Philosophical Zombies

In philosophy of mind, zombies are imaginary creatures that are exact physical duplicates of conscious subjects for whom there is no first-personal experience. Zombies are meant to show that physicalism-the theory that the universe is made up entirely out of physical components-is false. In this paper, I apply the zombie thought experiment to the realm of morality to assess whether moral agency is something independent from sentience. Algorithms, I argue, are a kind of functional moral zombie, such that thinking about the latter can help us better understand and regulate the former. I contend that the main reason why algorithms can be neither autonomous nor accountable is that they lack sentience. Moral zombies and algorithms are incoherent as moral agents because they lack the necessary moral understanding to be morally responsible. To understand what it means to inflict pain on someone, it is necessary to have experiential knowledge of pain. At most, for an algorithm that feels nothing, 'values' will be items on a list, possibly prioritised in a certain way according to a number that represents weightiness. But entities that do not feel cannot value, and beings that do not value cannot act for moral reasons.

В работе исследуется аргумент от мыслимости философского зомби, предложенный Д. Чалмерсом для поддержки дуализма свойств. Согласно дуализму свойств, существуют феноменальные свойства – субъективные характеристики опыта, которые нельзя свести к физическим свойствам. Идея о нередуцируемости феноменальных свойств создает проблемы для физикализма, главенствующей метафизической позиции в современной аналитической философии. Предлагается альтернативный подход к критике аргумента от мыслимости зомби, вдохновленный спором Дж. Э. Мура со скептиком о доказательстве существования внешнего мира. Автор демонстрирует, что посылка о каузальной роли сознания обоснованнее посылки о мыслимости зомби, а значит и сам аргумент от мыслимости философского зомби не может считаться обоснованным.

Bu makale, zombiler örneği üzerinden metafizik ve fiziksel hakikat arasındaki ilişkiyi ele almaktadır. Felsefede zombi, fiziksel tüm açılardan insana benzeyen ancak bilinci olmayan bir organizmadır. Böyle bir varlığın mümkün olup olmadığı konusunda süregelen tartışmalar bulunmaktadır. Bu tartışmalar büyük ölçüde zombilerin tasavvur edilip edilemeyeceği meselesine bağlıdır ve bağlamda hayal veya tasavvur edilebilirliğin zorunlu olarak imkan anlamına geldiği fikri de çalışmada incelenmektedir. Tartışmalar, ruhun varlığı ve mahiyeti hakkındaki çalışmalar için de mühimdir. Genellikle zombilerin mümkün varlıklar olduğu görüşünü savunanlar düalist, mümkün olduklarını reddedenler ise materyalisttir. Bu çalışmada, tartışmada her iki tarafça kullanılan ana teorinin Kripke’nin mümkün dünyalar semantiği olması sebebiyle Kripke metafiziğine odaklanılmaktadır. Ancak burada Kripkeci metafiziğinin bu görüşlerin hiçbirinin doğruluğunu belirleyemeyeceği, çünkü gerekli türde bir zorunluluğu temellendiremeyeceği öne sürülmektedir. Böylece, literatürde temelden hatalı bir değerlendirme yapılmış gibi görünmektedir. Bunun yerine, geleneksel nedensel ve ontolojik türde bir metafiziğin daha etkili olacağı önerilmektedir ve özellikle bazı farklı nedensellik teorilerinin faydalı olacağı ileri sürülmektedir. Bu tür teorilerin konunun sonlandırıcı karara bağlanmasında etkili olabileceğini göstermek için gerçekçilik karşıtlığı, indeterminizm ve özellikle teistik iradecilik örneklerinden yararlanılmaktadır. Her teoride, zombi imkanını kesin olarak belirleyen cevaplar elde edilmektedir. Bu şekilde, bir materyalistin zombilerin mümkün varlıklar olduğunu kabul edebileceği görüşü ispatlanmaktadır.

