What zombies can't do: A social cognitive neuroscience approach to the irreducibility of reflective consciousness

The psychological zombie hypothesis proposes that mental operations usually accompanied by conscious awareness can occur without it, suggesting that conscious awareness is superfluous for generating behaviors and judgments. This hypothesis, distinct from the philosophical zombie thought experiment, posits an 'inner-zombie' whose work does not depend on awareness. The chapter examines this emerging idea within psychology as a challenge to assumptions about the causal role of consciousness.

Study at a glance

Abstract

Could an individual act and speak just like other individuals without having any internal conscious experience? Belief in the possibility of so-called philosophical zombies serves as a litmus test for whether someone believes in some form of mind-body dualism or materialism. This chapter focuses on a related hypothesis that is emerging within psychology referred to as the psychological zombie hypothesis. This hypothesis suggests that our behaviors and judgements are produced by an 'inner-zombie' whose mental work does not depend on conscious awareness, and that those mental operations which are typically accompanied by conscious awareness do not rely on awareness to generate the operations and their outputs. This hypothesis suggests that mental operations which are typically accompanied by conscious awareness can be produced in the absence of conscious awareness, thus demonstrating the superfluousness of awareness.