Yeah, but it's a funny idea

About as funny as claiming nobody else has minds.

No, only claiming that those who claim they don't have minds, don't have minds

That's what the Socratic method is all about. "You said it, not me." Why would Dennett take offense at people agreeing with him?

I don't think (m)any philosophers claim to be p-zombies. What they claim is that the notion of qualia is not the proper way to understand consciousness.

I don't think we can, at least not in this sense it's proponents want. "Qualia" is more a less a placeholder for living the moment of consciousness. Since any description we give is only that, it always fails to amount to any moment of quaila. There is no such thing as a "what a likeness" because description is distinct from living. Our descriptions are only ever pointers to life, never the lived moment itself.

Dennett sort of alluding to this I think. We are readily fooled into thinking qualia is about describing. Supposely, it's the great failure of materialism and why the immaterialist is reflective of our experience. The immaterialist is thought to account for our lived experience to a greater extent.

The direction Dennett seems to be going is that this is an illusion. Since the lived moment is never description of that moment, there can be no account of quaila which IS the qualia of in question. The supposed strength of immaterialism, it's accounting of qualia, is a delusion because no such account is possible.

Given this, the supposition qualia needs to be described and that descriptions fail if they are not qualia fall into incoherence. No description was ever trying to be life. If are describing, we are always settling for something less than a lived moment of consciousness. By the inability of description to account for the lived moment, the supposed failure of materialism is shown to be an error based on the immaterialist's equivocation between description and life.

There are not "first person" and "third person" we experiences . All experiences are lived ( what "first person" is trying to talk about) and any description is different to what it is describing ( what "third person" is trying to speak about). The very idea of having a description which is life ("what is a likeness") is nonsensical and has us trying to replace life with mere description.

Could you cite some quotes from Dennett supporting this idea you're attributing to him?

Aren't p-zombies just people with no qualia? So doesn't every philosopher who denies there are qualia, claim to be a p-zombie?

P-zombies lack consciousness. Only if consciousness is to be understood as qualia would a lack of qualia mean a lack of consciousness. But some, e.g. Dennett, claim that this isn't the case. Although he's claiming to not have qualia he's not claiming to not have consciousness and so isn't claiming to be a p-zombie.

Although at best you could perhaps say that if consciousness really is to be understood as qualia then Dennett is inadvertently claiming to be a p-zombie.

Original post
P-zombies are people who are physiologically and behaviourally identical to conscious people but lack consciousness. Chalmers claims that because this is coherent it must be that consciousness is non-physiological/non-behavioural.

But some philosophers claim that if something is physiologically and behaviourally identical to conscious people then ipso facto it is conscious. So they're not claiming to be p-zombies; they're claiming that the notion of p-zombies doesn't make sense.

But some philosophers claim that if something is physiologically and behaviourally identical to conscious people then ipso facto it is conscious. — Michael

If they claim people are conscious, then there is no dispute, since they don't think they're p-zombies.

But for those who think that consciousness at least as popularly conceived in terms of qualia is illusory, they literally are claiming that people who are behaviorally identical to humans (namely, all humans) lack consciousness (in the relevant sense), and so are p-zombies.

Of course, they may be justified in this claim using their own case, since as p-zombies they can't conceive of qualia. But for those who aren't, the argument won't be compelling.

they're claiming that the notion of p-zombies doesn't make sense. — Michael

That depends on what you mean. On certain understandings of the terms, many philosophers not only believe the concept makes sense, but is actualized in their own case and presumably for the case of all human beings. This won't be the case if you have some lame understanding of what 'consciousness' is (i.e., something other than consciousness) that is functional, behavioral, etc. But that's just definition-gerrymandering and produces nothing of substance, since it will probably end up borderline tautological and have nothing to say about consciousness in the interesting sense, i.e. subjective experience. If the latter is meant, of course the notion of a p-zombie makes sense, in the sense that the average person understand what's meant by it with no difficulty.

Oops. I heavily edited my post before you posted that. Apologies. I'll try and put it back in.

A p-zombie, lacking in consciousness, would be incapable of understanding the question, let alone answering it.

