[ExI] Coherent vs. Incoherent Fears of Being Uploaded

[Stathis Papaioannou]

2010/1/18 Stefano Vaj <stefano.vaj at gmail.com>:
> 2010/1/18 Stathis Papaioannou <stathisp at gmail.com>:
>> But zombie
>> consciousness is absurd.
>
> Just paradoxical. A real, perfect zombie thinks to be conscious and
> saying that he is "mistaken" involves some essentialist concept of
> consciousness to which nothing "phenomenically identifiable"
> corresponds.

A regular zombie doesn't know whether he is a zombie or not, since he
has no mind and no knowledge of anything, but a human does know he is
not a zombie. That's the orthodox view, though Dennett argues with
good reason that even the regular zombie is an absurdity. But imagine
if you could be a kind of zombie now and not know it; you honestly
believe you are conscious, but you might in fact be blind, deaf and
aphasic. The idea that at least the conscious know they are conscious
is shown to be false, since they may actually have zombie
consciousness. Thus we have zombies who behave as if they are
conscious *and* honestly believe that they are conscious: conscious
zombies, but with an inferior zombie consciousness.


-- 
Stathis Papaioannou