On Saturday, February 1, 2014 5:48:04 PM UTC-5, stathisp wrote: > > On 2 February 2014 08:41, Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be <javascript:>> > wrote: > > >> There can be no zombies if consciousness is epiphenomenal. > > > > > > Just to be sure, I agree with that. > > > > I asked "why?" because I was thinking at the meta-level. > > > > The problem, is that if we can conceive that consciousness is > epiphenomenal, > > we can conceive that consciousness does not exist. > > > > That is why I am afraid that epiphenomenalism makes a step toward the > > elimination of the person. > > > > With comp we can eliminate or own person or ego, but that's the kind of > > thing which needs our own personal consent. > > Another way to look at it is that if consciousness is epiphenomenal > then it necessarily exists. > > >> Equivalently, if consciousness is epiphenomenal we could say it does > >> not really exist and we are all zombies; but I think that's just > >> semantics, and misleading. > > > > > > As I said, that's eliminativism. > > > > Now tell me, is it a crime to torture a p-zombie? > > > > I know a three years kids who broke a doll purposefully. Should we send > the > > kid in jail? In an asylum? > > > > Consciousness is not epiphenomenal, even if the brain might have > arbitrary > > choices in some of the way to sum up big chunks of informations > available > > for the person in act. > > > > Consciousness might better be seen as phenomenal, 1p. It depends on > truth, > > self, and relative consistency. > > If the dolls lack consciousness then it is not a crime to torture > them. Whether the consciousness is epiphenomenal or not is irrelevant. >
There is potentially an argument that torturing anything, even fictionally, could have negative consequences over time. it could conceivably build a tolerance for sadism and cruelty, both neurologically and culturally. The suppression of fictional torture could have negative consequences too though. > > -- > Stathis Papaioannou > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
