What is a philosophical zombie, and could one exist?
A philosophical zombie is a proposed duplicate with the same complete physical organization and behavior as a conscious person, but no experience. OPH rejects that possibility within its phenomenal identity: if the relevant organized self-reading is what constitutes experience, preserving that organization preserves experience. A system that merely copies the outward performance need not preserve the organization. The distinction is between realizing the relevant dependencies and displaying a recording of their results. Someone who rejects OPH's identity can continue to ask why the organization should feel like anything. The operational equations do not settle that disagreement alone. The position is therefore an explicit account of what experience is, with consequences that follow from accepting it, rather than a proof from information processing without an experiential premise.
See also Why does it feel like something to be a computation in a brain (qualia)?, Can manipulating symbols ever be understanding? (The Chinese room), Does describing a universe make it exist?
This answer comes from OPH, Observer Patch Holography. OPH is a rigorous, consistent and complete description of the unified, self-creating computational Universe we inhabit. Its consistency is machine-checked: the fixed point at its core is constructed explicitly, and a theory with a model contains no contradiction.
To understand OPH and check every step yourself, start with the free book Reverse Engineering Reality. It builds the theory from the ground up, and the OPH Notebook answers your questions while you read.
read the free bookask the notebookor ask sage:read chapter 40: Does It Feel Like Anything, and What Is Left to Decide?watch a universe make its own particles