Few people believe in the actual existence of zombies, but many believe that they are at least conceivable, that is, they are logically or metaphysically possible. It is argued that if zombies are at least minimally possible, then physicalism is erroneous and it is necessary to recognize some duality (duality) of this world. It is in this conclusion that most philosophers see the main merit of the zombie theory. At the same time, it is also interesting for its assumptions about the nature of consciousness and the connection between the material (physical) and the spiritual (phenomenal), and the use of the idea of ​​zombies in the criticism of physicalism raises more general issues about the relationships between the imaginable, the conceivable and the possible. Finally, the zombie idea leads researchers to such a difficult problem in the theory of knowledge as the problem of “other minds” problem.

Types of zombies

"P-zombies" have been used primarily as arguments against certain types of physicalism, such as behaviorism. According to behaviorism, mental states exist solely in terms of behavior: so faith , wish , thinking , consciousness, and so on, are simply certain types of behavior or a tendency towards them. It then turns out that a pi-zombie, who is behaviorally indistinguishable from a “normal” person but lacks conscious experience, is a logically impossible being according to behaviorism. This is explained by the strict dependence of the origin of consciousness on behavior. Based on the foregoing, we can conclude that appealing to intuition about the existence of the pi-zombie described in this way strengthens the argument about the falsity of behaviorism.

There are several types of "zombies". They vary in the degree of similarity to "normal" human beings and are applied in various thought experiments as follows:

• "Behavioral Zombie" A behavioral zombie is behaviorally indistinguishable from a human and yet has no conscious experience.
• "Neurological Zombie"(neurological zombie) has, this is emphasized, human brain and is otherwise physically indistinguishable from a human being; however, there is no conscious experience.
• "Soulless Zombie"(soulless zombie) lacks a soul, but is otherwise completely human; this concept is used to clarify what, in any case, the soul could mean.

However, the “philosophical zombie” is primarily seen in the context of arguments against physicalism (or functionalism) in general. Thus, a pi-zombie is generally understood to mean a being that is physically indistinguishable from a “normal” person, but lacks conscious experience, qualia.

"Zombies" and physicalism

• Kripke

File:Kripke.JPG

Saul Kripke

A good way to demonstrate weak spots physicalism - turn to some ideas of the American analytical philosopher Saul Kripke , set out in his work “Naming and Necessity” (1972).
Imagine God, writes Kripke, creating the world and deciding to bring all physical universe into existence according to full definition P exclusively in physical terms. P describes things like placement and states elementary particles everywhere in space and time, along with the laws governing their behavior. Now the question arises, having created a purely physical universe according to this specification, did God have to do anything else to bring about the existence of human consciousness? A positive answer to this question implies that there is something more to consciousness than just the physical facts from which it could be derived (dualism). Since consciousness requires non-physical properties in the strict sense, and such properties would not exist in a purely physical world, it would be a zombie world. Physicalists, on the other hand, have decided to answer the question in the negative. Then they must say that by establishing purely physical facts in accordance with P, God has thereby established all mental facts about the organisms whose existence is provided for by P, including facts about people's thoughts, feelings, emotions, and events.
Obviously, physicalists are committed to the view that physical world, a certain P is the only true order of things, while all other true statements are alternative ways talk about the same world. In this sense, physicalists must hold that the facts of consciousness “follow” the physical facts, and that zombie worlds are “not possible.” Therefore, proving the possibility of zombies will show that mental facts do not follow physical facts: that a zombie world is possible, and physicalism is false.

• Chalmers

File:David Chalmers TASC2008.JPG

David Chalmers

However, the zombie argument against physicalism in general was the best way applied and developed in detail David Chalmers in The Conscious Mind (1996). According to Chalmers, one can coherently imagine a complete zombie world: a world physically indistinguishable from our world, but completely devoid of conscious experience. In such a world, the counterpart of every creature that is conscious in our world would be a “p-zombie.” The structure of Chalmers' version of the "zombie argument" can be outlined in general outline in the following way:

1. If physicalism is true, then the existence of a world in which all physical facts are the same as those in the real (our) world, but in which there are also additional facts, is not possible. This is because according to physicalism, all facts are completely determined by physical facts; thus, any world that is physically indistinguishable from our world is completely indistinguishable from our world.

