That's a bold claim given that this has been a philosophical discussion point for fifty years now. Let's check out the author's credentials: I find that this SMBC comic sums up how physicists...
That's a bold claim given that this has been a philosophical discussion point for fifty years now. Let's check out the author's credentials:
Carlo Rovelli (born 3 May 1956) is an Italian theoretical physicist [...]
I find that this SMBC comic sums up how physicists routinely get old and start "fixing" all the other fields. I know that devaluing the social sciences is a pretty standard thing to do these days, but IMO overvaluing natural sciences instead doesn't do us any favours either.
Also, I have some critiques about the author's understanding of what the p-zombie thought experiment is trying to demonstrate, as well as, like, everything about that stance in 2026 given that LLMs exist. However it does devolve into me prodding an LLM to effectively refute his dumb argument about behaviour == consciousness, so I'm putting it in a spoiler tag, in order to keep people's feeds free of LLM slop (even if it apparently will still contain theoretical physicist slop).
(I chopped out a bunch of Carlo's purple prose, for brevity)
[source]
[A philosophical zombie] is a hypothetical entity that looks and behaves like a human in all respects, including reporting emotions, feelings, dreams and experience, yet it has no consciousness.
[...]
But the argument is weak. A philosophical zombie would claim to know what subjective experience is; otherwise, it would be empirically distinguishable from a human. Chalmers’s point is that [consciousness] is something we can be convinced of only by introspection. During introspection, physical processes in my brain convince me of my consciousness. The same would theoretically happen in the zombie brain [...]. If this is true, can I believe my own conclusion of having [consciousness], knowing that if I were a zombie, I would be convinced of the same without actually having it? The argument is self-defeating.
My [p-zombie] would be exactly like me — including in experience. In other words, philosophical zombies are distinguishable from ordinary people only by those who assume upfront what Chalmers seeks to prove: that there is something non-physical going on in the world. They are not proving anything; they are examples of an unconvincing metaphysical possibility and nostalgia for the old notion of the transcendent soul.
First off: I'd invite anyone interested in the field to go read The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory, which is where Chalmers says his piece about p-zombies (page 94, "The Irreducibility of Consciousness"). He actually addresses this argument, 30 years in the past, when talking about critics who believe this perspective to be impossible (largely because people have been leveling this identical critique for 30+ years).
Quick sidebar: do bear in mind that philosophers -- unlike people describing physical sciences -- do not rely on math and models to make their arguments, so although David makes some compelling arguments they are not necessarily describing reality, he's just a very compelling speaker. Firm theoretical footing, evidence, and successful modelling should, imo, be the measuring sticks by which we determine whether new ideas are worth adopting; philosophy necessarily only ever tackles the first. When reading about psychology/ philosophy/linguistics/etc., I find that it's best to keep an open mind, read extremely broadly, and synthesize your own position instead of following one person. Anyways, just a caveat, since I've known a few people to get lost in Jung's works 😅
Also, in skimming the Wikipedia article on philosophical zombies, apparently they weren't even proposed by Chalmers first. Furthermore, there have been critiques by other philosophers (arguing the author's point) -- e.g. Daniel Dennett -- that the thought experiment isn't valid. It doesn't seem like Carlo is adding to the discourse, here, just rehashing others' arguments that he's come up with from first principles (maybe) but with less rigor.
Finally, my rebuttal of Carlo's rebuttal is that I asked the sand in someone's server rack to read up on Carlo's life and then simulate an interview. Here's an excerpt:
Me: Of course, of course! So, you and I both have an inner world that we can experience, but so would a hypothetical philosophical zombie, since it behaves precisely like you or I? Down to claiming to have introspection, and an internal physical experience. Therefore making the thought experiment impossible, since outward behaviour predicts internal experience.
Gemini-Carlo: Precisely! You have captured the very crux of my critique.
Think about the bizarre epistemic trap this creates: If my brain's physical mechanisms produce the report, the internal self-monitoring, and the conviction "I am conscious," then those same physical mechanisms would produce the exact same report and conviction in the zombie twin.
So if Chalmers' setup were true, how could I ever know that I am not just a zombie who is mistakenly convinced it is conscious? I couldn't! The argument undermines its own foundation.
The mistake comes from a legacy of 19th-century materialism—the idea that the physical world is just cold, blind billiard balls bouncing around, devoid of meaning or experience. But modern physics shows us a world made of complex, dynamic networks of relations. Once you realize how rich, layered, and self-referential physical systems can be, you realize there is no need to invent a non-physical "ghost" to explain our inner life.
Nature itself is deep enough to include us, feelings and all.
Me: Oh, sorry, I never asked -- can I get you anything? I'm not sure if this interview room is well air conditioned, and I don't want you to feel agitated; we're going through a bit of a heat wave at the moment.
Gemini-Carlo: Ah, you are very thoughtful, thank you! A glass of cold water—or better yet, a small espresso, heatwave or not—would be wonderful.
Heat, as I like to remind myself, is just the chaotic dance of microscopic molecules, though it certainly makes us macroscopic beings feel a bit sluggish! But please, do not worry about me; I am enjoying our conversation immensely.
