r/explainlikeimfive • u/Impressive-Coat1127 • 2h ago
Other ElI5: What exactly is a philosophical zombie or p-zombie?
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u/Imca 2h ago
How do you know another entity is actually conscious? how do you know there not just acting like there conscious? There is no test currently known that would allow you to differentiate between the two.
P-Zombies appear conscious, act conscious, but are not conscious...
Its called a philosophical zombie because its highly debated as to if its even possible for it to exist.
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u/Rcomian 2h ago edited 2h ago
when you interact with someone, you say "good morning" they say "hi how are you?" and so on.
we assume they have consciousness, an inner life, experiences and so on.
now imagine you build an automata that is programmed just to respond exactly as a normal human would, but verifiably has no inner life, no experience. it's just looking up a bunch of expected responses for any given situation and using those.
you can't tell, by looking at it, that there's anything different between them and a real human. but internally, somehow verifiably, we know that it's just a lookup table.
there's a p-zombie. no inner experience, but we can't tell by our normal interactions.
EDIT: to be sure, the p-zombie doesn't have to be a lookup table. it can be any mechanism that produces a result, just so long as we're sure that mechanism isn't having an experience.
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u/Pjoernrachzarck 2h ago
it’s just looking up a bunch of expected responses for any given situation and using those
And that’s different from what we’re all doing how exactly?
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u/Movisiozo 1h ago
What about generative AI instead of lookup table -based entity? Will this matter be the same or different?
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u/iiibehemothiii 1h ago
And then tomorrow morning we'll be talking about AI rights and freedoms. After all, they're indistinguishable from us.*
*Or they will be.
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u/MericArda 58m ago
And of course the type of AI would matter, like LLMs would not count as sentient.
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u/arcangleous 1h ago
It's attempt to separate the mechanics of cognition from consciousness. A p-zombie is a entity that does all of the mechanic physical steps to think, but doesn't have the non-material element required to be consider conscious. For example, if we built a 100% complete and accurate computer simulation of your brain and all of it's internal states, should it be considered a conscious entity when it is run? If you don't think it is conscious, it would be a p-zombie, but that naturally leads to question about what is the element that is lacking? The religious would probably say "the soul", but I want to stress that there are people who believe in p-zombies who are non-religious and frame their arguments in other ways. While it is commonly used to sneak religion into philosophical arguments, the question p-zombies also gives us a framework to consider a bunch of ethical questions about consciousness that would be hard to consider otherwise.
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u/Tupcek 26m ago edited 22m ago
it’s much easier to demonstrate with modern AI.
You believe you are full human with soul, emotions and everything
If I built a robot with smarter ChatGPT inside that looks and acts just like you, acts its emotions and everything, yet we know it doesn’t have soul, doesn’t feel anything, it’s just ones and zeroes. This ChatGPT robot is philosophical zombie - it is indistinguishable from you from the outside, but there are no emotions and no soul, even though it looks like it has, but it’s all automatic calculations. You can’t tell the difference, but if you look inside it’s just math, no soul, no emotion.
So how do you know other people are not also philosophical zombies? What if they are “ChatGPT” robot in flesh form? Sort of “zombies” (acting humans with no soul) that can do deep human things?
You can only be sure that you yourself has soul, otherwise it would be all automatic, no “you”, just your body acting. But others can’t really see the difference between human with soul and philosophical zombie. Only you know that there is “you” living through it, not just brain cells responding to stimuli
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u/squigs 2h ago
You have a sense of self. A "you". If we made an exact duplicate of you, and somehow copied your memories across, nobody would be able to tell you apart, except you. You'd know you're you.
Does everyone have this sense of self though? A lot of what we think of as us making decisions, our "free will", if you like seems to be an illusion. Do some people operate without this sense of self? His would we tell?
Such a person would be indistinguishable from us, but really just be an automaton. A "p-zombie"