Journal of Consciousness Studies -- Controversies in Science and
the Humanities  Conversations with Zombies  Todd C. Moody
Department of Philosophy St. Joseph's University 5600 City
Avenue Philadelphia PA 19119    The `zombie problem' is the
problem of consciousness, stated in a particularly provocative
way. Given _any_ functional description of cognition, as
detailed and complete as one can imagine, it will still make
sense to suppose that there could be insentient beings that
exemplify that description. That is, it is possible that there
could be a behaviourally indiscernible but insentient simulacrum
of a human cognizer: a zombie. This is so because the best
functional description can only map inputs onto behaviours by
means of computations of some sort. That certain computations
are associated with consciousness is at most a contingent fact
about them. The problem is reiterated at the level of any
possible physical description of cognition as well. In this
case, the intervening processes between inputs an