oops double post

[quote1254859448=nougat]
YARN.

Does being plopped into a universe mean instantaneously to conform to its laws? [/quote1254859448]

Good question, I suppose we would have to imagine she would have some sort of exemption or observation bubble. Perhaps this would be assuming too much?

It is rather queer to think of the universe either legislating for or against conscious experience. If Chalmers is right about the hard problem of consciousness we cannot appeal to known physical laws to explain why phenomenal aspect of consciousness exist. At most, science can make the case for P-zombies. If so, we would really have to be speculating that there is some such law that would make it impossible.

[quote1254859448=nougat]
But more to the point, to be able to entertain the question "Am I conscious?" is already to be conscious. As soon as the question is asked it answers itself. If, upon being plopped into a zombieverse, our investigator discovers a world where there is nothing it's like to be her, she only discovers it in the same sense that a fire 'discovers' air and fuel. She may even take copious notes, and the notes may even record her joy or relief in being conscious, but these are evidences, objective realities, that are only for us to consider, since consideration in the phenomenological sense would be impossible for her.
[/quote1254859448]

Right, behaviorally a P-zombie would be (externally) indistinguishable from its qualia-laden counterpart.

Perhaps when she is in the zombie verse she lacks qualia, but does not know it. When she comes back she again has qualitative experience, but would she be aware that she had lacked it in the other universe? We don't see our own blind spots and we don't watch ourselves as we sleep. Perhaps when she reflected on her memory of the trip, her P memories would now "hum" with the colors and hues of qualitative experience.

Cut to future scene: Colonists move to the zombie universe and unwittignly become zombies.

The question of consciousness, of course, is wider than qualia, so even self-reflection would seem to be ruled out.