Cognitive stuff from a cognitive person. If you've got any requests, drop me an email. If it takes me a while to get to it, drop me another one.
Zombies have invaded the philosophy blogosphere, and Brandon of Siris, in providing links to all the other stuff, made some pretty strong claims that I was hoping he'd expand upon. And fortunately he has, in a follow up post that's a must-read for those who are interested in this sort of thing. The post is here. Here's an excerpt:
The zombie argument gets its plausibility not from anything about the argument itself but from a variety of positions pre-argument that give it an antecedent probability. The best thing to do is not to play the zombie game at all; where argument is needed, attack not the zombie argument but what makes it seem plausible that zombies are conceivable and therefore possible. Or, to put it in other words: the best strategy is simply to refuse to countenance Cartesian assumptions about the mind (the pretense that self-knowledge is easy, the pretense that we have a thorough understanding of the physical side of the equation, indeed, the pretense that the physical is all on one side of the equation and the mental all on the other, etc.) and let the argument fade on its own.
The rest of the post lays this position out in a bit more detail. I imagine it will spark some heated discussion.
And of course, no discussion of zombies would be complete without this video:
Humanities & Social Science
Brain & Behavior
Comments
You are definitely not an atheist Chris!
You've go the "rotten mind" which leads to theology.
The "Zombie question" is, by its very definition not amenable to ANY answer, so why asking such silly questions or even paying attention?
What do you (and anybody else stuck in such meaninglessness) expect as an outcome of "thinking about it"?
The "religious mind" does deserve a truly thorough investigation, how can such nonsense arise and intermingle with rationaly?
(though I am not a fan of hard-core rationality either)
Posted by: Kevembuangga | April 14, 2008 1:22 PM