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Or "not logically possible", whichever.
I'm only asking about the negation.
Also not about the philosophical arguments themselves, except where they may explain the use of the negated word.

Among both proponents and opponents, the convention appears to be that - if Chalmers' Causally-Inert Consciousness (CIC) were shown to not exist, it would make p-zombie world (PZW) "inconceivable". Rather than "even easier to conceive", the difference from baseline world being nil in such a case.

If I were asked to imagine "a world where everyone lacked left pinky fingers", I'd find the task even easier if I had lost my left pinky in an accident.

This gets even more silly if we consider p-zombies having an argument about the conceivability of PZW.

If this is an issue for another subsite (language?), I'll gladly take that for an answer.
I am not a native English speaker, is this difference a translation thing (like "fish" referring, in many languages, exclusively to Osteichthyes, not jellyfish or silverfish)?
Or is it more like CIC itself, where a group is making uncommon use of a common label ("conceivable", maybe?)?

[edit] [re: sources] @jo-wehler Sorry, I had assumed the work was generally familiar. I can't quickly find the passages, and the details don't seem all that relevant. When speaking of Chalmers, I meant (mostly) 'The Conscious Mind' and discussions - in particular, search for terms "causally inert", and "Let C be whichever psychological" When speaking of opponents, I meant Daniel Denett's 'Consciousness Explained', and Eliezer Yudkowsky's "rationality: from AI to zombies", particularly chapter 221+.

[re: question] @conifold I ask why the word 'inconceivable' is used to describe the situation. I perhaps DON'T know what exactly to ask, so I'll explain my confusion:

  1. Chalmers' CIC, being "causally inert", is rather unlike the 15+ OTHER things people call 'consciousness' (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/consciousness). So, I assume that when people on the topic say "consciousness", they mean CIC (or had been misled).
  2. p-zombies are "physically identical to baseline humans, and lacking CIC"

I can think of what the scenario would look like, even if I don't understand how it works. I mean, "exactly like our world'. Not hard.

I can even reflect and gain absolute conviction that PZW is physically possible, so long as I allow that the set of differences we label CIC, is nil, since then OUR world is an example.
I can even 'conceive' that this is actually the case. Heck, the p-zombie idea takes it as a premise that physics DOES have everything to produce consciousness-looking behavior!

If, on the other hand, if the idea of PZW has an implied "lacking CIC, UNLIKE US, OBVIOUSLY"
...then isn't that question-begging?
"Let's assume CIC exists. Let's think of a world without CIC. From this, and some equivocation, we can almost prove the initial assumption."

I'm not SAYING it's either of those cases. I can only guess.
My confusion, I reiterate, is about why Denett, Yudkowsky, Chalmers and others, say in unison:
"no difference" -> "PZW inconceivable",
rather than
"no difference" -> "THIS is a PZW, Q.E.D., not that it means anything"

[edit 2] I'm expecting the answer to maybe take the form of "you are assuming X, where most others are thinking Y".

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    Please add some reference on which papers or passages from Chalmers' work you rely - explaining CIC and PZW. Please also add which definition of p-zombie you are using in your post. Thanks.
    – Jo Wehler
    Commented Sep 13 at 17:53
  • Is the question what "inconceivable" means? It means cannot be thought coherently, see SEP, Are zombies conceivable? P-zombies are inconceivable if CIC does not exist because causally efficient consciousness would make a physical difference and conscious beings would be physically distinguishable from non-conscious ones. But that contradicts the definition of p-zombies.
    – Conifold
    Commented Sep 13 at 18:28

3 Answers 3

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As Jo Wehler said, it would be helpful to have some context about what passages from Chalmers you're referring to. But to answer the question of why causally-inert consciousness being impossible would mean P-zombies are impossible:

A P-zombie is a person who lacks consciousness, but behaves exactly the same as they would behave if they had consciousness.

Let P denote a P-zombie, and let C denote the same person if they had consciousness. The behavior of C is (by definition of P-zombie) exactly the same as the behavior of P, despite the presence of consciousness in C. So, the presence of consciousness in C is causally inert.

So, if both P and C are possible, then causally inert consciousness must be possible, because it would occur in the case of C.

Taking the contrapositive, this means that if causally inert consciousness is impossible, then it cannot be the case that both P and C are possible. Since we usually assume C is possible - we assume most people walking around do in fact have consciousness - this implies P is impossible.

