APA Dictionary of Psychology

in philosophy of mind, any of various arguments that focus on the question of how one might distinguish conscious beings (humans) from hypothetical, nonconscious beings (zombies) that are capable of performing all the functions of conscious beings. By asserting that a zombielike organism could behave as if it were conscious but still lack experience containing qualia, these arguments attempt to distinguish consciousness as subjective experience from consciousness as evidenced from observable behavior in the physical world; they are usually deployed against the assumptions of behaviorism and other forms of physicalism. See also zimbo.