Robert Kirk - Zombies and Consciousness

ZO M B I E S A N D C O N S C I O U S N E S S

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Zombies and

Consciousness

RO B E RT K I R K

CLARENDON PRESS OXFORD

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Robert Kirk 2005

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First published 2005

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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Data available

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Kirk, Robert, 1933

Zombies and consciousness / Robert Kirk.

p. cm.

1. Consciousness.

2. ZombiesMiscellanea.

3. Other minds (Theory of

knowledge)

4. Mind and body.

5. Materialism.

I. Title.

B808.9.K58 2005

126dc22

2005020194

Typeset by Newgen Imaging Systems (P) Ltd., Chennai, India

Printed in Great Britain

on acid-free paper by

Biddles Ltd., Kings Lynn, Norfolk

ISBN 0199285489

9780199285488

1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

To Fay

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Preface

Zombies (the philosophical sort: this is not about voodoo) would be exactly like us

in all physical and behavioural respects, but completely without consciousness. This

seductive idea threatens the physicalist view of the world dominant in philosophy

and science today. It has led a number of philosophers to reject physicalism and take up dualism. More surprisingly, it has beguiled many physicalists, who now feel

forced to defend increasingly convoluted explanations of why the conceivability of

zombies is compatible with their impossibility. But the zombie idea is a major source of confusion and distorted thinking.

I have two aims in this book. One is to dispose of the zombie idea once and

for all. There are plenty of objections to it in the literature, but they lack intuitive appeal. I have an argument which I think demolishes it in a way that is intuitively

appealing as well as cogent. The other aim is to set out an explanation of what it is to be phenomenally conscious. Both aims need to be pursued in the same work,

since the anti-zombie argument on its own would have left us still wondering how

on earth there could be such a thing as phenomenal consciousness; while my

account of consciousness is in the end dependent on the anti-zombie argument.

Three things about my approach are distinctive, I think. One is the argument

showing that zombies are inconceivable. Another is the attention given to

humbler creatures than ourselves, which helps to avoid some of the distracting

complications of our exceptionally sophisticated forms of cognition. The third is

my development of the notion of a basic package of capacities to pick out a

special class of creatures: deciders. When this idea is properly de-sophisticated, it makes a solid conceptual framework for an account of the crucial feature: direct

activity.

I hope the book will appeal to anyone seriously interested in problems of

consciousness: not only to professional philosophers, research students, and

philosophy undergraduates, but to zoologists, psychologists, and neuroscientists

tackling the empirical questions which consciousness raises.

I am grateful to colleagues and students at Nottingham for stimulating

discussions of these topics over many years; to Ned Block, Peter Carruthers, and

David Chalmers, who kindly read the whole or parts of a draft and generously

offered very helpful comments and suggestions; and to OUPs two anonymous

readers for their constructive suggestions. I would specially like to thank Bill Fish for acute detailed comments on the entire draft, and Janet, my wife, for unfailing

encouragement and support.

R. K.

April 2005

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Contents

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Contents

Contents

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Contents

A cook was charged with cruelty to animals. He had put live prawns on a hot

plate, where they wriggled and writhed, apparently in pain. The case was dropped

because it proved impossible to get expert advice on whether or not prawns could

feel pain. Although the prawns behaviour made it easy to suppose they were really

suffering, perhaps there was no more to it than behaviourperhaps they really

had no sensations at all, any more than a twisted rubber band, writhing as it

unwinds, has sensations. Perhaps there was nothing it was like for the prawns.

Can we make progress in this area? I think so, provided we resist some seductive

but radically mistaken ways of thinking. The philosophical idea of zombies is the

most dramatic manifestation of these, highly significant in spite of its strangeness.

There is much to be said for the view that the seeming possibility of zombies

entails the falsity of physicalism; and it matters whether physicalism is true. Even

more importantly, I think, the zombie idea reflects a fundamentally wrong con

ception of consciousness and provokes much misguided theorizing. In this book

I have two main aims. One is to expose the incoherence of the zombie idea in what

I think is a cogent and intuitively appealing way. The other is to build on that

result to develop a fresh approach to phenomenal consciousness: to explaining

how there can be such a thing as what it is like.

It is easy to imagine that prawns feel pain. And since they have eyes and other

sense organs, it is easy to imagine they are capable of other kinds of phenomenal

consciousness too. (Expressions like phenomenal consciousness will be examined

later.) It is also easy to imagine that they dont feel pain but only behave as if they did, and that they have no conscious perceptual experiences at all. Regardless of

what we might be able to imagine, though, there is surely a matter of fact to be

right or wrong about. Either there is something it is like for a creature or there

isnt, or so we tend to assume. In our own case, surely there is. I might pretend to

have toothache when I dont; but sometimes I really do have toothacheand lots