Scope of Investigation
The Philosophical Zombie is a thought experiment used to test the logical limits of physicalism. A zombie behaves, speaks, and reacts exactly like a human, but has no inner life, no qualia, and no awareness.
01
The Conceivability Argument
If a physical duplicate of a human could exist without any consciousness, then consciousness is not logically entailed by physical structures.
This implies that consciousness is an additional, non-physical property of reality.
02
The Materialist Counter-Argument
Illusionists like Daniel Dennett argue that zombies are logically impossible. They claim that if a system has all the functional and behavioral capacities of a human, it must be conscious.
They view consciousness as an illusion created by these functional capacities.
03
Conceivability vs. Possibility
Analyzes whether the conceivability of a zombie (which is a logical concept) implies its physical or metaphysical possibility.
If zombies are metaphysically possible, then physicalism is false, and consciousness is a separate feature of the universe.