[nearbuy]

> or at least that all such effects are shallow enough that they can be perfectly faked

Physicalism implies that things we wouldn't intuitively think of as conscious can perfectly mimic all such effects.

Imagine there's a person, John, and you take a precise scan of every neuron of his brain (or every particle if you prefer). You also record all the sensory input signals from his neurons to his brain. You write all this information down in a giant stack of papers. Then you go about simulating the brain with pencil and paper, computing its thoughts and actions (in this thought experiment people have deciphered exactly how neurons work). Maybe it takes you a trillion years to simulate one day of John's life, but you diligently do it.

Physicalism tells us that you can simulate John perfectly this way. You could perfectly predict every word is said, and every muscle he moved. You could feed the motor neuron outputs of your simulation into a robot replica of John, and it would act indistinguishably from the original John.

Is this pencil and paper simulation of John a p-zombie?

We either have to accept that this pencil and paper simulation of John is conscious, or that it's a p-zombie.

[anon84873628]

>Physicalism implies that things we wouldn't intuitively think of as conscious can perfectly mimic all such effects.

This is the multiple relizability argument and it only discounts certain types of physicalism that aren't popular anymore.

I consider myself a physicalism and answer that the simulation of John is conscious.

[nearbuy]

That's the normal physicalist position as far as I'm aware. Is there a physicalist theory where the simulation isn't conscious?

I was replying to a commenter who doubted that a non-conscious entity could mimic a person accurately. I'm pointing out the implication that without p-zombies, just by writing a bunch of stuff on paper, you created a conscious being. I'm not arguing that's false; just that intuitively it's a tough pill to swallow and if you don't want to accept that, p-zombies are the alternative.