Whenever you are ready, where shall we travel next in our dialogue?
Yeah, right Carlo, as long as it reports having internal state it's conscious.
As always when people post this type of thing, I strongly disagree. I do agree that consciousness is likely a result of purely physical processes! But that doesn't make the hard problem of...
As always when people post this type of thing, I strongly disagree. I do agree that consciousness is likely a result of purely physical processes! But that doesn't make the hard problem of consciousness any less of a problem. The fundamental issue is that we cannot observe consciousness externally, which makes it very difficult to find out under what conditions it arises. I know, or can assume by analogy, that other humans are conscious. Because of their similarities to us I feel comfortable assuming the same of animals. But how can we ever truly discover what specific physical processes give rise to consciousness when we cannot directly observe it?
I feel the same about this article, I agree completely that there is no 'soul' separate from the physical human, there is nothing metaphysical going on in our brains, but that doesn't mean you can...
I feel the same about this article, I agree completely that there is no 'soul' separate from the physical human, there is nothing metaphysical going on in our brains, but that doesn't mean you can just hand wave all the interesting issues surrounding human consciousness and 'hard problem of consciousness' away. There are so many questions that need answering, we know so little about our consciousness, animal consciousness, machine consciousness. It maybe be pointless to keep talking about it because we are all just guessing but I find it really interesting.
There do seem to be correlations between consciousness and physical processes. You're stuck in your own head. Although lucid dreaming is a thing, you're often unconscious when you're asleep....
There do seem to be correlations between consciousness and physical processes. You're stuck in your own head. Although lucid dreaming is a thing, you're often unconscious when you're asleep. Physical attacks have known bad effects. The effects of alcohol or other drugs are known.
I could imagine this being pinned down further with more scientific study, to the point where we do see consciousness being associated with specific physical mechanisms.
Will there still be an explanatory gap? I don't think thought experiments done now can tell us much about whether people will continue to care about that.
There will still be an explanatory gap. We likely will, eventually, reach a point where it feels like pointing out the problem of induction rather than a real lack of explanation, but science is...
There will still be an explanatory gap. We likely will, eventually, reach a point where it feels like pointing out the problem of induction rather than a real lack of explanation, but science is not apt to consciousness in itself, it mediates science. Brain scans will only ever give us more "outside" of the experience, and even sci fi ideas of mind melds made real will beg the issue of communication vs commingling. It will never work as "proof" against competing theories of consciousness, in the way people really want.
One thing to consider is that the concepts associated with consciousness might change with more knowledge. For example, before there were reliable thermometers, conventional wisdom from Aristotle...
One thing to consider is that the concepts associated with consciousness might change with more knowledge. For example, before there were reliable thermometers, conventional wisdom from Aristotle up through the Renaissance was that heat and cold were considered different qualities. (See here.)
Similarly, our fuzzy conceptions about consciousness might mutate in some ways with more study. The meanings of words can change.
Chalmers claims that experience cannot be accounted for by science. But scientific understanding is not extraneous to experience; it is entirely about experience. [...] It is misleading to see science, as often naively portrayed, as a direct account of an absolute and objective world, observed and described from its outside. If we think in this manner, we introduce dualism. No surprise, then, that we find dualism down the road: an irreducible gap between subject and object of knowledge. We have introduced it upfront.
Experience is not over and above the processes that happen in the brain, as Chalmers assumed upfront. The dualism between a first-person description of experience and a third-person (or scientific) account of the same is a normal perspectival difference: the same brain phenomenon as experienced by that same brain itself, or by another. Experience for both — not evidence of two different kinds of reality.
“Red,” as a qualia, is the name of the process we generally undergo when we see or remember or think about the color red. We do not need to explain why it looks red for the same reason that we do not have to explain why the animal that we call “cat” looks like a cat. Why should we have to explain why “red” looks red?
--
Chalmers asks us to contemplate what he calls a “philosophical zombie.” This is a hypothetical entity that looks and behaves like a human in all respects, including reporting emotions, feelings, dreams and experience, yet it has no consciousness. [...] The very fact that a philosophical zombie could be conceived, Chalmers argues, shows that inner experience is intrinsically distinct from observable natural phenomena.
But the argument is weak. A philosophical zombie would claim to know what subjective experience is; otherwise, it would be empirically distinguishable from a human. Chalmers’s point is that the existence of the hypothetical, irreducible consciousness of which he speaks is something we can be convinced of only by introspection. During introspection, physical processes in my brain convince me of my consciousness. The same would theoretically happen in the zombie brain, convincing it of having consciousness as well. If this is true, can I believe my own conclusion of having this mysterious non-physical experience, knowing that if I were a zombie, I would be convinced of the same without actually having it? The argument is self-defeating.
My hypothetical, physically identical zombie twin would be exactly like me — including in experience. In other words, philosophical zombies are distinguishable from ordinary people only by those who assume upfront what Chalmers seeks to prove: that there is something non-physical going on in the world.
I can’t help but read this as “your ideas about metaphysics are wrong, because mine are right”. Which is fine I guess, but I’m not sure it’s the “gotcha” the author seems to think it is.
