A “thought experiment” is an experiment which you perform in your head (often because performing the actual experiment would be impractical). The problem with zombies is that a zombie is defined as being experimentally indistinguishable from the original. There simply isn’t an experiment that could distinguish between them.
Actually the experiment need make no mention of the existence of actual p-zombies. The argument is specifically about whether a mind that knows all physical details, knows everything about qualia—whether it can be sure that all beings that we postulate to possess qualia actually do possess qualia.
I’m not sure that is all there is to a thought experiment. Quantum Suicide is described as a thought experiment and suffers a somewhat similar problem.
While there presumably would be a branch in which the subject will find at least a positive result (they observe themselves surviving long past the odds say they should) that is a completely subjective result. From the outside view they just see the Born probabilities; we can’t expect any empirical difference in running this experiment but it is still a useful thought experiment because it challenges us to rigorously accept some of the less intuitive consequences of MWI.
Performing quantum suicide would—very briefly—allow you to learn whether you were still alive or about to die—which seems as though it might be some kind of result.
Searle’s “Chinese room” appears to me to be another dodgy non-experiment, that is still described as being a thought experiment—since Searle apparently doesn’t dispute that the room can actually speak Chinese. Maybe we need the concept of a fake thought experiment—to help distinguish between the science and the baloney.
A “thought experiment” is an experiment which you perform in your head (often because performing the actual experiment would be impractical). The problem with zombies is that a zombie is defined as being experimentally indistinguishable from the original. There simply isn’t an experiment that could distinguish between them.
I don’t know if this is just wordplay, but I like it.
Actually the experiment need make no mention of the existence of actual p-zombies. The argument is specifically about whether a mind that knows all physical details, knows everything about qualia—whether it can be sure that all beings that we postulate to possess qualia actually do possess qualia.
I’m not sure that is all there is to a thought experiment. Quantum Suicide is described as a thought experiment and suffers a somewhat similar problem.
While there presumably would be a branch in which the subject will find at least a positive result (they observe themselves surviving long past the odds say they should) that is a completely subjective result. From the outside view they just see the Born probabilities; we can’t expect any empirical difference in running this experiment but it is still a useful thought experiment because it challenges us to rigorously accept some of the less intuitive consequences of MWI.
Performing quantum suicide would—very briefly—allow you to learn whether you were still alive or about to die—which seems as though it might be some kind of result.
Searle’s “Chinese room” appears to me to be another dodgy non-experiment, that is still described as being a thought experiment—since Searle apparently doesn’t dispute that the room can actually speak Chinese. Maybe we need the concept of a fake thought experiment—to help distinguish between the science and the baloney.
Say “intuition pump” and describe reality with other symbols than a single metaphor.