Philosophical Zombie (Zimbo)

Philosophical Zombie (Zimbo)

Remember: since a philosophical zombie is declared to be behaviorally indistinguishable from a conscious person, behaviors like carrying out this conversation are within its repertoire, and in order to control such behaviors the zombie is going to need recursive self-representation. It can “think” (in its unconscious zombie way) about how it feels about how it felt about what it was thinking of when it wondered whether . . . , and so forth. It is easy enough to imagine your dreadful suspicions being aroused if Zeke just draws a blank, becoming weirdly unresponsive when you query him this way, but that would be discovering that if Zeke is a zombie, he isn’t a zimbo. You should always make sure you’re thinking of a zimbo when you ask if a philosophers’ zombie is a real possibility, for only a being with recursive self-representation would be able to hold its own in everyday interactions like this conversation, to say nothing of writing poetry, framing novel scientific hypotheses, and acting in dramas, all of which are within the competences of zimboes—by definition.

Unless you go to the trouble of imagining, in detail, how indistinguishable “normal” Zeke would be from zimbo Zeke, you haven’t really tried to conceive of a philosophers’ zombie. You’re like Leibniz, giving up without half trying. Now ask yourself a few more questions. Why would you care whether Zeke is a zimbo? Or more personally, why would you care whether you are, or became, a zimbo? In fact, you’d never know.

Really? Does Zeke have beliefs? Or does he just have sorta beliefs, “you know, the sort of informational states-minus-consciousness that guide zimboes through their lives the way beliefs guide the rest of us”? Only here, the sorta beliefs are exactly as potent, as competent, as “the real thing,” so this is an improper use of the sorta operator. We can bring this out by imagining that left-handers (like me, DCD) are zimboes; only right-handers are conscious!