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You're listening to the partially examined life episode 222 Part 2.

We've been discussing dead blocks troubles with functionalism 1978

in David Chalmers 1993 essay, absent quality of fading quality of dancing

quality. We were just trying to figure out whether

Chalmers response to blocks absent quality argument made any sense

his response of fading quality. The idea that according to the functionalist

you could have me and then a robot version of me where all the parts are

swapped out for silicon and according to the absent quality argument

that's at least positive that these two are functionally equivalent but yet

one me has full on qualia the not me does not you could imagine

swapping out piece by piece to go from one to the other and what would be the

status of the in between what would be like to be in between and you

just express that some reservations about that making sense.

Right you pose this hypothetical functional equivalent thing that doesn't have

qualia. Chalmers says okay well if I start trying to replace parts of the

functionally equivalent thing with real parts of you or vice versa at what point do I lose the

qualia if I'm changing you or what point do I gain it if I'm changing the simulacrum.

Think of it as a continuum and then the question is if that is intended to be a thought

experiment that counters the intuition that you could conceive of something that's

...