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In Chapter 8 of our textbook David Chalmers (in “The Hard Problem of Consciousness” page 384) discusses ‘philosophical zombies’. What does he mean by this? Why do ‘zombies suggest that materialism must be false’?
Sample Answer
In Chapter 8 of the textbook, David Chalmers introduces the concept of “philosophical zombies” to explore the nature of consciousness and its implications for materialism. Philosophical zombies refer to hypothetical beings that are behaviorally indistinguishable from normal human beings but lack subjective conscious experience. Chalmers argues that the existence of such zombies suggests that materialism, the belief that everything in the world can be explained solely in terms of physical processes, must be false.
Chalmers presents the idea of philosophical zombies as a thought experiment to challenge the assumption that conscious experience can be reduced to physical processes alone. He proposes that it is conceivable for a being to exhibit all the outward behaviors and functionality of a conscious being without actually having any subjective awareness. This means that there could be individuals who are functionally equivalent to us but lack the inner experience of consciousness.
The significance of philosophical zombies lies in their ability to challenge materialism, which posits that consciousness can be wholly explained by physical processes in the brain. If it is possible to conceive of a being that lacks conscious experience but behaves identically to a conscious being, this implies that consciousness cannot be fully accounted for by physical explanations alone.
Chalmers argues that consciousness is an irreducible aspect of reality, separate from and not explicable by physical processes. He believes that materialism fails to provide a complete explanation for consciousness because it cannot account for the subjective nature of conscious experience.
The existence of philosophical zombies suggests that there is something beyond physical processes that gives rise to consciousness. Chalmers refers to this as the “hard problem” of consciousness – the challenge of explaining why and how subjective experience arises from purely physical phenomena.
In conclusion, philosophical zombies are hypothetical beings that are behaviorally indistinguishable from conscious beings but lack subjective conscious experience. Their existence challenges materialism because they suggest that consciousness cannot be fully explained by physical processes alone. According to David Chalmers, the concept of philosophical zombies points to the existence of a “hard problem” of consciousness, which implies that there is something beyond the physical realm that gives rise to conscious experience.
