Philosophy Salon with The Paradox Lab: Philosophical Zombies

A Philosophical Zombie is a hypothetical being that looks and acts just like a human, but has no conscious sensations, feelings, or emotions. It’s completely dark inside. Could such a being exist? If you discovered that your best friend was this kind of zombie, would you still care about them and treat them the same?

Led by Dr. Iris Oved, the founder and director of The Paradox Lab —a nonprofit organization in San Francisco that brings the joys and tools of philosophical inquiry and critical thinking to kids and kids at heart. You can access her resources and join her mission at www.ParadoxLab.org and on Instagram @theparadoxlab.

Dr. Oved is also an active researcher in philosophy and cognitive science, with a focus on learning in humans and machines. She has found that explanation plays a key role in how we learn to break up the world into kinds and categories, like CAT, WATER, TEACHER, and BOOK. She tests this idea by building computational models of toddlers that learn such categories by playing with the objects around them.