Hi Günther,
> unfortunately I can't participate a lot at the moment because I'm quite
> busy, but I try to follow some of the discussion, and would like to
> pose
> a question (to Bruno):
>
>>> Which is why I think philosophical zombies
>>> are impossible.
>
> I also think they are impossible, and you (Bruno) have already hinted
> once that you do not think them impossible,
I don't think them impossible because I have seen such zombies!
Indeed I have seen a false policeman on some road, they are for slowing
down some cars.
I don't attribute consciousness to cartoon policeman, so that they are
zombies, at least when I am a failed by them.
More exactly: I can conceive fake policemen in paper are not conscious,
and that is all I need to accept I can be fail by some zombie.
Thus I can conceive zombies.
Developing this argument makes zombies logically conceivable, even, if
I would refute the claim that a zombie acting exactly like I would act
in any situation can exist. Accidental zombie can exist. It could
depend what we put exactly in the term zombie.
I criticize sometimes Bohm Quantum mechanics by invoking the fact that
the "wave without particles" is full of zombies.
> and here you clarify:
>
>> If this were true, then the movie graph (step 8 without occam) would
>> not been needed. Arithmetical truth is provably full of philosophical
>> zombies if comp is true and step 8 false.
>
> Which arithemetical truths would correspond to philosophical zombies? I
> don't get this.
This is different. If I am a digital machine, the complete description
and even emulation of the computations leading to my mental state, at
the right level (which exists once we assume the comp hyp of course) is
entirely encoded into prove of statement like the machine described by
the number 43554500901655 (say) on imput 4545665450098987 (say) go to
the state 67567689043. Such a description constitute a provable
arithmetical truth (it is a typical Sigma_1 truth, actually a Sigma_0
truth, meaning just it decidable.
So it is just a theorem in computer science: computations are encodable
(and thus encoded) in the (additive+multiplicative) relations existing
between numbers.
So, someone who does not believe in philosophical zombies, does not
need the step 8 (the Movie Graph Argument MGA), because arithmetical
truth does contains the computation describing, well, for example this
very discussion we have here and now.
For me the MGA is needed because I don't want to rely on the non
existence of zombie.
>
> I follow you that 1st person is recoverable by a 3rd person number
> theoretic description - or better, OMs are - but how would a zombie
> come
> about? Can you give an example?
Just consider the computation which correspond to your actual real
life. That computation is encoded (indeed an infinity of times) in the
Universal Deploiement, which is itself encoded (indeed an infinity of
times) in the set of all arithmetical truth. All right? Such a
computation would define an arithmetical version of you, and would
constitute a phisophical (indeed arithmetical) zombies.
If you define the zombies as having a "material" body, then it is
different (again we should then better define zombie). But this move is
irrelevant *after* the MGA.
Best regards,
Bruno Marchal
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
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Received on Wed Nov 05 2008 - 06:52:10 PST