Will they eat my brain?

DRAFT a later version will be contributed to Wikipedia

We believe in fun.

This is not just an empty statement. Wikipedians follow their passions when choosing which articles to edit. If we want to develop a sustainable model for visual contribution we need to be true to our desires. Initially I was simply searching for articles I wanted to illustrate… From electric chairs to witch hunts these fun morbid subjects felt like a bit of a stretch… until it hit me… zombies!

As I was browsing some of the undead Wikipedia articles I came across the term Philosophical Zombie. Apparently it is a thought experiment used in philosophy in which this person (the P-zombie) acts like a human externally though they don’t share the same feelings or vulnerabilities as humans do. In a way they are acting out.

It seems like artists resist to give in to collective culture in fear it would eat their brains, devour their subjectivity, steal their soul (funny, the same accusations were against photography). Will we be acting as philosophical zombies within this collective process? Or will we maintain our humanity and show that those Wikipedians down there don’t bite (hard).

*The illustration for the “Philosophical Zombie” will follow soon in the meanwhile enjoy “Chicken Girl”, an earlier zombie themed painting.

Watercolor on paper

P: Philosophical zombie
A philosophical zombie or p-zombie is a hypothetical being that is indistinguishable from a normal human being except that it lacks conscious experience, qualia, or sentience. When a zombie is poked with a sharp object, for example, it does not feel any pain. While it behaves exactly as if it does feel pain (it may say "ouch" and recoil from the stimulus, or tell us that it is in intense pain), it does not actually have the experience of pain as a putative 'normal' person does. The notion of a philosophical zombie is mainly a thought experiment used in arguments (often called zombie arguments) in the philosophy of mind, particularly arguments against forms of physicalism, such as materialism and behaviorism.
wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_zombie
Dec 23rd, 2010
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