Experiment in Thought

The philosophical zombie is a thought experiment that helps us to think about consciousness.   A philosophical zombie in the philosophy of mind and a perception is a hypothetical being that is indistinguishable from a normal human being except it lacks conscious experience.

Read on. 

Does conscious experience exist in this world?   According to physicalism, all that exists in our world including consciousness is physical.   A metaphysically possible world in which all physical facts are same as those of the actual world except consciousness.   This is a zombie world.   Philosophical zombies are used in thought experiments and primarily used to argue against specific types of physicalism such as behaviourism, according to which mental states exist as behaviour, belief, thought and consciousness.

If consciousness is nothing more than the functions of the brain, and the body, then the zombies cannot exist.   Anything that can carry out all usual functions of speaking, thinking and acting wold have to be conscious like any of us says psychologist Susanne Blackmore. The psychologist continues that consciousness is separate from the brain and its functions.  Hence philosophical zombie exists or can be created.

Nobel laureate Francis Crick says there are zombie modes in the human brain.   For example sleep walking or when you nodded your head just then.   That was a zombie response.

If a person looks and talks like any of us but does not have a subjective experience at all, he is just a machine.   This is philosophers’ zombie- a being entirely lacking consciousness.

A very tough subject to understand and is very confusing too.

Philosophy often makes us upside  down.