A philosophical zombie (or " p-zombie ") is a being in a thought experiment in the philosophy of mind that is physically identical to a normal human being but does not have conscious experience .
150-469: For example, if a philosophical zombie were poked with a sharp object, it would not feel any pain, but it would react exactly the way any conscious human would. Philosophical zombie arguments are used against forms of physicalism and in defense of the hard problem of consciousness , which is the problem of accounting in physical terms for subjective, intrinsic, first-person, what-it's-like-ness experiences. Proponents of philosophical zombie arguments, such as
300-448: A necessary but not sufficient condition for physicalism. Additional objections have been raised to the above definitions provided for supervenience physicalism: one could imagine an alternative world that differs only by the presence of a single ammonium molecule (or physical property), and yet based on (1), such a world might be completely different in terms of its distribution of mental properties. Furthermore, there are disputes about
450-494: A "via negativa" characterization of the physical. The gist of the via negativa strategy is to understand the physical in terms of what it is not: the mental. In other words, the via negativa strategy understands the physical as "the non-mental". An objection to the via negativa conception of the physical is that (like the object-based conception) it lacks the resources to distinguish neutral monism (or panprotopsychism) from physicalism. Further, Restrepo argues that this conception of
600-596: A body (it could be that he was dreaming of it or that it was an illusion created by an evil demon), but he could not doubt whether he had a mind. This gave Descartes his first inkling that the mind and body were different things. The mind, according to Descartes, was a "thinking thing" ( Latin : res cogitans ), and an immaterial substance . This "thing" was the essence of himself, that which doubts, believes, hopes, and thinks. The body, "the thing that exists" ( res extensa ), regulates normal bodily functions (such as heart and liver). According to Descartes, animals only had
750-515: A body and not a soul (which distinguishes humans from animals). The distinction between mind and body is argued in Meditation VI as follows: I have a clear and distinct idea of myself as a thinking, non-extended thing, and a clear and distinct idea of body as an extended and non-thinking thing. Whatever I can conceive clearly and distinctly, God can so create. The central claim of what is often called Cartesian dualism , in honor of Descartes,
900-426: A brain structurally identical to Davidson's and will thus presumably behave exactly like Davidson. He will return to Davidson's office and write the same essays he would have written, recognize all of his friends and family, and so forth. John Searle 's Chinese room argument deals with the nature of artificial intelligence: it imagines a room in which a conversation is held by means of written Chinese characters that
1050-441: A child's touching a hot stove (physical event) which causes him to feel pain (mental event) and then yell and scream (physical event) which causes his parents to experience a sensation of fear and protectiveness (mental event) and so on. Epiphenomenalism states that all mental events are caused by a physical event and have no physical consequences, and that one or more mental states do not have any influence on physical states. So,
1200-511: A conscious system, yet not be conscious. Physicalism In philosophy , physicalism is the view that "everything is physical ", that there is "nothing over and above" the physical, or that everything supervenes on the physical. It is opposed to idealism , according to which the world arises from mind. Physicalism is a form of ontological monism —a "one substance " view of the nature of reality , unlike "two-substance" ( mind–body dualism ) or "many-substance" ( pluralism ) views. Both
1350-403: A different challenge: the "blockers problem". Imagine a world w 1 where the relation between the physical and non-physical properties at this world is slightly weaker than metaphysical necessitation, such that a certain kind of non-physical intervener—"a blocker"—could, were it to exist at w 1 , prevent the non-physical properties in w 1 from being instantiated by the instantiation of
1500-429: A false belief. Lynch thinks denying the possibility of zombies is more reasonable than questioning our own consciousness. Furthermore, when the concept of self is deemed to correspond to physical reality alone (reductive physicalism), philosophical zombies are denied by definition. When a distinction is made in one's mind between a hypothetical zombie and oneself (assumed not to be a zombie), the hypothetical zombie, being
1650-543: A high priority for centuries, and a university doctorate in theology generally included the entire science curriculum as a prerequisite. This doctrine is not universally accepted by Christians today. Many believe that one's immortal soul goes directly to Heaven upon death of the body. In his Meditations on First Philosophy , René Descartes embarked upon a quest in which he called all his previous beliefs into doubt, in order to find out what he could be certain of. In so doing, he discovered that he could doubt whether he had
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#17327763526091800-419: A long time, but I am quite used to it, now that I know that there is no alternative short of 'substance dualism'... Real physicalism, realistic physicalism, entails panpsychism, and whatever problems are raised by this fact are problems a real physicalist must face. Christian List argues that Benj Hellie's vertiginous question , i.e. why a given individual exists as that individual and not as someone else, and
1950-444: A lot against there being such radical heterogeneity at the very bottom of things. In fact (to disagree with my earlier self) it is hard to see why this view would not count as a form of dualism... So now I can say that physicalism, i.e. real physicalism, entails panexperientialism or panpsychism. All physical stuff is energy, in one form or another, and all energy, I trow, is an experience-involving phenomenon. This sounded crazy to me for
2100-477: A lot alike, but he thinks the comparison is misleading. Epiphenomenalism is a form of property dualism, in which it is asserted that one or more mental states do not have any influence on physical states (both ontologically and causally irreducible). It asserts that while material causes give rise to sensations , volitions , ideas , etc., such mental phenomena themselves cause nothing further: they are causal dead-ends. This can be contrasted to interactionism , on
2250-413: A monistic framework. According to a 2020 survey, physicalism is the majority view among philosophers, but there also remains significant opposition to physicalism. Outside of philosophy, physicalism can also refer to the preference or viewpoint that physics should be considered the best and only way to render truth about the world or reality. The word "physicalism" was introduced into philosophy in
2400-413: A new fundamental category of properties described by new laws of supervenience ; the challenge being analogous to that of understanding electricity based on the mechanistic and Newtonian models of materialism prior to Maxwell's equations . A similar defense comes from Australian philosopher Frank Jackson (born 1943) who revived the theory of epiphenomenalism which argues that mental states do not play
2550-446: A normal human being but lacking conscious experiences is therefore not logically possible according to the behaviorist, so an appeal to the logical possibility of a p-zombie furnishes an argument that behaviorism is false. Proponents of zombie arguments generally accept that p-zombies are not physically possible , while opponents necessarily deny that they are metaphysically or, in some cases, even logically possible. The unifying idea of
2700-472: A possible solution to the interaction problem. Paul Chutikorn has commented that "adopting Aquinas' view of substance will provide a solution to the problem by avoiding altogether the position that man is made up of dual substances. Rather, Aquinas shows us that we can acknowledge a duality within substance itself, while maintaining its inherent substantial unity". Aristotelian hylomorphic dualism also has many similarities with Thomistic dualism. Michael Egnor
2850-533: A priori from PTI and a non-deferential grasp of the concepts "water" and "earth" et cetera . If this is correct, then we should (arguably) conclude that conceivability does not entail metaphysical possibility, and P2) of the conceivability argument against physicalism is false. Galen Strawson 's realistic physicalism or realistic monism entails panpsychism – or at least micropsychism . Strawson argues that "many—perhaps most—of those who call themselves physicalists or materialists [are mistakenly] committed to
