They have grey skin and make creepy groaning noises, yes, I know, thank you very, very much.
This being the philosophy board though, it's actually philosophical zombies I'm talking about. Yeah, if you haven't heard about these guys before, ask Wikipedia:
Heavyweight philosophers like to get in big bitch fights about them, but I think they're all wrong.
A philosophical zombie, although not conscious, is supposed to act exactly like everybody else. Perhaps they are real? Perhaps everybody but you is a zombie? How can you tell?
The Turing Test is, by definition of a zombie, useless, so what can you do?
I think the bleedingly obvious answer here which nobody else seems to have is to go ahead and
ask them.
Think about it. If somebody asks if you are conscious, you check to see if you are, and say 'yes'. I am experiencing, hence I am a conscious being.
If you asked a zombie, they would check to see if they were experiencing, and say 'no'.
So, doesn't this show that consciousness does actually have physical, tangible manifestations, and is not just an added extra, and completely falsifies the idea of zombies?
Discuss. It's not as if you have anything better to do.
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