There is nothing about those high level descriptions that is not compatible with physics.
Since we can’t extrapolate our physics that far, we don’t know whether they’re truly compatible with our understanding of physics or not.
The difference between our views is that he thinks the reduction is logically necessary; that there is no sense to be made of the idea of a ‘zombie’ world physically identical to ours but lacking consciousness. I think that’s plainly false. There’s nothing incoherent about the idea of zombies.
Of course there is. If a feature can be removed from a model without affecting any outcome of the model, that feature never applied to the system we’re trying to model. It didn’t exist.
If you postulate a world that functions precisely as ours does in every way, but a mysterious property called ‘consciousness’ has been removed, than ‘consciousness’ does not and cannot exist in our world. It affects nothing. It is affected by nothing. It is not a part of existence.
Saying that something has absolutely no consequences of any kind, while asserting that it exists, is incoherent. The p-zombie concept is incoherent.
Since we can’t extrapolate our physics that far, we don’t know whether they’re truly compatible with our understanding of physics or not.
Of course there is. If a feature can be removed from a model without affecting any outcome of the model, that feature never applied to the system we’re trying to model. It didn’t exist.
If you postulate a world that functions precisely as ours does in every way, but a mysterious property called ‘consciousness’ has been removed, than ‘consciousness’ does not and cannot exist in our world. It affects nothing. It is affected by nothing. It is not a part of existence.
Saying that something has absolutely no consequences of any kind, while asserting that it exists, is incoherent. The p-zombie concept is incoherent.