3000-402: A priori physicalism and to physicalism in general is the "conceivability argument", or zombie argument . At a rough approximation, the conceivability argument runs as follows: P1 ) PTI and not Q (where "Q" stands for the conjunction of all truths about consciousness, or some "generic" truth about someone being "phenomenally" conscious [i.e., there is "something it is like" to be a person x] )
3150-438: A priori physicalists hold that PTI → N is a priori, they are committed to denying P1) of the conceivability argument. The a priori physicalist, then, must argue that PTI and not Q, on ideal rational reflection, is incoherent or contradictory . A posteriori physicalists, on the other hand, generally accept P1) but deny P2)--the move from "conceivability to metaphysical possibility". Some a posteriori physicalists think that unlike
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#17327763526093300-418: A reason to reject his principle. Frank Jackson 's knowledge argument is based around a hypothetical scientist, Mary, who is forced to view the world through a black-and-white television screen in a black and white room. Mary is a brilliant scientist who knows everything about the neurobiology of vision. Even though she knows everything about color and its perception (e.g. what combination of wavelengths makes
3450-470: A role in physical states. Jackson argues that there are two kinds of dualism: He claims that functions of the mind/soul are internal, very private experiences that are not accessible to observation by others, and therefore not accessible by science (at least not yet). We can know everything, for example, about a bat's facility for echolocation, but we will never know how the bat experiences that phenomenon. In 2018, The Blackwell Companion to Substance Dualism
3600-430: A soul is the hylomorphic form of a viable organism, wherein each level of the hierarchy formally supervenes upon the substance of the preceding level. For Aristotle, the first two souls, based on the body, perish when the living organism dies, whereas there remains an immortal and perpetual intellective part of mind. For Plato, however, the soul was not dependent on the physical body; he believed in metempsychosis ,
3750-535: A subset of the concept of oneself, must entail a deficit in observables (cognitive systems), a "seductive error" contradicting the original definition of a zombie. Thomas Metzinger dismisses the zombie argument as no longer relevant to the consciousness community, calling it a weak argument that covertly relies on the difficulty in defining "consciousness" and an "ill-defined folk psychological umbrella term". According to verificationism , for words to have meaning, their use must be open to public verification. Since it
3900-493: A world at which physicalism is true. Daniel Stoljar objects to this response to the blockers problem on the basis that since the non-physical properties of w 1 aren't instantiated at a world in which there is a blocker, they are not positive properties in Chalmers's sense, and so (3) will count w 1 as a world at which physicalism is true after all. A further problem for supervenience-based formulations of physicalism
4050-448: A world in which there are only physical properties; if physicalism is true at any world it is true at this one. But one can conceive physical duplicates of such a world that are not also duplicates simpliciter of it: worlds that have the same physical properties as our imagined one, but with some additional property or properties. A world might contain " epiphenomenal ectoplasm ", some additional pure experience that does not interact with
4200-512: Is epistemically —as a problem of causal explanation, rather than as a problem of logical or metaphysical possibility. The " explanatory gap "—also called the " hard problem of consciousness "—is the claim that (to date) no one has provided a convincing causal explanation of how and why we are conscious. It is a manifestation of the very same gap that (to date) no one has provided a convincing causal explanation of how and why we are not zombies. The philosophical zombie argument can also be seen through
4350-404: Is true at a possible world w if and only if any world that is a physical duplicate of w is also a duplicate of w simpliciter . Applied to the actual world (our world), (1) is the claim that physicalism is true at the actual world if and only if at every possible world in which the physical properties and laws of the actual world are instantiated, the non-physical (in the ordinary sense of
4500-487: Is type physicalism , or mind-body identity theory. Type physicalism asserts that "for every actually instantiated property F, there is some physical property G such that F=G". Unlike token physicalism, type physicalism entails supervenience physicalism. Another common argument against type physicalism is multiple realizability , the possibility that a psychological process (say) could be instantiated by many different neurological processes (even non-neurological processes, in
4650-411: Is a minimal physical duplicate of w is a duplicate of w simpliciter . Applied in the same way, (2) is the claim that physicalism is true at a possible world w if and only if any world that is a physical duplicate of w (without any further changes) is a duplicate of w without qualification. This allows a world in which there are only physical properties to be counted as one at which physicalism
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4800-416: Is a notable advocate of Aristotelian dualism. Property dualism asserts that an ontological distinction lies in the differences between properties of mind and matter, and that consciousness may be ontologically irreducible to neurobiology and physics. It asserts that when matter is organized in the appropriate way (i.e., in the way that living human bodies are organized), mental properties emerge. Hence, it
4950-466: Is a property which metaphysically (or logically) supervenes on the sort of property required by a complete account of the intrinsic nature of paradigmatic physical objects and their constituents". Physicalists have traditionally opted for a "theory-based" characterization of the physical either in terms of current physics or a future (ideal) physics. These two theory-based conceptions of the physical represent both horns of Hempel's dilemma (named after
5100-420: Is a sub-branch of emergent materialism . What views properly fall under the property dualism rubric is itself a matter of dispute. There are different versions of property dualism, some of which claim independent categorisation. Non-reductive physicalism is a form of property dualism in which it is asserted that all mental states are causally reducible to physical states. One argument for this has been made in
5250-402: Is a type of dualism derived from the views of Thomas Aquinas . Edward Feser has written that: Aristotelians and Thomists (those philosophers whose views are derived from St.Thomas Aquinas) sometimes suggest that their hylomorphic position is no more a version of dualism than it is of materialism. But though their view is not a Cartesian form of dualism, it is clear from a consideration of how
5400-441: Is a very unusual view about the interaction between mental and physical events which was most prominently, and perhaps only truly, advocated by Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz . Like Malebranche and others before him, Leibniz recognized the weaknesses of Descartes' account of causal interaction taking place in a physical location in the brain. Malebranche decided that such a material basis of interaction between material and immaterial
5550-404: Is an ineliminable part of the enterprise of describing, explaining, and understanding human mental states and behavior. For example, Davidson subscribes to anomalous monism , according to which there can be no strict psychophysical laws which connect mental and physical events under their descriptions as mental and physical events. However, all mental events also have physical descriptions. It
5700-452: Is assumed that we can talk about our qualia, the existence of zombies is impossible. Artificial intelligence researcher Marvin Minsky saw the argument as circular. The proposition of the possibility of something physically identical to a human but without subjective experience assumes that the physical characteristics of humans are not what produces those experiences, which is exactly what
