Some thoughts on the p-zombie idea

[UnseenParticipant]

What is a p-zombie? It’s shorthand for “philosophical zombie.” There are two kinds of p-zombies. The weak concept is a being that looks and behaves like a human in every way, but under the skin something not physically human is going on. So, this kind is basically a perfectly convincing robot or cyborg. The strong concept is a being that looks and behaves like a human in every way, including having human flesh, but lacking consciousness. Both kinds behave exactly like humans. If you injure them, they’ll exhibit pain behavior. If you threaten them, they’ll beg you not to do so. Unlike a real human, however, they are just running some some software. They feel no actual distress, fear, or pain. They have absolutely no interior life.

Assuming a p-zombie in the latter sense, aren’t you forced to consider the possibility, however farfetched, that everyone but you might be a p-zombie? Might you be completely alone in the world as a conscious being?

Let’s assume that I am a p-zombie and I rob a convenience store, murdering the clerk. Am I morally responsible for my actions?

And here’s a really disturbing question: Might we all simply be helpless consciousnesses trapped in p-zombie bodies? And so, does having a consciousness really have any moral implications?

[Reg the Fronkey FarmerModerator]

What’s it like to be a p-zombie?

[UnseenParticipant]

@ Reg

That was a very interesting discussion for someone like me who’s interested in philosophical issues and who thinks that, contrary to those who argue “Philosophy is dead,” philosophy is important and as society and technology advance, is becoming even more so.

My last paragraph in the original post, which reads, And here’s a really disturbing question: Might we all simply be helpless consciousnesses trapped in p-zombie bodies? And so, does having a consciousness really have any moral implications? raises important philosophical questions.

If free will is false or makes no sense whatsoever, how can we hold people morally responsible? If your body robs a convenience store and kills the clerk and your consciousness can’t control its thoughts and actions, if a consciousness is trapped inside a p-zombie host, then it would seem no praise or blame can attach. On the other hand, we can justify controlling the individual in order to protect the community. And then, do we need to mourn the loss of attaching moral judgment to acts of justice, or is it good riddance?

 

[Simon PayntonParticipant]

Unseen wrote:

If free will is false or makes no sense whatsoever, how can we hold people morally responsible?

Some people are not held morally responsible for crimes because they were mentally ill: they have diminished responsibility and their rational freedom of choice was impaired.  Some people have personality disorders: should they be blamed for what the disorders make them do?

As far as most people go, they all have the same level of free will, whether or not that free will is illusory.  They can choose to keep the law, or choose to break it.  That’s enough free will to convict a typical person who has broken the law.

[_Robert_Participant]

Simon Paynton wrote:

Unseen wrote:

If free will is false or makes no sense whatsoever, how can we hold people morally responsible?

Some people are not held morally responsible for crimes because they were mentally ill: they have diminished responsibility and their rational freedom of choice was impaired. Some people have personality disorders: should they be blamed for what the disorders make them do? As far as most people go, they all have the same level of free will, whether or not that free will is illusory. They can choose to keep the law, or choose to break it. That’s enough free will to convict a typical person who has broken the law.

The guilt by insanity defense is used in less than 1% of criminal trials in the US. Provocation (any reasonable person might lose control in that situation) is used more often however it comes with an admission of guilt.

[UnseenParticipant]

Simon Paynton wrote:

As far as most people go, they all have the same level of free will, whether or not that free will is illusory.  They can choose to keep the law, or choose to break it.  That’s enough free will to convict a typical person who has broken the law.

Illusory free will is the absence of free will, isn’t it?

That someone can choose to keep or break the law begs the question of how choices happen. I make choices all day long, some involve deliberation but others are just kind of impulsive for reasons I can’t explain much less justify. In my sock drawer, I have a variety of socks, some plain and some patterned and in a variety of colors, but I just grab a pair and go. “Why did you pick the plain brown pair, Unseen?” “No idea. I just grabbed a pair. My brain made the choice but never told me why.”

Strangely, some would see in that choice a perfect example of free will. A rather pure one. I see the opposite. A choice I make that I can’t explain or justify is the opposite of a free choice. It’s one I had to make. My brain, not my mind, made me do it. But doesn’t the brain dictate all of our choices? and we don’t run our brain the way we drive a car, for who, then, would be the “we”?

