However, there is no obvious barrier within monadology to the creation of a black-box simulation of consciousness whose interior mechanism is made up of many simple monads rather than a single complex conscious monad, and which is therefore not conscious itself.
If the conscious monad’s internal dynamics are uncomputable (even if its behavior is computable), and such a simulation must therefore have a radically different internal structure, perhaps not. But if such a simulation can be made which is structurally similar enough to the conscious monad, then it z-talks about consciousness for the same reason (at the appropriate level of abstraction) as the conscious monad, and the standard anti-zombie arguments return.
it z-talks about consciousness for the same reason (at the appropriate level of abstraction) as the conscious monad
“At the appropriate level of abstraction” is pretty broad. Part of the reason that a conscious monad talks about seeing colors is because it does see colors, whereas its simulation (let us suppose) talks about seeing colors only because it contains computational tokens imitating the causal role that colors play in the conscious monad’s internal transitions of state. I don’t see any contradiction. How would you employ a standard anti-zombie argument here?
If the conscious monad’s internal dynamics are uncomputable (even if its behavior is computable), and such a simulation must therefore have a radically different internal structure, perhaps not. But if such a simulation can be made which is structurally similar enough to the conscious monad, then it z-talks about consciousness for the same reason (at the appropriate level of abstraction) as the conscious monad, and the standard anti-zombie arguments return.
“At the appropriate level of abstraction” is pretty broad. Part of the reason that a conscious monad talks about seeing colors is because it does see colors, whereas its simulation (let us suppose) talks about seeing colors only because it contains computational tokens imitating the causal role that colors play in the conscious monad’s internal transitions of state. I don’t see any contradiction. How would you employ a standard anti-zombie argument here?