---
title: "Philosophical zombie · Library · Simulation Hypothesis"
url: https://simulation-hypothesis.com/library/philosophical-zombie
description: "A philosophical zombie is an imagined being that’s physically and behaviourally identical to a conscious person but has no inner experience."
license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
credit: "Ross Allan Dahl, Simulation Hypothesis (simulation-hypothesis.com)"
---

## Philosophy of mind

# Philosophical zombie

Definition

A philosophical zombie is an imagined being that’s physically and behaviourally identical to a conscious person but has no inner experience. People use it to argue that consciousness doesn’t follow from the physical facts alone.

On this site

The Scripted mind model, or the whole world with the inner-lives switch off.

Role in the model

Setting the Mind model to Scripted fills a scenario with mimics. They say the right words and react the right way from a script, with no experience behind it. They aren’t zombies in the strict sense. A strict zombie is a physical and functional copy of a person, and a script is far simpler. It’s by far the cheapest way to fill a world with people. The Four schools window shows how each school of ethics judges it.

Related

[The hard problem](https://simulation-hypothesis.com/library/hard-problem)[Functionalism](https://simulation-hypothesis.com/library/functionalism)[The problem of other minds](https://simulation-hypothesis.com/library/other-minds)

## The people behind the terms

14 short pages, one per thinker, each with its matching dial. See also the [reading list](https://simulation-hypothesis.com/reading).

[Plato’s cave](https://simulation-hypothesis.com/thinkers/plato)[Zhuangzi’s butterfly](https://simulation-hypothesis.com/thinkers/zhuangzi)[Vasubandhu’s dream](https://simulation-hypothesis.com/thinkers/vasubandhu)[Shankara’s māyā](https://simulation-hypothesis.com/thinkers/shankara)[al-Ghazali’s doubt](https://simulation-hypothesis.com/thinkers/ghazali)[Ibn Arabi’s imagination](https://simulation-hypothesis.com/thinkers/ibn-arabi)[Calderón’s life is a dream](https://simulation-hypothesis.com/thinkers/calderon)[Descartes’ demon](https://simulation-hypothesis.com/thinkers/descartes)[Berkeley’s perceiver](https://simulation-hypothesis.com/thinkers/berkeley)[Borges’ circular ruins](https://simulation-hypothesis.com/thinkers/borges)[Nozick’s experience machine](https://simulation-hypothesis.com/thinkers/nozick)[Putnam’s brain in a vat](https://simulation-hypothesis.com/thinkers/putnam)[Bostrom’s trilemma](https://simulation-hypothesis.com/thinkers/bostrom)[Chalmers: virtual worlds are real](https://simulation-hypothesis.com/thinkers/chalmers)