this post was submitted on 17 Dec 2025
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Other philosophy communities have only interpreted the world in various ways. The point, however, is to change it. [ x ]
"I thunk it so I dunk it." - Descartes
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Yeah, hence my use of the term spandrel. Not all mutations have to have a selective benefit to persist, but given that consciousness has (apparently) arisen, at least to some degree, multiple times, we can conclude that it may have arisen from something that had direct selective benefit.
This is a teleological assumption because there are critters out there with eyes but not any apparent consciousness, so there's no reason to assume that the subjective experience of "redness" is an inevitable consequence of vision development.
Butterflies have been around doing their thing for considerably longer than humans and, at the rate we're going, will probably outlive us, so I think you may be using an anthropocentric set of scoring criteria.
The nature of a p zombie is such that if one existed, you'd have no way of knowing if it was one (but you might have a strong suspicion; looking at you, Mark Zuckerberg). The second part is clearly wrong. Behavioral adaptations are observable in creatures as simple as nematodes, so, while a nematode will probably never be able to experience the glories of Microsoft Excel, there's nothing saying that consciousness is a requirement for remaining extant - in terms of both numbers and biomass, nematodes have us handily beat. In a human example, Peter Watts references the phenomenon blindsight in his novel of the same name; some folks lose access to vision processing and are functionally blind, but their brains are still capable of responding to visual input. All I think we can currently say is that human-level complex behavior does not appear to be possible without consciousness, but that take might be challenged by future developments.
When I say I don't think they can exist I mean I don't think they can exist in our actual reality. The thought experiment is usually that someone is literally a 1:1 copy of you but without consciousness: how do you figure out they're a zombie. My argument is that it is literally physically impossible to have my 1:1 brain and not have consciousness, as consciousness is derived from your brains processees.
When I say a p zombie could not exist because they need to adapt I am talking about a human p zombie in a modern city. They literally could not function. They would very quickly die.
And to use your example of "why consciousness". The p zombie paints the picture. Put a p zombie in a busy street in a busy city and they get hit by a car and die. The exact same person with consciousness can interpret the situation and avoid getting ran over. That's why consciousness came to be evolutionarily.
Imagining a p zombie is like imagining a computer that is supposedly running without an operating system... The operating system IS the computer... It can't run
That's not an "argument", that's literally the most text book example of begging the question that I can imagine.
They are literally behaviorally identical to a regular person. Jesus fucking Christ, this is such Reddit tier pseudo intellectualism. "I never bothered to actually comprehend the argument, but it's dumb and irrational anyway. Fucking no investigation, no write to speak, you self important chud
No. Imagining a p zombie is like imagining a computer that isn't conscious but still works. You know, the thing nobody has any problem doing!
How? Your behavior is literally dictated by how hard I hit you five minutes ago. Is that P Zombie the same as then? Or now?
A P Zombie is not real. Its anime shit. I am DETERMINED BY MY PAST, yet a ZOMBIE with no SEMBLANCE of my past determines the same thing? That doesn't make sense.
Read the paper.
Read the fucking paper
I read the paper. Literally nonsense. Even Chalmers himself argues that Zombie Chalmers would be making the exact same argument as Non Zombie Chalmers, so the actual question is what are we asking? Can I imagine a universe with P Zombies? Sure. I can imagine an ice cube that is hot. I can imagine a box that contains itself. Doesn't mean its possible or relevant to the conversation at all. What about this universe? Are we arguing there are P Zombies in this universe? If so, how? Are we simply arguing that consciousness may exist outside of the physical realm? If so, explain the mechanism that allows it to interact with the physical realm and cause physical effects on our brains.
I don't think you're honoring the thought experiment as originally proposed, which stipulated that p zombies are behaviorally identical to ordinary humans, so they would react to and avoid the car. Even without that stipulation, we should assume that p zombies would still exhibit reflexive behavior, given that people can react to danger without first consciously processing it. This gets us back to my original observation that a lot of non-human animals are able to exhibit complex behaviors without apparently having consciousness, so the question is still whether the conscious experience is actually doing something or if it's just a byproduct of certain cognitive processes.