This article aims to discuss the relationship between metaphysical and physical reality through the example of zombies. Zombies in philosophy are beings that are considered to be exactly like us physically, but still lack consciousness. There is ongoing controversy on the possibility of the existence of such entities. This debate is largely dependent on whether a zombie is conceivable or not, and the idea that conceivability necessarily implies possibility is subject to intense scrutiny. The debate is also important for the debate on the existence and nature of the soul. Generally, those that defend the view that zombies are possible entities are dualists, while those that reject their possibility are materialists. In this study, we focus on the use of Kripke’s metaphysics, as his possible world semantics has been a main theory used in the debate by both sides. However, it is argued that Kripkean metaphysics is able to determine the truth of neither view, as it cannot ground the needed type of necessity. Thus, it appears that a major misstep has been made in the literature. Instead, it is proposed that a metaphysics of the traditional causal and ontological type will be more effective, and it is suggested that certain different theories of causality are crucial. We use specifically the examples of antirealism, indeterminism and especially theistic voluntarism, to show that such theories can decide the matter. In these cases, we gain answers that determine with certainty the possibility of zombies. In this way, we defend the view that a materialist can accept that zombies are possible existents.

RESUMEN: En este artículo revisaremos los abordajes que T. Morton y A. Tsing realizan de la relación entre capitalismo y producción vegetal. A partir del encuadre provisto por la “agrilogística” y la “escalabilidad”, nos enfocaremos en problemas surgidos de la forma de existencia de las plantas transgénicas destinadas al monocultivo intensivo, a las que denominamos plantas zombies. En ese enclave de la producción vegetal relacionada con la biotecnología, mediante algunos recursos ofrecidos por la botánica especulativa (Meeker y Szabari) y las elaboraciones de D. Haraway, revisaremos los problemas surgidos en torno a lo no universalizable de lo vegetal y la “naturaleza”.  A continuación, introduciremos la noción de “ecología general” de E. Hörl con el fin de comprender el impacto de abordajes matemático-tecnológicos de los seres vegetales (en particular, algorítmicos y robóticos) y cómo sus formas específicas de existencia permiten desplazarse desde nociones romantizadas de la naturaleza hacia versiones ligadas más bien a lo artefactual.

ABSTRACT: In this article, we will examine the approaches of T. Morton and A. Tsing regarding the relationship between capitalism and plant production. Drawing on the frameworks of "agrilogistic" and "scalability," we will focus on issues arising from the existence of genetically modified plants designed for intensive monoculture, which we refer to as zombie plants. Within this context of plant production tied to biotechnology, we will utilize insights from speculative botany (Meeker and Szabari) and the works of D. Haraway to explore the challenges related to the non-universalizable nature of plants and "nature." Subsequently, we will introduce E. Hörl's notion of "general ecology" to analyze the impact of mathematical-technological approaches to plant life—particularly algorithmic and robotic—and how these specific modes of existence shift us away from romanticized notions of nature toward conceptualizations more closely associated with the artificial.

David Chalmers’s famous Zombie argument rests on the premise that conceivability entails metaphysical possibility, an assumption that remains hotly contested. One seemingly devastating objection against the premise comes from Kripke: while one could conceive a world where water is XYZ instead of H20, this is not actually possible because of a posteriori necessity. Chalmers responds by utilizing the distinction between primary and secondary intensions, arguing that while conceivability may not always entail 2-possibility, it does entail 1-possibility. In this paper, I propose a counterexample revolving around the conceivability of a Siamond world – a world where Diamonds are the exact same except for the fact that they are soft. This, I argue, creates a dilemma for the Chalmersian two-dimensionalist:  if we accept the conceivability of a world where diamonds are soft, we are forced to ask: what “epistemic properties” allow for our modal talk to remain fairly stable.  If hardness or any other property or set of properties whose necessity can only be known a posteriori are among of them, we are forced to accept that certain necessities are “strong,” in that they cannot be ruled out a priori, and hence are counterexamples to Chalmers’s conceivability thesis. If no such epistemic properties truly remain constant, then the consistency of modal talk is doubtful. Either way, this exposes a key methodological flaw in his methodology, undercutting the two-dimensional framework that Chalmers depends upon.

CALL FOR PAPERS

Heraclitus already talked about the “undead” in his days, but he couldn’t im-
agine zombie hordes walking on our cities’ streets. It was simply a metaphor, then as now, but perhaps at this point it became something more (from myth to symbol? a figure, in Auerbach’s sense?). Firmly in place in our collective imagery, the zombie travelled a long walk from Haiti’s nights to our screens, and now it populates almost all fieldsof knowledge, from philosophy to sociology, from media studies to epidemiol-
ogy. However, semiotics has rarely studied zombies, except for a brief mention
in Apocalittici e integrati by Umberto Eco (1964), a dense essay by Paolo Fab-
bri (2021) and few other cases.

