Self-portrait of author gritting his teeth over this question.
Brains! Sometimes I wonder if zombies eat them because they're philosophers on the hunt for usable parts.
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Lucia lived in a town where the lights were on, but nobody was ever home. She lived among zombies.
This was not as scary as it might sound. These zombies were not the flesh-eating ghouls of horror films. They looked and behaved just like you and I. They even had exactly the same physiology as you and I. But there was one key difference: they had no minds. If you pricked them they would say "ouch" and wince, but they felt no pain. If you "upset" them they would cry or get angry, but there would be no inner turmoil. If you played them soothing music they would appear to enjoy it, but in their minds they would hear nothing. On the outside, they were ordinary humans, but on the inside, nothing was going on.
This made them easy to get along with. It was easy to forget that they didn't have inner lives as she did, since they spoke and behaved just like ordinary people and that included references to how they felt or what they thought. Visitors to the town would also fail to notice anything strange. Even when Lucia let them in on the secret, they refused to believe her.
"How do you know that they have no minds?" they would ask. "How do you know that other people do?" would be Lucia's reply. That usually shut them up.
Baggini, J., The Pig That Wants to Be Eaten, 2005, p. 277.
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So what do you think — are so-called philosophical-zombies a legitimate possibility? I'll do my best to turn on the lights and think about this over the week ahead and get back to you on Friday with my ideas.
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Lucia lived in a town where the lights were on, but nobody was ever home. She lived among zombies.
This was not as scary as it might sound. These zombies were not the flesh-eating ghouls of horror films. They looked and behaved just like you and I. They even had exactly the same physiology as you and I. But there was one key difference: they had no minds. If you pricked them they would say "ouch" and wince, but they felt no pain. If you "upset" them they would cry or get angry, but there would be no inner turmoil. If you played them soothing music they would appear to enjoy it, but in their minds they would hear nothing. On the outside, they were ordinary humans, but on the inside, nothing was going on.
This made them easy to get along with. It was easy to forget that they didn't have inner lives as she did, since they spoke and behaved just like ordinary people and that included references to how they felt or what they thought. Visitors to the town would also fail to notice anything strange. Even when Lucia let them in on the secret, they refused to believe her.
"How do you know that they have no minds?" they would ask. "How do you know that other people do?" would be Lucia's reply. That usually shut them up.
Baggini, J., The Pig That Wants to Be Eaten, 2005, p. 277.
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So what do you think — are so-called philosophical-zombies a legitimate possibility? I'll do my best to turn on the lights and think about this over the week ahead and get back to you on Friday with my ideas.
