philosophical zombie
In plain wordsAn imagined being that behaves exactly like a person — talking, laughing, even saying it feels pain — but has no inner experience at all. Philosophers use it to ask whether behavior proves a mind.
A thought-experiment creature with no phenomenal consciousnessphenomenal consciousness, n.: The felt, experiential side of the mind — what it is like to taste coffee or to feel sad — as opposed to simply processing or reporting information. that is nonetheless a molecule-for-molecule copy of a conscious person. Because its physical makeup is identical, so is its behavior — it reports pains, describes sunsets, even debates the nature of experience — though nothing is felt. The zombie argument holds that such a being is conceivable, that what is conceivable in this sense is metaphysically possible, and hence that consciousness is not fixed by the physical facts, so physicalism is false. Critics reject one of the steps, holding that zombies only seem conceivable or that conceivability does not establish possibility; illusionistsillusionism, n.: The view that the inner glow of experience that seems so hard to explain is a kind of trick the brain plays on itself: we are conscious, but not in the mysterious way it seems. and many functionalists deny that the scenario is coherent. In AI discussions the term is extended to a system that could display every outward sign of consciousness, including sincere-seeming testimony, with no experience behind it.
Nothing in the transcript rules out that we are talking to a zombie that merely reports feelings.
Origin
Robert Kirk first used 'zombie' in this sense in 'Zombies v. Materialists' (1974); Keith Campbell's 'imitation man' (1970) made a similar point, and related 'absent qualia' cases were discussed by Ned Block and others in the 1970s. David Chalmers's The Conscious Mind (1996) made the zombie argument central to debates about physicalism.
Usage note
Unrelated to the undead of folklore and film except by name. A behavioral zombie in the AI sense need not be a physical duplicate of anyone, so its possibility is far less controversial than that of the philosopher's zombie, which is identical to us atom for atom.
Related
- hard problem of consciousnesshard problem of consciousness, n.: The puzzle of why physical processes in a brain — or a computer — should feel like anything from the inside, rather than simply running without any inner experience.
- phenomenal consciousnessphenomenal consciousness, n.: The felt, experiential side of the mind — what it is like to taste coffee or to feel sad — as opposed to simply processing or reporting information.
- problem of other mindsproblem of other minds, n.: The puzzle of how we can know that anyone besides ourselves has thoughts and feelings, since we only ever see their behavior. AI turns this old puzzle into a practical one.
- functionalismfunctionalism, n.: The view that minds are defined by how they work, not what they are made of: pain, for example, is whatever inner state plays pain's part, linking injury, other thoughts and behavior.
- qualiaqualia, n.: The individual felt qualities of experience — the particular redness of red, the taste of mint, the sting of a burn — that seem impossible to capture fully in words.
- Chinese roomChinese room, n.: A thought experiment: a person who knows no Chinese follows a rulebook to answer Chinese messages so well that outsiders think they understand. If the person doesn't understand, does a computer running a program?
Sources
- Kirk, R. (1974). Zombies v. Materialists. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volume 48, 135–152.
- Chalmers, D. J. (1996). The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory. Oxford University Press.
Mentioned in
David ChalmersDavid Chalmers, prop. n.: An Australian philosopher who named the 'hard problem' of consciousness — why physical processes feel like anything at all — and who asks whether AI systems could be conscious., hard problem of consciousnesshard problem of consciousness, n.: The puzzle of why physical processes in a brain — or a computer — should feel like anything from the inside, rather than simply running without any inner experience., phenomenal consciousnessphenomenal consciousness, n.: The felt, experiential side of the mind — what it is like to taste coffee or to feel sad — as opposed to simply processing or reporting information., problem of other mindsproblem of other minds, n.: The puzzle of how we can know that anyone besides ourselves has thoughts and feelings, since we only ever see their behavior. AI turns this old puzzle into a practical one., qualiaqualia, n.: The individual felt qualities of experience — the particular redness of red, the taste of mint, the sting of a burn — that seem impossible to capture fully in words., knowledge argumentknowledge argument, n.: A thought experiment about Mary, a scientist who knows every physical fact about color but has lived all her life in a black-and-white room. When she first sees red, does she learn something new?