zwol | Writer's Block: The Undead

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I see two questions packed in here. Is a zombie capable of suffering, and if so, is being a zombie intrinsically unpleasant enough to cause suffering (independent of any suffering caused by e.g. being methodically exterminated by the still-living, if any)?

With the standard horror movie zombie, it seems pretty standard that there's no continuity of consciousness — in other words, the person the zombie used to be really is dead; something else is running the body. One does sometimes see the emotional horror of the situation cranked up by not breaking continuity of consciousness — it's still the same person in there somewhere but they've not got control of their own actions. System Shock 2 did something like this, I think. But even when it is something else running the body, that something else generally displays dog-level intelligence, and dogs clearly are capable of suffering, so I think we have to assume that so are these zombies. Being a horror movie zombie also seems pretty darn unpleasant as an intrinsic thing, between the cravings for living flesh, the extremely impaired range of actions, and the deteriorating body. In some cases, though, it seems like the controlling intelligence doesn't care; for instance, when it's got some other, less limited body and is just teleoperating the zombie horde in order to further its evil plans.

Then there are voodoo zombies, who are not dead, and are the same person as ever, but whose will has been suppressed by evil magic, so they must do the bidding of the sorcerer. This seems like it would automatically involve suffering, except that the evil magic might shut down emotional response as well as will. Whether it does so seems to me to depend mostly on what the sorcerer wants out of their zombies; continual suffering would almost certainly make one's zombie minions less efficient at doing one's bidding, but would also make the condition a more satisfying fate for one's enemies. (One is an evil sorcerer; one therefore wishes to see one's enemies suffer.)

And then there are P-zombies, who by definition experience nothing, and so do not suffer. They're unfalsifiable, so I shall not consider them any further.