For the ones involving deliberation even the deliberation just happens in a sense. If I say “Choices just happen and I don’t know how the brain does it,” that doesn’t really scream “free will” to me.

[Simon PayntonParticipant]

Unseen wrote:

For the ones involving deliberation even the deliberation just happens in a sense. If I say “Choices just happen and I don’t know how the brain does it,” that doesn’t really scream “free will” to me.

Well, just because we can’t explain something, doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.

We all have our choices limited to more or less extent.  Some people don’t have the marbles they were born with, so they are taken to have no responsibility.  However, the rest of us have choices.  I could do this, or I could do that.

If someone has a personality disorder, I personally don’t hold them too responsible for the negative things they do – they can’t really help it.  But the law would hold them fully responsible, because they still have some freedom of choice over what they do.

The more we are consciously aware of our subconscious, and what it wants to do – the more free we must be, since we may be unconsciously constrained or influenced, and the deliberation of free will is a conscious matter.

[UnseenParticipant]

Simon Paynton wrote:

Unseen wrote:

For the ones involving deliberation even the deliberation just happens in a sense. If I say “Choices just happen and I don’t know how the brain does it,” that doesn’t really scream “free will” to me.

Well, just because we can’t explain something, doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.

Yes, whether or not we have free will remains an open question that depends upon many things, including the long-awaited coherent definition. One gets the impression that while people argue for it strenuously, it remains a rather nebulous concept. If you can even call it a concept.

We all have our choices limited to more or less extent. Some people don’t have the marbles they were born with, so they are taken to have no responsibility. However, the rest of us have choices. I could do this, or I could do that.

If all free will is is having options and being able to do one thing rather than another, then maybe goldfish have free will and it’s not a uniquely human trait. My cat can choose to eat the food I put out or, in her kitty cat way, tell me she wants something else. So, by the standard you are using, my cat must have free will and then be morally responsible for killing mice.

If someone has a personality disorder, I personally don’t hold them too responsible for the negative things they do – they can’t really help it. But the law would hold them fully responsible, because they still have some freedom of choice over what they do.

Free will is used as a cudgel to invoke the concept of evil. I can’t figure any other need for it.

The more we are consciously aware of our subconscious, and what it wants to do – the more free we must be, since we may be unconsciously constrained or influenced, and the deliberation of free will is a conscious matter.

How does the duality of being aware of what we want to do, which we can’t choose to have (it JUST IS), vs. our options, which likewise are JUST THERE, result in free will? It’s a muddled and nonsensical concept.

[jakelafortParticipant]

Simon says.

Well, just because we can’t explain something, doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.

Nor does it mean it does. We know or think we know life started without consciousness and yet single celled organisms react to their environment albeit presumably on an unconscious level. If consciousness emerged rather late on an evolutionary time line is it reasonable to project free will? After all life operates without consciousness and even in humans most of our inner world is still unconscious.

You are fine with negating free will for those with mental issues like tourettes in which certain sometimes inappropriate utterances are uncontrollable. Yet you credit neurotypicals with freedom-i could do this or that. If i choose to do a criminal act i am criminally responsible. That is the legal framework more or less. Mens rea is negated where control over the subject act is lost or knowledge of criminality is not present.

But the more we learn about biology the more free will appears a construct. It is a tough construct to discard since we feel free most of the time. And when we realize it may not exist all of our pats on the back and self congratulatory inner dialogue is for nought. And i suppose religious folks also have lives predicated upon free will. Supolksy makes it pretty clear that we are biologically determined. He loves the example of the studies of judges and their sentences. When they’ve eaten lunch beforehand they are way more lenient. Hungry, they throw the book at the defendant. Actually he has studied the matter extensively and concluded that we are all determined and our choices are i suppose alternatives but we are no more free to exercise those alternatives than a ping pong ball with lefty spin is to curve the way it will curve.

For whatever reason i am thinking of Dennet who just died, a guy i never read or heard until someone here (i think Davis) mentioned him and his ideas on compatibilism. I listened and found him highly illogical. And now after he recently died i listened to Harris talking about their friendship which was mostly over emails rather then in person and how the two had a sort of falling out over the issues. Now i know for myself when i lose respect for someone’s acumen i won’t want to listen or read them on other matters. And that may be unfair. One can be dead wrong on one issue and otherwise acute. But that is how i am.