The time is right now to develop an extensive discussion about a figure who
upsets our imagination and challenges our taxonomies. Moreover, the zombie
seems to be often effective in representing fears, new contingencies, even the
daily habits of human beings in the 21st century; after all, the zombie has
evolved in the last few years, and adapted itself to the new social conditions.
So, it seems worth to semiotically examine the zombie’s figure, its extreme
plasticity and ultimately its ability to represent a society who actually seems
more and more zombesque.

Deadline
Abstract submission: 31 May 2024
Abstract acceptance: 30 June 2024
Article delivery: 30 September 2024
Return of opinions after double blind review: 30 November
Delivery of revised articles: 31 January 2025
Publication: 30 April 2025

Lo scopo dell’elaborato è presentare il problema della causalità del mentale e cercare di dare una soluzione fisicalista al problema che possa includere anche i qualia, da sempre considerati come l’ultima difesa a favore dell’irriducibilità della mente al fisico. Il primo capitolo ha il compito di trovare la teoria metafisica del mentale migliore che riesca sia a rendere conto della causalità del mentale e sia a resistere all’argomento di Kim. Dopo aver esposto in dettaglio l’argomento di Kim sono affrontati i limiti della teoria dell’identità di tipo, in particolare viene esposta la critica di Hilary Putnam conosciuta come “realizzabilità multipla”. Come alternativa all’identità di tipo sono state analizzate le due principali varianti del funzionalismo, ovvero quello del ruolo e quello dell’occupante, e infine quest’ultimo è risultato avere maggiori vantaggi teorici. Sono stati esposti i problemi del funzionalismo e in particolare il problema dell’incapacità del linguaggio funzionalista di rendere conto dei qualia. A tal proposito è stato esposto l’argomento del “cervello-cinese” di Ned Block e ne sono stati individuati i limiti mostrando che la conclusione dell’argomento non può essere data per scontata. Per quest’ultimo motivo è stato elaborato un esperimento mentale volto a mostrare l’incapacità del linguaggio fisicalista nel descrivere qualia, e ne sono stati mostrati i vantaggi teorici rispetto all’esperimento mentale di Block; anche se un cervello-cinese presentasse qualia, un linguaggio funzionalista non potrebbe descriverli. Nel secondo capitolo è esposto il problema del “gap esplicativo” elaborato da Levine, utilizzato spesso a supporto di posizioni non riduzioniste. È stato esposto e analizzato l’esperimento mentale degli “zombie filosofici” di David Chalmers volto a dimostrare che i qualia non sono riducibili a qualcosa di fisico. È stato poi elaborato un altro esperimento mentale volto a mostrare che almeno intuitivamente, i qualia sembrano essere necessari per il darsi di alcuni comportamenti umani e che se l’esperimento mentale degli zombie prevede l’assenza di qualia allora la fisica di quel mondo dovrebbe essere in grado di predeterminare tutti i comportamenti degli zombie. Si è mostrato che così facendo si ammetterebbe la concepibilità di un mondo-zombie fisicamente predeterminato, e dunque anche la possibilità metafisica. È stata analizzata questa intuizione attraverso un’analisi controfattuale incentrata sulla somiglianza tra mondi possibili secondo la teoria dei controfattuali di Lewis, mostrando che un controfattuale del tipo “se non ci fossero qualia, allora alcuni comportamenti non potrebbero darsi” risulta vero. Infine viene proposto un argomento che dovrebbe mostrare, che se effettivamente i qualia sono necessari per alcuni tipi di comportamenti, allora l’esperimento mentale degli zombie non può funzionare. Se la fisica del mondo zombie deve permettere il realizzarsi di azioni che nel mondo attuale avverrebbero solo per la presenza di qualia, allora un mondo-zombie è possibile solo se si includono nella fisica di quel mondo anche i qualia. Questo mostra che seppure i qualia non possono essere descritti da un linguaggio fisicalista possono essere compresi in una metafisica fisicalista.

This paper sketches a new and somewhat heterodox metaphysical theory of consciousness: the “many-worlds theory”. It drops the assumption that all conscious subjects’ experiences are features of one and the same world and instead associates different subjects with different “first-personally centred worlds”. We can think of these as distinct “first-personal realizers” of a shared “third-personal world”, where the latter is supervenient, in a sense to be explained. This is combined with a form of modal realism, according to which different subjects’ first-personally centred worlds are all real, though only one of them is present for each subject. The theory offers a novel way of capturing the irreducibly subjective nature of conscious experience without lapsing into solipsism. The paper also looks at some scientific theories of consciousness, such as integrated information theory, through the proposed lens and reconsiders the hard problem of consciousness.