5850-440: Is based on the requirement that one theory (mental or physical) be logically derivable from a second. The combination of reductionism and physicalism is usually called reductive physicalism in the philosophy of mind. The opposite view is non-reductive physicalism. Reductive physicalism is the view that mental states are both nothing over and above physical states and reducible to physical states. One version of reductive physicalism
6000-441: Is conceivable (i.e., it is not knowable a priori that PTI and not Q is false). P2 ) If PTI and not Q is conceivable, then PTI and not Q is metaphysically possible. P3 ) If PTI and not Q is metaphysically possible then physicalism is false. C ) Physicalism is false. Here proposition P3 is a direct application of the supervenience of consciousness, and hence of any supervenience-based version of physicalism: If PTI and not Q
6150-527: Is contrasted with various kinds of monism . Substance dualism is contrasted with all forms of materialism , but property dualism may be considered a form of non-reductive physicalism . Ontological dualism makes dual commitments about the nature of existence as it relates to mind and matter, and can be divided into three different types: Substance dualism asserts that mind and matter are fundamentally distinct kinds of foundations. There are different types of substance dualism. Most substance dualists hold
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6300-417: Is distinct from substance dualism as it holds the view that the immaterial (form) and material (matter) are not distinct substances and only share an efficient causality. Thomistic scholars such as Paul Chutikorn and Edward Feser have written that Aquinas was not a substance dualist. Edward Feser who has defended hylomorphic dualism has suggested that it has advantages over substance dualism such as offering
6450-440: Is enough to refute physicalism. Such arguments have been criticized by many philosophers. Some physicalists, such as Daniel Dennett , argue that philosophical zombies are logically incoherent and thus impossible, or that all humans are philosophical zombies; others, such as Christopher Hill , argue that philosophical zombies are coherent but metaphysically impossible. Philosophical zombies are associated with David Chalmers, but it
6600-399: Is in terms of the latter that such events can be connected in law-like relations with other physical events. Mental predicates are irreducibly different in character (rational, holistic, and necessary) from physical predicates (contingent, atomic, and causal). This part is about causation between properties and states of the thing under study, not its substances or predicates. Here a state is
6750-426: Is logically possible is also, in the sense relevant here, metaphysically possible. Another response is the denial of the idea that qualia and related phenomenal notions of the mind are in the first place coherent concepts. Daniel Dennett and others argue that while consciousness and subjective experience exist in some sense, they are not as the zombie argument proponent claims. The experience of pain, for example,
6900-401: Is metaphysically possible, which is all the argument requires. Chalmers writes: "Zombies are probably not naturally possible: they probably cannot exist in our world, with its laws of nature." The outline structure of Chalmers's version of the zombie argument is as follows: The above is a strong formulation of the zombie argument. There are other formulations of zombie-type arguments that follow
7050-514: Is most easily defined as the negation of predicate monism . Predicate monism can be characterized as the view subscribed to by eliminative materialists , who maintain that such intentional predicates as believe , desire , think , feel , etc., will eventually be eliminated from both the language of science and from ordinary language because the entities to which they refer do not exist. Predicate dualists believe that so-called " folk psychology ," with all of its propositional attitude ascriptions,
7200-411: Is neither a man nor a human person. The intellectual soul by itself is not a human person (i.e., an individual supposit of a rational nature). Hence, Aquinas held that "soul of St. Peter pray for us" would be more appropriate than "St. Peter pray for us", because all things connected with his person, including memories, ended with his corporeal life. The Catholic doctrine of the resurrection of
7350-475: Is no overdetermination in the explanation for P2 . The idea that even if the animal were conscious nothing would be added to the production of behavior, even in animals of the human type, was first voiced by La Mettrie (1745), and then by Cabanis (1802), and was further explicated by Hodgson (1870) and Huxley (1874). Jackson gave a subjective argument for epiphenomenalism, but later rejected it and embraced physicalism . Psychophysical parallelism
7500-482: Is non-mentally-and-non-biologically identifiable as one of the things that interact causally with certain particles (coincident with the pineal gland). The Platonic number eight is non-mentally-and-non-biologically identifiable as the number of planets orbiting the Sun". Adopting a supervenience -based account of the physical, the definition of physicalism as "all properties are physical" can be reduced to: (1) Physicalism
7650-491: Is non-physical. Therefore, consciousness is non-physical. Galen Strawson argues that it is not possible to establish the conceivability of zombies, so the argument, lacking its first premise, can never get going. Chalmers has argued that zombies are conceivable, saying, "it certainly seems that a coherent situation is described; I can discern no contradiction in the description." Many physicalist philosophers have argued that this scenario eliminates itself by its description ;
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#17327763526097800-401: Is not reliable here. Yablo says he is "braced for the information that is going to make zombies inconceivable, even though I have no real idea what form the information is going to take." The zombie argument is difficult to assess because it brings to light fundamental disagreements about the method and scope of philosophy itself and the nature and abilities of conceptual analysis. Proponents of
7950-516: Is not something that can be stripped off a person's mental life without bringing about any behavioral or physiological differences. Dennett believes that consciousness is a complex series of functions and ideas. If we all can have these experiences the idea of the p-zombie is meaningless. Dennett argues that "when philosophers claim that zombies are conceivable, they invariably underestimate the task of conception (or imagination), and end up imagining something that violates their own definition". He coined
8100-491: Is one of the relevant facts about our world for determining whether a possible zombie world is accessible from our world. Therefore, asking whether zombies are metaphysically possible in our world is equivalent to asking whether physicalism is true in our world. Stephen Yablo 's (1998) response is to provide an error theory to account for the intuition that zombies are possible. Notions of what counts as physical and as physically possible change over time so conceptual analysis
8250-433: Is one that "if instantiated in a world W, is also instantiated by the corresponding individual in all worlds that contain W as a proper part." Following this suggestion, we can then formulate physicalism as follows: (3) Physicalism is true at a possible world w if and only if any world that is a physical duplicate of w is a positive duplicate of w . (3) seems able to handle both the epiphenomenal ectoplasm problem and
8400-471: Is physical if and only if it either is the sort of property that physical theory tells us about or else is a property which metaphysically (or logically) supervenes on the sort of property that physical theory tells us about". Likewise, the object-based conception claims that "a property is physical if and only if: it either is the sort of property required by a complete account of the intrinsic nature of paradigmatic physical objects and their constituents or else
8550-445: Is physical, and that everything physical is constituted out of physical ultimates, and that experience is part of concrete reality, it seems the only reasonable position, more than just an 'inference to the best explanation'... Micropsychism is not yet panpsychism, for as things stand realistic physicalists can conjecture that only some types of ultimates are intrinsically experiential. But they must allow that panpsychism may be true, and
