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61% of professional philosophers think zombies (physical duplicates of us that have no consciousness) are conceptually coherent. Only 16.5% think they're not. survey2020.philpeople.org/survey/results…

I don't think zombies can think. But other philosophers think that thought has nothing to do with consciousness.

Gabriella did a fantastic first-class dissertation on panpsychism and IIT with me this year. Pictured here at post-graduation drinks. I should have ironed my shirt.

Depends whether you believe in cognitive qualia.

I'd put Sean Carroll in the 16.5% group.

I'm very well aware of this fact. I was just making the point that the Dennett style physicalism many scientists adopt, on which zombies just make no sense, is not the mainstream form of physicalism among philosophers.

The mainstream physicalist position (as opposed to more radical Dennettian position) essentially just applies this to scientific identities of feelings and brain states. Zombies end up being logically possible but metaphysically impossible. More info here: academic.oup.com/book/3834

Sadly this is incompatible with having complete and coherent beliefs on ~any interesting philosophical topic.

I paid this person to say this, but it's still nice to hear.

Exactly. The point I was that I was making is that 61% (as opposed to 16.5%) of philosophers think that will never happen.

Why bring consciousness and quantum mechanics together? If (A) we need to add something to mathematical physics to get consciousness, (B) we need to add something to Schrödinger equation to get probability, it's worth exploring whether we can add one thing to get both.

I only have one tattoo, of a friend's initials on my bottom. For several years we competed to get each other the strangest birthday present. But his birthday was first so he always knew what he had to beat. I needed to do something he couldn't possibly beat. I won.

The suffering of children in Gaza is unbearable. youtube.com/watch?v=bycLTz…

I'm a "centrist" about AI sentience. I take two risks seriously: the risk of creating a new kind of sentient being, and the risk of millions of users misattributing sentience to chatbots on the basis of mimicry/role-playing. LSE invited me to explain: youtube.com/watch?v=hg8v_b…

I have a long section in my new book reflecting on the human capacity to get bored despite the richness of the present moment.