Who came up with the philosophical zombie?

1. The idea of zombies. Descartes held that non-human animals are automata: their behavior is wholly explicable in terms of physical mechanisms. But human behavior (he argued) could not be explained in that way.

What is Chalmers naturalistic dualism?

Chalmers characterizes his view as “naturalistic dualism”: naturalistic because he believes mental states supervene “naturally” on physical systems (such as brains); dualist because he believes mental states are ontologically distinct from and not reducible to physical systems.

Does Conceivability entail possibility?

Conceivability is prima facie evidence of metaphysical possibility, but it does not entail metaphysical possibility.

What makes a problem of consciousness easy?

The easy problems of consciousness are those that seem directly susceptible to the standard methods of cognitive science, whereby a phenomenon is explained in terms of computational or neural mechanisms. The hard problems are those that seem to resist those methods.

Are zombies conceivable?

A 2013 survey of professional philosophers conducted by Bourget and Chalmers produced the following results: 35.6% said P Zombies were conceivable but not metaphysically possible; 23.3% said they were metaphysically possible; 16.0% said they were inconceivable; and 25.1% responded “other.”

What does the Chinese room experiment prove?

The Chinese room argument holds that a digital computer executing a program cannot have a “mind”, “understanding” or “consciousness”, regardless of how intelligently or human-like the program may make the computer behave.

What does our conscious mind do?

The conscious mind contains all of the thoughts, memories, feelings, and wishes of which we are aware at any given moment. This is the aspect of our mental processing that we can think and talk about rationally.

What does the word dualism mean?

1 : a theory that considers reality to consist of two irreducible elements or modes. 2 : the quality or state of being dual or of having a dual nature. 3a : a doctrine that the universe is under the dominion of two opposing principles one of which is good and the other evil.

What does modal mean in philosophy?

Modal reasoning is central to human cognition, since it is pervasive both in philosophy and in every-day contexts. It involves investigating and evaluating claims about what is possible, impossible, essential, necessary, and contingent.

Is consciousness a hard problem?

Many philosophers have disputed that there is a hard problem of consciousness distinct from what Chalmers calls the easy problems of consciousness. Some, termed strong reductionists, hold that phenomenal consciousness (i.e., conscious experience) does exist but that it can be fully understood as reducible to the brain.

Are P zombies possible?

Are there zombies in the philosophy of mind?

in: Philosophical zombies. A philosophical zombie or p-zombie in the philosophy of mind and perception is a hypothetical being that is indistinguishable from a normal human being except in that it lacks conscious experience, qualia, or sentience.

Which is an example of a philosophical zombie argument?

Philosophical zombie arguments are used in support of mind-body dualism against forms of physicalism such as materialism, behaviorism and functionalism. It is an argument against the idea that the ” hard problem of consciousness ” (accounting for subjective, intrinsic, first person,…

What is the unifying idea of the zombie?

The unifying idea of the zombie is of a human that has no conscious experience, but one might distinguish various types of zombie used in different thought experiments as follows: A behavioral zombie that is behaviorally indistinguishable from a human.

Is it possible to have a physiological zombie?

However, physicalists like Daniel Dennett counter that Chalmers’s physiological zombies are logically incoherent and thus impossible. Though philosophical zombies are widely used in thought experiments, the detailed articulation of the concept is not always the same.