nickin00:

A pig. In wellies. Only made more awesome by the fact he is named Clive.

A philosophical zombie is, molecule for molecule, physically identical to human beings. You can conceive of a system that is functionally identical to you (same inputs and outputs, even the same internal processes) but entirely without qualia. The claim is that these zombies are conceivable, not that they exist. As they are conceivable, it is at least logically possible to have a system with the same functional organisation as us but with no qualia at all.

This creates a problem for materialist theories of the mind (behaviourism, functionalism, identity theory), as physical facts alone do not explain where the qualitative, subjective aspect of our conscious experience comes from. Material facts don’t explain consciousness, and therefore must be false.

Behaviourism
mental states are analytically reducible to statements about behavioural events
however, zombies have exactly the same behaviour as humans, therefore mental states are not identical to behaviour, as zombies don’t have mental states

Identity Theory
we can conceive of a zombie that has a brain with the same neurones firing off, and having the same response as any human, but they are missing the crucial sense of awareness (qualia)
therefore, identity theory fails to account for qualia

Functionalism
the zombies have the same inputs, interal processes and outputs to humans; they are functionally isomorphic but do not have the consciousness humans have

Mary’s Room
Mary knows everything there is to know about colour, but has been locked in a black and white room for her entire life. However, when Mary is let out of the room, it becomes apparent that she does not know everything there is to know about colour: she sees the colour red, and realises that this is a form of learning - she has learnt something new. Therefore, materialist theories do not account for what it feels like to see red.

Thus, philosophical zombies could be an argument for substance dualism, because substance dualists say that consciousness is not a physical thing anyway. We have a non-material mind, and this is where we get our qualia, our conscious experiences.

However, just because zombies are conceivable, does not mean that they are possible. For example, we can conceive that water may not be H2O, but this has no bearing on the chemical facts - it is H2O. If it is not possible, then if something is functionally isomorphic/behaviourally identical/has the same brain states, then it has consciousness, and therefore materialist theories do account for consciousness.

A compromise could be biological naturalism, that although we do not understand how consciousness occurs, it is merely a higher level biological feature of the brain.  Therefore, it is reducible to the material. Zombies are not conceivable: if a system was evolved in exactly the same way as a human, it would have consciousness. Zombies however don’t, but they would, and therefore they are impossible.

Another problem is how we are to account for the interaction between consciousness and the physical body.

Distributive justice is defined as the fair distribution of society’s burdens and benefits, or political bads and political goods. There are many benefits of society, such as social welfare, healthcare, natural resources, police and military protection: the resources that society has bering shared amongst the population.  The burderns of society, including taxation, conscription and, depending on the individual, market regulation, should also be shared within society.

However, distributive justice can be interpreted in different ways.  Some consider it fair to distribute political goods equally among all people.  However, there are obvious issues with this: would it be fair to pay an extremely hard working nurse who provides top quality care for patients the same as an unemployed slob who meaches off his parents and never bothers to try anf find a job?  I don’t think so.

This may lead to the idea of benefits being shared according to desert (how deserving a person is, how much they contribute to society).  Therefore, in the prior example, the nurse would earn more.

Corporate Conception

 - moral standing is ascribed to the group

- ‘ITS’ RIGHT (the group is a right bearing individual)

- the group as an entity, not reducible to anything else e.g. nations hold a right

Collective Conception

- moral standing ascribed to the individuals who jointly hold the group right

- ‘THEIR’ RIGHT

- the group right is reducible to the individuals who jointly hold the right e.g. individuals making up a nation hold a right

Natural rights are pre-legal, absolute, inalienable (they are moral facts, existing regardless of what anybody thinks - they cannot be denied: e.g. even if I am locked in a room with my practical right to freedom taken away, I still have my natural right to freedom) and universal. They can either be derived from God, from human nature, or are self-evident (they need no rational justification). They apply to all, and are a means by which legal rights can be standardised and judged.

Legal rights are dictated by the law, and reflect the views and policies of the governing body. They are also known as positive rights.