Thats what I am saying: they can't. The P-Zombie you have invented in this thought experiment is question begging. We cannot have a behaviorally identical Pzombie because humans are driven by consciousness, which P-Zombies are incapable of. Category error. An unconscious human gets hit by a car if they're in the middle of the road.
This question only works if you believe in the P-Zombie. Its a non-starter if you don't.
Its the same problem I have with Mary's Room. If Mary has all knowledge of color she can perfectly imagine that color in her mind, because I am capable of doing so with my incredibly small knowledge of color... to say Mary would "learn something new" when she sees color for the first time is a category error. We are making semantic mistakes over the definition of "knowledge", not asking anything truly groundbreaking.
I didn't come up with the idea; blame David Chalmers. All I was saying that is that if you want to use p zombies as they were proposed, you have to accept the conceit that they're behaviorally identical to regular humans. If you don't think it's possible for p zombies to exist, that's fine; I never suggested they were a thing (except you, Mark Zuckerberg). But to say that they can't exist because you need consciousness in order to exhibit human qualities is also question-begging, or potentially argument from incredulity depending on how you're framing it.
You're conflating two definitions of "conscious" here, "awake" and "capable of subjective experience," while I'm assuming the p-zombie argument addresses only the latter. Awake humans are capable of (and routinely engage in) behaviors that are not consciously driven. I've provided multiple counter-examples, including blindsight and ordinary reflexes. A human who is not consciously aware of a car can still avoid a car, it's demonstrable.
Is it your contention that all animals are conscious, then?
I believe the original framing was that if Mary had knowledge of the physical properties of color but has never experienced seeing red, she won't be able to know the sensation of seeing red until she's actually exposed to red light. Which seems fine to me. You can imagine red because you have prior experience of the color red, so we can conclude that the experience of redness is independent of your knowledge of what causes redness. Likewise, I could give you a wavelength of light (say, 375 nm) and you'll probably be unable to imagine what it looks like without seeing it first (or at all, because 375 is in the UV range). I think the argument becomes silly when it's claimed to be incompatible with a standard materialist conclusion that all subjective experience has a physical basis. But it also seems like it's beside the point here - the question isn't whether the sensation of redness exists (I thought we were aligned on that), it's whether being able to experience the sensation of redness is somehow essential to something, or if it's a byproduct of something else. I'm just questioning your conclusion that conscious experience has a demonstrable evolutionary benefit.
But not all at the same level of interior complexity. I think we can get a good estimate of that complexity by studying their cognition and behavior in comparison to ours.
I feel like there has to be some sort of cutoff - surely there's a certain number of neurons where all you have is basic stimulus/response behavior, but I'll confess to not knowing what it's like to be a nematode.
But this is a semantic argument of what "Mary Had Knowledge" means, not what qualia is... When you say knowledge I am including the physical characteristics you have ascertained through your subjective experience. Defining knowledge otherwise seems tricky. To say Mary has knowledge of the color of red is basically saying Mary can recreate your memory of the color red. I don't see how you can recreate a memory without knowledge of what that memory contains, so that at least is where my logic is flowing. Red is an entirely subjective definition depending on your historic eyes' cones and your historic position in spacetime.
I vaguely get what you are saying: put a preying mantis' brain in a human and they could likely react to the moving car.... most animals on the planet earth do not react properly to a speeding car. I don't think a P Zombie could ever have this conversation. Is that a good distinction?
Yeah I just dont think P Zombies actual make sense as proposed. I don't think you can get a human in my exact form that exhibits the behaviors of a preying mantis. I think that my form is directly responsible for my behavior.
No, it's a terrible destination, because all you've done is articulate an inconsistent position.
