The Mental Lives of Zombies

Philosophical Perspectives
Volume 26, Issue 1, pages 343–372, 19 December 2012
DOI: 10.1111/phpe.12013

Declan Smithies
The Ohio State University

A zombie is a creature that is just like a conscious subject in all relevant physical, functional or behavioral respects, except that it has no conscious states – there is nothing it is like to be a zombie. Zombies have figured prominently in metaphysical debates about the nature of consciousness, but they can also be usefully employed in raising questions about the relationship between consciousness and cognition. Could there be a cognitive zombie – that is, a creature with the capacity for cognition but with no capacity for consciousness? By definition, zombies cannot have conscious states, but can they nevertheless have cognitive states, such as beliefs, and cognitive processes, such as reasoning and other forms of rational belief revision?

In this paper, I am primarily concerned with conceptual questions about the relationship between consciousness and cognition. As  far as possible, I want to remain neutral on empirical questions about the functional role of consciousness and metaphysical questions about the nature of consciousness and its place in the physical world. So, when I ask whether there could be cognitive zombies, the relevant modality is conceptual possibility, rather than physical possibility or metaphysical possibility. The question is whether cognitive zombies are conceptually possible or impossible – that is, whether they can be coherently conceived or whether this involves some kind of inherent conceptual confusion.

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/phpe.12013/abstract