Tuesday, April 06, 2010

The zombie-world

Imagine a possible world physically identical to this one in which no one is having any thoughts. Particles just move the way they move, but none of the first-person mental states that go with those physical states exist. There are no inner states, just behavior of various kinds that someone might interpret from the outside as being “mental.”


If they are just like us physically, what do we have that zombies don’t have? A soul???

1 comment:

Tony A. said...

Do you think the soul is an entity that can be seperated from the physical body and maintain awareness of itself? It seems to me there is an overwhelming correlation between consciousness and the physical brain. If the brain is only an apparatus that manifests the soul like a radio receiver picks up radio waves then where was the soul created and a really interesting question to me concerns dreaming. Why would the soul need to dream crazy dreams that seem like bizarre constructions from a not fully awake brain?