Meh. Being conscious for surgery is significantly less horrifying to me than dying of a burst appendix. I’d probably be pretty saturated with analgesics anyhow.
This isn’t particularly related to p-zombies, though. An inverse p-zombie is a thing that responds exactly as if it weren’t conscious, but is conscious. The authors talk about the problem of “detecting qualia”—but if you could, if you could follow every atom and had perfect decision-making, detect the consciousness, it wouldn’t be an i-zombie. An i-zombie isn’t a sleeping person who forgets that they dreamt, it’s a conscious rock.
This is an i-zombie at the behavioral level, so it isn’t entirely unrelated. You’re right about the complete-physical-description level, which is the philosophers’ favorite. The authors do point out that the poorly anesthetized are not i-zombies at the functional level, which also implies that they’re not, at the complete physical description level.
What puzzles me is why they appear to favor functionalism for (e.g.) pain, over type-identity theory. None of their main points depend on it. And the supposed “advantage” of functionalism, that it affirms the mental as the source of behavior causation, applies equally to type-identity.
I was, perhaps opaquely, pointing out Manfred’s false dichotomy—the choice is not between surgery with faulty anesthesia and dying; the choice is between surgery with faulty anesthesia, dying, and a myriad of other options (such as the authors’ own suggestion: intensified investigation into neural correlates of consciousness, so failed anesthesia can be detected and the surgery aborted or the anesthesia improved).
That’s reasonable, and I’d agree there are some good third options (though if the pain is managed to less than getting my teeth drilled into under local anesthesia, I wouldn’t really care). We’re pretty much faced with my dichotomy now, though. So my statement was the sort of boring one that the current cost/benefit of going into surgery for anything worth even a few weeks of life remains very similar.
We’re pretty much faced with my dichotomy now, though.
I’m not an anesthesiologist though, so I can’t agree with that. Maybe there are alternatives. I can imagine there being workarounds or trade-offs which make more sense in light of these thoughts about i-zombies, such as greater use of local anesthetics (where it’s very easy to test whether it works, as opposed to blanket general anesthetics).
Meh. Being conscious for surgery is significantly less horrifying to me than dying of a burst appendix. I’d probably be pretty saturated with analgesics anyhow.
This isn’t particularly related to p-zombies, though. An inverse p-zombie is a thing that responds exactly as if it weren’t conscious, but is conscious. The authors talk about the problem of “detecting qualia”—but if you could, if you could follow every atom and had perfect decision-making, detect the consciousness, it wouldn’t be an i-zombie. An i-zombie isn’t a sleeping person who forgets that they dreamt, it’s a conscious rock.
This is an i-zombie at the behavioral level, so it isn’t entirely unrelated. You’re right about the complete-physical-description level, which is the philosophers’ favorite. The authors do point out that the poorly anesthetized are not i-zombies at the functional level, which also implies that they’re not, at the complete physical description level.
What puzzles me is why they appear to favor functionalism for (e.g.) pain, over type-identity theory. None of their main points depend on it. And the supposed “advantage” of functionalism, that it affirms the mental as the source of behavior causation, applies equally to type-identity.
Is it less horrifying than not being conscious during the surgery?
Is not being conscious during surgery particularly horrifying?
I was, perhaps opaquely, pointing out Manfred’s false dichotomy—the choice is not between surgery with faulty anesthesia and dying; the choice is between surgery with faulty anesthesia, dying, and a myriad of other options (such as the authors’ own suggestion: intensified investigation into neural correlates of consciousness, so failed anesthesia can be detected and the surgery aborted or the anesthesia improved).
That’s reasonable, and I’d agree there are some good third options (though if the pain is managed to less than getting my teeth drilled into under local anesthesia, I wouldn’t really care). We’re pretty much faced with my dichotomy now, though. So my statement was the sort of boring one that the current cost/benefit of going into surgery for anything worth even a few weeks of life remains very similar.
I’m not an anesthesiologist though, so I can’t agree with that. Maybe there are alternatives. I can imagine there being workarounds or trade-offs which make more sense in light of these thoughts about i-zombies, such as greater use of local anesthetics (where it’s very easy to test whether it works, as opposed to blanket general anesthetics).