[GoblinSlayer]

>I can tell you: "I'm conscious and aware", but there's no way I can prove to you I'm not a philosophical zombie(someone that acts like it's conscious, but isn't).

You can't prove that to yourself either, because a zombie has the same thoughts as you. You can't differentiate even subjectively whether you're a zombie or not.

[toomanydoubts]

Interesting idea, but I'm not sure I follow completely. Philosophical zombies may have the same "thoughts", but they do not have qualia, they act like they do, but they don't. As for me, I'm pretty sure I have qualia. I've been watching this movie called "my life" ever since I was born. If I were to be a philosophical zombie, it all would have passed in the dark.

I think the phrase "I think, therefore I am" is the essence here. A philosophical zombie does not "think". It looks like they do, but it's just a deterministic result of neurochemichal events going on in a brain that lives in the dark. Something like a neural network for instance. They can exhibit thought-like behavior without experiencing anything(as far as we know).

[GoblinSlayer]

If a zombie could detect it doesn't have thoughts, it would report about it. This can be done with reflection. If a zombie can't do reflection, that would be an observable functional difference from human, which is not allowed by definition. Therefore a zombie knows it has thoughts the same way a human knows it. A zombie only doesn't have qualia based on the assumption that it's possible to think without qualia.

[TchoBeer]

If you have thoughts, you can't doubt whether or not you have thoughts. In order to do so you need to doubt yourself, which is a thought.

[GoblinSlayer]

Did you answer to the right comment? I mean you can't prove you're not a zombie, thoughts don't help with this, because a zombie has all the same thoughts.

[TchoBeer]

A zombie has no thoughts, that's the point.