Deontology

Universal rights

-      Everyone, regardless of time, place, politics etc has the same rights

Non-consequentialist

-      This defence of rights takes no account of consequence

Interest in the act itself

Absolute

-      Rights are absolute, moral facts

-      Locke: from God (life, liberty, property)

-      Kant: non-theistic justification for moral absolutes

Rooted in natural law

-      Allows us to criticise apartheid laws, and the laws of Nazi Germany

-      Human laws should uphold natural moral laws

Utilitarianism

Consequentialist

Legal positivism

Mill: we should give people legal rights to life, liberty and property because the consequences of this are good for the individual and society

Conservatism

Positive freedom in the paternalistic sense: the state should shut some doors for us in order to coerce us into being our true, higher selves

Negative view of human nature, we need a “compass” to guide us (the state)

James Fitzjames Stephens, Burke, Scruton, Hart-Devlin debate

More restrictions in place

J.FJ.S.: freedom is like fire, it can be a good thing but it can also be a bad thing if it is out of control – it needs to be regulated

Freedom is not the true goal of politics, it is the maintenance of tradition and keeping things how they have always been

Defence of market freedom (a positive view on negative freedom): enables entrepreneurs to succeed, maintain hierarchy in society

Rights are to be decided on convention: if over time, people have come into money, inherited it etc they will have more rights (but also more obligation)

Natural hierarchy is God-given and must be maintained (All Things Bright and Beautiful)

Liberalism

Freedom is the true goal of politics

Mill: (not his terms) negative freedom needed in order to unlock positive freedom

Lots of negative freedom: minimal state, in favour of a free market, opium trade example (freedom to produce and consume products that they want to as long as they aren’t harming others)

Freedom of the market allows us to have free choice

The purpose of law is to protect and guarantee our liberty, not further the interests of the state: without law there can be no freedom

Mill defends freedom on the grounds of utility: only with freedom will individuals be happy, and therefore contribute more to society and help it to progress

Marxism

From each according to his ability to each according to his need

Capitalism is a sinister way of defending the oppressive class system

Everything about the view of the state encourages us to think only about ourselves, and think that we must have protection from others: this is not the case!

We are all exploited by capitalism: we sell our labour but at a very low cost, you don’t get back the fruits of your labour

Don’t start from the same position in communism: allocated a house, needs are provided for you so you can spend your life fulfilling your creative needs

Although capitalists say that if you work hard you can succeed but all this is an illusion

Anarcho-Communism

Being in a state cannot provide us with freedom, because we have so many limitations and repressions forced upon us by the state: the state itself is the criminal because it takes our freedom away from us

Taxation: we have no choice over what the government spends our money

War: they may even deprive us of life

It oppresses our nature of wanting to be creatively fulfilled

Law is all about prohibitions, forcibly and coercively preventing us from having freedoms (but law is the thing that guarantees your freedom…?)

The whole basis on which capitalism functions is private ownership/property

Man is not only robbed of the products of his labour, but of originality, free initiative and the interest in/desire for the things he is making

A perfect state is only possible when man is free to choose the mode of work, the conditions of work and the freedom to work

By living without a state, everyone will be able to live up to their full potential: positive freedom (the state prohibits negative AND positive freedom)

Focus is on community, social cooperation; we need to work together in social communities for the greater good, without the selfishness inspired by capitalism

You are able to express your creative desires without the oppression of a state

Anarcho-Capitalism

Free market, free trade, self-regulated market

You can make money however you can

Want a society based on voluntary trade of private property (money, consumer goods, land, capital goods) and services to maximise individual liberty and prosperity

Freedom from oppression of the “criminal” state: Rothbard

Freedom is a moral right

Freedom to make your own choices, fulfil your desires and creatively express yourself

We have a basic right to self-ownership and the state takes this away (tax, regulation, don’t have the freedom to use the money that you earn in the way you want to)

Capitalism without a state allows us to express this

Freedom to own property

Get out of society what you put in: privately

Vision of a stateless capitalist society

Only when the state is removed can people be truly free, creatively fulfilled etc

Provision of security services by voluntarily funded competitors

Religion is part of the state and is a mechanism of control, a way of manipulating people through fear, religious assemblies in school (e.g. must be predominantly Christian)

Your political compass

Economic Left/Right: -3.25
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -1.54

Basically Gandhi!!!

