Image courtesy of Derivative Images
Let’s grant for the sake of argument that philosophical zombies are possible: beings that are molecule-for-molecule physically and behaviorally identical to human beings yet lack conscious experience. They will say “I’m conscious!” (or emit sounds naturally interpreted as sentences with that meaning), but that’s exactly the type of sound a molecule-for-molecule identical replica of a human would make given the physical-causal channels from ears to brain to vocal cords. Zombies share every single physical property with us but lack something crucial — the property of being conscious.
My thought for today: Is there any reason to think there would be only one such nonphysical property?
[abstract depiction of a zombie, a human, and a hyperconscious entity, with concentric rings]
Introducing Hyperconsciousness
Let’s stipulate the existence of hyperconsciousness. If this stipulation later entangles us in logical contradiction, we can treat it as the first step in a reductio ad absurdum. My hyperconscious twin is molecule-for-molecule identical both to me and to my zombie twin. Unlike my zombie twin, but like me, my hyperconscious twin is conscious. However, unlike both my zombie twin and me, it is also hyperconscious.
What is hyperconsciousness? I can form no positive conception of it, except through this structural analogy. But the impossibility of hyperconsciousness doesn’t follow. Someone blind from birth might be unable to form a positive conception of redness, but red things exist. My merely abstract grasp of hyperconsciousness might just reflect my own sad limitations.
If there are hyperconscious entities, they probably won’t be my behavioral twins. Any molecule-for-molecule twin of mine would say (or “say”) the same things I say, since their physical structure and behavior will be entirely indistinguishable from mine, regardless of whether they are zombie or hyper. But just as friends of the zombie thought experiment hold that non-zombies typically (but not universally) know and say they are not zombies, so I imagine that typical hyperconscious entities would typically know and say they are hyperconscious. (ETA 11:39 AM: They will, presumably, have hyperintrospective insight into their hyperconsciousness, say they can conceive of entities physically identical to them but who are merely conscious, and maybe have cognitive capacities of which we humans can’t conceive.) Since no one around here describes themselves as hyperconscious in this sense, I tentatively conclude that hyperconsciousness does not exist on Earth.
Zero, One, or Many Nonphysical Properties?
Could there really be such hyperconscious entities (in principle, or even in actuality)? Here I think we face a theoretical choice:
(1.) Consciousness is as consciousness does. Zombies are impossible. Anything physically identical to a conscious human being is necessarily conscious. There’s no looseness between physical properties and other properties such that some entities could have non-physical properties that other physically identical entities lack. If so, hyperconsciousness is impossible.
(2.) There is only one type of nonphysical property. (Or at least there’s only one of the type we’re attempting to conceive: Maybe being a prime number is also a nonphysical property, but if so, it is in a very different way.) But then I think we’re owed an account of why there should be only one such property. Hyperconsciousness seems at least in an abstract sense conceivable. Even if it’s not instantiated around here (though can we be sure of that?), it might be instantiated somewhere.
(3.) There are multiple types of nonphysical property. Although individual atoms (let’s assume) aren’t conscious, swirl them around in the right way, and amazingly a whole new type of property arises: consciousness! Now, swirl conscious entities around and maybe a further new type of property arises. We just haven’t swirled things around in the right way yet. Maybe they’re doing it in the Andromeda galaxy, or in a metaphysically possible world with different laws of nature. (If we allow that individual atoms are conscious, then maybe some are hyperconscious too.)
We humans love to think we’re the top of the metaphysical food chain. And maybe we are, around here. But zombie-lovers’ dissociation of consciousness from physics invites a way of thinking on which we are only one step above zombies in a potentially unlimited hierarchy.
If this seems too absurd, maybe that’s one consideration against such nonphysical properties.