P-Zombies Waking Up: Uploaded minds would download themselves

Mati_Roy

This is a linkpost for https://matiroy.substack.com/p/p-zombies-waking-themselves-up

This weekend I attended the Machine Consciousness Conference, “MC0001”.

Some people were arguing that uploaded minds (or any digital minds) wouldn’t be conscious, but rather philosophical zombies—that is a mind that acts exactly as if it was conscious without actually being conscious. I don’t believe so, but let’s assume that was the case. [Edit: To be clear, I’m saying I don’t think p-zombies are a thing, but I’m assuming it for this post as it’s addressed to those who do.]

In the future, if you realized that uploads were not conscious, you might want to change their substrate in order to make them conscious again. Let’s assume you were cryopreserved, and then were uploaded as your revival method. Your p-zombie would act the same way as you would, by definition, and so would also be wanting to download p-zombies / make them conscious again. Therefore your p-zombie would presumably decide to download itself back into a substrate that supports consciousness. Problem solved.

(Unless you think most of the value was already destroyed by having a temporary p-zombie between the 2 conscious states.)

The concept of a p-zombie is incoherent as framed. In the case you're talking about, if the digitally-uploaded mind (and body too? into a virtual environment?) is not conscious, great, now we've got a great idea what plays a causal role in consciousness and it's apparently missing in the digital version and present in the real-world one. That should help us isolate it. Otherwise, this is just ungrounded biological chauvinism.

I agree, hence why I said:

I don’t believe so, but let’s assume that was the case.

I haven't had many conversations with proponents of p-zombiehood. Personally, I don't see how it works in a physicalist universe.

For this part of the model, you'd have to define where desire/goals come from - if it's from the consciousness, then p-zombies don't have it and don't care if they download to become "real".

I don't see how it works in a physicalist universe.

yep, same

if it's from the consciousness, then p-zombies don't have it and don't care if they download to become "real".

well, by definition p-zombies act the same way as their conscious counterpart; which maybe (probably) is impossible, but is a different claim from yours which seems to be "non-conscious entities can't care (/behave as if they cared) about becoming conscious"