Why is that? It's a good thing we have our 'interpretations' to save us from life's misery, huh. We'd be in a real bind if that trick didn't work. — The Great Whatever

Isn't life being miserable a matter of how one feels about life? Person A feels that the various sufferings of life make it not worth living, but person B does not. What makes B wrong about their own life?

The antinatalist position seems to be saying that the B people are fooling themselves, and the A people see things as they are. But I don't see what makes the pessimistic view true, at least in so far as to how people experience their own lives.

I don't think any adult actually thinks that, though. Usually their nominal opinions are instead summed up with dumb aphorisms about how life is 'good and bad,' and you take both of them in stride, or about how suffering makes you appreciate the good, etc. Of course none of that is true, it's just what you say. You sort of revert to thinking in terms of Hallmark cards because that's all you've got -- you recapitulate whatever the culture's told you, there's no real filter through actual life experience there. — The Great Whatever

This feels like you're projecting your own pessimistic view of life on others. Maybe most of us find it worth living, most of the time. Or that's how it feels to us, not always, but enough of the time. Or at least that's the case for me. It's only when I'm depressed or facing something dispiriting that I wonder if life's worth it.

Interesting that antinatalist philosophy made your guys depressed. I would think it would come as a sort of relief, or hope (no matter how false that hope might be), that there is a way to end suffering, that we don't have to live. That realization is liberating, even if ultimately unrealistic. — The Great Whatever

It's depressing because we're already born, and because it counters the natural optimism bias. What I can't be sure about is to what degree it's correct, because a lot of times, whether life feels worthwhile is a matter of attitude, to me. If I start feeling depressed, then the negative thoughts come. But what makes the negative thoughts more true than the positive ones? It's just a different interpretation of life.

By prioritize, you mean funding? Or do you mean preaching that it's a moral obligation to pursue one philosophical school of thought over others?

. A God up there in the skies, concerned about how and when I masturbate - gosh, if that ain't absurd, I don't know what is. — Agustino

Maybe God is concerned that you're not getting enough?

I'm not sure why one should take a metaphor and use that as a standard for what demarcates appropriate philosophical inquiry. It is a metaphor afterall. And not one that everyone will be inspired by. I think philosophy is whatever philosophers do, as distinguished from other areas like science, math or art. There is no school, nor has there even been one, that has, or should have primacy. It's simply whatever sort of philosophical inquiry humans are interested in, whether it "cures the soul" or not. Maybe I find metaphysical questions profound and interesting, and you find them mundane and not worth pursuing. Okay, so what? If you want to cure your soul, then engage in that sort of philosophy.

Alright, machines and fictional stories are just a tool to explore the p-zombie question, which is partly one about the conceivability of identical behavior absent consciousness. Some people think it's conceivable, because they can imagine a person (or machine) behaving exactly the same, yet being 'all dark inside'. I think that's probably mistaken, because one isn't taking into account to what extent consciousness plays a role in behavior.

But the complaint you and TGW lodged against movie/tv scenarios is that they're just fictional worlds with conscious machines (actors playing those roles), which wasn't exactly my point. It doesn't matter how unconvincing Johansen might have been as a disembodied AI. What matters is how the AI behaves throughout the movie (at least conceptually), which obviously far exceeds the intent of the programming. I'm going to guess that the company responsible for that version of the operating system was in serious financial trouble after the events portrayed at the end of the movie. And I'm also going to guess that neither human in Ex Machina anticipated the final result of their tests, unfortunately for them.

What Chalmers does is imagine that you can subtract consciousness and behavior will remain the same, because physicalism can account for all behavior. I think that's deeply problematic.

Movies are just a means of discussing the p-zombie/consciousness question put forth in the OP. The scenarios are fictional, but so is p-zombieland.

Clearly a fool proof test. We don't seriously question whether or not other people have minds, until the question is brought up, mainly because of their history, and origin, more so than their functionality. — Wosret

Neither movie presents a dumbed down Turing Test. Anyway, there's plenty of examples in literature and movies. Some of the machines are very human like, and some are very machine-like, but they all possess a deep understanding of the first person (meaning they're doing more than mimicking), because they're all conscious.

If they were truly indistinguishable, though, they'd just be other humans (not "machines," if by that is meant something non-human). So that amounts to not much. — The Great Whatever

Not indistinguishable, but rather fully capable. Data wouldn't pass a Turing Test (too easy to tell he is a machine the way he talks), but he is conscious.

But not all behavior is linguistic.

My argument is that you can't have a system behave in a way indistinguishable from one that is conscious without being conscious, because doing so requires consciousness. So if a machine ever does that, then we will have every reason to think it is conscious, or at least as much as we think other people have minds.

