The document discusses various philosophical perspectives on consciousness and their implications for "zombie rights". It proposes a view called complementary dualism where: 1) Both the physical and phenomenal worlds are considered fundamentally real and mutually represent each other, rather than one being primary over the other. 2) This avoids the need for reductive physicalism while also precluding the possibility of zombies, resolving dualism's epistemic issues. 3) It supports assessing phenomenal properties based on physical/functional properties, allowing a common-sense approach to questions of rights and ethics.

1. Zombie Rights
Andrew Dun

2. The not too distant future…

3. Rights Revolutions
An expanding circle…
• Women’s suffrage
• Race Rights
• Queer Rights
• Animal Rights
• …’Zombie’ Rights?

4. ‘Zombie’ 2.0
• uploads?
• artificial intelligences?
• hybrid intelligences?
• non-human animals?
• ‘brain in a vat’
• you?
• me?
• materialists?

5. Ethics…
“Consciousness Matters”
• Consciousness is necessary for suffering
• Consciousness is necessary for agency
• Identity, selfhood, intentionality, paying
attention…

6. What is consciousness?

7. Objective: Cognitive, psychological:
• self-awareness,
• self-consciousness,
• introspection,
• self-identity,
• relationship to environment.
• Access-consciousness (Block), Available
content (Chalmers).
• A complex of traits…?

8. Subjective: Experiential, Phenomenal
• Qualia
• “What it is like”
• Intrinsic
• Ineffable
• Non-relational
• Unified
• Private
• Directly apprehensible
Truths about what it is like to be a subject that are not
entailed a priori by the physical and functional truth
(including the environmental truth) about that subject.
(Chalmers 2002).

9. Which kind of consciousness is
ethically important?
• Objective? Subjective?

10. Threats to Zombie Rights?
• Non-naturalistic worldviews
• Biological Materialism (eg. Searle 1992)
• General uncertainty about consciousness
• Conceivability of Zombies

11. Enter the Zombie…

12. ‘My Zombie Twin’
• “This creature is molecule for molecule
identical to me, and identical in all the low-
level properties postulated by a complete
physics, but he lacks conscious experience
entirely.” (Chalmers 1996, p 92)

13. Get to know your nearest zombie…

14. So… how to tell a zombie?
Supervenience…?
“*High level+ properties supervene on [low level]
properties if no two possible situations are
identical with respect to their [low level]
properties while differing in their [high level]
properties” (Chalmers 1996, p 31).

15. More supervenience
• Logical supervenience – “…if no two logically
possible situations are identical with respect to
their low level properties but distinct with
respect to their high level properties.” (Chalmers
1996 p 32)
• Natural supervenience – “…if any two naturally
possible situations with the same [low-level]
properties have the same *high level+ properties.”
(Chalmers 1996 p 34)
• -> Looking at brains won’t help!

16. Do zombies know they are zombies?
Causal
Closure
p
Do non-zombies know they are non-zombies?

17. A paradox…
• “of phenomenal judgement”
…can we resolve this?
Chalmers: Judgements can be justified in the
absence of a causal link -> ‘Acquaintance’

18. Are we barking up the wrong tree?

19. Re-enter…
Monism

20. ‘Qualia’ for monist materialists
• Heterophenomenology (Dennett):
“phenomenology of another not oneself”
• A method: Psychology, Cognitive Science,
Neuroscience etc..

21. Heterophenomenological Qualia
• When you say “This is my quale,” what you are singling
out, or referring to, whether you realize it or not, is
your idiosyncratic complex of dispositions. You seem to
be referring to be referring to a private, ineffable
something-or-other in your mind’s eye, a private shade
of homogenous pink, but this is just how it seems to
you, not how it is. That “quale” of yours is a character
in good standing in the fictional world of your
heterophenomenology, but what it turns out to be in
the real world in your brain is just a complex of
dispositions.
• (Dennett 1991, Consciousness Explained, pp 388 –
389).

22. ~ The End ~
?

23. Does heterophenomenology ‘take
consciousness seriously’?
• “The crucial argument seems to be… where
[Dennett] claims (in effect) that what needs to
be explained is how things seem, and that his
theory explainthis equivocates between a
psychological and phenomenal sense of
“seem.”s how things seem. But… What the
theory might explain is our disposition to
make certain judgements about stimuli, but
those judgements were never the puzzling
explananda.

24. An uploader’s dilemma
• Will my upload just be a piece of ‘software’?
…a zombie me?
• Is it at least conceivable that this will be the
case?
• If it is conceivable, is it then possible?

