Conatus: THIRD EDITION by Tom Wallace - HTML preview

C O N A T U S

So are the zombie examples trying to tell us that — because everything can be reduced to flows of information — then zombies are actually alive? If this is the intention then surely it is misguided. If everything is just a flow of information then are the examples not actually telling is that we are dead?!

There is a subtle split going on as we move from direct observations (seeing red) through to emotional responses. Observation — seeing — is regarded as a kind of automatic process. ‘What you see is what you get’. A matter-of-fact kind of thing. (Even here though, humans and animals often defy this explanation — being very selective and often deliberately distorted in the way we see the world.)

But the trouble with humans — at least for the would-be reductionist — is that we’re all about sensation, feeling, emotion, pleasure and pain. Observation, rational thought and objective truth are wall down the list of what makes a conscious creature of any kind — let alone a human.

Zombie examples — the reductionist ones — are leading us towards the question of whether computers could ever be conscious. The question is asked as if consciousness means giving rational answers to empirical questions — an accountant’s truth! The zombie examples are given by philosophers on the basis that we think we are not zombies. But actually, they are trying to turn us into zombies rather than try to turn zombie computers into humans. At some point the two processes will coincide and they’ll

69