Heidegger

Zombie Psycho-Philosophy

GEVANS613 at aol.com wrote:

>jPolanik@nc.rr.com writes:

>Joe: as you well know, the philosopher’s zombie is “a creature that is
>physically identical to you in every way, goes through exactly the same
>actions, and says exactly the same things as you but that lacks
>conscious experience” [Freeman, Anthony. 2003. Consciousness: A Guide
>to the Debates. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO p. 226].

>Jud: For me what you dualistically call *the experiencer* I
>distinguish as the (monistic) experiencing brain, which, apart from the
>profusion of neurological cells that characterise that organ,
>ontologically, and in some ways physiologically is no different from
>the/ experiencing tongue/ or the experiencing eyes, which in my opinion
>are adjuncts of the brain anyway if one views the human ( as I do) as a
>holism.

>Joe: it is just such a definition (of the experiencer as the
>experiencing brain) that unconceals the fact that you define a human in
>a way that is co-extensive with the definition of a zombie. zombies
>have human bodies and human brains; and, according to you, the human is
>nothing but a human body

>Jud: Firstly - Don’t be a complete dope Joe - you know damn well that
>you are misrepresenting my position. Your *philosopher’s zombie* has no
>connection with the real world - nor should such childishness be
>connected with *philosophy. * Such a literary character does NOT go
>through *exactly the same actions, and say exactly the same things as I
>do, but that lacks conscious experience” because it does not exist.

my contention is not that philosophers have defined the zombie because
some naturalist found zombies walking among us. my contention is that a
zombie (as the philosophers define the zombie) is supposed to be quite
different from a human; but, contrary to expectation, your definition of
‘human’ is indistinguishable from the definition of ‘zombie’. hence, a
contradiction has been found.

this a thought experiment. we have two definitions. the initial
hypothesis is that they are different — that the population satisfying
one definition is not identical to the population satisfying the other.
the task is to isolate and specify that difference.

so far, we can’t — in part because you declined to respond to the pop
quiz I presented in my last post. let me repeat the question

when I say ‘I saw a forest green afterimage’ in *people-talk* I’m
referring to the patch of green; but, when I say ‘I saw a forest green
afterimage’ in *zombie-talk* I’m referring to the neuro-chemical events
correlated with the (report of having seen an) afterimage.

now, Jud, after you’ve eliminated from your dictionary all the words
that elminativists eliminated, does the word ‘afterimage’ survive? when
you say you saw an afterimage do you refer to the *qualia* of the
subjective experience — the patch of color that zombies do not see? or
do you refer to the brain state that scientists say is correlated with
reports of having seen an afterimage?

do you talk people-talk or zombie-talk?

>[Jud]: Eliminativist man thinks, feels, speculates, loves, hates,
>wishes, is interested, is bored, believes, disbelieves just like any
>other member of human society.

>[Joe]: the eliminativist man claims that he thinks, feels, loves, hates
>and so on; but, according to you love does not exist; nor, presumably,
>does hate, compassion and so on. true?

>[Jud]: To reject the invisibles (which you claim *are* or *exist*) does
>NOT mean that there is a need for the eliminativist to eradicate some
>notion in such a way that their semantic implications become
>inaccessible at all.

few weeks ago you said, “The feeling lover exists but not his feeling of
love”. would it not follow that hate and compassion do not exist either?

if the eliminativist thinker has eradicated the feeling of love in such
a way that the semantic implications of this ‘notion’ have not become
inaccessible after all; then, would you kindly explain what you are
referring to when you speak of the feeling of love that doesn’t exist?
is it the qualia of experience or is it the correlated brain state you
refer to?

Joe

–
Philosophy is, after all, done ultimately in the first person for the
first person. — H-N Castaneda

@^@~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~@^@
 http://what-am-i.net
@^@~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~@^@

Posted on Sunday, October 12th, 2008 at 6:03 am
comment | rss 2.0 | trackback