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Are philosophical zombies possible? Explain your answer, and why

the question is important for physicalist views of the mind.

In this essay I shall be arguing that philosophical zombies are possible, and that the question of
whether or not they are possible is important for physicalist views of the mind, as the mere
possibility of the existence of philosophical zombies proves physicalism wrong. I shall first of all
provide a brief and simplistic formulation of the zombie argument and what it means, followed by
defining the terms that I shall use. I will then explore briefly some objections and responses to the
simple argument, then move onto a more sophisticated version entitled the ‘two-dimensional
argument against materialism’ (Chalmers, 2010, pp. 142-192). Here I shall explain Chalmers’
argument and why I believe it is so persuasive, by providing a mix of canonical objections and my
own, along with responses to them. I shall conclude that philosophical zombies are possible, and as a
result physicalist views of the mind are false.

To start, it is important that we have a basic formulation of the ‘zombie argument’ (or ‘conceivability
argument’, as Chalmers refers to it). Firstly, just what is a ‘philosophical zombie’? Rather than the
shambling creatures in Thriller, the philosophical zombie is just like you or I, except it is lacking
phenomenal consciousness. This is to say that the zombie behaves like a computer, responding to
input appropriately without any thought on the input in question. For a practical example, it never
feels the phenomena of satisfaction we get from eating a particularly tasty meal. So why is the
philosophical zombie (which I shall refer to as a ‘zombie’ henceforth) a problem for physicalism? (I
shall also use ‘materialism’ interchangeably with ‘physicalism’, and all unqualified usage refers to
physicalist views of the mind.) The zombie is physically identical, yet seems to lack something else,
which is impossible under physicalism. Thus, the argument runs as follows:

1.
2.
3.
4. (Chalmers, 2010, p. 142)

Where P is all the physical truths about the universe and Q is that an individual is
phenomenally conscious.

From this point, any unqualified usage of ‘possible’ will mean metaphysically possible, in the sense
that it is narrower than logical possibility i.e. more than just obeying the minimum principle of non-
contradiction. Interestingly, zombies are also nomologically possible, but the extra qualification
serves little purpose here.

For the physicalist, the mere possibility (premise 3 in the argument) of the existence of zombies is a
cause for great concern, as it defies their central tenet: the mind is nothing more than the physical
interactions within the brain and central nervous system. Thus, the question is of immense
importance to them. So let us briefly consider some objections and responses.
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Firstly, what is it to be conceivable? I can conceive of someone disproving Gödel’s incompleteness

theorems, but that can’t be so: they are a necessary truth about mathematics. Chalmers responds
with the concept of ‘ideal conceivability’ (Chalmers, 2010, p. 143). This is where that the only things
that are conceivable are those which could be conceived by a perfect reasoner. This prevents the
above worry about conceiving of the falsity of a necessary truth. As a result, any further use of
‘conceive’ or its derivatives will mean ideal conceivability. However, is it possible to object to this
notion on the grounds that we have no idea what a perfect reasoned could be, and thus we appear
to be arbitrarily picking things that are and are not conceivable. In response, I believe we do know
what a perfect reasoner is: a computer. Admittedly an advanced one at that (consider the character
Data from Star Trek for example), but it is bound by logic and necessary truths. (As a side effect, it
would be able to conceive of itself!)

Secondly, premise 2; the move from the epistemic to the modal is a clear target for the physicalist.
The physicalist may respond by saying “Ah-ha! What about necessary truths we only know
empirically? Such that water is H2O or that heat is the microscopic movement of atoms and
molecules? We can conceive of them to be otherwise, but they are not possible!” Here, things get
difficult. Chalmers states that although these things are true, and necessarily so, he argues that this
is by an almost coincidence. For example, there could be a possible world in which water is H2O, but
‘water’ is used to refer to ‘clear, wet stuff’ in the language of the possible world, and that compound
is not H2O. So here we have a case where ‘water is not H2O’ is conceivable and not conceivable! To
resolve this, look it at from the point of view of the possible-worldian: for them, the two senses of
‘water’ coincide: it is both clear and wet and it is also not H2O. We can call this sort of conceivability
‘primary conceivability’ or ‘1-conceivability’, as it is actually the case for the possible-worldian. In our
world, it is only ‘secondarily conceivable’ or ‘2-conceivable’, as it might be the case. This marks the
beginning of two-dimensional semantics, which is what Chalmers uses to reinforce the conceivability
argument from before, but that will come later.

In two-dimensional analysis of semantics, a possible world can possess one or two features, that of
satisfaction and verification. ‘Satisfaction’ means that when the world is run through as a
counterfactual world, a phrase holds within it. ‘Verification’ means that when the world is run as an
actual, it also holds. In the above case, the phrase ‘water is not H2O’ is verified when it is an actual,
but is not satisfied when the possible world is run as a counterfactual. In Chalmers’ terms, he calls a
world in which a phrase is verified ‘1-possibility’ or ‘primary possibility’ and where the phrase is
satisfied ‘2-possibility’ or ‘secondary possibility’. Although we do not seem to be able to move 1-
conceivability to 2-possibility well, there remains a strong link between 1-conceivability to 1-
possibility, and thus from conceivability to possibility. (Chalmers, 2010, p. 147)

