The conceivability wars

Abstract

One comparatively neglected response to David Chalmers’s zombie argumentappeals to the conceivability of so-called shombies—entities physically andbehaviourally indistinguishable from us that possess conscious experience justas we do—to reject dualism. In light of the resulting stalemate, the proponentsof this strategy typically either deny the entailment from ideal conceivabilityto metaphysical possibility or urge that the debate over physicalism ought tobe “de-prioritized”, since it cannot be settled on a priori, purely conceptualgrounds. I argue that the battlefield in which “shombists” aim to challenge“zombists” is less neutral than they claim: the implicit assumptionsunderpinning Chalmers’s formulation of the zombie argument conflict withreductive versions of physicalism. Specifically, I contend that the conjunctionof these assumptions—notably, the thesis I term phenomenal essentialism,according to which a subject, by virtue of referring to the way an experiencephenomenally appears, is thereby able to grasp what that experienceessentially is—with the ideal inconceivability of zombies (a consequence ofthe ideal conceivability of shombies, given the conceivability–possibilityentailment) yields implications a physicalist ought to reject. Physicalists whodeem zombies ideally inconceivable are thus committed to denyingphenomenal essentialism and/or other assumptions of Chalmers’s argument. Iconclude by arguing that phenomenal essentialism is highly plausible.