[ExI] Coherent vs. Incoherent Fears of Being Uploaded

Lee Corbin lcorbin at rawbw.com
Wed Jan 20 04:50:34 UTC 2010


Stathis Papaioannou wrote:

> Also, a true philosophical zombie has no qualia at all,
 > and no understanding that it has no qualia
> (because it has no understanding of anything).

Yes. I believe that this is how those who believe in qualia
use the terms. But to my surprise, you seem to believe
that it makes sense to talk of qualia. You do?

>> We come right back to the fundamental question: does
>> the functional equivalent supply the subjectivity,
>> i.e., supply the "qualia" of existence?

When I use the term, I am forgiven===because I only do so
to communicate with the heathen who don't understand.

While I find it *conceivable* that there could be
zombies, I consider it ridiculous, for many reasons,
chief among them is that nature presumably could
have economized by turning out zombies instead of
us.

Er, I mean instead of me. In fact, I strongly suspect
that people who live in or are from the antipodes
(including Australians) have no subjectivity;
something about the reverse coriolus causes the quantum
entanglement to fail to manifest true consciousness. In
other words, you other hemisphere types on this list make
a lot of sound and noise, but you don't truly mean it
because you are not.

Lee

P.S. Even when you make sense:

>> To me it seems completely bizarre and extremely
>> unlikely that somehow nature would have chosen to
>> bestow a "beingness" or consciousness on one
>> peculiar way for mammals to be successful:
>> our way, with gooey neurons and neurotransmitters.
>> And that had electronic or other means of
>> accomplishing the same ends for exactly the
>> same kinds of creature with high fitness been
>> supplied by nature instead, then magically no
>> consciousness, no qualia, and no subject.
>>
>> It sounds absurd even to write out such a claim.
> 
> It's not absurd, just very unlikely to be the case. But zombie
> consciousness is absurd.



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