Quote:
Originally Posted by GreyZone
nice try, however:
No life forms other than humans have any connection to this game and No more than 17 humans exist on this island!! That excludes any 18th person. In short, this 18th person X does not exist!! This applies to all games!!!
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A philosophical zombie does not "exist" as a person. A sleeping or mindless human body is a "human life form" but it isn't a person per the definition of a person as a personality or mental state, which it must be to accommodate the existence of Shannon/Kanon.
You're conflating the two statements as meaning the same thing. A sleepwalking philosophical zombie "human life form" can exist and influence the game without being a person, because it lacks a mental state necessary to be counted as a "person!" The use of "life form" is clearly meant to provide a biological distinction, and a key factor of a philosophical zombie is that it is impossible to distinguish a philosophical zombie from oneself on a biological level. The sole difference is that the philosophical zombie has no mental state, merely the
appearance of consciousness.
Alternately,
the sleepwalker is one of the existing characters in the game, but in a non-existing mental state which prevents them from being described as the person bearing their name.
Or perhaps
Shannon and Kanon are the only existences on the island at all, and everyone other than them is a philosophical zombie.