[ExI] Zombies are logically inconsistent: a proof

[Jason Resch]

I will attempt to prove below that the idea of "*zombies"* (entities that
are functionally or physically identical to fully conscious humans, but are
entirely devoid of consciousness) is an idea that contains logical
contradictions which make zombies logically impossible. That is, I will
attempt to show it is not logically possible to separate consciousness from
a system that behaves and operates in all manners like a person who is
conscious.

__________________________________________________________________________

The possibility of zombies means that there is no behavior
that requires consciousness. That is, a zombie could:

   - Describe their emotions, feelings, inner thoughts, etc. without being
   consciousness
   - Shift their attention, focus, and concentration, without being
   conscious
   - Learn, remember, internalize, and forget, without being conscious
   - Describe probable intentions, thoughts, and feelings of others without
   being conscious
   - Develop a theory of epiphenomenalism and zombies without being
   conscious
   - Sense (see, hear, taste, smell, touch, and feel pain) without being
   conscious
   - Contemplate, think, meditate, know and believe without being conscious
   - Become informed and change one's mind without being conscious
   - Talk about consciousness and question the mystery of qualia without
   being conscious

Some of these behaviors seem contradictory. Can one really "believe",
"think", or "know" without being conscious? But this is what belief in
zombies requires: that there be no behavior, capacity, or function which
requires consciousness, since zombies behave in every way like a conscious
person despite not being conscious.

But it seems to me that either answer:

*1. "Zombies can think, believe, or know"*
or
*2. "Zombies cannot think, believe or know"*

Leads us to a contradiction.

*If we accept #1*, that zombies can think, believe, or know, then we get
something that believes, thinks, and knows itself to be conscious (just as
any normally functioning person would), and something that thinks about and
knows its own internal mental states. Something that can believe and know
itself to be in pain, and so on, and what more is there to being conscious
than having such thoughts and beliefs about our own internal mental states?
If this is consciousness, then we conclude the zombie is itself conscious.

*If we accept #2*, that zombies cannot think, believe, or know, then we end
up with zombies that can solve complex problems without thinking, and
zombies that can win at Jeopardy despite not knowing anything. This
thinking without thinking, and knowing without knowing, appears to be an
equally inconsistent notion.

Therefore, we conclude: *if zombies are logically inconsistent with regards
to these behaviors*, then *consciousness is logically necessary in any
system that manifests such behaviors*. That is, any system that can think,
or know, or believe, must be conscious.

__________________________________________________________________________


Below are some quotes to reinforce the implausibility/impossibility of
zombies that can function like we do, without being conscious:

“To hold that it is logically possible (or, worse, nomologically possible)
that a state lacking qualitative character should be functionally identical
to a state having qualitative character is to make qualitative character
irrelevant both to what we can take ourselves to know in knowing about the
mental states of others and also to what we can take ourselves to know in
knowing about our own mental states. There could (on this view) be no
possible physical effects of any state from which we could argue by an
'inference to the best explanation' that it has qualitative character; for
if there were, we could give at least a partial functional characterization
of the having of qualitative character by saying that it tends to give
rise, in such and such circumstances, to those physical effects, and could
not allow that a state lacking qualitative character could be functionally
identical to a state having it. *And for reasons already given, if cases of
'absent qualia' were possible, qualitative character would be necessarily
inaccessible to introspection. If qualitative character were something that
is irrelevant in this way to all knowledge of minds, self-knowledge as well
as knowledge of others, it would not be at all 'unacceptable', but would
instead be just good sense, to deny that *pains* must have qualitative
character. But of course it is absurd to suppose that ordinary people are
talking about something that is in principle unknowable by anyone when they
talk about how they feel, or about how things look, smell, sound, etc. to
them.* (Indeed, just as a causal theory of knowledge would imply that
states or features that are independent of the causal powers of the things
they characterize would be in principle unknowable, so a causal theory of
reference would imply that such states and features are in principle
unnamable and inaccessible to reference.) *And if, to return to sanity, we
take qualitative character to be something that can be known in the ways we
take human feelings to be knowable (at a minimum, if it can be known
introspectively), then it is not possible, not even logically possible, for
a state that lacks qualitative character to be functionally identical to a
state that has it.*”
-- Sydney Shoemaker in "Argument by Functionalism and Qualia" (1975)

Here, Shoemarker forces us to ask where our communicable knowledge about
our own mental states comes from, if it comes from something with no causal
efficacy (as a belief in
zombies/epiphenomenalism/consciousness-inessentialism requires).


“*If zombies or their functional equivalents are logically possible, then
experience is inaccessible to introspection*: zombies have the same
introspective mechanisms that we do, so those mechanisms do not allow us to
determine whether or not we are zombies. Shoemaker concludes that zombies
and their functional equivalents must be logically impossible.”
-- David Chalmers in "The Conscious Mind" (1996)


Here Chalmers recapitulates Shoemarker's argument, and shows if zombies are
possible, then we, (like zombies), also have no access whatsoever to our
internal mental states, as if we had such access while zombies did not, it
would lead to functional differences in our behavior.