8700-420: Is possible they exist, so dualism is false. Given the symmetry between the zombie and zoombie arguments, we cannot arbitrate the physicalism/dualism question a priori . Similarly, Gualtiero Piccinini argues that the zombie conceivability argument is circular. Piccinini questions whether the possible worlds where zombies exist are accessible from our world. If physicalism is true in our world, then physicalism
8850-416: Is possible, there is some possible world where it is true. This world differs from [the relevant indexing on] our world, where PTIQ is true. But the other world is a minimal physical duplicate of our world, because PT is true there. So there is a possible world which is a minimal physical duplicate of our world, but not a full duplicate; this contradicts the definition of physicalism that we saw above. Since
9000-434: Is some physical particular y such that x = y". It is intended to capture the idea of "physical mechanisms". Token physicalism is compatible with property dualism , in which all substances are "physical", but physical objects may have mental properties as well as physical properties. Token physicalism is not however equivalent to supervenience physicalism. First, token physicalism does not imply supervenience physicalism because
9150-419: Is sufficient for the consequent to be knowable a priori. An "a posteriori physicalist", on the other hand, will reject the claim that PTI → N is knowable a priori. Rather, they would hold that the inference from PTI to N is justified by metaphysical considerations that in turn can be derived from experience. So the claim then is that "PTI and not N" is metaphysically impossible. One commonly issued challenge to
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#17327763526099300-426: Is that the immaterial mind and the material body, while being ontologically distinct substances, causally interact. This is an idea that continues to feature prominently in many non-European philosophies. Mental events cause physical events, and vice versa. But this leads to a substantial problem for Cartesian dualism: How can an immaterial mind cause anything in a material body, and vice versa? This has often been called
9450-437: Is the so-called "necessary beings problem". A necessary being in this context is a non-physical being who exists in all possible worlds (for example, what theists call God ). A necessary being is compatible with all the definitions provided, because it is supervenient on everything; yet it is usually taken to contradict the notion that everything is physical. So any supervenience-based formulation of physicalism will at best state
9600-506: Is therefore compatible with multiple realizability . From the notion of supervenience, it can be seen that, assuming that mental, social, and biological properties supervene on physical properties, two hypothetical worlds cannot be identical in their physical properties but differ in their mental, social or biological properties. Two common approaches to defining "physicalism" are the theory-based and object-based approaches. The theory-based conception of physicalism proposes that "a property
9750-409: Is true, since worlds in which there is some extra stuff are not "minimal" physical duplicates of such a world, nor are they minimal physical duplicates of worlds that contain some non-physical properties that are metaphysically necessitated by the physical. But while (2) solves the problem of worlds at which there is some extra stuff (sometimes called the "epiphenomenal ectoplasm problem" ), it faces
9900-487: Is true. A natural question for physicalists, then, is whether the truth of physicalism is deducible a priori from the nature of the physical world (i.e., the inference is justified independently of experience, even though the nature of the physical world can itself only be determined through experience) or can only be deduced a posteriori (i.e., the justification of the inference itself is dependent upon experience). So-called "a priori physicalists" hold that from knowledge of
10050-467: The conjunction of all physical truths, a totality or that's-all truth (to rule out non-physical epiphenomena, and enforce the closure of the physical world), and some primitive indexical truths such as "I am A" and "now is B", the truth of physicalism is knowable a priori. Let "P" stand for the conjunction of all physical truths and laws, "T" for a that's-all truth, "I" for the indexical "centering" truths, and "N" for any [presumably non-physical] truth at
10200-435: The mind–body problem . Aristotle shared Plato 's view of multiple souls and further elaborated a hierarchical arrangement, corresponding to the distinctive functions of plants, animals, and humans: a nutritive soul of growth and metabolism that all three share; a perceptive soul of pain, pleasure, and desire that only humans and other animals share; and the faculty of reason that is unique to humans only. In this view,
10350-443: The "problem of interactionism." Descartes himself struggled to come up with a feasible answer to this problem. In his letter to Elisabeth of Bohemia, Princess Palatine , he suggested that spirits interacted with the body through the pineal gland , a small gland in the centre of the brain , between the two hemispheres . The term Cartesian dualism is also often associated with this more specific notion of causal interaction through
10500-591: The 17th century reinforced the belief that the scientific method was the unique way of knowledge. Bodies were seen as biological organisms to be studied in their constituent parts (materialism) by means of anatomy , physiology , biochemistry and physics (reductionism). Mind–body dualism remained the biomedical paradigm and model for the following three centuries. Emergent dualism is a type of substance dualism that has been defended by William Hasker and Dean Zimmerman . Emergent dualism asserts that mental substances come into existence when physical systems such as
10650-430: The 1930s by Otto Neurath and Rudolf Carnap . The use of "physical" in physicalism is a philosophical concept and can be distinguished from alternative definitions found in the literature (e.g., Karl Popper defined a physical proposition as one that can at least in theory be denied by observation ). A "physical property", in this context, may be a metaphysical or logical combination of properties which are physical in
10800-479: The 1970s by Thomas Nagel (1970; 1974) and Robert Kirk (1974), but the general argument was most famously developed in detail by David Chalmers in The Conscious Mind (1996). According to Chalmers, one can coherently conceive of an entire zombie world, a world physically indistinguishable from this one but entirely lacking conscious experience. Since such a world is conceivable, Chalmers claims, it
10950-404: The actual world obtains. The general argument goes as follows. Q can be false in a possible world if any of the following obtains: (1) there exists at least one invert relative to the actual world; (2) there is at least one absent quale relative to the actual world; (3) all actually conscious beings are p-zombies (all actual qualia are absent qualia). Another way to construe the zombie hypothesis
11100-413: The actual world. We can then, using the material conditional "→", represent a priori physicalism as the thesis that PTI → N is knowable a priori. An important wrinkle here is that the concepts in N must be possessed non-deferentially in order for PTI → N to be knowable a priori. The suggestion, then, is that possession of the concepts in the consequent , plus the empirical information in the antecedent
11250-485: The appropriate states of mind and body were only the occasions for such intervention, not real causes. These occasionalists maintained the strong thesis that all causation was directly dependent on God, instead of holding that all causation was natural except for that between mind and body. In addition to already discussed theories of dualism (particularly the Christian and Cartesian models) there are new theories in
11400-430: The argument claims to prove. Richard Brown agrees that the zombie argument is circular. To show this, he proposes "zoombies", which are creatures non physically identical to people in every way and lacking phenomenal consciousness. If zoombies existed, they would refute dualism because they would show that consciousness is indeed physical. Paralleling the argument from Chalmers: It is conceivable that zoombies exist, so it
11550-745: The argument's logical validity include George Bealer . In his 2019 update to the article on philosophical zombies in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy , Kirk summed up the current state of the debate: In spite of the fact that the arguments on both sides have become increasingly sophisticated—or perhaps because of it—they have not become more persuasive. The pull in each direction remains strong. A 2013 survey of professional philosophers by Bourget and Chalmers found that 36% said p-zombies were conceivable but metaphysically impossible; 23% said they were metaphysically possible; 16% said they were inconceivable; and 25% responded "other". In 2020,
