ROBERT KIRK’S ATTEMPTED INTELLECTUAL FILICIDE: ARE PHENOMENAL ZOMBIES HURT?

• Authors: Sepetyi Dmytro
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

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 admits 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.

Keywords

EN

CONSCIOUSNESS; CONCEIVABILITY; INCOHERENCE; MATERIALISM; PHENOMENAL ZOMBIE

• Publisher: Institute of Philosophy of the Slovak Academy of Sciences and Institute of Philosophy of Academy of Sciences of Czech Republic
• Journal: Organon F. medzinárodný časopis pre analytickú filozofiu
• Year: 2022
• Volume: 29
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 78 - 108

Contributors

author

Sepetyi Dmytro

• Zaporizhzhia State Medical University, Maiakovskyi avenue, 26, Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine

• https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2110-3044

Identifiers

DOI

https://doi.org/10.31577/orgf.2022.29104