Maybe you should actually make the smallest effort to understand what is being proposed, rather just assuming your some big smart boy who automatically knows better than all the dumb-dumb professional philosophers.
You're proposing an entity with my exact form that does not contain my exact mind state. That cannot exist. That is a category error. You are assigning a string variable to fucking integer.
You need to define what you mean by a P Zombie exactly like me that does not possess consciousness. What does that mean? I think consciousness is in the brain. Define how its not? Even if your argument is NOT a category error, what you are relaying to me is a category error. Should be solvable through syntax alone.
It does not contain the qualia associated with your mind state
You really love begging the question.
Fuck off back to reddit with these completely empty cliches.
Damn, I wonder if the original paper might have done that. Guess you'll never know, given your refusal to do any actual investigation before asserting your right to speak.
If we were to recreate a P Zombie of me right now why would they ever respond to you without qualia?
DAMN STRAIGHT. Finally you're making some sense. Why would a P Zombie EVER read that fucking paper? The assumption with a P Zombie is they only do whats biologically imperative to survive. Paper never needed. Writing paper... never needed. Reading paper? What is reading? Not needed. Avoid car.
"How can chat gpt respond to me if it's not conscious".
Once again: because they are behaviourally identical to you.
Ok. Just straight up admitting you don't know shit and you're proud of it. Just a hillbilly afraid those damn scary books.
What part about their homeostasis dictates that responding to you is necessary to achieve a fruitful life?
DAMN STRAIGHT. And you're just a city slicker too afraid of them country Jays that have too experience with the real world... many such cases.
I beg of you: descibe to me a P Zombie that is a physical clone of me that doesn't have my mental state. Describe to me how that P Zombie is uniquely different from the version of me that you froze of me 20 minutes ago. Where does the distinction lie? You say theres no consciousness, I say theres no way for that to be? Again, me arguing on hexbear is the OPPOSITE OF FUCKING. I should be FUCKING right now. I am getting the OPPOSITE of DICK.
The same as yours. The only difference is that they don't experience qualia
Least arrogant Redditer
Read. The. Fucking. Paper
I did. Its wrong. It explains no FUNCTIONAL reason for me to be arguing with you right now instead of getting my bump and grind on. We can theorize a robot that does 1:1 what I do in real life,. That doesnt mean I was written in fucking c#
You have already outright stated that you did not read the paper while repeatedly demanding people explain to you concepts that the paper explained. You are clearly now lying about having read it, just like you admitted lying about having written a masters thesis in physics.
Yeah, it seems like semantics really get in the way of serious consideration of the example, and I don't really think it leads anywhere interesting.
I'm not sure what I can say here other than it isn't necessary to consider P zombies as an argument, but there should be a little bit of willingness to ask what if rather than resorting to intuition to dismiss them. The idea should be to approach this from a position of intellectual curiosity - if it were possible to have a creature that resembled a human in all respects except for the fact that it lacked subjectivity, would we be able to tell the difference? What would we need to know to tell? It doesn't seem sufficient to conclude that certain behaviors are inherent properties of "usness" simply on the basis of intuition, because neuroscience has found that a lot of behaviors that seem conscious and volitional may not, in fact, be so.
Talking strictly in terms of what p zombies can and cannot do feels a bit like asking whether unicorns would be able to fart rainbows if they existed. Do you want them to?
To me, entertaining the thought of a P Zombie is like asking me whether a unicorn can fart: sure why not but does that actually provide any utility to the conversation?
My belief is that consciousness is a result of your physical state, so asking me to make something with my physical state that isn't conscious is like asking me to imagine a computer that doesn't have a processor. That can't be. A computer is defined by its relationship to the processor!
How do we dissect a P Zombie that is fake conscious? How do we even suspect it's a P Zombie? Is the P Zombie dead after I take it's brain out?
I think the idea is designed to get you to move beyond belief and consider your personal epistemology. Sure, consciousness seems central to your behavior, but recent neuroscience research suggests that even some of the behavior that seems conscious might not fully be - in some situations, the consciousness may be providing post-hoc rationalizations of actions that are decided elsewhere in the brain.