11700-434: The basis of a physicalist argument is that the world is defined entirely by physicality; thus, a world that was physically identical would necessarily contain consciousness, as consciousness would necessarily be generated from any set of physical circumstances identical to our own. The zombie argument claims that one can tell by the power of reason that such a "zombie scenario" is metaphysically possible. Chalmers writes, "From
11850-433: The big step has already been taken with micropsychism, the admission that at least some ultimates must be experiential. 'And were the inmost essence of things laid open to us' I think that the idea that some but not all physical ultimates are experiential would look like the idea that some but not all physical ultimates are spatio-temporal (on the assumption that spacetime is indeed a fundamental feature of reality). I would bet
12000-462: The blockers problem. With regard to the former, (3) gives the correct result that a purely physical world is one at which physicalism is true, since worlds in which there is some extra stuff are positive duplicates of a purely physical world. With regard to the latter, (3) appears to have the consequence that worlds in which there are blockers are worlds where positive non-physical properties of w 1 will be absent, hence w 1 will not be counted as
12150-470: The body does not subscribe that, sees body and soul as forming a whole and states that at the second coming , the souls of the departed will be reunited with their bodies as a whole person (substance) and witness to the apocalypse . The thorough consistency between dogma and contemporary science was maintained here in part from a serious attendance to the principle that there can be only one truth. Consistency with science, logic, philosophy, and faith remained
12300-399: The body and soul are different substances. Instead, a person is composed of only one substance the soul whilst the body is considered an ensouled physical structure. J. P. Moreland has commented: Thomistic substance dualism is not a dualism of two separable substances. There is only one substance, though I do not identify it with the body/soul composite. Rather, I take the one substance to be
12450-424: The body, and the body cannot think. Substance dualism is important historically for having given rise to much thought regarding the famous mind–body problem . It is compatible with theologies which claim that immortal souls occupy an independent realm of existence distinct from that of the physical world. Cartesians tend to equate the soul to the mind. The Copernican Revolution and the scientific discoveries of
12600-445: The brain reach a sufficient level of complexity. Hasker defines emergent dualism as: Human persons are not identical to any physical body, but consist of a physical body and a non-physical substantial soul, and (b) the human soul is naturally emergent from and dependent on the structure and function of a living human brain and nervous system. Hasker has argued that emergent dualism is consistent with neuroscientific discoveries showing
12750-474: The case of machine or alien intelligence). For in this case, the neurological terms translating a psychological term must be disjunctions over the possible instantiations, and it is argued that no physical law can use these disjunctions as terms. Type physicalism was the original target of the multiple realizability argument, and it is not clear that token physicalism is susceptible to objections from multiple realizability. There are two versions of emergentism,
12900-577: The cause is present will constitute an "occasion" for the effect to occur as an expression of the aforementioned power. This "occasioning" relation, however, falls short of efficient causation. In this view, it is not the case that the first event causes God to cause the second event: rather, God first caused one and then caused the other, but chose to regulate such behaviour in accordance with general laws of nature. Some of its most prominent historical exponents have been Al-Ghazali , Louis de la Forge , Arnold Geulincx , and Nicolas Malebranche . According to
13050-703: The cave , Plato likens the achievement of philosophical understanding to emerging into the sunlight from a dark cave, where only vague shadows of what lies beyond that prison are cast dimly upon the wall. Plato's forms are non-physical and non-mental. They exist nowhere in time or space, but neither do they exist in the mind, nor in the pleroma of matter; rather, matter is said to "participate" in form (μεθεξις, methexis ). It remained unclear however, even to Aristotle, exactly what Plato intended by that. Aristotle argued at length against many aspects of Plato's forms, creating his own doctrine of hylomorphism wherein form and matter coexist. Ultimately however, Aristotle's aim
13200-498: The conceivability of zombies, proponents of the argument infer their metaphysical possibility" and argues that this inference, while not generally legitimate, is legitimate for phenomenal concepts such as consciousness since we must adhere to "Kripke's insight that for phenomenal concepts, there is no gap between reference-fixers and reference (or between primary and secondary intentions)." That is, for phenomenal concepts, conceivability implies possibility. According to Chalmers, whatever
13350-661: The counterfeit bill example brought forth by Amy Kind. Kind's example centers around a counterfeit 20-dollar bill made to be exactly like an authentic 20-dollar bill. This is logically possible. Yet the counterfeit bill would not have the same value. According to Kind, in her book Philosophy of Mind: The Basics , The Zombie Argument can be put in this standard form from a dualist point of view: Zombies, creatures that are microphysically identical to conscious beings but that lack consciousness entirely, are conceivable. If zombies are conceivable then they are possible. Therefore, zombies are possible. If zombies are possible, then consciousness
13500-417: The defense of dualism. Naturalistic dualism comes from Australian philosopher, David Chalmers (born 1966) who argues there is an explanatory gap between objective and subjective experience that cannot be bridged by reductionism because consciousness is, at least, logically autonomous of the physical properties upon which it supervenes. According to Chalmers, a naturalistic account of property dualism requires
13650-630: The definition of "physical" and the meaning of physicalism have been debated. Physicalism is closely related to materialism , and has evolved from materialism with advancements in the physical sciences in explaining observed phenomena. The terms "physicalism" and "materialism" are often used interchangeably, but can be distinguished on the basis that physics describes more than just matter. Physicalism encompasses matter , but also energy , physical laws , space , time , structure , physical processes, information , state, and forces , among other things, as described by physics and other sciences, all within
13800-406: The dependence of mind on brain. He likens the individual mind to a magnetic field in its qualitative difference from the physical properties that generate it and also in its ability to act on the brain that generates it. Consciousness is said to arise when the brain reaches a certain threshold level of organizational complexity and when properly organized gives rise to the soul. Thomistic dualism
13950-507: The dialogue Phaedo , Plato formulated his famous Theory of Forms as distinct and immaterial substances of which the objects and other phenomena that we perceive in the world are nothing more than mere shadows. In the Phaedo , Plato makes it clear that the Forms are the universalia ante res , i.e. they are ideal universals, by which we are able to understand the world. In his allegory of
14100-512: The existence of first-personal facts, is evidence against physicalist theories of consciousness and against other third-personal metaphysical pictures, including standard versions of dualism. List also argues that the vertiginous question implies a "quadrilemma" for theories of consciousness, where no theory of consciousness can simultaneously respect four initially plausible metaphysical claims – namely, "first-person realism", "non-solipsism", "non-fragmentation", and "one world" – but that any three of
