I read somewhere that philosophical zombies can think. However, I don't think that is true at all. I believe thinking and loving are mental states, and only conscious beings can have mental states. Sure, there is brain activity going on, but it is not accompanied by any subjective sensation of thought or love. So, can philosophical zombies think or love?
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1Humans are unconscious much of the time and still have mental states during it (dreams, etc.). Even when they are conscious, much of their mental state is not consciously accessible. See SEP, Higher-Order Theories of Consciousness:"Almost everyone now accepts, for example, (post-Freud) that beliefs and desires can be activated unconsciously... And then if we ask what makes the difference between a conscious and an unconscious mental state, one natural answer is that conscious states are states that we are aware of."– ConifoldCommented Apr 23, 2023 at 3:48
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It all depends on definitions, and neither does philosophical zombie or thinking have enough definition to be answered. And if they had, the answer would be obvious. So it's not a good question either way.– tkruseCommented Apr 23, 2023 at 9:51
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As I was recently arguing, Philosophical Zombies are best thought of as a Thought-Experiment, where their lack of subjectivity is by definition, thus allowing the implications and evidence to distinguish which to be explored: Why do people hide the assumption contained in the philosophical zombies question/idea?
Exploration of the Thought-Experiment naturally leads back to; are they possible, and could we determine whether they were happening or not based on our evidence, or only by their evidence reporting their experiences? If thinking and love are possible without all the seeming wasted energy of rumination and anguish, surely that ruthless engine Evolution would have ground them away.
But Dennett for instance, in his Incompatibilism, suggests there might be a kind of Epiphenomenalism to our subjectivity, we might truly be P-Zombies, and also feel subjectively we are not. And again, the question isn't, does that feel right but: how could we tell..?
I make the case that intersubjectivity, the neurologically enabled and imaginative acts of picturing ourselves in the experiences of others, are the basis for language, extension and persistence of learning, and of culture, in this answer: According to the major theories of concepts, where do meanings come from?
An intelligence incapable of this intersubjectivity in my picture, would be like a Chinese Room, incapable of transitioning from syntax to semantics in the peer-to-peer reality (see Indras's Net) of the communicating minds it was enjoining with, whether or not there is a 'true' subjectivity operating the Chinese Room. Personhood or specific modes of subjectivity are not necessarily essential to form such intersubjective networks, but they do have specific consequences, and they enable efficient heuristics, like judging the motivations and character of others in order to build better networks, and we can relate our neocortex to this via the Dunbar Number. See: Is the idea of a causal chain physical (or even scientific)?
I'd relate this indifference of intersubjective networks to personhood, to Bundle Theory. A flower 'loves' a bee visiting. A slime-mold collective 'thinks' about where to go next. Loving and thinking can have meaning, even without the cohesive strange-loop of a self-model deciding what kind of bundle to be, in order to shape outcomes (affective states regarding intensions).
Our love and thought arose from 'zombie' atoms, and we should not expect a hard discontinuity between those and us, in my view. Yet our subjectivity, our angst and anguish and passion, are functional, and efficient in the purposes for which they evolved. I think any reasonable person must admit so. And anyone who doesn't, must just be a zombie... ;)
answered Apr 23, 2023 at 1:43
