Organon F

Volume 27, August 2020, Issue 3, Pages 395–410

ISSN 2585-7150 (online) ISSN 1335-0668 (print)

According to the two-dimensional argument against materialism, developed by David Chalmers, the conceivability of zombies entails primary possibility, and the primary possibility of zombies entails further secondary possibility. I argue that the move from the conceivability to primary possibility of zombies is unjustified. Zombies are primarily impossible despite being conceivable if the corresponding phenomenal and microphysical concepts have coinciding primary intensions (refer to the same properties in all possible worlds considered as actual) despite being distinct concepts. But there is no good reason to think that phenomenal and microphysical concepts cannot have coinciding primary intensions despite being distinct concepts. As I argue, this conclusion follows from reflection on special cognitive features of phenomenal concepts.

Conceivability; consciousness; phenomenal concepts; possibility; two-dimensional semantics.

Author

Karol Polcyn

Affiliation

University of Szczecin

Address

Institute of Philosophy and Cognitive Science, University of Szczecin, ul. Krakowska 71-79, 71-017 Szczecin, Poland

E-mail

karol.polcyn@gmail.com

Received

11 July 2019

Accepted

10 February 2020

Published online

1 March 2020

Publishers

Institute of Philosophy of the Slovak Academy of Sciences

Institute of Philosophy of the Czech Academy of Sciences

APA

Polcyn, K. (2020). Does the Conceivability of Zombies Entail Their Possibility? Organon F, 27(3), 395–410. https://doi.org/10.31577/orgf.2020.27306

Chicago

Polcyn, Karol. 2020. "Does the Conceivability of Zombies Entail Their Possibility?" Organon F 27 (3): 395–410. https://doi.org/10.31577/orgf.2020.27306

Harvard

Polcyn, K.  (2020). Does the Conceivability of Zombies Entail Their Possibility? Organon F, 27(3), pp. 395–410. https://doi.org/10.31577/orgf.2020.27306

© Karol Polcyn

https://www.sav.sk/index.php?lang=sk&doc=journal-list&part=article_response_page&journal_article_no=18677

The above URL is linked with the article's response page. The response page is a permanent location that is associated with the article's DOI number.

This article is distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International Public License (CC BY-NC 4.0).