The objective of this paper is to defend the non-reductive thesis of phenomenal consciousness. This paper will give an overview of the arguments for the non-reductive explanation of phenomenal consciousness and justify why the reductionist approach is implausible in the context of explaining phenomenal subjective experience. The debate between reductionist and non-reductionist on the project of Demystifying and Mystifying phenomenal consciousness is driven by two fundamental assumptions-1) Reductive-Naturalistic Objectivism, 2) Phenomenal Realism. There are several arguments for the irreducibility of phenomenal consciousness; this paper will focus on the inverted spectrum argument, knowledge argument, and the conceivability argument.

What would happen if Macbeth returned as a zombie? David Mence's "Macbeth Re-Arisen", a daring sequel of Shakespeare's Macbeth, is the answer to that question. According to award-winning author David Mence, the borders between pulp science fiction, fantasy and horror and literary fiction are more permeable than we think (Mence, 2014). In his audacious "Macbeth Re-Arisen", entirely written in blank verse, Mence blends the medieval Scotland depicted by Shakespeare with the maniacal zombies of Sam Raimi's "Evil Dead" series. This article analyses the representation of zombies as characters in relation to David Mence's "Macbeth Re-Arisen", showing some continuity between this sequel of Shakespeares "Macbeth" and zombies in cinema, popular culture, and social studies. This article also analyses characters and topoi in OMacbeth Re-ArisenO and compares them to those in Shakesperare's "Macbeth".

The objective of this paper is to defend the non-reductive thesis of phenomenal consciousness. This paper will give an overview of the arguments for the non-reductive explanation of phenomenal consciousness and justify why the reductionist approach is implausible in the context of explaining phenomenal subjective experience. The debate between reductionist and non-reductionist on the project of Demystifying and Mystifying phenomenal consciousness is driven by two fundamental assumptions-1) Reductive-Naturalistic Objectivism, 2) Phenomenal Realism. There are several arguments for the irreducibility of phenomenal consciousness; this paper will focus on the inverted spectrum argument, knowledge argument, and the conceivability argument.

D. Chalmers and J. Perry both construe phenomenal concepts as irreducible to descriptive concepts of physical properties or properties, which logically supervene on them. But they draw different conclusions from this point. D. Chalmers in "The Conscious Mind" argues that the epistemic gap between phenomenal and physical properties shows that the former cannot be ontologically identified with the latter. J. Perry in "Knowledge, Possibility and Consciousness" claims that we can identify phenomenal properties with physical ones without being committed to reductionism. In this paper I am going to examine Chalmers' and Perry's views on meaning and necessity, especially with respect to identity statements, in order to find where exactly their ways of thinking about the content of phenomenal concepts.

In "Phenomenal Concept Strategy and a Master Argument," Mabaquiao presents the debate between physicalists and antiphysicalists in light of the plausibility of the phenomenal concept strategy vis-à-vis Chalmers' master argument. He argues that, as it currently stands, the debate is at an ontological stalemate. This paper argues that this indictment is not fair given an alternative picture of the current dialectical status of the debate. Furthermore, it suggests that, given this picture, we could have reasons to favor the anti-physicalists over the physicalists just by following how the debate has currently been pursued.

According to some materialists, consciousness is an illusion generated by matter mattering to itself, and is ultimately ontologically non-existent, thus, consciousness is just so remarkable that an unwary brain might be tempted to think consciousness is really real. However, both direct phenomenological investigation and modern science show that, contrary to materialists’ desires, consciousness “has its own intrinsic degrees of freedom” and is a fundamental dimension of reality. Ultimately we are not the result of the evolution of an “original dollop of physical matter”. The ideas presented the book Soul Dust are an excellent example of the kind of ridiculous and logically incoherent accounts of the mindless evolution of matter into ‘illusory’ mind which are penned by materialist advocates of primordial mindlessness.

