The Second Amendment issue aside, Jim Zumbo’s name has been firing off secondary explosions in my head.

I’ve been reading up on Consciousness Studies this past few weeks, by way of background to a review I’m doing of Doug Hofstadter’s forthcoming book. Fascinating stuff, with some interesting results coming in from neurophysiology, evolutionary biology, zoology, and so on. Did you know that there is (since 1994) a Journal of Consciousness Studies? It’s a hot field.

Not the least fascinating thing about Consciousness Studies is the jargon that’s been built up: the Cartesian Theater and the Chinese room, the Turing Test and the Phi Phenomenon, that sort of thing. What particularly came to mind reading about Jim Zumbo’s unfortunate experience was the zimbo.

You start with a zombie, which is a person who can do everything you and I can do–talk, act–but has no self-aware consciousness. Everything’s there except the spark, the elan mental (more jargon).

Then you enhance your zombie slightly so that his thoughts can observe and monitor themselves–allow “recursive self-representation”–, but there is still no central clearing-house–no “I.” That’s a zimbo. I think I’ve got that right. It’s all covered at length in Daniel Dennett’s 1991 book Consciousness Explained (which, for my money, left rather a lot UN-explained…) The issues to be explored here are: Can zombies exist (consensus answer: no) and, Can zimbos exist (consensus answer: well…)

Whether or not zimbos can exist, the past few days have left us in no doubt whatever that bimbos can. As H.P. Lovecraft would have said: They exist, and they walk among us.