I Think, Therefore I Am .... Not a Zombie?

In my latest of the Great Courses from The Teaching Company, I learned about Consciousness and Its Implications. My reaction to it was uneven, but ultimately positive.

In their opening lectures each of the other Great Courses I had heard did a very good job of introducing their topics and telling me what I would be learning. They approached the subjects in a way that I could easily follow.

Not this course. Dr. Daniel N Robinson started this course with lectures on Zombies.

Zombies?

Well, the idea, it seemed, was to get us to think about what constituted consciousness. It turns out that those who study consciousness use "zombies" to illustrate points. In a way, it's somewhat like the thought experiments physicists use, since zombies don't really exist -- at least not in the form Dr. Robinson (and the cited literature) mean.

This focus on zombies almost made me stop listening to the course. Why? Because it seemed like we were already assumed to know something about the science of consciousness. Or, perhaps, that Dr. Robinson thought he could grab our attention with something "cool." It might have worked, if he had also laid some groundwork. But he didn't, and he almost lost me.

Fortunately, I kept listening, and the course ended up talking about several intriguing concepts. Perhaps the most interesting was related to whether Physics can really describe everything, since when it comes to thought and consciousness, it's hard to find a Physics-based explanation. I'll explain one of the core questions by using an example.

Think of a red rose.

OK, now, you've done that.

Did your thought exist?

For most of what we describe as reality, existence means to be made up of physical stuff. Is a thought of a red rose explainable by any stuff?

Consciousness and thought are integral to our lives, yet they are not even close to explainable using current science, as far as this course has taught me.

This was just one of many very interesting discussions in the course. I am very glad to have taken the time to listen to it.

Perhaps Dr. Robinson should have waited until later in the course, after we had some background, before discussing celluloid undead.

Or better yet, just skipped the zombies.