Not sure if it’s a NSFW assertion, but to me the p-zombie experiment seems like the result of a discourse that went off the rails very early and very hard into angels on the head of a pin territory, this lw post notwithstanding.
Like, as far as I can tell, imagining a perfectly cloned reality except with the phenomenon in question assumed away, is supposedly (metaphysical) evidence that the phenomenon exists, except in a separate ontology? Isn’t this basically like using reverse Occam’s razor to prove that the extra entities are actually necessary, at least as long as they somehow stay mostly in their own universe?
Plus, the implicit assumption that consciousness can be defined as some sort of singular and uniform property you either have or don’t seems inherently dodgy and also to be at the core of the contradiction; like, is taking p-zombies too seriously a reaction specifically to a general sense of disappointment that a singular consciousness organelle is nowhere to be found?
Careful, you’re agreeing with Yud there! ^^
There’s a reason it’s not a completely dead topic in philosophy, since it’s at least somewhat of an interesting question as relates to monism/physicalism vs dualism (more than trying to litigate any specific organelle, or of the presence or lack thereof in animals).
Though a much shorter debunking of Yud’s views is the possibility of p-zombies is an unfalsifiable premise, thus claiming any foolproof counter is not so Rational™ (Although by the same token, it is indeed a topic of ultimately limited value)
I kinda agree with, but the post does correctly point out the Eliezer ignored a lot of the internal distinctions between philosophical positions and ignored how the philosophers use their own terminology. So even though I also think p-zombies are ultimately an incoherent thought experiment I don’t think Eliezer actually did a good job addressing them.
