How does one distinguish between a 'conscious being' and a 'philosophical zombie'?

From a functionalist's standpoint, you can't-if it behaves lke a human, it is human. However, if you consider consciousness to be a necessary quality of identity, then you can only differentiate if you find whether the body has consciousness. This is, some believe, an impossible task to accomplish.

For one, what you suggest is that a "philosophical zombie" would be much like if robotics were to improve to the point that robots could communicate and emulate human behavior, but lacked free will, conscious thought, and simply ran on raw logic.

That aside, it is a difficult distinction to make. I believe it fair to say that few humans could even be considered close to philosophical zombie, as they are capable of some form of abstract thought, even if it is limited, untrained, and unused. Unless one were to be so lacking in mind that they were of limited capability in any respect, it would be doubtful that they would be unable to participate in some form of conscious abstract thought.

I believe this only applies if you discount determinism in entirety, as that concept reduces all actions and thoughts to pre-determined reactions, which can be reduced to infinitely complex formulae, theoretically. Conscious thought doesn't even matter there, it's simply a pretense born of some other origin, and which in itself will spawn many other predetermined actions. In a non-deterministic universe, I believe it would take free will to make use of conscious thought beyond programmed logic.

So, what has free will? I do. I'm pretty sure almost all other humans do. Perhaps the more intelligent animals do, particularly when they act quite contrary to their own interests and instincts. Then again, it's pretty hard to measure that.

A philisophical zombie is something some people would like to reduce humans, and organisms in general to. A mixture of chemicals and substances that reacts a certain way to circumstances.

I don't believe that, and don't believe such a thing is possible.

But the way you would distinguish between the two would be to try to have a philisophical conversation, a romantic experience, an artistic epiphany, or something of the sort with it.

by the way he works out through a situation.

What's a philisophical zombie?