14250-591: The form of anomalous monism expressed by Donald Davidson , where it is argued that mental events are identical to physical events, however, strict law-governed causal relationships cannot describe relations of mental events. Another argument for this has been expressed by John Searle , who is the advocate of a distinctive form of physicalism he calls biological naturalism . His view is that although mental states are ontologically irreducible to physical states, they are causally reducible . He has acknowledged that "to many people" his views and those of property dualists look
14400-408: The former does not rule out the possibility of non-supervenient properties (provided that they are associated only with physical particulars). Second, supervenience physicalism does not imply token physicalism, for the former allows supervenient objects (such as a "nation", or "soul") that are not equal to any physical object. There are multiple versions of reductionism. In the context of physicalism,
14550-460: The four claims are mutually consistent. Mind-body dualism In the philosophy of mind , mind–body dualism denotes either the view that mental phenomena are non-physical , or that the mind and body are distinct and separable. Thus, it encompasses a set of views about the relationship between mind and matter, as well as between subject and object , and is contrasted with other positions, such as physicalism and enactivism , in
14700-405: The human being was a unified composite substance of two substantial principles: form and matter. The soul is the substantial form and so the first actuality of a material organic body with the potentiality for life. While Aquinas defended the unity of human nature as a composite substance constituted by these two inextricable principles of form and matter, he also argued for the incorruptibility of
14850-483: The human soul differs from the souls of plants and animals (at least on the Thomistic variation of hylomorphism) that the view does amount to a kind of dualism: Thomistic dualism or hylomorphic dualism, as it has variously been called. Thomistic substance dualism has been defended by J. P. Moreland and Scott B. Rae . Thomistic substance dualism distinguishes itself from Cartesian substance dualism by denying that
15000-439: The individual properties. The point of this extension is that physicalists usually suppose the existence of various abstract concepts which are non-physical in the ordinary sense of the word; so physicalism cannot be defined in a way that denies the existence of these abstractions. Also, physicalism defined in terms of supervenience does not entail that all properties in the actual world are type identical to physical properties. It
15150-463: The intellectual soul exercises its own per se intellectual operations without employing material faculties, i.e. intellectual operations are immaterial, the intellect itself and the intellectual soul, must likewise be immaterial and so incorruptible. Even though the intellectual soul of man is able to subsist upon the death of the human being, Aquinas does not hold that the human person is able to remain integrated at death. The separated intellectual soul
15300-417: The intellectual soul, in contrast to the corruptibility of the vegetative and sensitive animation of plants and animals. His argument for the subsistence and incorruptibility of the intellectual soul takes its point of departure from the metaphysical principle that operation follows upon being ( agiture sequitur esse ), i.e., the activity of a thing reveals the mode of being and existence it depends upon. Since
15450-403: The late philosopher of science and logical empiricist Carl Gustav Hempel ): an argument against theory-based understandings of the physical. Very roughly, Hempel's dilemma is that if we define the physical by reference to current physics, then physicalism is very likely to be false, as it is very likely (by pessimistic meta-induction ) that much of current physics is false. But if we instead define
15600-487: The mental and the physical. In physicalism, material facts determine all other facts. Since any fact other than that of consciousness may be held to be the same for a p-zombie and for a normal conscious human, it follows that physicalism must hold that p-zombies are either not possible or are the same as normal humans. The zombie argument is a version of general modal arguments against physicalism, such as that of Saul Kripke . Further such arguments were notably advanced in
15750-474: The mental event of deciding to pick up a rock (" M1 ") is caused by the firing of specific neurons in the brain (" P1 "). When the arm and hand move to pick up the rock (" P2 ") this is not caused by the preceding mental event M1 , nor by M1 and P1 together, but only by P1 . The physical causes are in principle reducible to fundamental physics, and therefore mental causes are eliminated using this reductionist explanation. If P1 causes both M1 and P2 , there
15900-425: The migration of the soul to a new physical body. It has been considered a form of reductionism by some philosophers, since it enables the tendency to ignore very big groups of variables by its assumed association with the mind or the body, and not for its real value when it comes to explaining or predicting a studied phenomenon. Dualism is closely associated with the thought of René Descartes (1641), who holds that
16050-464: The mind can literally assume any form being contemplated or experienced, and it was unique in its ability to become a blank slate, having no essential form. As thoughts of earth are not heavy, any more than thoughts of fire are causally efficient, they provide an immaterial complement for the formless mind. The philosophical school of Neoplatonism , most active in Late Antiquity, claimed that
16200-588: The mind is a nonphysical—and therefore, non-spatial—substance. Descartes clearly identified the mind with consciousness and self-awareness and distinguished this from the physical brain as the seat of intelligence . Hence, he was the first documented Western philosopher to formulate the mind–body problem in the form in which it exists today. However, the theory of substance dualism has many advocates in contemporary philosophy such as Richard Swinburne , William Hasker, J. P. Moreland , E. J. Low, Charles Taliaferro , Seyyed Jaaber Mousavirad, and John Foster. Dualism
16350-404: The mind. Physicist Adam Brown has suggested constructing a type of philosophical zombie using counterfactual quantum computation , a technique in which a computer is placed into a superposition of running and not running. If the program being executed is a brain simulation, and if one makes the further assumption that brain simulations are conscious, then the simulation can have the same output as
16500-441: The modal status of physicalism: whether it is a necessary truth or is only true in a world that conforms to certain conditions (i.e. those of physicalism). Closely related to supervenience physicalism is realisation physicalism, the thesis that every instantiated property is either physical or realised by a physical property. Token physicalism is the proposition that "for every actual particular (object, event or process) x, there
16650-421: The ordinary sense. It is common to express the notion of "metaphysical or logical combination of properties" using the notion of supervenience : A property A is said to supervene on a property B if any change in A necessarily implies a change in B . Since any change in a combination of properties must consist of a change in at least one component property, we see that the combination does indeed supervene on
16800-495: The other hand, in which mental causes can produce material effects, and vice versa. Predicate dualism is a view espoused by such non-reductive physicalists as Donald Davidson and Jerry Fodor , who maintain that while there is only one ontological category of substances and properties of substances (usually physical), the predicates that we use to describe mental events cannot be redescribed in terms of (or reduced to) physical predicates of natural languages. Predicate dualism
16950-401: The phenomenal concept strategy is a label for those a posteriori physicalists who attempt to show that it is only the concept of consciousness—not the property —that is in some way "special" or sui generis . Other a posteriori physicalists eschew the phenomenal concept strategy, and argue that even ordinary macroscopic truths such as "water covers 60% of the earth's surface" are not knowable
17100-500: The philosopher David Chalmers , argue that since a philosophical zombie is by definition physically identical to a conscious person, even its logical possibility refutes physicalism. This is because it establishes the existence of conscious experience as a further fact . Philosopher Daniel Stoljar points out that zombies need not be utterly without subjective states, and that even a subtle psychological difference between two physically identical people, such as how coffee tastes to them,