“Consciousness, whatever it may be—a substance, a process, a name for a
confusion—*is not epiphenomenal; your mind can catch the inner listener in
the act of listening, and say so out loud.*  *The fact that I have typed
this paragraph would at least seem* to refute the idea that consciousness
has no experimentally detectable consequences.”
-- Eliezer Yudkowsky in “The Generalized Anti-Zombie Principle” (2008)


Here, Eliezer shows the clearest example of the fact that we do have access
to our own mental states, because we can talk about them. We can not only
hear the inner thinker, but we report what we hear. This is as near a
knock-down argument against epiphenomenalism (which is required for a
belief in zombies) as one can get. If conscious states have physically
detectable consequences (like writing the above paragraph) then
consciousness cannot be stripped away without having physically detectable
consequences.


“*Unless our thoughts are completely uncorrelated with what physically
happens in our brains, the correct conclusion of the zombie scenario is
that introspection about our conscious experiences is unreliable. But such
introspection is the entire reason we felt the need to develop
non-physicalist accounts of consciousness in the first place.* In that
sense, the zombie argument against physicalism is self-undermining.
The zombie scenario posits that we can conceive of persons who behave
exactly as we do, but who lack inner experience. To pull off this trick, it
is necessary to invoke strategies to completely sequester consciousness
from anything that people say or do. The cost is that what ends up being
described is not what we usually think of a person at all. *Within a
passive-mentalist approach, a person is not an integrated whole of
phenomenal experience and behavior. Rather, they are effectively a zombie
carrying around a sealed box labeled “mental stuff.” And their physical
selves will never know what’s inside the box. Were they allowed to look
inside and become aware of the mental aspects of their existence, the
knowledge they gained would inevitably affect their behavior, which is
against the rules.* The fact that passive mentalism admits the
conceivability of zombies implies that what it purports to explain is not
consciousness as we know it.”
-- Sean M. Carroll in "Consciousness and the Laws of Physics" (2021)


Carroll points out that the entire motivation for proposing
epiphenomenalism/consciousness-inessentialism is self-refuting, as if it
were true, what it purports to be consciousness, cannot be consciousness,
as none of us would ever have access to it, and it would follow that the
consciousness in our heads would have no bearing or relation to anything we
ever say about the consciousness in our heads.

“Shakey was a particularly crude zombie, but we can now imagine a more
realistic and complex zombie, which monitors its own activities, including
even its own internal activities, in an indefinite upward spiral of
reflexibility. I will call such a reflexive entity a zimbo. A zimboe is a
zombie that, as a result of self-monitoring, has internal (but unconscious)
higher-order information states that are about its other, lower-order
informational states. (It makes no difference for this thought experiment
whether a zimbo is considered to be a robot or a human–or
Martian–entity.) *Those
who believe that the concept of a zombie is coherent must surely accept the
possibility of a zimbo. A zimbo is just a zombie that is behaviorally
complex, thanks to a control system that permits recursive
self-representation.* [...]
We can readily see that at the very least the zimbo would (unconsciously)
believe that it was in various mental states–precisely the mental states it
is in a position to report about should we ask it questions. It would think
it was conscious, even if it wasn’t! Any entity that could pass the Turing
test would operate under the (mis?)apprehension that it was conscious.
[...]
*Is the process of unconscious reflection, then, a path by which a zombie
could turn itself into a zimbo, and thereby render itself conscious? If it
is, then zombies must be conscious after all.* All zombies are capable of
uttering convincing “speech acts” (remember, they’re indistinguishable from
our best friends), and this capability would be magical if the control
structures or processes causally responsible for it in the zombie’s brain
(or computer or whatever) were not reflective about the acts and their
(apparent, or functional) contents. A zombie might begin its career in an
uncommunicative and unreflective state, and hence truly be a zombie, an
unconscious being, *but as soon as it began to “communicate” with others
and with itself, it would become equipped with the very sorts of states,
according to Rosenthal’s analysis, that suffice for consciousness.*”
-- Daniel Dennett in “Consciousness Explained” (1991)


Dennet shows that once we introduce the concept of "belief", even if we
define it to be a "belief without consciousness", it quickly leads to a
kind of belief every bit as rich as our own, the moment such beliefs are
turned inward, to reflect upon itself.

__________________________________________________________________________


The impossibility of zombies has profound implications for the possibility
of mind uploading, and the question of whether our uploaded selves will
still be conscious, as well as the question of whether we can make
super-intelligent AIs that are without consciousness. Issues and questions
which I think are pertinent to members of this list.

Jason
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