On 31 March 2015 at 09:28, Stathis Papaioannou <stath...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > On Tuesday, March 31, 2015, Bruno Marchal <marc...@ulb.ac.be> wrote: > >> >> On 30 Mar 2015, at 10:06, LizR wrote: >> >> On 30 March 2015 at 19:26, Stathis Papaioannou <stath...@gmail.com> >> wrote: >> >>> Fading qualia in the setting of normal behaviour, if logically >>> possible, would destroy the common idea of consciousness that we have. >>> It would mean, for example, that you could have gone blind last week >>> but not realise it. You would look at a painting, describe the >>> painting, have an emotional response to the painting - but lack any >>> visual experience of the painting. If that is possible, what meaning >>> is left to attribute to the word "qualia"? >>> >>> Well, it would mean that comp is false, because the electronic >> replacements are not generating any conscious experience despite having >> their I/O matched to the rest of the brain. >> >> Yes, there would be p-zombies. Behaving like conscious person, but >> without any private knowledge, qualia, sensation or consciousness. >> > > And there would also be the possibility of partial p-zombies, which would > mean that private knowledge, qualia, sensation and consciousness make no > subjective difference, or equivalently that they don't exist. > Yes, exactly, partial zombies. This is sounding like Daniel Dennett's view, that consciousness etc don't "really" exist but are a sort of illusion or "user interface" or like "elan vital", some mysterious ineffable property that science will do away with once we understand enough. I don't necessarily believe this, but I need more than "an argument from incredulity" to convince me that it's wrong. -- 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/d/optout.
