Re: Less certainty

[Robert Charleston <rc3673@student.open.ac.uk>]

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Dave and Alice think that the problem of other minds and the inner states 
of animals and other humans are not the problem I have suggested. In fact 
I think Alice called the claim silly. Which is fair enough - I am a fairly 
silly person.

However as Nick has pointed out to me there is a whole branch of 
philosophy where concerns over the possibility of 'philosophical zombies' 
- things which look and act just like human beings but which in fact have 
no inner mental life or experience of pain, pleasure etc - are very 
serious. The thought experiment of imagining such creatures shows up many 
scientific accounts of mind to have problems where qualia are concerned. 
The problem is that science cannot tell the difference between a creature 
that acts similarly to us but has no inner life and one that is genuinely 
self-aware, rational, experiences etc. If this inability to tell whether 
something is self-aware, rational, experiences pain and pleasure etc. is 
enough to force functionalists and materialists across the philosophical 
community to pause and rethink their assertions about mind, it seems 
reasonable to expect it to seriously question assertions about animals 
having the inner life that we are concerned with here. How do you oppose 
someone who claims that animals are like philosophical zombies?

Rab.


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