You might suppose that any physically identical entity must necessarily experience consciousness, and that may even be true, but this does not preclude imagining a p-zombie, any more than a knowledge of anatomy and aerodynamics precludes imagining a dragon.
I can only suppose that you imagine someone like you with a textual annotation above his/her head "I don't experience red color", and not trying to imagine what it is like to be such a person.
Doesn't it defy the purpose of a thought experiment? You don't imagine conscious experiences, but imagine descriptions of presence or absence of conscious experiences.
ETA: Using your analogy it is like imagining pigeon with a label "Dragon" above its head, and then concluding that there's no logical reasons that dragons can't fly or exist.
When you imagine a "real" dragon and then ponders on this imagination, you have to conclude that your imagined physics must be different for it to work.
Of course I can't imagine being a p-zombie, because there is no experience of being a p-zombie, that's the point. When I imagine a p-zombie, it is someone else.
>explain why red-p-zombie-you insist on being able to experience red color, while in fact he/she doesn't experience it.
They would say they experience it for the exact same reasons a non-p-zombie does. A chemical process in their brain produces that reaction. The difference is that they never actually have that experience, they just act as if they did.
I say that your label is incorrect and your "p-zombie" experiences everything as we do. Prove me wrong. Imagine being nothing.
Otherwise you are just attaching label "dragon" to a pigeon.
ETA: Have you noticed circularity of the argument? You need to accept that physicalism isn't true to be sure that your label "There's darkness inside" can be true, as you can't really imagine p-zombie. Partial p-zombie just makes it obvious. And physicalism requires less epicycles.
Ah sorry I missed that part of the argument. Yes, I agree that I can't imagine such a thing, because I don't think experience can be subdivided in that way. Anything a consciousness can perceive, it must experience.
I could however imagine a person whose brain perceived and reacted to the colour red in certain ways, but never became conscious of that perception, and merely experiences vision with all red things having the same qualia as another colour. It's quite a weird thing to imagine, but if you're trying to assert that it's impossible, I will do so to disagree.
> You can't imagine p-zombie, you imagine someone with attached label "There's darkness inside" (as Chalmers had put it).
Can you imagine a non-conscious rock? Or does the rock just have a similar label attached? If you believe one can imagine such a rock, then I can imagine such a human in the same way.
If not, then your imagination must be teeming with errant consciousnesses.
So you are adding more epicycles.
> merely experiences vision with all red things having the same qualia as another colour.
Swapped qualia qualia argument. I can answer that, but I think I already know how you will answer.
ETA: Or do you mean you see all greens as greens and all reds as greens? Will it not change your behavior when you'll notice that you are confidently calling very similar colors by very different names and cannot say why are you doing that?
> Can you imagine a non-conscious rock?
I can imagine a rock. I can guess that the rock is not conscious because it doesn't demonstrate any signs of consciousness, unlike you and me. I am pretty sure I can't change whether the rock is conscious or not by the power of my imagination.
Thank you for conversation.
Not really? I don't conceive of consciousness experience as something that can be meaningfully separated from the perception of that consciousness. For a consciousness, perception is experience.
However, I can imagine a perceiving system which does not have any consciousness, and thus experiences nothing.
> Will it not change your behavior when you'll notice that you are confidently calling very similar colors by very different names and cannot say why are you doing that?
In this hypothetical, the "partial p-zombie" cannot distinguish them consciously, so they would not do that. This is the closest thing I can conceive of to what you described.
>I am pretty sure I can't change whether the rock is conscious or not by the power of my imagination.
But the rock exists within your imagination, you have total power over it?
I can imagine a system which is presumably too simple to have any conscious experiences. But the only thing that really matters is the lack of first person experience of such a system. I can't imagine being such system, and that is what matters, if we are talking about consciousness and not about some words which are used as a substitute for a real conscious experiences.
> In this hypothetical, the "partial p-zombie" cannot distinguish them consciously, so they would not do that.
Let's suppose, for simplicity, that I don't experience color differences at all. All I experience is brightness. But my brain works exactly the same as yours. I see two grey cups and hear myself saying "Do you prefer red or green?" Am I not conscious of this discrepancy too? Am I also not conscious of the lack of any clues when I'm asked to select one of the things which looks exactly the same to me? Sorry, sounds like complete bullshit to me. I will prefer physical consciousness over such brain-damaged metaphysical one.
BTW, are you sure you are experiencing colors? You will not notice if your point of view is true.
> But the rock exists within your imagination, you have total power over it?
Sure, I can image a rock which has supernatural soul and conscious experiences. Why all the p-zombie fuss, when it clearly shows that dualism is true? That's sarcasm of course. But why p-zombie argument is any better? You can't even conceive what is really matters in p-zombie - the lack of first person experience. You can only conceive some images like "dark inside" or a textual description of that.
Physicalism is based on intuition too, but as I said it requires less epicycles.
First person experiences exist. First person experiences are uniquely determined by physical processes. The end.
It kind of does. The argument goes: if you can imagine a p-zombie, then in your mind it's possible that consciousness is not tied to physical qualities. Therefore, physicalism would necessarily be false.
It took me awhile to accept this, but the solution is simple: p-zombies can't exist because I can't imagine them. And this is because consciousness must serve a functional purpose, and so p-zombies would be distinguishable from humans.
I mean, yes? I tend to assume physicalism, but I don't take it as axiomatic.
>And this is because consciousness must serve a functional purpose
I don't see why that has to be true?
It must be true if you accept physicalism.
I can imagine a world where there are no physical laws, everything is entirely random, and by an astonishing coincidence it just so happens to behave exactly like the world we observe in every single way.
Does that mean it's possible that there are no physical laws and everything is completely random? Strictly speaking yes, it is possible, but the odds are indescribably remote, and it's a completely useless hypothesis anyway.
I can imagine a p-zombie which somehow comes up with the idea of consciousness and starts discussing it despite having no experience of it, but it would have to be some bizarre random occurrence, and is not really useful to consider.