Traditionally, phenomenal consciousness has been restricted to the realm of perceptual and otherwise sensory experiences. If there is a kind of phenomenology altogether unlike sensory phenomenology, then this was a mistake, and requires an accounting. I argue such cognitive phenomenology exists by appealing to a phenomenal contrast case that relies on meaningful and relatively meaningless dialogue. I explain why previous phenomenal contrast arguments are less likely to be effective on even neutral parties to the debate: these arguments rely on a 'hard-tounderstand' sentence, which may elicit sensory crutches that one focuses on, thereby obscuring cognitive phenomenology. I also argue for a positive characterization of the phenomenal contrast in terms of seeming to be aware of abstract relations that obtain between different contributions in a dialogue. This paves the way for arguing that what it's like to entertain a cognitive content that p differs from that of q in their cognitive phenomenology.

The objective of this paper is to defend the non-reductive thesis of phenomenal consciousness. This paper will give an overview of the arguments for the non-reductive explanation of phenomenal consciousness and justify why the reductionist approach is implausible in the context of explaining phenomenal subjective experience. The debate between reductionist and non-reductionist on the project of Demystifying and Mystifying phenomenal consciousness is driven by two fundamental assumptions-1) Reductive-Naturalistic Objectivism, 2) Phenomenal Realism. There are several arguments for the irreducibility of phenomenal consciousness; this paper will focus on the inverted spectrum argument, knowledge argument, and the conceivability argument.

In philosophy of mind, zombies are imaginary creatures that are exact physical duplicates of conscious subjects but for whom there is no first-personal experience. Zombies are meant to show that physicalism—the theory that the universe is made up entirely out of physical components—is false. In this paper, I apply the zombie thought experiment to the realm of morality to assess whether moral agency is something independent from sentience. Algorithms, I argue, are a kind of functional moral zombie, such that thinking about the latter can help us better understand and regulate the former. I contend that the main reason why algorithms can be neither autonomous nor accountable is that they lack sentience. Moral zombies and algorithms are incoherent as moral agents because they lack the necessary moral understanding to be morally responsible. To understand what it means to inflict pain on someone, it is necessary to have experiential knowledge of pain. At most, for an algorithm that feels nothing, ‘values’ will be items on a list, possibly prioritised in a certain way according to a number that represents weightiness. But entities that do not feel cannot value, and beings that do not value cannot act for moral reasons.

The objective of this paper is to defend the non-reductive thesis of phenomenal consciousness. This paper will give an overview of the arguments for the non-reductive explanation of phenomenal consciousness and justify why the reductionist approach is implausible in the context of explaining phenomenal subjective experience. The debate between reductionist and non-reductionist on the project of Demystifying and Mystifying phenomenal consciousness is driven by two fundamental assumptions-1) Reductive-Naturalistic Objectivism, 2) Phenomenal Realism. There are several arguments for the irreducibility of phenomenal consciousness; this paper will focus on the inverted spectrum argument, knowledge argument, and the conceivability argument.

Faced with the current pandemic situation,
many thinkers examined not only the
relationship between the political
dimension and the present health
emergency, and the related social and
economic transformations, but also and
above all the changes in the construction
of identity and the self-perception that
it has determined and will continue to
determine. Giorgio Agamben and Byung-Chul
Han, although starting from different
analyses (disciplinary society /
performance society), agree on the return
and on the tightening of devices that limit
personal freedoms. The provocative
question from which we are starting is
whether neoliberalism really wants a
pandemic. The answer is particularly
complex and is divided into three
passages: the first part, in fact, is
critically confronted with Agamben’s
reflection; the second part starts from
the analysis of Byung-Chul Han’s thought,
highlighting its strengths and weaknesses;
in the last part, the fallout from the
point of view of identity processes is
discussed above all through a critical
analysis of the paradigms of resilience
and victimization.

This essay explores how the classic narrative of Haitian zombification is refashioned within a postcolonial Haitian-Dominican context as a passing narrative in Pedro Cabiya's 2011 science fantasy novel Malas hierbas. In its depiction of a nameless zombie scientist who pretends to be a living being and successfully assimilates into the community of the living without detection, Cabiya's text not only departs from the traditional zombie archetype. It also unfolds as a philosophical exploration of what it means to be alive when one is born into a political ontology that has always already defined and marked some as dead. Interrogating the disjuncture between the vital signs of life codified in Western scientific discourse and the zombie's simulation of life, the essay argues that Malas hierbas adapts the trope of racial passing to show how the meaning of life moves from ontology of existence to a category of identity, like race, legal personhood, and citizenship. Situating the novel in its Haitian and Dominican contexts, where race constitutes markers of national identity and juridical status, the essay connects the zombie's passing life to contemporary representations of Haitians as impostors who must play dead, on both sides of Hispaniola, as a means of survival.