The problem of other minds is an epistemological question, rather than an ontological question. This is seen as a problem for substance dualism, especially as knowledge of my own mind is infallible, indubitable, known directly through introspection and privileged access, whilst knowledge of other minds is indirectly acquired via perception of bodies/behaviour, dubitable (zombies!), fallible and without privileged access.

Descartes’s solution to the problem of other minds is the ontological argument: I know minds exist because God exists, and an all-perfect, benevolent God would not deceive me.

Mill’s argument from analogy attempts to demonstrate the existence of other minds. I eat spicy food and because of the mental states this causes, I exhibit certain behaviours (sweating, flapping my hand around and saying “Oh my goodness that is so hot!”). When other people eat spicy food, they exhibit the same behaviours, and therefore I can assume that they go through the same process as me, including mental events; therefore they also have a mind.

A response to this is that you can’t make a generalisation about billions of minds based on the evidence of one. Your mind could be a special case. For example, if I saw a three-legged dog and so assumed that all dogs had three legs based on the evidence of this one dog, I would be incorrect.

Ayer’s response to this is that Mill is not generalising from one case, but many – there are many behaviours that correlate with many metal states, so I can infer other minds exist in this way.

A response to this that it is still only one case – there is still only one mind involved, and therefore the most accurate viewpoint to take is solipsism.

Inference to the best explanation is an improvement on the argument from analogy. It asks the question of which hypothesis best explains other people have minds. Answer: the hypothesis that gives the most coherent and simple explanation is that people’s outward behaviour is caused by the fact that they too have minds and mental states. It is an improvement because instead of beginning with a single case, it observes billions of examples and draws the best possible conclusion.

A problem with this is that in order to draw the conclusion of existence of other minds, it relies on us having to recognise that our own mind in order to come up with the idea of minds in the first place. Only by recognising what a mind is can we draw the conclusion that others have minds, so the argument collapses in on itself.

Wittgenstein’s private language argument attempts to prove that solipsism is necessarily false. If solipsism were true, the solipsist would have a private language, because there would be no other minds to understand it. However, private language is impossible because our memory is not infallible – we would make up words to refer to something and then forget their meaning, using a different word to mean the same thing next time. Private language would therefore have no coherence – impossibility of self-corroboration. He then uses the “beetle in a box” argument. Imagine we all had our own beetle in a box that only we could see. I might describe my beetle, in private language, as “small” and “black”, my sister might describe her beetle as “small” and “black” also. However, we have no way of knowing that our two descriptions mean the same thing because we cannot see what the other is describing, making our description meaningless. However, the description is not meaningless, we understand the term, and so whatever gives language meaning is public (community of language). Language only acquires meaning in a social context of public agreement. Therefore, existence of public language presupposes the existence of minds and mental states, as our language is processed and understood by more than one individual.

The second problem with biological naturalism is that Searle is not fully committed to dualism or materialism - this middle ground does not exist.  He cannot claim that consciousness is an ordinary biological process (a materialist account of consciousness) but also claim that it is irreducibly subjective (because we cannot reduce subjective experience), which is a dualist account of consciousness, because he has to choose between dualism and materialism.  He cannot avoid both, or accept both.

Searle responds to this by saying that the objection relies on a mistaken conception of the implications of the distinctions between the mental and physical.  Just because mental states are subjective, first person ontology, qualitative and intentional it does not mean that they cannot be spatially loacted, extended, causally explainable by physical processes and act causally within a system.  Just because consciousness is subjectively irreducible, qualitative, intrinsically intentional etc does not prevent it from being an ordinary part of the physical world with spatial location, extension and with cause and effect relations.