2. But there is possible world, in which all the physical facts are the same as in the real world, but in which there are still additional facts. (For example, it is possible that there is a world exactly like ours in every physical respect, but in it everyone lacks certain mental states, namely, any phenomenal events or qualia. People there look and act exactly the same as people in the actual world , but they don’t feel anything; when, for example, someone is successfully shot, the latter screams in pain, as if he really feels it, but this is not at all the case)

3. Therefore, physicalism is false. (The conclusion follows modus tollens (((A&B) & not-B) → not-A))

An argument is logically valid because if its premises are true, then the conclusion must be true. However, some philosophers doubt that his premises are true. For example, regarding premise 2: is such a zombie world really possible? Chalmers states that "certainly a logically consistent situation appears to be depicted; I cannot discern any contradiction in the description." Since such a world is conceivable, Chalmers argues that it is possible; and if such a world is possible, then physicalism is false. Chalmers argues purely for logical possibility, and he believes that this is all his argument requires. He states: "Zombies are probably not possible in nature: they probably cannot exist in our world, with its natural laws."
This leads to the following questions, for example, in what sense is the concept of “opportunity” used here? Some philosophers argue that the corresponding this issue kind of possibility is not as weak as logical possibility. They believe that despite the logical possibility of a zombie world (that is, there is no logical contradiction in any full description situation), such a weak concept is not relevant (does not correspond) to the analysis of a metaphysical thesis like physicalism. Most philosophers agree that the relevant concept of possibility is a kind of metaphysical possibility. That the person making the claim of the “zombie argument” is the only one who can say, sitting in a chair and using pure mind power, that this whole zombie situation is metaphysically possible. Chalmers states: "From the conceivability of zombies, proponents of the argument derive their metaphysical possibility." Chalmers argues that this inference from conceivability to metaphysical possibility is not entirely admissible, but it is fully admissible for phenomenal concepts such as consciousness. In fact, according to Chalmers, what is logically possible is also, in in this case, perhaps metaphysically.

Criticism of the "zombie argument"

Daniel Dennett

Daniel Dennett - a well-known critic of the “zombie argument”, since he believes that it is of no use in philosophical discussions, it is based on illusions and is contradictory in nature, to the extent that it relates to the concept of man. Although it should be noted that Dennett himself, in his 1991 work Consciousness Explained, spoke of the idea of ​​“zombies” as something well known and even states “general agreement among philosophers” that “zombies are or would be such people who demonstrate completely natural, lively behavior, accompanied by attention and speech, but at the same time in reality are completely devoid of consciousness, being something like automata.” A physicalist could respond to the zombie argument in several ways. Most answers deny premise 2 (Chalmers' version above), that is, they deny that a zombie world is possible.
The clear answer is that the idea of ​​qualia and the corresponding phenomenal representations of consciousness are not related concepts, and the idea of ​​zombies is therefore controversial. Daniel Dennett and others take this position. They argue that although subjective experience, etc. exist in some representation, they do not appear to be claims of the zombie argument; pain, for example, is not something that can be quietly separated from a person's mental life without causing behavioral or physiological abnormalities. Dennett coined the term "zimboes" ("philosophical zombies" who have second-order beliefs or "advanced self-monitoring mechanisms") to argue that the idea of ​​a philosophical zombie is controversial. He states: "Philosophers should hastily abandon the idea of ​​zombies, but since they continue to be closely embraced, this gives me the perfect opportunity to focus on the most seductive error in the current thinking."
In a similar way Nigel Thomas argues that the concept of zombies is inherently self-contradictory: since zombies, barring various assumptions, behave exactly as ordinary people they will claim that they were conscious. Thomas insists that any interpretation of this requirement (that is, whether it is taken to be true, false, or neither true nor false) inevitably entails either a contradiction or outright absurdity. Taking the position of physicalism, one must either believe that anyone, including oneself, could be a zombie, or that no one could be a zombie - follows from the statement that one's belief that zombies exist (or do not exist) is a product of the physical world and is therefore no different from anyone else's. This argument was put forward by Daniel Dennett, who argues that "zimbos are conscious, they have qualia, they endure pain - they are only "wrong" (according to this sad tradition) in a way that none of them will ever be able to discover." While it has been argued that zombies are metaphysically impossible under the assumption of physicalism, it has also been argued that zombies are not conceivable. This argument was expressed by Daniel Dennett, who argues that "when philosophers claim that zombies are conceivable, they invariably underestimate the task concepts (or fantasies), and end up imagining something that violates their own definition."
According to Dennett, there is no difference at all between people and “philosophical zombies”. After all, consciousness, which zombies supposedly lack, simply does not exist, and in the sense in which it exists, zombies fully possess it. That is why, if desired, all people can be called zombies.

