Some thoughts on the p-zombie idea

[UnseenParticipant]

jakelafort wrote:

Well, the question remains: are these entanglements and quantum processes set in stone by the past or is there true randomness that excludes any possible omniscience? The believers in God’s gift of “free will” also believe in omnipotence and omniscience so in reality they are the hard determinists. There is only one possible future: God’s plan.

Rife with contradiction is the bible and its fiction.

If man truly has free will, then that contradicts the notion that God is omniscient, because he didn’t know that Joe Shmoe would jump in the raging river to save the baby or that Jill Doe would drown her baby in the bathtub.

The idea of free will poses as many puzzles for theists as it does for atheists, only we atheists don’t have the parachute of “Well, in God all things are possible and He is beyond all human understanding. Have faith.”

[_Robert_Participant]

Th degree of randomness encountered appears to be function of knowledge. Sometimes we do know enough about a process to at least assign a probability/curve. If that curve is based only on past observations, the curve is more questionable than when there is an understanding of the mechanics of the process.

Are there aspects of the universe that are unknowable or are only knowable as a probability? If so, determinism is impossible.

[UnseenParticipant]

_Robert_ wrote:

Th degree of randomness encountered appears to be function of knowledge. Sometimes we do know enough about a process to at least assign a probability/curve. If that curve is based only on past observations, the curve is more questionable than when there is an understanding of the mechanics of the process.

It’s very difficult to discover what you are not looking for. A lot of understanding only happens in retrospect.

Are there aspects of the universe that are unknowable or are only knowable as a probability? If so, determinism is impossible.

I’m sure there are aspects of the universe which are unknowable, certainly in the subatomic level. Is there some kind of causality going on there. Perhaps, though it’s unlikely it is discoverable.

[UnseenParticipant]

Okay, here’s an argument against the possibility of p-zombies. I’m not saying whether or not I accept it. I do wonder about it.

Let’s take two men in parallel worlds. Let’s call him Joe Smith. Joe in World A is a regular human. Joe in World B is a p-zombie.

In World A, Joe is a widower whose beloved wife recently died suddenly from bacterial meningitis. Exactly the same thing happened to Joe in World B.

Joe in World A can’t go to sleep at night without crying and asking “Why did this have to happen to me?”

Does Joe in World B also cry himself to sleep? Why would he?

While it’s easy to imagine a being simulating human behavior in a stimulus/response way in a physical world, why would a p-zombie, alone, express grief by crying when the stimulus for grief behavior is something in the consciousness, not the external world?

[Author]

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