Here’s the contradiction—p-zombies will claim to be conscious. If uploads aren’t actually conscious, they won’t show it in their behavior it, so they won’t seek it.
there are people who don’t believe uploads are conscious, and also don’t believe being conscious (or not conscious) causes someone to talk (or not talk) about consciousness. if they think Logical Argument X proves uploads are not conscious then an upload of them would also believe that argument, at least according to people holding that view (otherwise they would have to concede that an upload’s observation of their own consciousness changes their actions)
in other words, a p-zombie can observe being an upload even though they can’t observe whether or not they’re conscious (according to people who believe in p-zombies in that way)
I can’t pass an ITT for such people, but I’d expect that if uploaded, they’d claim to still have consciousnessness. Their current stated beliefs are about others, not themselves. I have yet to encounter anyone who claims to have experienced p-zombiehood (and indeed, the theory would make it nonsensical to do so).
My body has apparently gone through something similar to p-zombiehood at least once.
I don’t recall any experience of the time interval (some minutes I heard), but I was reported to have been awake and alert and conversing and able to do mental arithmetic. Then I lay down and some minutes later sat up again, from which point I do recall experiencing normally but with no memory of any of the prior activity.
Alternatively I just had some memory loss that has never been recovered but with no other identifiable long-term effects. I was recently out of anesthetic at the time, so both explanations seem reasonably viable.
Remnant effects from the anesthetic could have impaired medium-term (order of minutes) and long-term memory formation without impairing short-term memory (enough to allow me to reply to speech etc). Or equally well could have impaired whatever underlies consciousness or its connection with the body, and there was no actual experience to remember.
Why do you think this was zombie hood, as opposed to “just” memory loss/alteration? It would seem just as reasonable to believe that you were experiencing qualia and consciousness during that time, but don’t remember it correctly.
That’s why I said “something similar to”, and “both explanations seem reasonably viable”. I can’t rule out either of them, and it’s not possible (even in principle) to distinguish them after the fact. Was there short-term memory but no memory of consciousness because there was no consciousness to remember (due to the effects of the drug known to cause loss of consciousness), or was there both consciousness and short-term memory but the drug prevented those from leaving any traces some minutes later?
I certainly don’t claim to know what consciousness is or how it works. I would by default expect that a true p-zombie that for some reason became conscious would still remember having thoughts and experiences from the time period in which they had been a p-zombie, but it doesn’t seem logically inconsistent that they might not.
Yeah, you might very well be right that they would change their mind. But presumably someone with that position would claim that they wouldn’t change their mind.
Right—so are we discussing what a (presumably) conscious human predicts about their upload experience, or are we predicting what they’d do/say if uploaded? I think they’re two different questions, and honestly have very low confidence that either one is very useful to any decisions or actions today.
That conditions on prior beliefs about whether uploads are conscious and whether consciousness is what causes you to talk about being conscious, not on whether the uploads are conscious.
i basically agree. i think uploads are conscious, so i think the belief that uploads are not conscious has to be caused by something else than “uploads not being conscious”
Yes, I was going to comment in the same way. From the original post:
In the future, if you realized that uploads were not conscious, you might want to change their substrate in order to make them conscious again. Let’s assume you were cryopreserved, and then were uploaded as your revival method.
How would you “realize” such a thing? There is no evidence that you could find that would distinguish between being in a world in which such high-fidelity uploads were conscious and those in which they were not. Did you mean “realize” by some non-rational means, such as religious revelation or something?
Even in that case, I expect that your upload would behave as if it had either received irrefutable evidence that it was actually conscious after all, or that it actually is not an upload and someone is trying to fool it into thinking that it is an upload. If the biological human would have protested that of course I’m conscious, then so would the upload.
If it can be presented with something that does makes it behave as if it is convinced that it is an upload, without losing conviction that uploads are unconscious, then the same would happen for the biological human if you were able to somehow give them the same evidence (e.g. by means of direct sensory nerve control). That’s inherent in it being a perfect behavioural replica.