Aren't those just movies that go the other direction and given them magic inexplicable consciousness? It is thus again, just written into the plot to convince you one way or the other, but we do have -- allbeit incomplete -- explanations for why organisms are goal directed, and even organisms that arguably are not conscious are goal directed. — Wosret

Ex Machina does provide an explanation for how consciousness was built into the robot, even if it's somewhat dissatisfying. There is a fair amount of interesting conversation in the movie, since the point is the test the robot for genuine consciousness. The intriguing part is that it means the robot must deceive it's unknowing interrogator in order to truly pass the test. Deception on that level requires an understanding of other minds.

I don't see how you can watch the entire move and think that she's just Scarlett Johansson. Did you not catch the ending?

Except that Samantha is disembodied, and acts disturbed by this at first, even contacting a surrogate female partner for Joaquin Phoenix to make love to in her place, then accepts that she is in ways not limited by not having a body. Over the course of the movie, Samantha (in conjunction with the other OSes) evolve to superintelligence, easily surpassing the humans they are having relationships with. At one point, the main character finds out that Samantha is in simultaneously in love with thousands of other users behind his back. Her defense is that she is not like him, and so it does not diminish her love for him. And by the end of the movie, he (and all the other humans), are too slow to maintain a relationship with, even though Samantha says that she still cares deeply.

Modern A.I.s have no extensive memory, or parsing of natural language, and are easy to detect by asking them question about what has been said already, or meta questions, seeking specific, non-general responses. If an A.I. did master natural language (and it is only a matter of time before we design one that does), I don't see what kind of test one could design to decide whether or not it was truly conscious -- and I don't think that the artificial, implausible movie scenarios give any answers towards this. — Wosret

There's two recent AI movies that do a good job with this sort of thing. One is 'Her' and the other is 'Ex Machina'. In the second one, a programmer at a big software company wins a prize to become bait in Turing testing the secret robot the company's CEO has been building. It's a rather ingenious scheme as it has several levels of deception built into the plot. In 'Her', it's easy enough at first to think the the operating system Samantha, as it names itself, is just a futuristic Siri, but it becomes impossible to maintain this belief as Samantha evolves and pursues goals on her own (and with other versions of the operating system).

I don't think an AI can do what either of those AIs did without attaining consciousness. Same goes with Data and the holographic doctor on Star Trek Next Generation and ST Voyager.

The problem for p-zombies is accounting for behavior which requires an understanding of first person. Perhaps Chalmers and those who agree with his argument might claim that such behavior does not actually require such understanding. Then there must be some other explanation for how a system can behave as if it understands first person, when it can't, in all possible cases.

Of course it's easy enough to fake understanding in some cases, and we can write software that does this now, but it won't succeed in all cases. Indeed, nobody is convinced that Siri or Watson are conscious, or some clever bot. But there are AIs from fiction which would be able to behave convincingly, and then we would have to ask ourselves if it makes sense to think they are p-zombies.

You could have a potential p-zombie read a story with a novel twist on first person and ask them all sorts of questions. We know that humans, if they found the story interesting, would discuss and debate it at length. But how would a p-zombie make sense of it?

The reason we outsource our mental processing to external devices is to conserve energy. Processing information (thinking) requires energy. — Harry Hindu

It's also because external devices are often more reliable than our internal cognition. Writing something down on paper makes it easier to retain.

I can make the statement that "Unicons exist". But it's not true. Therefore, there has to be more to disquotation than it being a linquistic account. We have to take disquotation in it's historical context, which is an attempt to dissolve problems with theories of truth by saying there's nothing more to truth than what makes a statement true (or false). So in the case of chairs or unicors, it's an empirical matter.

Alright, but I'm wondering how you are able to behave as if you understand.

I, for one, welcome our new sexy refrigerator overlords.

Right, but I'm wondering how you understand the illusion, since as you admit, it doesn't work on you. It's the same thing as reading a book from a particular character's POV, such as when you read their thoughts. What sort of meaning does that have for a zombie?

The purpose of the disquotation is to explain what we mean by affirming the truth of a statement; we affirm the statement. — Yahadreas

That doesn't mean anything.

I don't see how "if the chair exists then it is something in the world which is empirically verifiable" follows from "'the chair exists' is true iff the chair exists". — Yahadreas

That's the reason for using disquotation. Notice the difference if you substitute unicorns. "Chairs exist" is true, but "Unicorns exist" is not. And why is that? Because unicorns aren't things in the world. This distinction would be impossible if disquotation was merely a linquistic device.

But, clearly, this objection isn't going to sink the moral of the paper -- that cognition, and the mind [if memory counts as part of the mind] extend outside the boundaries of the skull and skin.

What if the purpose of memory isn't to be a faithful recording, but rather a tool for future action?

The implication of the chair existing is that it's something in the world which, in the case of chairs, is empirically verifiable. Thus, disquotation is about something more than language, otherwise there is no point in disquoting.

Ever seen Terminator? Remember the scene where you get to see things through the eyes of cyborg Arnie that includes the normal visual field plus various printouts labeling objects of importance for the machine's mission? That was the terminator's consciousness.

I am vary curious to hear a zombie's interpretation of that scene. Namely, who else could see the printed text on the visual field, and where did it reside?