25. Conceivability -> Possiblity
Chalmers: Yes!
Dennett: ‘…’
Physicalist (e.g. Levine, Loar) : No!

26. Physicalism (‘Type B’ Materialism)
i) Consciousness is physical
ii) Consciousness is irreducible (non-reductive)
• A solution without (a clear) explanation?
Strong metaphysical necessity?
‘Don’t-have-a-clue physicalism’

27. The story so far…
A dilemma:
Take qualia seriously, but struggle with
epistemologic gap
OR
Close epistemic gap, but take qualia ‘less seriously’
Ontology or Epistemology?

28. Where to for ‘Zombie’ Rights?

29. Materialist ZR
• Complex factors, but no metaphysical puzzles -
> heterophenomenological approach to
subjective experience, including suffering.
• Agency, responsibility -> cognitive,
behavioural, psychological, sociological
• Mirrors existing approach, at least for humans.
A 'common-sense materialism’.

30. Dualist ZR
A bifurcated self? Whose rights? Physical self?
Phenomenal self?
• Physical self -> same treatment as materialist
• Phenomenal self -> evaluate ethical
significance of pure experience (pure
phenomenal concepts)

31. Ethics of ‘a pain in a box’….
Without cognition, identity
A reductio?

32. Inflationary and Deflationary
Phenomenal Concepts
• “At a first approximation, phenomenal concepts deal with
the first-person aspects of the mind, and psychological
concepts deal with the third-person aspects.” (Chalmers
1996, p 14).
• Direct (and pure) phenomenal concept: “partly constituted
by an underlying phenomenal quality, in that the content
will mirror the quality (picking out instances of the quality
in all epistemic possibilities), and in that across a wide
range of nearby conceptually possible cases in which the
underlying quality is varied while background properties
are held constant, the content will covary to mirror the
quality.” (Chalmers 2003)

33. Conceptual Bindings?
Inflationary: ‘Underlying quality’ understood as an
irreducible (phenomenally real) phenomenal property
Deflationary: ‘Underlying quality’ understood in
materialistic (e.g. heterophenomenological) terms
Contention: Phenomenal properties such as pains only
have ethical significance where associated with direct
phenomenal concepts of which they are constituents –
however…

34. The ‘deflationary scoop’
Phenomenal concepts - > distinct psychological
analogues, including direct and pseudo-direct.
Undermining constitution…
We can ‘scoop out’ deflationary (psychological)
content from phenomenal concepts (and
beliefs) – chasing the ‘raw feel’ down a rabbit
hole…

35. Conceptual Constitution
Phenomenal properties are never truly constituent -
‘surplus to requirements’.
All qualia are in this way ‘disembodied’.
Rights should be based in relationships, goals,
commitments, actions.
• Contention: Psychological facts are sufficient for
ethical appraisals.

36. Acquaintance
• Chalmers: Phenomenal beliefs can be constituted by phenomenal properties by
virtue of a subject’s acquaintance with those properties…
• “Acquaintance is not itself a conceptual relation: rather, it makes certain sorts of
concepts possible. And it is not itself a justificatory relation: rather, it makes
certain sorts of justification possible. Phenomenal concepts and phenomenal
knowledge require not just acquaintance, but acquaintance in the right cognitive
background: a cognitive background that minimally involves a certain sort of
attention to the phenomenal quality in question, a cognitive act of concept
formation, the absence of certain sorts of confusion and other undermining
factors (for full justification), and so on. But it is acquaintance with the quality or
the experience itself that does the crucial justifying work.” (Chalmers 2003)
• “…acquaintance is a relation that makes possible the formation of pure
phenomenal concepts, and we have seen that pure phenomenal concepts embody
a certain sort of lucid understanding of phenomenal properties. So acquaintance is
a relation that makes this sort of lucid understanding possible.” (Chalmers 2003)

37. Epistemic gap = ethical gap
‘Lucid understanding’ -> heterophenomenology
“The question is whether I am justified in the belief,
not whether my brain is justified in the belief
(and if property dualism is correct there is more
to me than my brain)” *Chalmers 1996, page
198].
But: This is not a case of ‘brain and’, it’s a case of
‘brain OR’.

38. Distinct Selves
- Reasoning, planning, feeling, interacting self
(brain)
- Experiential self (‘a phenomenal mirror’)
If constitution fails:
a) We grant these selves rights distinctly?
b) Change tack?

39. A ‘psychological consensus’…
• For materialists, physicists and dualists (so too
for proponents of ‘neutral’ or ‘diet’ qualia)..
• Metaphysical considerations ‘cancel out’ of
the equation.

