deepstash
Beta
Deepstash brings you key ideas from the most inspiring articles like this one:
Read more efficiently
Save what inspires you
Remember anything
Are we more than just our bodies? Philosophers argue over zombies.
3
Key Ideas
Save all ideas
"Zombie"
The word comes from the Hatian folklore and refers to a corpse animated by witchcraft.
In philosophy, this idea of a regular human but with no conscious experiences is known as a “philosophical zombie" or a “p-zombie". It is an argument against physicalism - the school of thought that everything that makes us human is ultimately derived from our physical characteristics.
18 SAVES
P-zombie as a Foundation to Dualism
If a p-zombie is logically conceivable, a physical body minus the mental, then this possibility could support dualism - an alternative view that sees the world consisting of not just the physical but also the mental. In other words, since a world of zombies is imaginable, all behaving purely at the physical level, why did evolution produce consciousness in humans?
14 SAVES
The Physicalism Analogy: A Proof to Dualism
- Physicalism says that everything in our world is physical.
- If physicalism is true, everything in out world is physical including consciousness.
- But we can conceive of a “zombie world", a physical world without consciousness then,
- Physicalism is proven false, because our world consists of both physical and mental attributes.
The existence of consciousness is a further, nonphysical fact about our world.
19 SAVES
SIMILAR ARTICLES & IDEAS:
9
Key Ideas
The Hard Problem of Consciousness
Consciousness could be described as the feeling of being inside your head, looking out, or of having a soul.
How we learn, store memories, or perceive things, are easy prob...
Between Science And Philosophy
The problems of consciousness straddle the border between science and philosophy.
- Some argue that conscious sensations, such as pain, don't really exist, others, that plants and trees must also be conscious.
- A handful of neuroscientists have come to believe that the problem is about to be solved if we are willing to accept the conclusion that computers or the internet might soon become conscious too.
Ignoring The Problem
Science has been trying to ignore the problem of consciousness for a long time.
- In the 1600s, René Descartes declared that nothing is more obvious and undeniable than the fact that we are conscious. Your consciousness can't be a fantasy. At the same time, your consciousness does not obey any of the usual rules of science. It doesn't seem to be physical. It can't be observed or really described. Descartes concluded that it had been bequeathed to us by God.
- This Cartesian dualism remained the assumption into the 18th century. But it was unacceptable to the secular scientist that took the position that only physical things exist.
- As late as 1989, the British psychologist Stuart Sutherland declared that it is impossible to specify what consciousness is, what it does, or why it evolved.
- In 1990 Francis Crick and Christof Kock mentioned in a paper that most of the work in both cognitive and neurosciences makes no reference to consciousness because most don't know of a useful way of approaching the problem.
11
Key Ideas
Artificial Intelligence: Singularity and Virtual Immortality
The growth of technology and Artificial Intelligence(AI) is on track to provide us with:
- Singularity: A merging of human intelligence and AI, resulting in Superstro...
Inner Awareness and AI
... or self-awareness is something many scientists and philosophers are discussing. The fact that there is consciousness inside us, is a big problem for those developing AI, as no matter what they do, and how technologically superior the product is, nobody can explain or even fathom the juggernaut of consciousness.
Qualia: Experiencing Sensations
Qualia relates to the raw sensations of experience, like colours, smells, sounds.
It is through our actual experience that we know what something tastes, looks or smells like, and it is not some information already drilled inside our brains on birth. We have to experience sensations to understand them.
4
Key Ideas
Misconceptions About Zombies
A zombie is a walking corpse, a living dead. But not all walking corpse is a zombie.
Unlike many other undead, the zombie is mindless, vacant, without purpose. The zom...
How Zombies are Reflected in Life
A lot of people have related zombies to the lives of humans, mostly social ills, including consumerism, racism, capitalism, and terrorism.
Most of the films about zombies are not about the zombies themselves, but on how people cope or with the reality of the undead.
Samsara = Life of a Zombie
Samsara is a belief in Buddhism meaning the cycle of birth, life, death and rebirth. It is new life, but it is still full of suffering. As long as we are alive, suffering is present because it is natural for us to wish for good things not to end even though we knew that it would.
Just like the zombie which suffers because of its endless hunger, never satisfied and moves on to another prey which also ends up as a zombie.