Philosophical zombies
I've just finished watching Shaun of the Dead (which is very funny and also has some touching moments) and went to look it up on Wikipedia. Somehow I ended up reading about philosophical zombies, which are hypothetical humans that look and react in every way exactly as a normal human being does, but have no consciousness. The concept is intriguing, but the arcana of philosophy bore me after a point. I think I ran out of attention span about 80% of the way through.
My opinion is that it's not possible for philosophical zombies to exist...as a Christian I believe that the soul exists after death, but I'm in the rather more unusual position of insisting that during life, the soul and the brain are identical, that is, the soul doesn't exist as a separate thingy from the physical body (click on the link for an old post giving my argument). Anyway...it's worth looking at, I wonder what you guys think.
Labels: film
posted by xenobiologista @ 23:34
1 Comments:
That's a great find on Wikipedia! =) ...wow, that brings back old memories of me slogging across the University of Maryland College Park campus, talking with my professor before class, and me sitting in the first row to talk about the "brain in a vat" and "philosophical zombies."
I posted my thoughts in a Treatise on Philosophical Zombies. Honestly, I liked the idea as a philosophical construct and argument... and I think it holds up fairly well in "Unbearable Lightness of Being" type arguments.
I see zombies every day on the DC Metro and in corporate culture. They look human, but they lack conscious experience, qualia, sentience, or sapience. =)
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