conclusions

The zombie argument is difficult to accept because it reveals disagreements about fundamental issues that philosophers have raised about the method and limits of philosophy itself. He gets to the core of the controversy about the nature and powers of conceptual analysis. Proponents of the zombie argument, such as Chalmers, think that conceptual analysis is a central part (if not the only part) of philosophy and therefore it (the zombie argument) will certainly help do a lot of important philosophical work. However, others, such as Dennett, Paul Churchland, Willard Quine and others, have diametrically opposed views of nature and the field philosophical analysis. Therefore, discussion of the zombie argument remains vigorous in contemporary philosophy of mind.

Literature

1. Vasiliev V.V. “The difficult problem of consciousness.” M.: “Progress-Tradition”, 2009
2. Volkov D. B. D. Dennett’s Theory of Consciousness: dissertation for competition scientific degree candidate philosophical sciences: 09.00.03 / Volkov Dmitry Borisovich; [Place of protection: Moscow. state University named after M.V. Lomonosov].- M., 2008
3. Gartseva N. M. Naturalistic dualism of D. Chalmers: dissertation for the degree of candidate of philosophical sciences: 09.00.03 / Gartseva Natalya Mikhailovna; [Place of protection: Moscow. state University named after M.V. Lomonosov].- M., 2009
4. Chalmers D. The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory, New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press. 1996
5. Chalmers D. Consciousness and its Place in Nature, in the Blackwell Guide to the Philosophy of Mind, S. Stich and F. Warfield (eds.), Blackwell, 2003
6. Chalmers D. Imagination, Indexicality, and Intensions, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, vol. 68, no. 1, 2004
7. Dennett D. Consciousness Explained, Boston, Little, Brown and Company. 1991
8. Dennett D. The Unimagined Preposterousness of Zombies, Journal of Consciousness Studies, vol. 2, no. 4, 1995, pp. 322–326.
9. Dennett D.. The Zombic Hunch: Extinction of an Intuition?, Royal Institute of Philosophy Millennial Lecture, 1999
10. Kripke S. Naming and Necessity, in Semantics of Natural Language, ed. by D. Davidson and G. Harman, Dordrecht, Holland: Reidel, 1972, pp. 253-355.
11. Thomas N.J.T. Zombie Killer, in S.R. Hameroff, A.W. Kaszniak, & A.C. Scott (eds.), Toward a Science of Consciousness II: The Second Tucson Discussions and Debates (pp. 171–177),

Quantum suicide

Just like everyone else known problem with a cat languishing in a box, this experiment touches on the problems of quantum mechanics - only from the point of view not of an observer, but of the participant in the process. In the place of Schrödinger's cat is a conventional hero who shoots himself in the head with a gun with a mechanism dependent on the decay of a radioactive atom. The probability of misfire is 50%. At the moment the trigger is pressed, two quantum theories collide - the so-called “Copenhagen” and many-worlds theories. According to the first, the observed hero cannot be in two states in parallel - he is definitely either alive or dead.

But the second option is much more romantic - each new shot attempt splits the universe into two alternative versions: in one the participant remains alive, and in the other he dies. But the hero's surviving alter ego will never know about his own death in parallel world. The author of the experiment, MIT professor Max Tegmark, firmly adheres to the concept of the multiverse, but is in no hurry to test it on himself. “Everything will be fine with me, but my wife Angelica will remain a widow,” he explained in an interview. And it's hard to argue with that.

But, no matter how tempting the theory of alternative universes may be, most experts in quantum mechanics, interviewed by Tegmark himself in 1997, agreed with the Copenhagen concept. And later surveys of scientists in the “2000s” repeated the same result.

