Robert Kirk’s Attempted Intellectual Filicide: Are Phenomenal Zombies Hurt?

Rok, strany: 2022, 78 - 108

In the paper, I discuss Robert Kirk’s attempt to refute the zombie argument against materialism by demonstrating, “in a way that is intuitively appealing as well as cogent”, that the idea of phenomenal zombies involves incoherence. Kirk’s argues that if one ad- mits that a world of zombies z is conceivable, one should also admit the conceivability of a certain transformation from such a world to a world z* that satisfies a description D, and it is arguable that D is incoherent. From which, Kirk suggests, it follows that the idea of zombies is incoherent. I argue that Kirk’s argument has several minor deficiencies and two major flaws. First, he takes for granted that cognitive mental states are physical (cognitive physicalism), although a zombist is free to—and would better—reject this view. Second, he confuses elements of different scenarios of transformation, none of which results in the incoherent description D.

ISO 690:

Sepetyi, D. 2022. Robert Kirk’s Attempted Intellectual Filicide: Are Phenomenal Zombies Hurt?. In Organon F, vol. 29, no.1, pp. 78-108. 1335-0668. DOI: https://doi.org/10.31577/orgf.2022.29104

APA:

Sepetyi, D. (2022). Robert Kirk’s Attempted Intellectual Filicide: Are Phenomenal Zombies Hurt?. Organon F, 29(1), 78-108. 1335-0668. DOI: https://doi.org/10.31577/orgf.2022.29104

Vydavateľ: Filozofický ústav SAV, Filosofický ústav AVČR

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