This paper presents an application of retiming to model checking, a branch of formal verification. Retiming can change the transition relation of a circuit without changing its input-output behaviour by relocating its registers. With the retiming, a given circuit can have a different structure more adequate for model checking. This paper proposes a cost function to reflect the number of registers and the characteristic of its transition relation and develops a heuristic annealing algorithm to search efficiently the circuit structures obtained by retiming. Experimental results show that the proposed method can improve the model checking performance.

Philosophical zombies are exactly as physicalists suppose we are, right down to the tiniest details, but they have no conscious experiences. (It is presupposed that all explicable physical events are explicable physically.) Are such things even logically possible? My aim is to contribute to showing not only that the answer is 'No', but why. (I concede that systems superficially like human beings might exist and lack consciousness.) My strategy has two prongs: a fairly brisk argument which demolishes the zombie idea; followed by an attempt to throw light on how something can qualify as a conscious perceiver. The argument to show that zombies are impossible exploits the point that in order to be able to detect our own 'qualia' we should have to be somehow sensitive to them; which the zombie idea rules out. The attempt to make clear why my zombie twin must be conscious exploits the idea that we have a reasonably clear grasp of a 'Basic Package' of psychological concepts.

Chalmers’ “zombies” are the “unconscious to be unconscious” Neanderthals

Since the butterfly’s “deviation” from initial conditions toward chaos implies “consciousness”, therefore I believe that my Neanderthal metaphor is synonymous with David Chalmers’ philosophical “zombies”:)

Gli "zombi" di Chalmers sono gli "incoscienti di essere incoscienti” Neanderthal

Poiché la "deviazione" della farfalla dalle condizioni iniziali verso il caos implica "coscienza", credo che la mia metafora dei Neanderthal sia sinonimo degli "zombi" filosofici di David Chalmers :)

I show that some of the most initially attractive routes of refuting epistemological solipsism face serious obstacles. I also argue that for creatures like ourselves, solipsism is a genuine form of external world skepticism. I suggest that together these claims suggest the following morals: No proposed solution to external world skepticism can succeed which does not also solve the problem of epistemological solipsism. And, more tentatively: In assessing proposed solutions to external world skepticism, epistemologists should explicitly consider whether those solutions extend to knowledge of other minds. Finally, and also tentatively: epistemological solipsism warrants more philosophical attention than it currently enjoys.

In the entire universe various disciplines and subjects holds their significant presence in academia as well as folklore.But ‘Philosophy' and 'Literature' are two vital disciplines which played a crucial role in shaping history of mankind.These two streams free flowly without boundation and lays foundation for all.

Alvin Plantinga has proposed a fascinating epistemology, one which he considers to be completely naturalized. Critical to his epistemology is the notion of a 'design plan' which circumscribes the function of organs or systems. Ernest Sosa has objected to Plantinga by using Donald Davidson's Swampman thought experiment, according to which a bolt of lightning randomly assembles a physical duplicate of a person, including one's neurological structure. The Swampman would have no design plan and as such would constitute a counterexample to Plantinga's epistemology. Plantinga responded to Sosa that the Swampman may not be metaphysically possible so he is not disturbed by it conflicting with his epistemology and, at any rate, we would still ascribe functions (and thus design plans) to the Swampman's organs and systems. In this essay I will argue that 1) a stronger case can be made demonstrating that the Swampman is not metaphysically possible and 2) at any rate the Swampman is not possible in an epistemological sense; that is, it could not know anything.

Bir aşçı hayvanlara zulüm ile suçlandı. Aşçı, sıcak tabağa acı içinde bükülüp kıvranan canlı karidesler koymuştu. Davası düştü, çünkü karideslerin acı çekip çekmediği hususunda uzman görüşü almak imkansızdı. Karideslerin davranışları, gerçekten acı çektiklerini düşünmeyi kolaylaştırmış olsa da belki de davranıştan daha fazla bir şey yoktu -belki de gerçekten bir lastik bandın gevşeyip bükülmesinden daha fazla herhangi bir duyguya sahip değillerdi.

