what do you call 300 philosophers in a room?

The annual conference of the Australasian Association of Philosophy was held last week in Melbourne. Amongst the papers delivered was one by Professor Declan Smithies titled 'Do Zombies Have Beliefs?' - abstract

Zombies have no phenomenally conscious states, but beliefs are not phenomenally conscious states. So, do zombies have beliefs? I argue that beliefs are individuated by their relations to phenomenal consciousness and hence that zombies do not have beliefs. The argument relies on a thesis about the epistemic role of consciousness and a thesis about the epistemic individuation of belief. I go on to explore the consequences of this argument for functionalist theories of belief. Here, I distinguish between causal and normative versions of functionalism and I argue that belief is individuated by its normative role, rather than its causal role, in reasoning.

Not surprisingly, that wasn't the only absurd paper presented. What a waste of time - zombies are brain dead. They are dead, just re-animated corpses. Of course, zombies have no beliefs. I could have presented a paper to the conference on this topic in ten seconds without the pop/mock/pseudo intellectualism.

So what would one call 300 philosophers in a room? Pointless. Discuss.