On that note, there's probably flaws to the analogy you're using to reject the idea of a p-zombie. If consciousness is a result (your word) of your physical brain-state, then the computer analogy does not hold because processors are not a result of the rest of the physical material that comprises a computer. I can also freely swap processors and still have a computer that functions more or less the same unless I remove a component completely, so while processors are necessary, they aren't sufficient.
That's basically the question of a thought experiment. If it were possible for a being to exist that exhibits human behavior but isn't conscious, how would we be able to tell? What would need to be different? It's pointing to gaps in our current understanding.
It looks like Mark Zuckerberg.
Presumably. The brain is more than just the consciousness, given that people are capable of survival (albeit not independently) while in comas. There's also other examples where consciousness appears to be lost or modified while the brain continues to do its thing - did Phineas Gage stop being Phineas Gage and start being someone else when he lost his frontal lobe? What's going on with sleepwalkers? What about Alien Hand Syndrome?
They aren't gaps to a physicalist though. We would end up dissecting the P Zombies brain and concluding it's literally exactly the same as ours, and he was probably actually conscious.
We could even envision a technology that is able to capture, in data, the entirety of your brain state. We could then take a copy of your brain, and the p Zombies brain, and see if any differences exist. Once we determine that A = A (as the thought experiment claims at least) we would conclude the P Zombie is conscious.
This has actually happened before. People went diving for vital essences and came up with a better understanding of biology instead.
Instead of a computer with no processor we can just boil it down to what I actually think we are: biological agents with a proclivity for homeostasis. You remove the "agency" and you cannot achieve homeostasis. You can't achieve homeostasis you will not be a biological creature very long. The biological creatures that lack agency lose to my lawn mower every spring.
Consciousness simply is agency, which p Zombies lack in the thought experiment, but cannot lack in reality without being BTFO by the weather.
📽️
Literally question begging.
Thought terminating cliche.
This is so fucking stupid. So if a robot can avoid traffic, it's conscious then.
Or, you know, if you don't believe literally all animals, plants, and computers are conscious.
Name one color you've never seen but can perfectly imagine.
Whatever Mantis Shrimp got going on.
Did it spontaneously avoid traffic through a means of self preservation? If so, maybe. If not, and it was programmed to do so, we have a direct explanation as to why it wasn't.
That's not remotely the name of a color you've never seen but can perfectly imagine. Are you illiterate?
As much as a human does. Unless you're asserting the existence of a non-physical soul that transcends the laws of cause and effect.
What do mean "maybe"? Yes or No?
....
Oh. You literally are proposing that humans have a soul that transcends cause and effect and biological programming.
Biological programming dictates "dont die, and fuck*". My maybe is with the asterisk that avoiding that the biological imperative within the p zombie tells the P Zombie (unconsciously?) that ignoring the car leads to fucking.
You asked me to describe a color. I described a mechanism to achieve said color. Maybe its my CompSci brain but the Function returns the same value. Am I illiterate? I have had 9 alcoholic beverages.
Ok. So? Why does that particular programming make it conscious. And once again you're asserting that all life is conscious.
You're also just changing your argument on a whim now. First you said that pzombie wouldn't avoid traffic, because you need to be conscious to avoid traffic. Now you claim that a robot avoiding traffic isn't conscious because you don't need to be conscious to avoid traffic.
No. I didn't. For fucks sake, just fucking read other people's words for once, instead of being so arrogant.
I can't even perfectly imagine red. "Perfectly imaging" red does a lot of fucking heavy lifting. Again, you're describing an impossible task DUE TO SEMANTIC ISSUES.
PERFECT RED ISNT REAL. AHHHHH!!!!
Conscious life clearly has an advantage over unconscious life. If there is no DISTINCTION between conscious and non conscious life WHAT are you asking me to DESCRIBE?