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  • “A P-zombie is a person who lacks consciousness, but behaves exactly the same as they would behave if they had consciousness.” How to decide whether a p-zombie fullfils this definition? Is there a “Turing-test“ for being either a p-zombie or a conscious person? For me the handicap of the whole discussion is its fictitious character without operationable definitions – of course I am not against thought experiments.
    – Jo Wehler
    Commented Sep 13 at 18:35
  • This appears to me to answer a question which is somewhat different from the original question, although perhaps the original question had a mistake in it. The original question asked how "if Chalmers' Causally-Inert Consciousness (CIC) were shown to not exist, it would make p-zombie world (PZW) 'inconceivable'." This answer only explains how, if CIC were shown (metaphysically, resp. logically) impossible, then it would imply that p-zombies are (metaphysically, resp. logically) impossible. So the hypotheses are quite different: the original question allows for CIC to be possible but false.
    – user509184
    Commented Sep 13 at 20:23
  • There is a point that I think is more important, though. This answer doesn't specify what notion of impossibility is at play. Presumably it is metaphysical possibility, since CIC is certainly not logically impossible (causality is a metaphysical concern, not a purely logical one). So this answer concludes only that P is metaphysically impossible. The original question asked to conclude that P is either inconceivable or logically impossible. To reach the conclusion that P is inconceivable, you need to be able to infer metaphysical possibility from conceivability.
    – user509184
    Commented Sep 13 at 20:26
  • The inference from conceivability to metaphysical possibility is one of the most important but incompletely-developed parts of this whole subject. Chalmers wrote an excellent paper which is entirely about the plausibility and the limits of this inference, available on the Web here: consc.net/papers/conceivability.html
    – user509184
    Commented Sep 13 at 20:29
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    What is logically possible or impossible depends on the axiom system. The axiom system, in turn, is (at least arguably) modeled after what we can clearly and coherently picture. There are many mathematical objects that sound like they could exist, but which we cannot clearly picture. For instance, "a simple quadrilateral whose vertices lie on a circle, but whose product of diagonals does not equal the sum of products of its opposite sides." Sounds okay - but we can't draw it, can't picture it, can't construct it, and it's logically impossible by Ptolemy's theorem.
    – causative ♦
    Commented Sep 13 at 22:06
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Intro

I will offer a 3 part answer here, that will explain that Chalmer's version of consciousness has refuting evidence, which seems to meet your starting presumption, BUT that zombies are possible anyway, with two examples.

Epiphenomenalism is refuted by the evolutionary test case for causal consciousness

The evolutionary test case for causal consciousness was to my knowledge first articulated by William James. https://philarchive.org/archive/KLEWJO

The argument (somewhat rephrased by me) is that:

  • Consciousness appears to do clearly functionally beneficial things for us
  • Consciousness is subject to massive variation: it is not explicitly or logically coupled to what we do. We experience inappropriate thoughts at times, and blank minds while we do things
  • IF consciousness were causal, that variation would be selected against, to lead to an optimized/effective conscious mind
  • If consciousness were not causal, then variation would spiral out of control, such that our conscious minds would be blank, or totally untethered form what we do.
  • Consciousness is optimized, and looks a lot like pretty much any other complex biological function (poor architecture, but tuned for high effectiveness within the architecture's constraints)
  • Therefore consciousness is causal.

The epiphenomenalist counter discussed in this paper, that consciousness could be one extremely complex collection of millions of accidental correlations between our minds and our bodies -- is patently absurd.

The counter proposed by Chalmers is Russelian monism -- that there is some feature of the universe that couples consciousness to bodily action. However, the multiple cases where we have inappropriate thoughts, or no thoughts at all, also refute Chalmers and Russell.

So -- I submit that we have good reason to consider consciousness to be causal, and Chalmers version of "consciousness" not to hold.

So could there still be P-zombies? Option 1

As I noted, most of us have experienced cases where we did things, but have no recollection of having thoughts as we did them. This is rare for deliberate actions, but is actually common for most mental processing. Referencing System 1 of Kahneman's 2-system model of minds, it is entirely unconscious, and has 1000X the throughput of system 2, so approximately 99.9% of everything we "think" -- we are zombies while thinking.

This observation, plus the evolutionary argument above highlights that we actually need an explanation for why we are even 0.1% conscious, and only 99.9% zombies rather than 100% zombies. After all, sometimes we ARE 100% zombies!

This option says "yes", and we ARE mostly zombies, and sometimes entirely zombies.

So could we be zombies, Option 2?

One of the more interesting theories of consciousness floating around philosophy is Dennett and his allies Delusionism. Under delusionism, we are not causally conscious, have no self, experience no qualia, and while we have a version of "consciousness" it is just our unconscious "tricking us" into thinking we are conscious.