17250-400: The philosophy of Immanuel Kant , there is a distinction between actions done by desire and those performed by reason in liberty ( categorical imperative ). Thus, not all physical actions are caused either by matter alone or by freedom alone. Some actions are purely animal in nature, while others are the result of mind's free action on matter. Hermotimus of Clazomenae (fl. c. 6th century BCE)
17400-560: The physical and the spiritual are both emanations of the One . Neoplatonism exerted a considerable influence on Christianity , as did the philosophy of Aristotle via scholasticism . In the scholastic tradition of Saint Thomas Aquinas , a number of whose doctrines have been incorporated into Roman Catholic dogma , the soul is the substantial form of a human being. Aquinas held the Quaestiones disputate de anima , or 'Disputed questions on
17550-411: The physical components of the world and is not necessitated by them (does not supervene on them). To handle the epiphenomenal ectoplasm problem, (1) can be modified to include a "that's-all" or "totality" clause or be restricted to "positive" properties. Adopting the former suggestion here, we can reformulate (1) as follows: (2) Physicalism is true at a possible world w if and only if any world that
17700-412: The physical in terms of a future (ideal) or completed physics, then physicalism is hopelessly vague or indeterminate. While the force of Hempel's dilemma against theory-based conceptions of the physical remains contested, alternative "non-theory-based" conceptions of the physical have also been proposed. Frank Jackson , for example, has argued in favour of the aforementioned "object-based" conception of
17850-473: The physical makes core non-physical entities of non-physicalist metaphysics, like God, Cartesian souls and abstract numbers, physical, and thus either false or trivially true: "God is non-mentally-and-non-biologically identifiable as the thing that created the universe. Supposing emergentism is true, non-physical emergent properties are non-mentally-and-non-biologically identifiable as non-linear effects of certain arrangements of matter. The immaterial Cartesian soul
18000-518: The physical properties at w 1 . Since (2) rules out worlds that are physical duplicates of w 1 and also contain non-physical interveners by virtue of the minimality, or that's-all clause, (2) gives the (allegedly) incorrect result that physicalism is true at w 1 . One response to this problem is to abandon (2) in favour of the possibility mentioned earlier in which supervenience-based formulations of physicalism are restricted to what David Chalmers calls "positive properties". A positive property
18150-453: The physical. An objection to this proposal, which Jackson noted, is that if it turns out that panpsychism or panprotopsychism is true, then such a non-materialist understanding of the physical gives the counterintuitive result that physicalism is nevertheless also true, since such properties will figure in a complete account of paradigmatic examples of the physical. David Papineau and Barbara Montero have advanced and subsequently defended
18300-411: The pineal gland. However, this explanation was not satisfactory: how can an immaterial mind interact with the physical pineal gland? Because Descartes' was such a difficult theory to defend, some of his disciples, such as Arnold Geulincx and Nicolas Malebranche , proposed a different explanation: That all mind–body interactions required the direct intervention of God . According to these philosophers,
18450-458: The possession of most, if not all other empirical concepts, the possession of consciousness has the special property that the presence of PTI and the absence of consciousness will be conceivable—even though, according to them, it is knowable a posteriori that PTI and not Q is not metaphysically possible. These a posteriori physicalists endorse some version of what Daniel Stoljar (2005) has called "the phenomenal concept strategy ". Roughly speaking,
18600-480: The potential to change. Thus, if given an eternity in which to do so, it will , necessarily, exercise that potential. Part of Aristotle's psychology , the study of the soul, is his account of the ability of humans to reason and the ability of animals to perceive. In both cases, perfect copies of forms are acquired, either by direct impression of environmental forms, in the case of perception, or else by virtue of contemplation, understanding and recollection. He believed
18750-409: The reductions referred to are of a "linguistic" nature, allowing discussions of, say, mental phenomena to be translated into discussions of physics. In one formulation, every concept is analysed in terms of a physical concept. One counterargument to this supposes there may be an additional class of expressions that is non-physical but increases a theory's expressive power. Another version of reductionism
18900-599: The same general form. The premises of the general zombie argument are implied by the premises of all the specific zombie arguments. A general zombie argument is in part motivated by potential disagreements between various anti-physicalist views. For example, an anti-physicalist view can consistently assert that p-zombies are metaphysically impossible but that inverted qualia (such as inverted spectra ) or absent qualia (partial zombiehood) are metaphysically possible. Premises regarding inverted qualia or partial zombiehood can replace premises regarding p-zombies to produce variations of
19050-682: The same survey yielded almost identical results: "inconceivable" 16%, conceivable but impossible 37%, "metaphysically possible" 24%, and "other" 23%. Though philosophical zombies are widely used in thought experiments, the detailed articulation of the concept is not always the same. P-zombies were introduced primarily to argue against specific types of physicalism such as materialism and behaviorism , according to which mental states exist solely as behavior. Belief, desire, thought, consciousness, and so on, are conceptualized as behavior (whether external behavior or internal behavior) or tendencies towards behaviors. A p-zombie behaviorally indistinguishable from
19200-528: The set of all properties of what's being studied. Thus each state describes only one point in time. Interactionism is the view that mental states, such as beliefs and desires, causally interact with physical states. This is a position which is very appealing to common-sense intuitions, notwithstanding the fact that it is very difficult to establish its validity or correctness by way of logical argumentation or empirical proof. It seems to appeal to common-sense because we are surrounded by such everyday occurrences as
19350-442: The sky seem blue), she has never seen color. If Mary were released from this room and experienced color for the first time, would she learn anything new? Jackson initially believed this supported epiphenomenalism (mental phenomena are the effects, but not the causes, of physical phenomena) but later changed his view to physicalism , suggesting that Mary is simply discovering a new way for her brain to represent qualities that exist in
19500-819: The soul', at the Roman studium provinciale of the Dominican Order at Santa Sabina , the forerunner of the Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas, Angelicum during the academic year 1265–1266. By 1268 Aquinas had written at least the first book of the Sententia Libri De anima , Aquinas' commentary on Aristotle's De anima , the translation of which from the Greek was completed by Aquinas' Dominican associate at Viterbo , William of Moerbeke in 1267. Like Aristotle, Aquinas held that
19650-477: The soul, and the body to be an ensouled biological and physical structure that depends on the soul for its existence. Eleonore Stump has suggested that Thomas Aquinas 's views on matter and the soul are difficult to define in contemporary discussion but he would fit the criteria as a non-Cartesian substance dualist. Other terms for Thomistic dualism include hylomorphic dualism or Thomistic hylomorphism which are contrasted with substance dualism. Hylomorphism
19800-525: The strong version and the weak version. Supervenience physicalism has been seen as a strong version of emergentism, in which the subject's psychological experience is considered genuinely novel. Non-reductive physicalism, on the other side, is a weak version of emergentism because it does not need that the subject's psychological experience be novel. The strong version of emergentism is incompatible with physicalism. Since there are novel mental states, mental states are not nothing over and above physical states. But