I say that to say what i am determined to say.

[Reg the Fronkey FarmerModerator]

It might be worth giving Dennett another chance to make his case on ‘Determinism’ (and the ‘free will’ that matters).

[UnseenParticipant]

@ Reg

Prof. Dennett confuses determinists with predeterminists. He argues, in so many words, “If determinism is true, then the future is entirely laid out ahead of time until the end of time.” That’s a pastiche of several things he says in the video you gave us, as well as in other videos.

I’m sure there are determinists who hold that view, but that’s a very naive version of determinism. More true is that everything that happens on the level of human experience happens due to proximate causes, not due to The Big Bang. A more nuanced and accurate determinism recognizes the existence of randomness and the mathematical fact of chaos, making the future in detail impossible to calculate even if one had all of the facts going back to the beginning. As a practical matter, it’s only the proximate circumstances that matter. Beneath the world we live in, which is governed by the principles of Newton and his child Einstein, is a totally different world in which randomness holds sway, and now and then subatomic particles do affect our worldly affairs in unpredictable ways. Genetic mutations caused by the odd gamma ray, for example. They have almost certainly played a major role in evolution

He vindicates free will by redefinint it as “the control you exert when you decide to take conscious control of yourself and act accordingly.” He leaves aside any analysis of HOW one arrives at a decision and whether there is any freedom behind the scenes when one does so. The brain makes a decision to take control, but the brain just functions with no Wizard of Oz or homunculus behind the curtain pulling the levers. In a sense, we just ARE our brain and the brain runs us, not vice versa.

Dennett makes sense to a certain group of people who think we somehow must have free will, not because it’s a fact but because they think we need it. Need it for what? Praise and blame and maintaining a corresponding belief in the existence of Evil.

[UnseenParticipant]

Just a thought: Dennett rescues the notion of free will by diminishing it. I think that most people who value free will are going to find Dennett’s free will less than fully satisfying.

[Simon PayntonParticipant]

Unseen wrote:

My cat can choose to eat the food I put out or, in her kitty cat way, tell me she wants something else. So, by the standard you are using, my cat must have free will and then be morally responsible for killing mice.

What about when your cat tries to decide whether to go out or not?  They can spend ages trying to make their mind up.  So it clearly has some kind of capacity for some kind of free will.

Is your cat morally responsible for killing mice, which it does not need to do?  Hunting for fun is now frowned upon in human beings.  I think that cats are not considered moral agents because of 1) their limited free will; 2) their inability to follow rules, and their general ungovernability.

Free will is used as a cudgel to invoke the concept of evil. I can’t figure any other need for it.

Observations of baboon troops have shown that some baboons are just jerks: they hurt others out of spite.  Overall, baboons are quite a spiteful and antagonistic species socially, mainly around the arena of mating.  If a human behaved this way, we would call them evil.  But again, a baboon is not really capable of learning right from wrong.

[Simon PayntonParticipant]

Unseen wrote:

More true is that everything that happens on the level of human experience happens due to proximate causes, not due to The Big Bang.

It’s also shaped by evolution.  Evolutionary psychology recognises two kinds of motivation: ultimate and proximate; or, evolutionary pressures and psychological pressures.  Ancient humans said, “I need to help those I depend on, which happens to be just about everyone around me.”  Modern humans say, “I need to help those around me.”

My point is, there are all kinds of restrictions, enforced avenues, etc., on our actions and some of them did begin in the Big Bang.  Some of them were put there by evolutionary pressures.  Those things in our ancient past can shape our psychology now.

[_Robert_Participant]

I agree with a chain of causes going back a big bang, but I do wonder sometimes.  Given the current state of the universe is there is really only one path forward? Is there an element of randomness involved? Some chaos in our future experiences. You can trace causality backwards, but can you really predict it forwards? The arrow of time enigma.

Super strait-laced, logical people will sometimes do impulsive things. Even evolution has that bit of randomness via genetic mutations.

This element of randomness probably gives us the impression of free will.

 

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