Nancey Murphy argues that God created humans as purely physical beings without immortal souls, claiming neuroscience explains the mind better through physical information processing than dualist theories can. The authors reply that Murphy overestimates neuroscience's ability to explain qualia, unity, privacy, and causality of the mind, and underestimates dualism. They argue that E. J. Lowe's version of dualism offers better explanations, often with experimental support and in testable ways. Thus, Murphy's physicalism actually highlights the value of Lowe's dualism today.
Philosophical p-zombies are imagined beings that behave like humans but lack consciousness, used to challenge physicalist theories of mind. Inverting this concept yields i-zombies: beings that appear unconscious but are actually conscious. A real-world approximation of i-zombies exists in anesthesia awareness, where 1-2 per 1000 patients under general anesthesia become conscious during surgery despite appearing unconscious due to paralysis and intubation. Additionally, 22% of patients in a recent study reported dreaming during anesthesia. P-zombies raise the hard problem of explaining qualia; i-zombies pose the practical problem of detecting qualia. The work compares these concepts and examines the hard problem of unconsciousness through anesthesia awareness.