The premise of philosophical zombies is that it’s possible for there to be beings with the same information processing capabilities as us without experience. That is, given the same tools and platforms, they would be having just as intricate discussions about the nature of experience and sentience. without having experience or sentience.
I’m not convinced it’s functionally possible to behave the way we behave when talking & describing sentience without being sentient. I think a being that is functionally identical to me except that it lacks experience wouldn’t be functionally identical to me, because I wouldn’t be interested in sentience if I didn’t have it.
thats’ the entire point. if the existence of complex unconscious behaviors (or even just computers and math) proves that information processing can be done without internal subjective experience (if we assume a stone being hit by another stone, for example, is not experienceing subjectivity), and if there is something humans do beyond what is possible for pure information processing, then that is proof that consciousness is fundamentally irreducible to it. if there is something we can do that a philosophical zombie (a person with information processing but not subjectivity) could not, it is because of subjectivity/qualia, not information processing. subjectivity can influence our information processing but is not identical with it.
Premise B is where you lost me.
The premise of philosophical zombies is that it’s possible for there to be beings with the same information processing capabilities as us without experience. That is, given the same tools and platforms, they would be having just as intricate discussions about the nature of experience and sentience. without having experience or sentience.
I’m not convinced it’s functionally possible to behave the way we behave when talking & describing sentience without being sentient. I think a being that is functionally identical to me except that it lacks experience wouldn’t be functionally identical to me, because I wouldn’t be interested in sentience if I didn’t have it.
thats’ the entire point. if the existence of complex unconscious behaviors (or even just computers and math) proves that information processing can be done without internal subjective experience (if we assume a stone being hit by another stone, for example, is not experienceing subjectivity), and if there is something humans do beyond what is possible for pure information processing, then that is proof that consciousness is fundamentally irreducible to it. if there is something we can do that a philosophical zombie (a person with information processing but not subjectivity) could not, it is because of subjectivity/qualia, not information processing. subjectivity can influence our information processing but is not identical with it.