Oh. So you did actually read it, you were just lying and pretending you didn't.
No it doesn't, and you've presented no argument that it does.
???????. I see you're back to not reading what I said
Gottem.
Consciousness, as it seems to function, is a means to model your internal and external data into a single experience that will help you dictate further success in getting your fuck on.
The P Zombie with my exact make and model right next to me would never consider that me stabbing him in the dumb redditor skull will allow me to get MY fuck on in place of HIM, yet there is evolutionary advantage to me doing so. For him to acknowledge that would be to exhibit what I would define as consciousness.
So any reproducing system is conscious now. And presumably after going through menopause, women cease to be conscious.
BEHAVIOURALLY. IDENTICAL. You illiterate child.
TOO DRUNK AT THIS POINT TO READ PAST MEANING (CONSCIOUSNESSES MANIFEST) BUT THE GENERAL SENTIMENT I POSSESS IS THAT WHILE YOU POSSIBLY MAY BE CORRECT THE IDEA THAT CONSCIOUSNESS IS FUNDAMENTALLY NON EXISTENT, OR EXISTENT, THIS LEADS TO SEMANTIC DECONSTRUCTION OF WHAT CONSCIOUSNESS POSSIBLY IS.i
Hell, two weeks ago I was prone to the belief that consciousness is fundamental. After reading various reddt comments I have (false logically?) conceded that consciousness is NOT fundamental but emergent, but I will concede I have MAYBE NOT provide an honest to goodness argument for. what consciousness actually is or what it means to be a conscious entity. But my problem is inherentlly with what it means to be unconscious. To what it means to be part of the universe. And I will admit, this is definitely a *Redditor construct. While drunk, I realize Redditor is a very specific type of event. Almost entirely ATHEIST while I attempt to be AGNOSTIC in the waking world. I literally feel atease with what you are saying to me. Not simple passing, where I accept that that what you are saying is completely FALSE but accepting that what you are saying is FALSE with me my CURRENT beliefs. I beleve, and honestly believe that all entities, possess the abiility to change due to LOGIC and think that the internal contradiction I may possess may be entirely interal and not systematic. I am sorry if what I was seems non contradcitpryh, because typically I imagfine myself within your shoes.
Ultmately, while drunkm and honest, my current belief, raw and unfilitered, is that consciousness is the simple acknowledgment of conciseness, and that maybe what I am interpreting is simply a reduced pipeline due to my procivitty to what would be conisdered :"aspergers".
I honstlyh think aspergers is TOO RAW and too analytical for what we call experience.
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ANYYWAYS:
CONTRARY TO DRUNK
I think what youre saying is aweosome. too analyitical. I imagine a human in 2000 years is the sum of my experience, great analysis pls great experience. right nowi am not that so i hold hope that what youj believe ios true, which is funny, i dont even believe what i say is true as in impactful to the soul .
I FUCKIUNG LOVING HEXBEAR.
I AM SORRY FOR BEING CRINMGE I HAVFE BEEN ON REDDIT FOPR SO LONG AND HAVE SINCE BEEN BANNED FOR BEING BASED?? NOT BASED ENOUGH BASED ON BRIAN/ TRUE BASED
You're just posting rambling vibes now.
Nah dawg I was really cooking with this comment last night you're the one rambling
Yea I drank too much for a Thursday. Sorry. I appreciate your critique though. you've been the only person that has provded a substantive counter argument. Is that my proclivity toward the unknown rationality? Who knows. Either way I appreciate what you bring to the table. Without you Id right all the time and i've had killed myself like 10 years ago.
Anyways, great job. I know personaally that giving your true opinion about epiistemic philsophy (is that the right term?????) can feel self flagettlating and self defeating, but I appreaciate it. So thanks, man. Maybe when I am more sober( whicj i was like 5 hours ago) i can provide more substantive arguments ). And again, you probably think I am a dunce, I dont dispute that. I have never had the ability to grow into anything but a dunce