Types of zombies. Zombie Analogues. Not all bite victims are Zombies. Unless infected by some kind of mutagenic pathogen, and subsequently become deceased and re-animated with the hunger for the living, a human cannot be termed a Zombie. Examples of this are in the movies 28 Days Later and REC. In 28 Days Later, the victims are infected with a 'Rage virus'. In REC, the virus is likened to Rabies, only with symptoms that show in minutes or hours instead of months. In both cases, the victim will 'turn' while still alive, and while the virus infects the brain and inhabits the blood, will not physically change the body. While losing that which makes them human, they become filled with rage and will attack any living being while recognizing its own. A key fact to remember is that such infected subjects can be killed by any normal means used to kill an uninfected human and will even starve to death without their instinct to feed for sustenance.
Types of zombies. Voodoo zombies. Origin: Haïtian beliefs and supersitions The word 'voodoo' (vodou, vaudou, vodoun or vodun) derives from the word 'vodu' in the Fon language of Dahomey meaning 'spirit' or 'god’ and describes the complex religious and belief system that exist in Haïti, an island of the West Indies. The foundations of voodoo were established in the seventeenth century by slaves captured primarily from the kingdom of Dahomey, which occupied parts of today's Togo, Benin, and Nigeria in West Africa, it combines features of African religion with the Roman Catholicism of the European settlers. Today over 60 million people practice voodoo worldwide. Religious similar to voodoo can be found in South America where they are called Umbanda, Quimbanda or Candomble.
It is widely practiced in Benin, Haiti and within many black communities of the large cities in North America. The voodoo religion involves belief in a supreme god (bon dieu) and a host of spirits called loa which are often identified with Catholic saints. Hollywood zombies. Modern zombies or Hollywood zombies, as portrayed in books, films, games, and haunted attractions, are quite different from both voodoo zombies and those of folklore. Modern zombies are typically depicted in popular culture as mindless, unfeeling monsters with a hunger for human flesh. Modern zombies come in mobs and waves, seeking either flesh to eat or people to kill or infect. They are generally incapable of communication and show no signs of personality or rationality. Their collective and almost absurd presence (since they are dead) is closely tied to the idea of a Zombie Apocalypse the collapse of civilization caused by a vast plague of undead.
The ideas are now so strongly linked that zombies are rarely depicted within any other contex. Viral/Infection Zombies These zombies usually originate from some kind of virus or ailment. Fast moving zombies In some movies, zombies are portrayed as fast moving super-predators who seem to take on animal-like movements and hunting techniques. Philosophical zombies. A philosophical zombie, p-zombie or p-zed is a hypothetical being that is indistinguishable from a normal human being except that it lacks conscious experience or subjective consciousness, qualia, or sentience.
In this sense zombies are mere automaton, completely 'mindless' in the conscious sense. If you shoot a p-zombie, he cries out as if he feels pain, but he really doesn’t, because there is no consciousness there to do the feeling. Origin: philosophy. They are found in philosophical articles on consciousness. 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.
A behavioral zombie is behaviorally identical with humans and yet has no conscious experience. However, the zombie argument against physicalism in general was most famously developed in detail by David Chalmers in The Conscious Mind (1996). Functional zombies.