Why I am a non-dualist Zombie

I used to think that what we experience was beyond what could ever be explained by any kind of physical processes.  I mean, how could some electric charges and re-arrangements of molecules in nerve cells mean that I see red to look like *that*?  This problem has been in my mind most of my life, since I was a child.  There had to be something more than the known physical world.  There had to be some extra ingredient.  I never assumed that this was supernatural, just some extra layer over the world that we can investigate and experiment on.  The properties of reality that I *experience* (which I later found in out in my early teens to be called *qualia*) aren't even the kinds of things that could be tested in a laboratory.

This had been on my mind, sometimes a source of major concern, on and off for decades, until I read a book (The Conscious Mind) by one of the strongest supporters of dualism - the philosoper David Chalmers.

In that book, he proposes a hypothetical being - a 'zombie' - which does not experience the internal mental world that we do, but when asked questions about its mental state, gives the same answers that we normal people do.

It took some time before the impact of that proposal hit me.  Then, suddenly, I had a realisation.  If you can't tell by talking to a zombie whether or not it experiences qualia, then what are qualia?  Zombies function perfectly normally in society.  They express emotion, and they have normal reactions to art, to politics, to other people. 

And then it hit me, like a sledgehammer:  I am a zombie!  I say the same things to people as if I did not experience qualia, so what are qualia?  They can't be anything at all.  They have no influence on physical reality, and so can't influence what we say, and what we think.

And so, thanks to one of the greatest supporters of dualism, I abandonded it.

I am Steve, the zombie.