fronori

Tetsuo Ishikawa · @fronori

22nd Jan 2011 from Twitlonger

QT Nicholas Humphrey wrote that: [Earlier] I mentioned the idea of a philosophical zombie -- the philosophers’ fantasy of a creature who is physically identical to a normal human being but completely lacks conscious experience. “Philosophical zombies look and behave like the conscious beings that we know and love, but ‘all is dark inside.’” I gave reasons for saying that, in principle, philosophical zombies do not and could not exist. However, it has to be part of my evolutionary argument that these zombies have a near relation that could certainly exist. We might call it a “psychological zombie.” A psychological zombie, let’s assume, is physically identical to a normal human being except in one crucial respect: namely, that he or she lacks just those evolved circuits in the brain that yield the phenomenal quality of conscious experience.
Would psychological zombies look and behave like the conscious beings that we know and love, despite the fact that all is dark inside? No, that is exactly the point. If consciousness is an evolutionary adaptation, the answer has to be that they would not. There must be things that a psychological zombie would do differently precisely because all is dark inside. And for natural selection to have seen this, this difference must result in the zombie’s being less likely to survive and reproduce. Compared with a conscious human being, a psychological zombie would fail to thrive.
"Soul Dust: The Magic of Consciousness" by Nicholas Humphrey

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