Anti-zombies are possible

Consciousness & Mind Modality & Possibility

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Reasons For

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Reason for

1.Anti-zombies are conceivable
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2.Whatever is conceivable is possible
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Reasons Against

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Reason against 1 of 2

1.Conceivability of anti-zombies relies on our ability to coherently imagine phenomenal consciousness as multiply realizable across radically alien physical substrates.
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2.Our conceivability judgments about consciousness are systematically unreliable because we lack third-person access to the physical-phenomenal relationship (Levine's 'explanatory gap').
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3.If conceivability judgments about consciousness are unreliable, they cannot serve as a guide to metaphysical possibility in the anti-zombie case any more than in the zombie case.
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Reason against 2 of 2

1.If anti-zombies are possible, then phenomenal consciousness can be instantiated without the specific physical substrate that actually realizes it in humans (type-B physicalism's core commitment).
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2.Kripkean a posteriori necessities suggest that identity statements like 'pain = C-fiber firing' are, if true, necessarily true—ruling out consciousness without its actual physical realizer.
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3.Therefore, the possibility of anti-zombies presupposes the falsity of the most defensible form of mind-brain identity theory, making the argument question-begging against a well-established physicalist tradition.
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Modality & Possibility Consciousness & Mind

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Anti-zombies are conceivable Conceivability of anti-zombies relies on our ability to coherently imagine pheno...If anti-zombies are possible, then phenomenal consciousness can be instantiated ...If conceivability judgments about consciousness are unreliable, they cannot serv...

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Kripkean a posteriori necessities suggest that identity statements like 'pain = ...Our conceivability judgments about consciousness are systematically unreliable b...Therefore, the possibility of anti-zombies presupposes the falsity of the most d...Whatever is conceivable is possible

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AI-extracted1/3 agreementValid

SEP: zombies

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The anti-zombie argument for physicalism. The conceivability argument — which assumes physicalism entails that zombies are impossible — purports to refute it by showing they are possible. As we saw, the simplest version of this argument goes: (1) zombies are conceivable; (2) whatever is conceivable is possible; (3) therefore zombies are possible. However, ‘anti-zombies’ — duplicates of ourselves made conscious by the purely physical facts (Frankish 2007) — also seem conceivable. So we have a par

Extraction notes

Validity: Extracted via Max plan + API grounding/validity checks