Survival lottery

British philosopher John Harris came up with a brutal ethical conundrum. Let's imagine a world where organ transplants are carried out perfectly, and the ethical rules are such that letting a person die and killing him are the same thing. As a result, all of humanity agrees to participate in the "survival lottery" - as soon as any person is near death, a random lot determines who must sacrifice his life to save him. And since one donor can save several dying people, his sacrifice is statistically justified. Everything seems to be fair, but I don’t want to live in such a world. But there is reason to think about the justification of self-sacrifice and the line between non-intervention and murder.

The philosopher himself in this story was worried about another important problem. “In many cases it will be excruciatingly difficult to decide whether a person is to blame for his misfortune. There are many ways in which he can drive himself into this trap, and the task is to determine to what extent a person is responsible for his destiny and how conscious his actions were. And how can we be sure that a person is not to blame for the misfortune that befell him, and can we rely on this confidence to save him? In other words, even if the “survival lottery” is ethically impeccable, is it worth saving a smoker from lung cancer? The main thing is that real doctors do not think about this issue.

Philosophical Zombie

This hypothetical living dead, unlike the characters in Resident Evil, does not eat people: he is a completely harmless creature, outwardly indistinguishable from ordinary person. The only difference is that a philosophical zombie is not capable of feeling anything and does not have conscious experience, but can imitate any human reactions and actions. For example, if you prick him with a needle, he will portray pain quite convincingly.

The possibility of the existence of such a zombie refutes the concept of physicalism, according to which human perception is determined only by physical processes. The philosophical zombie also fights the ideas of behaviorism. Indeed, in terms of behavior, such a dead person is indistinguishable from a real person, and according to this theory, consciousness, desires and other mental manifestations are reduced only to behavioral patterns.

This experiment indirectly addresses the problem artificial intelligence- in place of a zombie, you can just as well imagine an android copying all human habits. Such an android would probably pass the Turing test - while remaining unaware of itself. And this forces us to reconsider the criteria of reasonableness.

Maria's room

Like the philosophical zombie, this experiment makes you think about the difference between actual experience and knowledge of what experience should be like. Let's imagine black and white room, where Maria, a specialist in the neurophysiology of vision, sits behind a black-and-white monitor. She has never seen color, but she has complete information about the human reaction to it: she knows exactly what we experience when we see a blue sky or scarlet rose. The question is, will Maria learn anything new if she sees the color for herself?

This is another stone in the garden of physicalists who believe that any knowledge is knowledge only about physical facts. However, some reputable philosophers (including the famous American cognitive scientist) are of the opinion that the personal experience of color is unlikely to surprise an omniscient scientist. Even if you try to play a trick on Maria and give her a blue banana instead of a normal one, theoretical knowledge about the color of all things existing in the world will help her react adequately. However, for the purity of the experiment, it would probably be worth replacing the banana with something more spectacular - for example, a painting by Matisse.

Infinite Monkey Theorem

A favorite thought experiment of the physicist and fans of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy claims that an abstract monkey, randomly hitting the keys of a typewriter for an eternity, will sooner or later type out any predetermined text (the most popular version is Shakespeare's Hamlet).

Enthusiasts have already tried to implement this experiment: in 2003, students and teachers at the University of Plymouth spent $2,000 on research by giving a computer to six macaques at the local zoo. But in a month of work, aspiring writers Elmo, Gum, Heather, Rowan, Holly and Mistletoe did not do very well - their creative legacy amounted to only five pages, mostly containing only the letter “S”, and the computer by the end of the project was a more than deplorable sight. However, university representatives claimed that they learned a lot of useful things from the experiment.

But interest in the issue does not fade away: perhaps because this theorem is as old as time. Specialists in probability theory became interested in it at the beginning of the 20th century, but ancient philosophers thought about the possibility of randomly generating meaningful text. For example, in Cicero, the role of a monkey was played by an abstract man throwing metal letters on the ground, and instead of “Hamlet” there was “Annals” by Ennius. “It’s unlikely that even one line could come out this way by chance,” the philosopher pronounced his verdict.

But mathematicians do not agree - the probability of sooner or later printing a full-fledged book by randomly poking at the keyboard, although negligible (approximately 1/10,183,800), still exists. And recognized expert on quantum mechanics Seth Lloyd claims that this is exactly how everything that exists came into being. If, of course, we take the Universe itself as a computer, and random quantum fluctuations as monkeys. Thus, the fantastic assumption became the basis of a new branch of science - quantum theory information.