So you would also have to conclude that a corresponding conscious biological human could likewise be convinced that it is not actually conscious and have them want to download into a biological body. Which is not out of the realm of possibility, but it hardly seems like a universal or even likely sort of thing.
it’s not their observation of their consciousness or lack thereof that changes their mind because p-zombies act the same as if they were not conscious
the difference is that when they look at their brain they see it is made of different material than the non-uploads and think that material doesn’t support consciousness (just like their non-uploads counterpart also believe)
Here’s the contradiction—p-zombies will claim to be conscious. If uploads aren’t actually conscious, they won’t show it in their behavior it, so they won’t seek it.
there are people who don’t believe uploads are conscious, and also don’t believe being conscious (or not conscious) causes someone to talk (or not talk) about consciousness. if they think Logical Argument X proves uploads are not conscious then an upload of them would also believe that argument, at least according to people holding that view (otherwise they would have to concede that an upload’s observation of their own consciousness changes their actions)
in other words, a p-zombie can observe being an upload even though they can’t observe whether or not they’re conscious (according to people who believe in p-zombies in that way)
I can’t pass an ITT for such people, but I’d expect that if uploaded, they’d claim to still have consciousnessness. Their current stated beliefs are about others, not themselves. I have yet to encounter anyone who claims to have experienced p-zombiehood (and indeed, the theory would make it nonsensical to do so).
My body has apparently gone through something similar to p-zombiehood at least once.
I don’t recall any experience of the time interval (some minutes I heard), but I was reported to have been awake and alert and conversing and able to do mental arithmetic. Then I lay down and some minutes later sat up again, from which point I do recall experiencing normally but with no memory of any of the prior activity.
Alternatively I just had some memory loss that has never been recovered but with no other identifiable long-term effects. I was recently out of anesthetic at the time, so both explanations seem reasonably viable.
Remnant effects from the anesthetic could have impaired medium-term (order of minutes) and long-term memory formation without impairing short-term memory (enough to allow me to reply to speech etc). Or equally well could have impaired whatever underlies consciousness or its connection with the body, and there was no actual experience to remember.
Why do you think this was zombie hood, as opposed to “just” memory loss/alteration? It would seem just as reasonable to believe that you were experiencing qualia and consciousness during that time, but don’t remember it correctly.
That’s why I said “something similar to”, and “both explanations seem reasonably viable”. I can’t rule out either of them, and it’s not possible (even in principle) to distinguish them after the fact. Was there short-term memory but no memory of consciousness because there was no consciousness to remember (due to the effects of the drug known to cause loss of consciousness), or was there both consciousness and short-term memory but the drug prevented those from leaving any traces some minutes later?
I certainly don’t claim to know what consciousness is or how it works. I would by default expect that a true p-zombie that for some reason became conscious would still remember having thoughts and experiences from the time period in which they had been a p-zombie, but it doesn’t seem logically inconsistent that they might not.
Yeah, you might very well be right that they would change their mind. But presumably someone with that position would claim that they wouldn’t change their mind.
Right—so are we discussing what a (presumably) conscious human predicts about their upload experience, or are we predicting what they’d do/say if uploaded? I think they’re two different questions, and honestly have very low confidence that either one is very useful to any decisions or actions today.
both are interesting to me but fair enough!
That conditions on prior beliefs about whether uploads are conscious and whether consciousness is what causes you to talk about being conscious, not on whether the uploads are conscious.
i basically agree. i think uploads are conscious, so i think the belief that uploads are not conscious has to be caused by something else than “uploads not being conscious”
Yes, I was going to comment in the same way. From the original post:
How would you “realize” such a thing? There is no evidence that you could find that would distinguish between being in a world in which such high-fidelity uploads were conscious and those in which they were not. Did you mean “realize” by some non-rational means, such as religious revelation or something?
Even in that case, I expect that your upload would behave as if it had either received irrefutable evidence that it was actually conscious after all, or that it actually is not an upload and someone is trying to fool it into thinking that it is an upload. If the biological human would have protested that of course I’m conscious, then so would the upload.
If it can be presented with something that does makes it behave as if it is convinced that it is an upload, without losing conviction that uploads are unconscious, then the same would happen for the biological human if you were able to somehow give them the same evidence (e.g. by means of direct sensory nerve control). That’s inherent in it being a perfect behavioural replica.
So you would also have to conclude that a corresponding conscious biological human could likewise be convinced that it is not actually conscious and have them want to download into a biological body. Which is not out of the realm of possibility, but it hardly seems like a universal or even likely sort of thing.
it’s not their observation of their consciousness or lack thereof that changes their mind because p-zombies act the same as if they were not conscious
the difference is that when they look at their brain they see it is made of different material than the non-uploads and think that material doesn’t support consciousness (just like their non-uploads counterpart also believe)
Sure, that’s the sort of thing that’s covered by “realize by some non-rational means”.
i see yeah!