I’d say zombies have goals insofar as they have desires. But a zombie desire would lack any phenomenal component; they might desire food but they wouldn’t feel hungry, nor would they feel satisfied once the desire was fulfilled. I don’t have a problem with seeing desires in this way but it does seem that blocking a zombie’s goal is quite different from blocking a human’s goal. Now I’m pretty much a straight hedonist so I’d say it’s a moral issue in the case of the human but not in the case of the zombie. Preference utilitarians are concerned with the frustration of preferences so they might say that it’s an issue for both humans and zombies (though it would depend on whether they thought non-phenomenal desires were possible).

I probably should be a bit careful talking about Kantian ethics, because I don’t really know much about modern Kantians. Still, it does seem objecthood is tied up with rationality for Kantians (in as far as they find talk of moral objects useful).

Zombies, at least as Chalmers describes them - atom by atom replicas of humans but entirely lacking phenomenal consciousness - don’t seem possible to me either. But even though I don’t belieive in *physically* indistinguishable zombies, *behaviourally* indistinguishable ones seem like a possiblity.

Do Zombies have goals? These states seem more like thoughts than sensations to me. If so, then a zombie can have its goals blocked, and that might be a moral issue. The zombie has rationally formed its goals based on its beliefs and desires (does it have desires?) and then someone willfully blocked it from achieving its goals. If someone did that to me, I’d see it as a moral issue.

Also, if we follow a strict sort of Kantian line, isn’t all that matters for moral objecthood that you are rational? An end in a kingdom of means?

Sounds like an interesting project–good luck!

PS I have serious doubts that zombies are possible in any relevant sense. Needless to say, I think Chalmers et al are wrong on this.

There’s no doubt about it, zombies cause huge epistemic problems for hedonism and your argument certainly is persuasive. I can’t really do justice to it here but when I’ve given it some more thought I’ll write a post on it.

In the (possible) presence of zombies, there is no rational way to distinguish who or what is and isn’t a moral object. If you had convincing knowledge of zombies as possible in principle, there is no argument or observation that can rationally convince you that I am, or am not, a worthy moral object, so, for example, if I were drowning, you would not only have no way of absolutely knowing whether you should run to save me, or whether you should stay where you are so you don’t block anybody’s sun on the way over; there wouldn’t even be any evidence that could weigh on the matter in a ‘limited-rationality’ way.

From a hedonist position, of course, you could decide that your feeling of personal discomfort at watching me drown would outweigh blocking a few people’s sun in the aggregate utility function, but there are certainly examples that can deal with that. Should you jump in front of a bus to push two people out of the way? What about two zombies? How would you ever know the difference?

I know anyone who’s given serious consideration to a straight utilitarian position is comfortable with a certain degree of uncertainty in ethical judgement, but this seems absolutely beyond the pale. Acting as a complete egoist, or for that matter sociopath, would be a perfectly good-faith interpretation of such a utilitarianism!

I really just don’t think hedonism is at all plausible if zombies are metaphysically possible. (Myself I’d jettison the zombies first–they just cause too many problems. But, given your blogname …)

Available on her website here: http://www.kent.ac.uk/secl/philosophy/staff/tanney.html

Richard,
I’ve not studied it in any detail but my view is that when Alice’s own phenomenal states can be the intentional objects of her utterances. Obviously this isn’t true for Zombalice but I’m unsure if there’s a difference between the intentional objects of Alice and Zombalice’s utterances when they talk about Oliver’s phenomenal states.
I know Tom Regan uses the term ‘moral patients’ but it seems that he is specifically referring to moral objects that aren’t agents. Under Regan’s view a dog is a moral patient but a normal adult human is not. I prefer ‘moral objects’ as a sort of shorthand for ‘objects of moral actions’.
As for Zomboliver’s interests, I’ll be focusing on hedonism and preference-satisfaction in the thesis. Hedonism seems to require phenomenal consciousness but I don’t think preference satisfaction does. Personally, this makes me lean toward hedonism.

Adam,
Thanks for the suggestion. Most of the ethicists I’ve talked to don’t like the idea of zombie moral agents but it’s nice to have something concrete to refer to.
Yeah, I’m not happy with my definition for ethics either (it’s probably thanks to me not knowing what audience I was writing for). I’d amend it to say something like this:
Ethics (for consequentialists) is about how the actions of moral agents affect properties or states of affairs that are deemed to have intrinsic value according to some theory of value.

An entirely separate worry I have is about the rather vague definition you’ve given for ethics. Surely my actions have effects on other individuals in all sorts of ways that aren’t relevant to ethics: my walking down the sidewalk casts a shadow on the shoes of others walking on that sidewalk (or having coffee at the sidewalk cafe); and if we are to take Lewis and physics seriously, any action I perform will cast an ever-widening causal “light cone” and effecting an indefinite number of future events. Surely, ethics isn’t concerned with all my shadow-casting actions or with all of the effects that lie in my causal light cone. Or put another way, surely I’m not acting qua moral agent in such cases. Presumably, there’s a difference between my walking down the sidewalk in the everyday context and my walking down the beach past the baby drowning in the shallow waters.

But it might be argued that Zombalice’s utterances lack meaning, or at least do not have the same meaning that Alice’s would. Depending on your theory of mental content (among other things), you might deny that Zombalice has moral concepts at all. Or you might grant that she (it?) has the concepts, but deny that her moral beliefs can be justified in the way that ours can.

As for moral objects (is ‘moral patient’ a more standard term?), the key question seems to be whether Zomboliver has *interests*. So that’s going to depend on your theory of welfare. It’s easy enough if you assume hedonism, but otherwise we might ask why it should matter so much that Zomboliver can’t have experiences. He can (arguably) still do other important things, like fulfill his desires, or pursue projects at which he may succeed or fail, etc. Is that enough to suggest that his life can go better or worse; that he can be harmed?

I’m afraid I’m better at asking these questions than answering them. Good luck with your thesis!

That’s thanks to a lack of clarity on my part. When I said that phenomenal consciousness referred to things we feel, I meant experiences. You mention that some experiences are ‘given in terms of the object and the feeling constituting those experiences’. I agree, many experiences do have both affective and representational aspects. For instance, the smell of roast chicken is both chickeny (representational) and appetising (affective). My view is that both the chickeny smell and the appetising feeling are examples of phenomenal consciousness.

Non-phenomenal consciousness is different from either of these. I’m sort of following Chalmers’ idea of psychological consciousness or Block’s idea of access consciousness - a purely functional process that needn’t be accompanied by any subjective experineces.

For me, the distinction is important because it seems self-evident (admittedly as a hedonistic consequentialist) that phenomenal consciousness has implications for moral objects whereas non-phenomenal consciousness does not.