P-zombies lack consciousness. Only if consciousness is to be understood as qualia would a lack of qualia mean a lack of consciousness. But some, e.g. Dennett, claim that this isn't the case. — Michael

I can't understand the claim that consciousness doesn't consist in qualia as anything other than a redefinition of consciousness from its lay meaning to some technical meaning. But isn't the lay meaning what we're interested in? You can gerrymander the definition to show whatever you want, but the result won't be interesting.

By 'consciousness' I don't, and don't think I can, understand anything but qualia, at least if the term is used in anything like its ordinary way.

It may be that Dennett is wrong in dismissing the sensibility of qualia, but because he isn't claiming that he doesn't have consciousness he isn't claiming to be a p-zombie.

At the very most you could argue that the claim "I am conscious and the concept of qualia is meaningless" is a contradiction.

But suppose that we can't make sense of consciousness on terms that doesn't somehow equate it with the presence of qualia. It would follow that the only way to deny that one has qualia is to deny that one is conscious.

If I claim that the President is white and if I believe that Barack Obama isn't the President, am I claiming that Barack Obama is white?

Obviously not, but I don't see what that has to do with anything.

So if I claim that I don't have qualia and if I believe that consciousness isn't qualia, am I claiming that I don't have consciousness?

You will be claiming that you don't have consciousness if your belief that consciousness isn't qualia can't be made sense of. For instance, suppose I claim I have no legs, but that I believe walking has nothing to do with legs -- do I therefore claim I can't walk? Of course I do, even though I deny it, because my belief that walking doesn't require legs is wrong (and perhaps nonsensical).

With your approach we could always reverse the consideration. You claim you can walk. Walking requires legs. Therefore you claim you have legs. Dennett claims to have consciousness. Consciousness is qualia. Therefore Dennett claims to have qualia.

So if we make two contradictory claims, which one takes priority? Being able to walk or not having legs? Being conscious or not having qualia?

I don't think it makes sense to choose one way or the other. Just take them at their word. You're claiming to not have legs and to be able to walk. Dennett's claiming to be conscious and to not have qualia. The claims might be nonsensical, but that's a different matter.

Just take them at their word. — Michael

But that's what I'm doing, taking Dennett at his word that he doesn't have qualia, and is is a p-zombie. Why not take him at his word that he has consciousness instead? Because the former, not the latter, is his primary theoretical motivation.

If you believe that the absence of qualia makes someone a p-zombie, then the conclusion is rather trivial. It's like saying the disbelief in god makes someone an atheist. Of course it makes them an atheist, it's the definition of atheism. So of course if you define p-zombies in such a way that it means they lack any and all qualia, then they become p-zombies.

P-zombies are only a thing for those who take qualia seriously. Dennett doesn't take qualia seriously and would find the entirely concept of a p-zombie incoherent and empty. To say that Dennett is a p-zombie would again beg the question that qualia is something coherent.

So of course if you define p-zombies in such a way that it means they lack any and all qualia — darthbarracuda

I didn't define anything?

Come now, didn't you just define a p-zombie as a specimen that lacks qualia?

Aren't p-zombies just people with no qualia? — The Great Whatever

That's what I thought.

That's not my definition. That's just what the word means.

So my point stands. If you don't have a definition of what a p-zombie is, your entire argument is empty. And if you stand that p-zombies are entities without qualia, your argument is trivial and question-begging.

Perhaps one might ostensively define a philosophical zombie as something like one of those self-driving cars. It sees, it thinks, it decides, but it does not experience. Or so we might want to claim. The radical mechanist claims that we are all machines - it is a metaphor that pervades psychology and neuroscience at the moment.

So the notion of qualia seeks to reify (if you're agin'it) a substance of experience. Subjectivity is the soul of the irreligious. It's not that Dennett does not have legs but miraculously walks, so much as the legs miraculously walk without a Dennett.

I'm coming to this thread rather late, but it intrigues me as to why TGW thinks that consciousness must be defined in terms of qualia. I wonder whether he has an argument to support that contention? I'm also wondering what TGW's descriptive account of qualia is.

I'm coming to this thread rather late, but it intrigues me as to why TGW thinks that consciousness must be defined in terms of qualia. I wonder whether he has an argument to support that contention? I'm also wondering what TGW's descriptive account of qualia is. — John

Sometimes people are just wrong: maybe from a misunderstanding of "qualia" or a misunderstanding of the context of consciousness.

The trouble with staring a philosophical discussion from a hypothetical which is impossible is that the discussion tends to find impossible results.