Are Meta-Zombies Possible?
Is any logical error committed when a zombie proposes the existence of zombie twins?
I’m taking a short break from posting my “Introduction” series to pose a question to readers. Answers will be incorporated in my continuation of the “Introduction”.
Is any logical error committed when a zombie proposes the existence of zombie twins?
There are several dimensions of ambiguity in such a question, so I don’t believe there is a single correct answer. Any answer must do considerable extra work in defining the terms. Obviously, I have my own views, which regular readers might guess.
But let’s assume, for now, that zombies are possible: physicalism is false on this human world, and we have a special extra called “phenomenal consciousness”. Next door, in the space of possibilities, there is a world that is identical to ours along every physical parameter, but without the special extra. The extra is not arguably absent, or possibly absent, or dubious, or whatever. It’s just not there. And what these poor souls are missing is our version of phenomenal consciousness. Conventional physicalists are wrong on our world, hardists are right, and the existence of this neighbouring world is proof of that.
On the zombie world, by contrast, physicalists are technically right. (But who cares? They’re unconscious.) Hardists are wrong. (But, again, who cares?)
Everyone in this neighbouring world is a philosophical zombie, and some bright spark among them as come up with the Zombie Argument, which is posed by cognitively ostending to something (not our consciousness, obviously) that they call “phenomenal consciousness”, for all the same reasons that we talk about our phenomenal consciousness. The entity being ostended to is interpreted by the inhabitants as non-physical, but — whatever it is — it is necessarily a corollary of a purely physical characterisation of their world. Depending on our definitions, it is physical, or a physically generated fiction.
“It is conceivable”, says this pseudo-thinker (and here we might translate to “pseudo-conceivable”), “that there could be a world exactly like ours, but lacking this.”
And, as they say “this”, the zombie philospher ostends to whatever lame analogue of consciousness passes for “phenomenal consciousness” on this bland, impoverished, purely physical world.
“In lacking this,” says the zombie philosopher, “these poor hypothetical creatures, which I will call ‘zombies’ are dead inside. But they are physically identical to us. Because they are physically identical, but lack this, whatever we’re pointing at within our cognition cannot be physical, and physicalism must be false.”
We are already using the term “zombie” to refer to the instigator of this argument, so what the instigator calls a zombie is actually, from our perspective, a meta-zombie.
Has the zombie philosopher just falsified physicalism on the zombie world?
Well, no. because physicalism is true on the zombie world — at least with respect to what passes for phenomenal consciousness on their world. So has the instigator of this argument proposed an impossibility? Or have they proposed a scenario that, while plausible to them, fails to falsify physicalism on the zombie world?
We need to address these questions from the logical perspective of zombies who, while not consciousness in our own special sense, are still capable of proposing scenarios that we are free to judge as coherent or otherwise, based on the ontology of the zombie world.
So what do we make of the zombie philosopher’s argument?
Are meta-zombies logically possible?
Answer 1: the zombies are just wrong about having phenomenal consciousness, so the meta-zombies which zombies imagine to be different are actually identical to the zombies. They're logic was correct, but they started from an incorrect premise ("we have phenomenal consciousness"), so no wonder their conclusion of some sort of dualism is incorrect.
Answer 2: actually, there still is something that the zombies are referring to when they say "meta zombies lack *this*", an attempt to gesture at their own version of phenomenal consciousness -- perhaps a virtual phenomenal consciousness or some sort of illusion. Then the premise "we have *this*" is correct. However, when they go to imagine meta-zombies, they are making a logical mistake: the physical duplication requirement implies meta-zombies still have the *this*, contradicting the requirement that they lack the *this*.
In answer 1, humans are different but zombies=meta-zombies. In answer 2, this leaves the possibility that actually humans = zombies = meta-zombies. I think a good metaphysical principle is "humility", which states that a metaphysical reasoner should, all else being equal, assume they are not special or unique in anyway. For example, we shouldn't assume the universe revolves around us, we should assume we're just in some random corner of the universe. Such a principle does support the physicalist answer of answer 2. But there is more to say on this I think.
Interesting question. It seems like if philosophical zombies are possible, then meta-zombies (zombies postulating zombies if I'm understanding correctly) have to be possible. A zombie is supposed to be, at a minimum, behaviorally indistinguishable from a conscious entity, including scenarios where some will pseudo-think (nice phrase) they're conscious but that there would be a type of being that behaved like them without being conscious.
Of course, zombies are only possible if we presuppose epiphenomenal dualism, which of course is what the argument sets out to demonstrate. So it doesn't seem like we should be surprised by this aspect.