So, we have managed to lay the physicalist response via necessary empirical truths to rest, at least
for now. But we are not quite out of the woods yet: although we have re-established a link between
conceivability and possibility, we have only managed that when the possible world is run as actual,
which is not good enough for our original argument, as physicalism requires that P&¬Q would never
be the case in any possible world, which is 2-possibilism. At this juncture, it appears we have been
beaten to the punch: “You can’t even give a positive account of the 2-possibilism of P&¬Q!” the
physicalist may cry. However, we still have an ace up our sleeve: intensionality.
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Earlier, I explained that ‘water’ had two intensions: clear, wet stuff and H2O. In order to bridge the
gap between 1-possibility and 2-possibility, Chalmers suggests we use this ‘coincidence’ to move
from 1-possibility to 2-possibility as a proposition with coinciding intensions is verified by a world iff
it is also satisfied by a world. In our case, P has coinciding intensions so a world verifies P iff P is also
satisfied. This can also be run for Q and as a result, P&¬Q. As a result, P&¬Q will be 1-possible iff it is
2-possible. This allows us to run the (much improved) argument as follows:

1.
2.
3.
4.
5. (Chalmers, 2010, p. 149)

Chalmers thinks this is much better, and I agree. This revision protects the argument from the earlier
objections surrounding necessary empirical facts about the world, and strengthens our link from the
conceivable to the possible. We need not worry about 2-conceivability, as it only deals with the a
posteriori: 1-conceivability deals with the a priori, so is much stronger and more useful for our
purposes. Thus, from this point, when I use the term ‘conceivability’ I mean primary (ideal)
conceivability. However, the physicalists have more to say. Although I am broadly in Chalmers’ camp,
I hold some reservations over the use of two-dimensional semantics, of which I will go over later. For
now, I return to some physicalist objections.

Firstly, I present quite an intuitive objection to the argument. If the argument was to be true, and
zombies did indeed exist in some possible world, would they also not come up with the argument?
(Balog, 1999) Take ZombieChalmers. Although he has no phenomenal consciousness, some
circumstances have arisen which has caused him to formulate the above argument, and thus
conclude physicalism is false. However, because he is in a zombie world, physicalism is true: there
are only physical aspects to the mind. Thus, if the argument is true in our world, and in the zombie
world, there must be a false premise in the argument. Chalmers responds (Chalmers, 2010, p. 160)
that the proposition ‘Q’, that someone is phenomenally conscious, is tacitly accepted by the
argument and thus cannot be used by ZombieChalmers. However, to me this appears to be
question-begging: stating that ‘someone is phenomenally conscious’ is what the argument is trying
to prove by falsifying physicalism! If the argument requires tacit acceptance of Q, the argument may
as well be run as:

1. Someone is phenomenally conscious.

2. If someone is phenomenally conscious, physicalism is false.
3. Physicalism is false.

This to me achieves nothing, and is far away from the goal of the original argument. Perhaps I am
not being charitable enough to Chalmers’ response, and in any case, I still hold that the improved
conceivability argument’s conclusion is correct and that there is a possibility of zombies existing.

Next, I shall briefly consider Perry’s objection that the zombie argument presupposes, minimally,
epiphenomenalism. (Perry, 2001, p. 79) However, I believe that this is simply a non-issue. There are
plenty of physicalist doctrines that are compatible with the conceivability of zombies, such as
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Russellian monism (Chalmers, 2010, pp. 152-153). As a result, I believe we can dismiss Perry’s
objection.

Finally, I wish to express my concern over Chalmers’ use of two-dimensional semantics. The
acceptance of the argument above depends entirely on if you accept primary intension to be
coherent or not. For example, in the scientific disciplines; water means H2O, gold means the atom
with atomic number 79, and heat means the motion of particles and so on. There is no room for
intensionality, as it does not matter what you intend by it, these things just are. As a result, some
materialists may remain unconvinced. Likewise, if we were to adopt a truth-conditional theory of
meaning, the biconditional ‘<water is clear, wet stuff> is true iff water is clear, wet stuff’ doesn’t
hold, as there are many other compounds that are clear and wet, such as H2SO4: sulphuric acid.
Chalmers assumes the coherence of two-dimensional semantics (Chalmers, 2010, p. 165) by claiming
that most criticism is directed only at specific theses, and not the general theory itself. Although I
hold two-dimensional semantics is coherent and particularly powerful in this case, I feel that it
requires a further critique before we can take Chalmers’ formulation of the conceivability-possibility
argument for the possible existence of zombies as ‘the best we have’. As this critique is beyond the
scope of what I am trying to accomplish, I cannot include it here. However, a good critique of two-
dimensional semantics can be found in Reference and Description: The Case against Two-
Dimensionalism (Soames, 2004) and Chalmers response to them and other objections in the
appendix (Chalmers, 2010, pp. 541-568).

In conclusion, I have shown that from the humble beginnings of the original zombie argument (or
‘zombic hunch’, as Dennett would put it), we have arrived at a fully-fledged argument that deals
with (at least most of) the objections physicalists have put forward. As a result, I believe zombies are
possible and that the question of whether they do or not is important as for most formulations of
physicalism, the possibility of zombies works to prove physicalism false.

Bibliography
Balog, K. (1999). Conceivability, Possibility, and the Mind-body Problem. Philosophical Review, 497-
528.

Chalmers, D. (2010). The Two-Dimensional Argument Against Materialism. In D. Chalmers, The

Character Of Conciousness (pp. 149, 152). New York: Oxford University Press.

Perry, J. (2001). Knowledge, Possibility and Conciousness. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT.

Soames, S. (2004). Reference and Description: The Case against Two-dimensionalism. Princeton:
Princeton University Press.