19950-416: The subject cannot actually read, but is able to manipulate meaningfully using a set of algorithms. Searle holds that a program cannot give a computer a "mind" or "understanding", regardless of how intelligently it may make it behave. Stevan Harnad argues that Searle's critique is really meant to target functionalism and computationalism , and to establish neuroscience as the only correct way to understand
20100-431: The term parallelism is used to describe this view. Occasionalism is a philosophical doctrine about causation which says that created substances cannot be efficient causes of events. Instead, all events are taken to be caused directly by God itself. The theory states that the illusion of efficient causation between mundane events arises out of a constant conjunction that God had instituted, such that every instance where
20250-685: The term "zimboes"—p-zombies that have second-order beliefs —to argue that the idea of a p-zombie is incoherent; "Zimboes think they are conscious, think they have qualia, think they suffer pains—they are just 'wrong' (according to this lamentable tradition), in ways that neither they nor we could ever discover!". Michael Lynch agrees with Dennett, arguing that the zombie conceivability argument forces us to either question whether we actually have consciousness or accept that zombies are not possible. If zombies falsely believe they are conscious, how can we be sure we are not zombies? We may believe we are experiencing conscious mental states when in fact we merely hold
20400-759: The thesis that physical stuff is, in itself, in its fundamental nature, something wholly and utterly non-experiential... even when they are prepared to admit with Eddington that physical stuff has, in itself, 'a nature capable of manifesting itself as mental activity', i.e. as experience or consciousness". Because experiential phenomena allegedly cannot be emergent from wholly non-experiential phenomena, philosophers are driven to substance dualism , property dualism , eliminative materialism and "all other crazy attempts at wholesale mental-to-non-mental reduction". Real physicalists must accept that at least some ultimates are intrinsically experience-involving. They must at least embrace micropsychism . Given that everything concrete
20550-400: The view that conceivability can tell us about possibility, he provides no positive defense of the principle. As an analogy, the generalized continuum hypothesis has no known counterexamples, but this does not mean we must accept it. Indeed, according to Hill and McLaughlin, the fact that Chalmers concludes we have epiphenomenal mental states that do not cause our physical behavior seems to be
20700-423: The view that the mind and body are capable of causally affecting each other, known as interactionism . Notable defenders of substance dualism include John Foster , Stewart Goetz , Richard Swinburne and Charles Taliaferro . Cartesian dualism, most famously defended by René Descartes , argues that there are two kinds of substances: mental and physical. Descartes states that the mental can exist outside of
20850-559: The weak version of emergentism is compatible with physicalism. Emergentism is a very broad view. Some forms of it appear either incompatible with physicalism or equivalent to it (e.g. posteriori physicalism); others appear to merge both dualism and supervenience. Emergentism compatible with dualism claims that mental states and physical states are metaphysically distinct while maintaining the supervenience of mental states on physical states. But this contradicts supervenience physicalism, which denies dualism. Physicalists hold that physicalism
21000-421: The word) properties of the actual world are also instantiated. To borrow a metaphor from Saul Kripke , the truth of physicalism at the actual world entails that once God has instantiated or "fixed" the physical properties and laws of our world, then God's work is done; the rest comes "automatically". But (1) fails to capture even a necessary condition for physicalism to be true at a world w . To see this, imagine
21150-408: The world. Swampman is an imaginary character introduced by Donald Davidson . If Davidson goes hiking in a swamp and is struck and killed by a lightning bolt while nearby another lightning bolt spontaneously rearranges a bunch of molecules so that, entirely by coincidence, they take on exactly the same form that Davidson's body had at the moment of his untimely death, then this being, "Swampman", has
21300-421: The zombie argument may think that conceptual analysis is a central part of (if not the only part of) philosophy and that it certainly can do a great deal of philosophical work. But others, such as Dennett, Paul Churchland and W.V.O. Quine , have fundamentally different views. For this reason, discussion of the zombie argument remains vigorous in philosophy. Some accept modal reasoning in general but deny it in
21450-463: The zombie argument. The metaphysical possibility of a physically indistinguishable world with either inverted qualia or partial zombiehood implies that physical truths do not metaphysically necessitate phenomenal truths. To construct the general form of the zombie argument, take the sentence P to be true if and only if the conjunct of all microphysical truths of our world obtain, and take the sentence Q to be true if some phenomenal truth that obtains in
21600-460: The zombie case. Christopher S. Hill and Brian P. McLaughlin suggest that the zombie thought experiment combines imagination of a "sympathetic" nature (putting oneself in a phenomenal state) and a "perceptual" nature (imagining becoming aware of something in the outside world). Each type of imagination may work on its own but not work when used at the same time. Hence Chalmers's argument need not go through. Moreover, while Chalmers defuses criticisms of
21750-436: The zombie is that of a human completely lacking conscious experience. It is possible to distinguish various zombie subtypes used in different thought experiments as follows: Zombie arguments often support lines of reasoning that aim to show that zombies are metaphysically possible in order to support some form of dualism —in this case the view that the world includes two kinds of substance (or perhaps two kinds of property ):
21900-457: Was a philosopher who first proposed the idea of mind being fundamental in the cause of change. He proposed that physical entities are static, while reason causes the change. Sextus Empiricus places him with Hesiod , Parmenides , and Empedocles , as belonging to the class of philosophers who held a dualistic theory of a material and an active principle being together the origin of the universe. Similar ideas were expounded by Anaxagoras . In
22050-448: Was impossible and therefore formulated his doctrine of occasionalism , stating that the interactions were really caused by the intervention of God on each individual occasion. Leibniz's idea is that God has created a pre-established harmony such that it only seems as if physical and mental events cause, and are caused by, one another. In reality, mental causes only have mental effects and physical causes only have physical effects. Hence,
22200-721: Was philosopher Robert Kirk who first used the term "zombie" in this context, in 1974. Before that, Keith Campbell made a similar argument in his 1970 book Body and Mind , using the term "imitation man". Chalmers further developed and popularized the idea in his work. There has been a lively debate about what the zombie argument shows. Critics who primarily argue that zombies are not conceivable include Daniel Dennett , Nigel J. T. Thomas, David Braddon-Mitchell, and Robert Kirk. Critics who assert mostly that conceivability does not entail possibility include Katalin Balog, Keith Frankish , Christopher Hill , and Stephen Yablo . Critics who question
22350-619: Was published that contains arguments for and against Cartesian dualism, emergent dualism, Thomistic dualism, emergent individualism and nonreductive physicalism. Contributors include Charles Taliaferro , Edward Feser, William Hasker, J. P. Moreland, Richard Swinburne, Lynne Rudder Baker , John W. Cooper and Timothy O'Connor. An important fact is that minds perceive intra-mental states differently from sensory phenomena, and this cognitive difference results in mental and physical phenomena having seemingly disparate properties. The subjective argument holds that these properties are irreconcilable under
22500-413: Was to perfect a theory of forms, rather than to reject it. Although Aristotle strongly rejected the independent existence Plato attributed to forms, his metaphysics do agree with Plato's a priori considerations quite often. For example, Aristotle argues that changeless, eternal substantial form is necessarily immaterial. Because matter provides a stable substratum for a change in form, matter always has
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