40. Can we do better?
We want:
• To ‘take qualia seriously’
• To avoid the epistemic problems of dualism
• To defend an intuitive view of conceivability
Can we shake the zombie off our back?

41. Physicalism Revisited
Can we defend a view where:
• i) possibility/conceivability relation holds
• ii) qualitative states exist
• iii) zombies are not possible
• iv) because zombies are not conceivable

42. Conceiving Zombies
Missed assumptions?
• Physical 'world for free"
• Ontological hierarchy
• Supervenience
• Ontological consistency

43. Consider…
Physical Realism: The physical world as primary.
Solipsism: The phenomenal world as primary.
Which view is ‘correct’?
Is there are any reason we should automatically
grant ourselves the first?

44. Symmetric Ontologies
Physical world as primary…
Physicality is necessary but not sufficient for
phenomenal world
Phenomenality is sufficient but not necessary
for physical world
And vice versa…

45. Symmetric Scenarios
So: Ontological and epistemic gaps are symmetric.
Paradox of physical judgement?
Absent physicalia?
Inverted physicalia?
• “We need some intrinsic properties to make sense of
the physical world, and we need to find a place for the
intrinsic properties revealed in phenomenology. The
two problems seem to be well matched.” (Chalmers
1996 p 303).

46. ‘Sorta’ Real
We can say that…
Qualia are ‘sorta’ real with respect to their
hetereophenomenological (rich psychological)
representations
Physical properties are ‘sorta’ real with respect
to phenomenal properties – they are richly
representet

47. Supervenience…
vs Symmetric Representation
The physical contains representations of the
phenomenal
The phenomenal contains representations of the
physical

48. Ontological Exclusivity vs
Complementarity
• “...implies the impossibility of any sharp separation
between the behaviour of atomic objects [i.e., objects
governed by quantum mechanics] and the interaction
with the measuring instruments which serve to define
the conditions under which the phenomena appear....
Consequently, evidence obtained under different
experimental conditions cannot be comprehended
within a single picture, but must be regarded as
complementary in the sense that only the totality of
the phenomenena exhausts the possible information
about the objects.” (Bohr, 1949)

49. Complementary Photons, Realities
• “The complementarity principle states that
some objects have multiple properties that
appear to be contradictory. Sometimes it is
possible to switch back and forth between
different views of an object to observe these
properties, but in principle, it is impossible to
view both at the same time, despite their
simultaneous coexistence in reality.”
(Wikipedia – Complementarity (Physics))

50. Complementary Dualism
“How to kill a zombie”
Proposal: Treat all reality in a manner analogous
to the complementary treatment of photons.

51. Complementary Symmetric
Representation
Reality = “two different things
but not at the same time”.

52. Applying Complementary Dualism
Which physical entities will have phenomenal
correlates? Which phenomenal entities will
have physical correlates?
Mutual symmetric representation
A natural suggestion: Intentional states –
physical and phenomenal (eg. Horgan and
Tienson)

53. Assessment of physical systems
• Presence of physical intentionality will imply
phenomenal intentionality, and vice versa
• Can therefore confidently asses phenomenal
properties in terms of physical/functional
properties, as per Naturalistic Dualism

54. A Dual Aspect Ontology?
It-from-bit: “Experience is information from the
inside; physics is information from the
outside”. (Chalmers 1996, 303).
To the extent that informational or intentional
states can be abstracted across ontologies…

55. However…
We don’t need to identify intentional states across
ontologies. This is a key advantage for complementary
dualism.
Mutual global representation is sufficient. As ontologies
are complementary, rather than simultaneous or
coexistent, there is no need to posit a psychophysical
‘mapping’ function between ontological particulars
(i.e. specific qualitative and intentional states). (Just as
we don’t seek to ‘map’ waves to particles or vice versa
in quantum systems).

56. Quantum Consequences?
Many minds
Complementing…
Many worlds
-> Pan-psychism, Pan-physicalism

57. Cogency before proof...
Complementary dualism = a new kind of physicalism
i) Supports phenomenal (and physical) realism
ii) Phenomenal is not ‘surplus’ to physical nor vice versa
ii) Precludes zombies
iii) Assessment of physical functional states = assessment
of phenomenal states
iv) Parsimonious, no supervenience
Supports a ‘common sense’ psychological approach to
ethical questions.

58. In world without zombies…
zombie rights
->
universal rights

59. Summary
• ‘Physical rights’ are enough
• Complimentary dualism -> Phenomenal
realism without zombies

60. All Aboard!