Per Dennett's delusionism, we therefore are ALL zombies, all the time, but don't know it.

It is also arguable that eliminative reductionism, which holds that with more and more knowledge we will eventually consider our mental processes to be neural processes, and replace mentalistic concepts with neural concepts, is likewise arguing that we are actually zombies, but don't know it.

Delusionism is a minority view in philosophy of mind, but almost all views are minority views, and delusionism is not an insignificant minority. The percent of support for delusionism was not measured in the 2020 philosophy survey, but its cousin eliminative reductionism had a 4.5% support level among philosophers.

This view is therefore under active consideration within philosophy, and under it the answer to the question would be "yes, there could be and ARE zombies".

Summary

Chalmer's view of consciousness is refuted by the evolutionary tuning of consciousness, showing it to be causal, rather than epiphenomenal. So your presumption that Chalmer's version of "consciousness" does not hold, appears to be true of this world.

Yet, in this world, there are at least two viable approaches to considering consciousness that hold that we ARE zombies, at least part of the time. So no, refuting Chalmer's conception of consciousness does not make his zombies inconceivable.

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  • Thank you, as I understand, you also disagree with the convention. I still don't understand why, on so many discussions, people have consistently used it, regardless of the side of the debate they take. Were Denett and Yudkowsky. adopting Chalmers' uses of words? I don't see Denett doing that.
    – kaay
    Commented Sep 13 at 22:37
  • @kaay -- Dennett is not always an honest summarizer of his own views. Dennett is very focused on persuasion, and the power of intuition pumps. Because zombies are a useful intuition pump for views he disagrees with, I think he was strongly motivated to deny that there could even BE a zombie. At any rate, I have read him repeatedly deny that P-Zombies are possible, so no he does not adopt Chalmer's language. However, most of his rivals agree with my summary that he actually is arguing that we are P-zombies.
    – Dcleve
    Commented Sep 13 at 22:56
  • arguing that we ARE p-zombies, and are simultaneously not possible? :) A consequence of the "persuasion over honesty" stance?
    – kaay
    Commented Sep 13 at 22:58
  • @kaay -- If you have read Consciousness Explained, you would get an inclination of how that would be possible. CE is a fascinating collection of empirical test data, along with Dennett's speculative narration designed to open his reader's minds to the possibility that they are Delusionist. IE it is primarily intuition pumps by Dennett. At one point, he even admits he was trying to non-rationally brainwash his audience, by implanting an alternative Delusionist operating system in us! Having logical contradictions in this process --- is no obstacle so long as the audience does not notice!
    – Dcleve
    Commented Sep 13 at 23:04
  • @kaay to understand the reasoning behind Delusionism, I strongly recommend Blackmore's Consciousness a Very Short Introduction instead. Here is my review: amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/R1C1TJFIWBZ8ZQ/… I give Blackmore 5 stars, AND say she is insane!!!
    – Dcleve
    Commented Sep 13 at 23:10
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Though neither @causative not @dcleve ever said it outright, they led me to believe that the reason for my defied expectation on the use of the negation is this:

I had assumed PZW meant "a world like this, with no CIC", PZW actually means "a world where people aren't (actually, not CI)conscious and yet everything physical remains unchanged"

Making the question "Can you imagine PZW" more like "Can you imagine that removing CErtConsciousness* may leave the world visibly unchanged"? Entirely different quesiton.

And then Chalmers went "conciousness is Causally Inert", and I assumed PZW was about CIC from the beginning, when it wasn't.
Instead, the response "PZW is inconceivable/impossible" means "No, it is inconceivable that you could take a-part-of-the-world-that-DOES-have-visible-consequences away without visibly changing it, it's a contradiction"

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  • Chalmers concept of zombies is only compatible with a few models of consciousness in philosophy of mind. All of them require epiphenomenalism. Epiphenomenal emergent dualism, where mind is emergent from the body but a-causal, parallelist non-interactive property dualism, and denial of the reality of consciousness physicalism. The other epiphenomenal option, epiphenomenal idealism, where matter has no effect on our thoughts, could not have zombies because mind/consciousness is the originating substance. Denial of zombies is basically a denial that one should consider these options.
    – Dcleve
    Commented Sep 20 at 17:36
  • And yes "physically identical" is critical for Chalmers' concept. My question as to why we aren't always unconscious as a result of observed variation of consciousness is designed to highlight how "identity theories" and "emergent physicalism" both have unexamined commitments to epiphenomenalism as a result of causal closure, putting them in Chalmer's sights too. It is only causal consciousness models that can pass the evolutionary test case.
    – Dcleve
    Commented Sep 20 at 17:50

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