I can’t help but read this as “your ideas about metaphysics are wrong, because mine are right”. Which is fine I guess, but I’m not sure it’s the “gotcha” the author seems to think it is.
It seems like a long way just to end up back where you started.
We have souls. We have an inner self. We can treat ourselves as transcendental subjects in the Kantian sense. We have emotions and spiritual life; we experience qualia. These entities are not obtained by addition to a physical state, but by subtraction from a complete physical account. Mental processes are physical processes described in a way that captures only their salient characteristics.
It seems like a long way just to end up back where you started.
That's a bold claim given that this has been a philosophical discussion point for fifty years now. Let's check out the author's credentials:
I find that this SMBC comic sums up how physicists routinely get old and start "fixing" all the other fields. I know that devaluing the social sciences is a pretty standard thing to do these days, but IMO overvaluing natural sciences instead doesn't do us any favours either.
Also, I have some critiques about the author's understanding of what the p-zombie thought experiment is trying to demonstrate, as well as, like, everything about that stance in 2026 given that LLMs exist. However it does devolve into me prodding an LLM to effectively refute his dumb argument about behaviour == consciousness, so I'm putting it in a spoiler tag, in order to keep people's feeds free of LLM slop (even if it apparently will still contain theoretical physicist slop).
(I chopped out a bunch of Carlo's purple prose, for brevity)
First off: I'd invite anyone interested in the field to go read The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory, which is where Chalmers says his piece about p-zombies (page 94, "The Irreducibility of Consciousness"). He actually addresses this argument, 30 years in the past, when talking about critics who believe this perspective to be impossible (largely because people have been leveling this identical critique for 30+ years).
Quick sidebar: do bear in mind that philosophers -- unlike people describing physical sciences -- do not rely on math and models to make their arguments, so although David makes some compelling arguments they are not necessarily describing reality, he's just a very compelling speaker. Firm theoretical footing, evidence, and successful modelling should, imo, be the measuring sticks by which we determine whether new ideas are worth adopting; philosophy necessarily only ever tackles the first. When reading about psychology/ philosophy/linguistics/etc., I find that it's best to keep an open mind, read extremely broadly, and synthesize your own position instead of following one person. Anyways, just a caveat, since I've known a few people to get lost in Jung's works 😅
Also, in skimming the Wikipedia article on philosophical zombies, apparently they weren't even proposed by Chalmers first. Furthermore, there have been critiques by other philosophers (arguing the author's point) -- e.g. Daniel Dennett -- that the thought experiment isn't valid. It doesn't seem like Carlo is adding to the discourse, here, just rehashing others' arguments that he's come up with from first principles (maybe) but with less rigor.
Finally, my rebuttal of Carlo's rebuttal is that I asked the sand in someone's server rack to read up on Carlo's life and then simulate an interview. Here's an excerpt:
Yeah, right Carlo, as long as it reports having internal state it's conscious.
As always when people post this type of thing, I strongly disagree. I do agree that consciousness is likely a result of purely physical processes! But that doesn't make the hard problem of consciousness any less of a problem. The fundamental issue is that we cannot observe consciousness externally, which makes it very difficult to find out under what conditions it arises. I know, or can assume by analogy, that other humans are conscious. Because of their similarities to us I feel comfortable assuming the same of animals. But how can we ever truly discover what specific physical processes give rise to consciousness when we cannot directly observe it?
I feel the same about this article, I agree completely that there is no 'soul' separate from the physical human, there is nothing metaphysical going on in our brains, but that doesn't mean you can just hand wave all the interesting issues surrounding human consciousness and 'hard problem of consciousness' away. There are so many questions that need answering, we know so little about our consciousness, animal consciousness, machine consciousness. It maybe be pointless to keep talking about it because we are all just guessing but I find it really interesting.
There do seem to be correlations between consciousness and physical processes. You're stuck in your own head. Although lucid dreaming is a thing, you're often unconscious when you're asleep. Physical attacks have known bad effects. The effects of alcohol or other drugs are known.
I could imagine this being pinned down further with more scientific study, to the point where we do see consciousness being associated with specific physical mechanisms.
Will there still be an explanatory gap? I don't think thought experiments done now can tell us much about whether people will continue to care about that.
There will still be an explanatory gap. We likely will, eventually, reach a point where it feels like pointing out the problem of induction rather than a real lack of explanation, but science is not apt to consciousness in itself, it mediates science. Brain scans will only ever give us more "outside" of the experience, and even sci fi ideas of mind melds made real will beg the issue of communication vs commingling. It will never work as "proof" against competing theories of consciousness, in the way people really want.
One thing to consider is that the concepts associated with consciousness might change with more knowledge. For example, before there were reliable thermometers, conventional wisdom from Aristotle up through the Renaissance was that heat and cold were considered different qualities. (See here.)
Similarly, our fuzzy conceptions about consciousness might mutate in some ways with more study. The meanings of words can change.
--
I can’t help but read this as “your ideas about metaphysics are wrong, because mine are right”. Which is fine I guess, but I’m not sure it’s the “gotcha” the author seems to think it is.
It seems like a long way just to end up back where you started.