Poison and reward

Another inhumane fantasy: a certain millionaire places a bottle of poison in front of the hero. The poison is not fatal, but its use causes terrible agony for 24 hours. The rich man makes an offer that is impossible to refuse: if the hero agrees to drink poison tomorrow afternoon, then tomorrow morning he will receive a million dollars. That is, in principle, it is not necessary to take poison - the daredevil will receive a prize before it is time to poison himself. Common sense suggests that the most logical thing to do is agree, get a reward and not drink the toxin. But here a paradox arises: how can you intend to do something (and money is given precisely for intention) without intending to do it? It turns out that it is still impossible to honestly fulfill the agreement without drinking poison.

Curtain of Ignorance

An excellent experiment on the topic of social justice, invented by the American philosopher John Rawls. Let's say that all decisions on organizing the society of the future are entrusted to a certain group of people. In order for the concept they came up with to be as objective as possible, they were deprived of knowledge about their own social status, class affiliation, IQ and other personal qualities that can provide competitive advantage(the so-called “curtain of ignorance”). It turns out that when making a decision they cannot take into account own interests. Which concept will they choose?

It must be said that Rawls himself was a liberal, and his Political Views implicitly affect the purity of the experiment: the curtain case is initially based on the fact that justice means equality of opportunity. But in Democratic politics, he could be a good litmus test for any lawmaker.

Chinese room

A man who doesn't know Chinese sits in a room with baskets full of hieroglyphs. He has a detailed textbook in his native language, explaining the rules for combining hieroglyphs. In this case, only the outline of the symbols is used - it is not necessary to understand their meaning. But as a result of such manipulations, you can create a text that is no different from the written speech of an ordinary Chinese. There are people behind the door who hand the recluse signs with questions in Chinese. The hero, guided by the textbook, sends answers - meaningless for him, but quite logical for readers.

In fact, the hero symbolically passes the Turing test: he plays the role of a computer, the textbook is a database, and the messages are questions from a person to the machine and its answers to them. The experiment shows the limits of the machine's capabilities and its inability to learn human thinking, simply reacting to given conditions in a learned way. He also warns against a mechanical approach to learning: a practiced solution skill specific tasks does not mean that the person really understands what he is doing. So writers of tasks for the Unified State Exam should keep this experiment in mind.

Philosophical Zombie

Few people believe in the actual existence of zombies, but many believe that they are at least conceivable, that is, they are logically or metaphysically possible. It is argued that if zombies are at least minimally possible, then physicalism is erroneous and it is necessary to recognize some duality (duality) of this world. It is in this conclusion that most philosophers see the main merit of the zombie theory. At the same time, it is also interesting for its assumptions about the nature of consciousness and the connection between the material (physical) and the spiritual (phenomenal), and the use of the idea of ​​​​zombies in criticism of physicalism raises more general questions about the relations of the imaginable, conceivable and possible. ). Finally, the zombie idea leads researchers to such a difficult problem in the theory of knowledge as the problem of “other minds” problem.

Types of zombies

P-zombies have been used primarily as arguments against certain types of physicalism, particularly behaviorism. According to behaviorism, mental states exist solely in terms of behavior. So, faith, desire, thinking, consciousness, and so on are simply certain types of behavior or a tendency towards them. It then turns out that a pi-zombie, who is behaviorally indistinguishable from a “normal” person but lacks conscious experience, is a logically impossible being according to behaviorism. This is explained by the strict dependence of the origin of consciousness on behavior. Based on the foregoing, we can conclude that appealing to intuition about the existence of the pi-zombie described in this way strengthens the argument about the falsity of behaviorism.

There are several types of "zombies". They vary in the degree of similarity to "normal" human beings and are used in various thought experiments as follows.

• "Behavioral Zombie" A behavioral zombie is behaviorally indistinguishable from a human and yet has no conscious experience.
• "Neurological Zombie"(neurological zombie) has, it is emphasized, a human brain and is in other respects physically indistinguishable from a person; however, he has no conscious experience.
• "Soulless Zombie"(soulless zombie) has no soul, but is otherwise completely human-like; this concept is used to figure out what soul might mean.

