[Tyler]

Zombie Robots and Reductive Functionalism
     

For those who never tire of listening to philosophers argue whether
qualia are real or imagined, and whether silicon machines can experience
the same qualia as meat machines, you'll enjoy the latest essay from Dr.
Jacques Mallah entitled, The Partial Brain Thought
Experiment: Partial Consciousness and its Implications (PDF format).
Basically, the essay is a defense of physicalism and the idea that
consciousness is non-centralized. For those who aren't up on
their philosophy, here's what you need to know for this paper to make
some sense: Physicalism is the
idea that
things are made out of stuff (matter
and energy) and work the way they do because of the properties of the
stuff from which they're made. Functionalism
means about the same thing (depending on who you ask). Physicalists
spend a lot of time arguing
with dualists. Dualists believe either that things
are made partially of
real stuff and partially of "mental" stuff; or that things
are made of real stuff but certain
arrangements of real stuff, like meat,
have (unreal/non-physical/magical) powers that give rise to mental
properties. When
these folks argue, the thought experiments frequently involve
speculations about robots and other types of zombies (zombies are
agents who
dualists
believe can't
experience qualia, not undead agents who hunger for human brains).
   

http://robots.net/article/2740.html
     

[Freddy]

Ahh, the return of the Zombies - I remember we came across this term a long time back when we went rambling into the world of philosophy.  Seems a lot of AI's could qualify as zombies..

[Art]

Hmmm...seems that a lot of people at work could come under the same classification!

[Freddy]

Hee hee...indeed!