I sometimes wonder, jokingly, whether there are really philosophical zombies among us. A philosophical zombie is a human being that behaves like any other human being except that it's all mechanical. There's no mind behind the behavior, no consciousness, etc. Philosophical zombies are just machines.
One reason I've wondered about this is because there are some serious philosophers who deny the existence of consciousness. I talked about that in this post. Or some people seemed to be confused about what consciousness even is. Anybody who is conscious knows they are conscious and what it means to be conscious, so anybody who denies these things or behaves as if they are confused about it might be a philosophical zombie.
There's another point of view out there--I think it's called analytical behaviorism--that tries to explain things like pain and desire purely in terms of behavior. For example, they might say that pain is just the tendency to say, "Ouch!" in certain situations. These people try to get away from using mental language at all. It's all just behavior. To me, that sounds exactly like what's going on with philosophical zombies. They just behave, but there's no felt experience of pain behind their expressions. There's no desire or motive behind anything they do; it's just mechanical action.
If there are really people who say that (I shy away from saying, "think that,"), then maybe it's because they really are philosophical zombies. Because otherwise, they'd know it wasn't true.
I suppose the one exception might be in the case of epiphenomenalists. These are people who believe in minds and consciousness, but they don't believe minds and consciousness have any influence over our behavior. Mental states are just the inert byproducts of processes in the brain. The brain gives rise to mental states, but the mental states don't give rise to behavior. The direction of causation (or entailment) only goes one way.
For all practical purposes, if epiphenomenalism were true (at least in the case of some people), then people are as good as philosophical zombies. We shouldn't expect that their behavior is indicative of anything that's going on in their minds. They could be saying and behaving one way while thinking and feelings something completely different. There's no reason in the world for evolution to have produced brains that generate minds and behaviors that correspond to each other since minds don't do anything. Smashing somebody's finger might actually feel good to them in spite of their crying out as if they were in pain. Their behavior is purely mechanical and can be accounted for purely in the language of physics and chemistry without reference to anything like desire, motive, belief, sensation, or feeling.
I don't actually believe there are philosophical zombies among us, but sometimes it seems like the only explanation for how people seem to seriously embrace these obviously false ideas. I say, "seem" because, of course, they don't really believe these things if they really are philosophical zombies. They're just behaving.
