Joe wrote:
Maybe you need a refresher course in logic. To logicians, self-contradiction is widely rumored to defuse an argument; a self-contradiction does not enhance it. Any argument - which gives rise to self-contradiction (as above) - is simply invalid.
Non-interactionary dualism (the occult belief-claim that consciousness is causally inert) - when grafted to functionalism, as has been demonstrated for quite some time - generates obscene paradoxes. Should consciousness be causally inert - functionalism could not apply to conscious experiences. If consciousness were causally inert, consciousness could not functionally (or otherwise) interact with brain-states. (I pointed-out this trite detail over two years ago.)
Dennett does not conceive of and approach conscious experience as being causally inert. Only those, inhabiting the cultic fringe, known as non-interactionary dualism, do.
Dennett denies that zombies are physically possible. Imaginary beings claimed to have no conscious experiences - trivially - cannot empathize with another's sadness (i.e. consciously identifying with the thoughts, feelings and experiences of conscious beings). Dennett accepts supervenience (the principle whereby psychological states depend on physical states). The failure (i.e. cross-world inequivalence) of supervenience is the pivot-hinge - on which the possible existence of zombies turns.
Dennett rejects the foundation of your god-damned zombies, i.e. the break-down of supervenience in any possible world. To him, two beings who are in the same physical state must be in the same mental state. Dennett rejects the notion that one of two physically identical beings has mental states - while the other physically identical being (a zombie) entirely lacks mental states. Below is Dennett's unqualified dismissal of the zombie side-show:
Dennett:
"Supposing that by an act of stipulative imagination you can remove consciousness while leaving all cognitive systems intact - a quite standard but entirely bogus feat of imagination - is like supposing that by an act of stipulative imagination, you can remove health while leaving all bodily functions and powers intact. Health isn't that sort of thing, and neither is consciousness."
I'm the one insisting that zombies and CDs have neither awareness nor mental states! Nothing about imaginary beings (zombies) and audio technology (CDs) can be coherently "described or defined in terms of any behavior (linguistic, even)...that is, a mental state".
My objection to your profound misunderstanding as to how zombies are defined by philosophers and your silliness that CDs experience empathy are logically disconnected from whether I accept (or reject) "any behavior" - as it pertains human beings!
Trivially, conscious-lacking CDs do not enjoy states of conscious experience. The molecular arrangements, comprising a CD, are not sufficiently complex to give rise to any "behavior (linguistic, even)" which could allow them to be described as "conscious of vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experiences of a human being", i.e. empathy.
How do you know that zombies, CDs, rocks or thermostats have ever manifested an instance of "mimicry", associated with an experience of empathy? It's your contention that something is happening in the world, i.e. "mimicry". It is - unmistakeably - an experiential matter. You need solid evidence to sustain this rubbish-notion. You cannot do this with your mind - by confusing zombies and CDs with people and people with zombies and CDs.
As an analogy to this zombie mischief, compare what Khuno is proposing to the kid's board game: "Candyland", how the game is played and what the "landmarks", inscribed on the board, represent. Players draw cards from the deck, and they move their "characters" to the closest space, designated by the color-square on the card. As the players move their "characters" 'round the board, they pass various "landmarks" - such as "the Candy Cane Forest", "the Gum Drop Mountain" and "the Molasses Swamp". Do the "landmarks" of the game exist outside of the game, i.e. in the world? To determine whether any of these "landmarks" exist, one must do the hard work, like traveling and looking for these "landmarks", then either finding - or obviously not finding them.
To decide whether an "intentional component" and mime behavior exist on the part of zombies and CDs, Khuno needs to do the hard work - like looking for the "intentional component" and the alleged, accompanying mime behavior, then either finding or not finding them. He cannot - by fiat - decree them into being, insisting that anyone who criticizes the existences of his "intentional component" and mime behavior does not understand what the devil modern philosophy has gotten itself up to (or accept that modern philosophy has driven itself totally off the deep-end). Khuno has been playing a game with this Myspace group as his "Candyland board". Zombies and CDs are the "characters", and his "intentional component" and the supposed mime behavior are the "landmarks".
As I have stressed - for over 2 years, empathy presupposes the existence of the "phenomenal component", i.e. conscious experience. Cashing-out empathy as having to do with anything other than a conscious experience is a self-contradiction - and a major-league equivocation. Only beings who possess a "phenomenal component" can empathize - which leaves zombies and CDs out in the cold, lacking empathy. Even if - per impossibile - such an "intentional component" and mime behavior on the parts of zombies and CDs were detected, they could not rise to the level of being states of conscious experience.