Philosophical Zombies….

There is a philosophical question about zombies.  

If there was a person shaped thing, and if you spoke to it: it replied like a person, if you touched it: it reacted like a person,  it smiled, it cried it did everything that a person would do…. BUT…. At no time did it have an internal experience…. It did not know that it “was”….  This is a philosophical zombie.

There are lots of discussions about this sort of thing… how would you know?  Most of the discussions come down to the fact that the only thing that someone truly knows is that they are themselves.   The argument goes that I know that I exist.  I know that I think, and that I make choices and that I am something.  In fact, it is the only thing a conscious being can be truly sure of .  “I think therefore I am” is the catch cry of the argument….

But

There is all sorts of evidence that I think bring the whole thing into question.

Split brain patients experiments have shown that if we do not have a reason for doing something… we make it up.

It has been found that nerves make preparations to move well before a person consciously decides they want to move.

We live our lives behind when we think we are living, by appreciable fractions of a second – we then make stories to fit with the facts later.

So an alternative hypothesis:

We are all philosophical zombies.  When people talk to us, we respond.  We do the expected thing at the expected time.  Physics determines what we do, what actions we take… but weirdly enough a side effect of our evolution has resulted in an operational system that insists on deciding it is in control.

So our environment, our biology and the physics of our electrochemical reactions determine what we (the zombies) do.  After it is done, our brain makes us think that we think we did these things, but it is as predictable and inevitable as any clockwork.

Just sayin is all.