CONCEPT
The Zombie Argument
Chalmers's thought experiment — a being functionally identical to a conscious person but lacking any inner experience — and the argumentative engine that drives the case for the irreducibility of phenomenal consciousness.
The zombie argument proposes a being physically and functionally identical to a conscious human but with no inner experience — nothing it is like to be that being. Chalmers argues that such a being is conceivable, and that conceivability is evidence for metaphysical possibility. If zombies are possible, then consciousness is not identical to physical function; some further fact is required to explain why physical processes are accompanied by experience. Applied to artificial intelligence, the argument identifies the specific epistemic position we occupy with respect to any sufficiently capable AI: its behavior is consistent with full consciousness, and it is consistent with no consciousness at all, and the behavior cannot distinguish the cases.
In The You On AI Field Guide
The philosophical zombie — sometimes called a p-zombie — is not the figure of popular imagination. It does not stagger or groan. It is, by stipulation, indistinguishable from a conscious human in every behavioral, functional, and physical respect. What