However, the “philosophical zombie” is primarily seen in the context of arguments against physicalism (or functionalism) in general. Thus, a pi-zombie is generally understood to mean a creature that is physically indistinguishable from a “normal” person, but lacks conscious experience.

"Zombies" and physicalism

Kripke

Saul Kripke

A good way to demonstrate the weaknesses of physicalism is to look at some of the ideas of the American analytic philosopher Saul Kripke, as outlined in Naming and Necessity (1972).

Imagine God, writes Kripke, creating the world and deciding to create the entire physical universe according to the complete definition (designation P) solely in physical terms. P describes, firstly, the placement and state of elementary particles throughout space and time and, secondly, the laws governing their behavior. The question now arises: having created a purely physical universe according to this specification, did God have to do anything else to bring about the existence of human consciousness? A positive answer to this question implies that there is something more to consciousness than just the physical facts from which it could be derived (dualism). Since consciousness requires non-physical properties in the strict sense, and such properties would not exist in a purely physical world, it would be a zombie world. Physicalists, on the other hand, have decided to answer the question in the negative. Then they must say that by establishing purely physical facts according to P, God has thereby established all mental facts about the organisms whose existence is provided by P, including facts about people's thoughts, feelings, emotions, and events.

Obviously, physicalists are committed to the view that the physical world, defined by P, is the only true order of things, with all other true statements being alternative ways of talking about the same world. In this sense, physicalists must hold that the facts of consciousness “follow” the physical facts and that zombie worlds are “impossible.” Therefore, proving the possibility of zombies will show that mental facts do not follow physical facts: that a zombie world is possible, and that physicalism is false.

Chalmers

However, the zombie argument against physicalism in general was best applied and developed in detail by David Chalmers in The Conscious Mind (1996). According to Chalmers, one can coherently imagine a complete zombie world: a world physically indistinguishable from our world, but completely devoid of conscious experience. In such a world, the counterpart of every creature that is conscious in our world would be a “p-zombie.” The structure of Chalmers' version of the "zombie argument" can be outlined as follows:

1. If physicalism is true, then it is impossible for a world to exist in which all physical facts are the same as those in the real (our) world, but in which there are also additional facts. This is because according to physicalism, all facts are completely determined by physical facts; thus, any world that is physically indistinguishable from our world is completely indistinguishable from our world.
2. But there is a possible world in which all the physical facts are the same as in the actual world, but in which there are still additional facts. (For example, it is possible that there is a world just like ours in every physical respect, but in it everyone lacks certain mental states, namely, any phenomenal events or qualia. People there look and act exactly the same as people in the actual the world, but they don’t feel anything; when, for example, someone is successfully shot, the latter screams in pain, as if he really feels it, but this is not the case at all).
3. Therefore physicalism is false. (The conclusion follows modus tollens (((A→B) & not-B) → not-A).)

An argument is logically valid because if its premises are true, then the conclusion must be true. However, some philosophers doubt that his premises are true. For example, regarding premise 2: is such a zombie world really possible? Chalmers states that “it certainly appears that a logically consistent situation is depicted; I can't see the contradiction in the description." Since such a world is conceivable, Chalmers argues that it is possible; and if such a world is possible, then physicalism is false. Chalmers argues purely for logical possibility, and he believes that this is all his argument requires. He states: "Zombies are probably not possible in nature: they probably cannot exist in our world with its natural laws."

This leads to the following questions: for example, in what sense is the concept of “opportunity” used here? Some philosophers argue that the kind of possibility relevant to this question is not as weak as logical possibility. They hold that, despite the logical possibility of a zombie world (that is, there is no logical contradiction in any complete description of the situation), such a weak concept is irrelevant to the analysis of a metaphysical thesis like physicalism. Most philosophers agree that the relevant concept of possibility is a kind of metaphysical possibility. That the person making the claim of the “zombie argument” is the only one who can say, sitting in a chair and using pure mind power, that this whole zombie situation is metaphysically possible. Chalmers states: "From the conceivability of zombies, the argument's proponents derive their metaphysical possibility." Chalmers argues that this inference from conceivability to metaphysical possibility is not entirely admissible, but it is entirely admissible for phenomenal concepts such as consciousness. In fact, according to Chalmers, what is logically possible is also, in this case, metaphysically possible.

Criticism of the "zombie argument"

Daniel Dennett