I don’t know how this isn’t the same thing as saying added complexity.
All it means is that you can make a brain more complex by interconnecting all its neurons at random. But such a maximally complex system won't do anything interesting. A system that that does something interesting must be less than maximally complex by incorporating some kind of functionality; in the brain, this means a modular & hierarchical functional architecture.
These different areas of the brain are responsible for different functions in an individual way, and then at a later stage everything is reassembled into a coherent whole. But all of these functional dependent regions could also exist for qualia zombies too, they too would require a ton of different sensory mechanisms in order to avoid running across a busy street 1 second too early or too late, or to chop a carrot without chopping off a fingertip, etc. But we don’t escape the privileged 1st person information problem, we can’t know via brain functions if a person who cut their finger instead of the carrot really feels the pain or if they are just going through the motions and acting like they are in pain. THAT their brain mechanisms matches what my brain mechanisms look like when I feel pain is an objective FACT, but whether or not the pain experience itself is being faked or is genuine in that person is unfortunately reduced to an inference. It’s this reduced quality of knowledge that is the explanatory gap when moving from the physiological data to the assurance that we don’t have a qualia zombie.
Well I don't agree that qualia zombies are metaphysically possible; being able to conceive of such a thing doesn't mean it is possible. My view is that a system that is indistinguishable in all ways and under all conditions from one that has qualia, necessarily has qualia too; IOW it cannot respond and report as if it has precisely the same qualia as its non-zombie identical duplicate if it doesn't experience (and think it experiences) those qualia.
Qualia are, by definition, experiential, you can't generate identical qualia descriptions & responses under all possible conditions without being an experiential qualia-generating system.
So basically, I take a physicalist view. The qualia zombie concept begs the question by assuming what it attempts to demonstrate - that qualia are not supervenient on brain activity. I think that such a dualist claim needs to be demonstrated, i.e. tested; but
by definition it cannot be, since a qualia zombie is indistinguishable from a non-zombie. So, meh to philosophical zombies
Such deficits in motor function ability, speech, etc, would be objective facts. But lost consciousness, and sense of self could come or could still remain without us knowing for sure. It’s like the argument about whether a coma patient can hear & understand you (or even more precisely could THIS coma patient here you, or how about THAT coma patient?). There’s no such argument about the coma patient’s brain scans.
We can't know anything for sure, but we can make a reasonable assessment of the relevant likelihoods based on the available evidence.
Clearly, we can't be certain that when someone goes from apparently alert and responsive to slumped and unresponsive, they have lost consciousness, but - assuming they recover - we can ask them if they remember being conscious during that episode. Even self-reported consciousness or lack of consciousness isn't definitive, but it's as good as we can get. Most of the deficits associated with consciousness that have been studied, are either self-reportable or can be tested by careful questioning or by studying of behaviour.
I do not disagree that higher states of consciousness are an easy inference to make since we have tons of test subjects to verify that higher level functions in the cortex relates to mental states that don’t exist for lower level entities such as those with just hindbrains. But it’s that “What is it like to be a bat” problem. A friend of mine once made the claim that sharks have to be the most miserable creatures on Earth because of their disturbed & lousy sleep patterns. Now what if I made the argument that sharks live in a state of bliss? We know that levels of distress and contentness in organisms are real properties in reality (and sharks might also feel nothing at all), but to answer this shark debate a hard science can never help us (even though each individual shark would know the answer), we would be reduced to some soft science like Behaviorism to just make an inference.
I don't think Behaviourism is relevant here, but we typically judge the level of conscious function by observing active behaviour or responsiveness; for example, if members of one species consistently show an ability to solve simple puzzles and the members of another species with the same physical capabilities don't, we infer the former is more intelligent than the latter; to some extent that's what we mean by intelligence. Similarly for other aspects of consciousness.
Now, I could claim that a frog is actually capable of solving very complex problems but is just not inclined to, but unless I can support my claim with some evidence it's worthless. And we can look at all the circumstantial evidence to see how plausible the claim might be - are the relevant parts of a frog brain as large or sophisticated as the simple problem-solver's? Has any frog ever been observed to exhibit problem-solving capabilities? The evolutionary view - do complex problem-solving capabilities provide a selective advantage to a frog that would outweigh the resources to support such capabilities? and so-on. We do have the means to make reasonable inferences about changes or deficits in certain aspects of consciousness, particularly in humans that can self-report.
Unanswerable questions about reality (questions that we know for sure HAVE answers) that can’t be answered by the tools of hard physical sciences to me reveals that more exists in reality than the physical. Because we just became forced into a situation where we can only use a tool of mental language to describe a part of reality that we know is real…and that is the claim, that there’s a mental fabric of reality that falls outside of the scope of physical reality (although they are both intimately entangled, and dependent on each other).
I'm not clear what unanswerable questions that we know for sure HAVE answers you mean - or whether that's even meaningful... If a question
has an answer, then it seems to me that it is answerable, whether we actually have the answer or not.
Yeah I think so too, kind of like a lie detector test but with way more information. Well that’s if we don’t kill ourselves first and have to start over with sticks & stones. Some of these stories about the record droughts, temperatures, water scarcity, floods, etc are weirding me out.
That's my feeling too - I don't expect to be around for the sticks & stones, but I think we need to get as much done as we can before that, and maybe find a way to leave the knowledge as a legacy.
