In another comment too interesting to leave hanging off an irrelevant entry, Camilo Libedinsky writes:
This is a comment on your March 16th 2004 blog on motion induced blindness... there you say: "Is it conceivable that the zombie sees but isn't really aware of seeing the yellow dot, and also sees but isn't really aware of not seeing the yellow dot, and yet somehow still can distinguish objectively between the two states (so it
can describe the illusion) just like someone with a mind?" I have a problem here with your definition of "seeing". Actually, in the rain, there are differences between the state of "seeing" the yellow dot and not "seeing" it during motion induced blindness. And that's precisely what neuroscientists are trying to pin down so as to find the neural correlates of visual perception. Back to your zombie argument, a zombie could in principle, given the change in neural activity, signal the appearance and disappearance of the yellow dot without a qualitative state associated to it. Of course here I am not at all defending the logical possibility of zombies; just pointing ut that motion induced blindness can't be used to target the zombie argument.
I think that's more or less my point, though. If neuroscientist pin down a specific brain-state that correlates exactly with "seeing" or "not seeing", that is being both aware of the perception when it's there, and aware of its absence and the peculiarity of that absence when it's not, then is there any reason not to identify that brain-state with having qualia? I mean, assuming that there's something empirical to the supposition about zombies in the first place; if there's not, then why stop at Zombies instead of going directly to Solipsism in the first place?
In a comment on the last post, MP asks:
Okay, so who are your all time, desert-island, top 5 philosophers? I'll go first.
1) Marcus Aurelius
2) Alain de Botton
3) Ludwig Wittgenstein
4) A. A. Milne
5) Robert HeinleinCheers,
-MP
By "desert island", I'm assuming that he means ones that you can read and re-read, not necessarily the philosophers that made the greatest impact, or the ones that you'd want to organize your desert island society around. On that score I'd go for Marcus Aurelius, too, even though I think Epicurus had much more influence on my thinking. But when mostly fragments and restatements survive, you want more to keep you busy on a desert island. For the same reason, I think most of the analytic philosophers fall by the wayside. Do I really want to keep rereading Wittgenstein or Searle? For me I think it's probably
1) Nietszche
2) Isaiah Berlin
3) David Hume
4) Marcus Aurelius
5) Plato
But, as usual with such lists, I reserve my right to change my mind at any time. At any time, I tell you!