Introduction

Don’t you just love philosophers? They find any topic worthy of examination, even though most are deemed “uninteresting”.

Zombies, in the above article, are another victim of their relentless debating. As defined in the article, zombies are exactly like humans but they are lacking “consciousness”. This take on zombies allows a little exploration of mind/body issues, but to me, really fires wide of the mark. Zombies are interesting precisely in that they were at one point “human” but no longer are, although they continue to carry out many human-typical activities. This begs the question: what characteristics are essential to our definition of "human", beyond the appearance of being alive? This is the simpler (and more interesting) version of the automata question which uses zombies as a tool to try & resolve the mind/body debate. In the above article, qualia are seen as important in locating consciousness. To me, qualia or lack of, are the essence of why zombies exist (in the human imagination) and therefore the essence of what it is to be actually human rather than just to appear to be human.

Other zombie characteristics that are intriguing are the concept of contagion, zombie mass psychology, the transformation from human into zombie, their animosity toward non-zombies and their state of decay. All of these characteristics speak volumes about what humans think it means to live a fully human life rather than some zombified half life. It looks as though this blog will be dedicated to this exploration for the next little while. Zombie fans rejoice! (Thank goodness my readership is small, possibly in the single binary digits...)

To sum up: if zombies are merely humans lacking qualia/consciousness which cannot be determined by physical testing or linguistic probing, they truly are uninteresting and irrelevant. That question can be addressed through the exploration of the Other minds problem or the question of animal consciousness. Hey philosophers, leave those zombies alone!