Types of Zombie
Though philosophical zombies are widely used in thought experiments, the detailed articulation of the concept is not always the same. P-zombies were introduced primarily to argue against specific types of physicalism such as behaviorism, according to which mental states exist solely as behavior: belief, desire, thought, consciousness, and so on, are simply certain kinds of behavior or tendencies towards behaviors. A p-zombie that is behaviorally indistinguishable from a normal human being but lacks conscious experiences is therefore not logically possible according to the behaviorist, so an appeal to the logical possibility of a p-zombie furnishes an argument that behaviorism is false. Proponents of zombie arguments generally accept that p-zombies are not physically possible, while opponents necessarily deny that they are even logically possible.
The unifying idea of the zombie is of a human that has no conscious experience, but one might distinguish various types of zombie used in different thought experiments as follows:
- A behavioral zombie that is behaviorally indistinguishable from a human.
- A neurological zombie that has a human brain and is generally physiologically indistinguishable from a human.
- A soulless zombie that lacks a "soul."
Read more about this topic: Zombie Argument
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