Proponents of the hard problem of consciousness argue that the zombie and inverted spectrum thought experiments demonstrate that consciousness cannot be physical. They present scenarios designed to demonstrate that it is conceivable that a physical replica of someone can have radically different or no conscious experiences, that such an experience-less replica is possible and therefore that materialism is false. I will argue that once one understands the limitations that the physics of this world puts on cognitive systems, zombies and the inverted spectrum are not conceivable.

The cognitive phenomenology thesis has it that conscious cognitive states essentially exhibit a phenomenal character. Defenders of ‘conservatism’ about cognitive phenomenology think that the phenomenology of thought is reducible to sensory phenomenology. In contrast, proponents of ‘liberalism’ hold that there is a proprietary, sui generis cognitive phenomenology. Horgan develops a morph-sequence argument to argue for liberalism. The argument is based on the conceivability of a cognitive phenomenology zombie, i.e. a man who does not understand Chinese but shares the behavior and sensory phenomenology with his twin who does understand Chinese. I argue that the conceivability of a cognitive phenomenology-zombie fails to settle the debate between conservatives and liberals. The roots of the ineffectiveness of the argument lie in the diverse readings of sensory phenomenology which flesh out the relation between sensory phenomenology and concepts differently but explain the conceivability of the scenario equally well. The lesson to learn is that to adjudicate the debate about cognitive phenomenology, we first have to clarify the notion of sensory phenomenology.

This chapter considers the continued critical import of Heidegger’s notion of equipmentality in grappling with contemporary currents and problems within the mediatory or, as I prefer to term it, the immediatory sphere. Within Heidegger’s thought “equipmentality” marks out an exhilarating conception that equipment is never something that exists objectively “out there” (Vorhanden) but which instead inheres so deeply within our each and every comportment (Verhalten) that we rarely get to see it in operation. For when such equipment is ready-to-hand (Zuhanden) and is operating effectively, and when it is really there working for us, we do not really recognize, in any removed sense, that we are there using it. Equipmentality thus bypasses classical notions of a detached “mentality” and so we must never, according to Heidegger, equate equipmentality in any cognate way with calculative cognition. This is the first sense in which we can think equipmentality as “equip-mentality,” in that it marinates the entirety of who we are and is thus never in any way at all some sheer “thing” that we would pick up and apply. Such is the “space” of equipment, in that it is never distanced or decidedly set apart from us. Secondly, it is in the very character of equipment that it has the quality, the “equipment-ality,” of structural holism. As a consequence of this holism, equipment is never engaged with in the singular, and so one can never isolate any single “part” of it outside of the ongoing whole, without losing this equipment-ality that provides its resolve. This is the “time” of equipment, in that each and every part is deferred and is thus always lying in wait for other component parts within which it will find its meaning and significance (Bedeutung). Equipmentality then is something that inheres within really every- thing that we are. In so inhering, within everything that we are, it is never some mere mental “side” (res cogitans) placed in opposition to some object “side” (res extensa). In thus never taking sides, equipmentality always already coheres into its coherent qualitative whole. It is such coherence that we find so lacking in the zombie.

What would happen if Macbeth returned as a zombie? David Mence’s Macbeth Re-Arisen, a daring sequel of Shakespeare’s Macbeth, is the answer to that question. According to award-winning author David Mence, the borders between pulp— science fiction, fantasy and horror — and literary fiction are more permeable than we think (Mence, 2014). In his audacious Macbeth Re-Arisen, entirely written in blank verse, Mence blends the medieval Scotland depicted by Shakespeare with the maniacal zombies of Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead series.
This article analyses the representation of zombies as characters in relation to David Mence’s Macbeth Re-Arisen, showing some continuity between this sequel of Shakespeare’s Macbeth and zombies in cinema, popular culture, and social studies. This article also analyses characters and topoi in Macbeth Re-Arisen and compares them to those in Shakesperare’s Macbeth.

It is often thought that consciousness has a qualitative dimension that cannot be tracked by science. Recently, however, some philosophers have argued that this worry stems not from an elusive feature of the mind, but from the special nature of the concepts used to describe conscious states. Marc Champagne draws on the neglected branch of philosophy of signs or semiotics to develop a new take on this strategy. 

The term “semiotics” was introduced by John Locke in the modern period – its etymology is ancient Greek, and its theoretical underpinnings are medieval. Charles Sanders Peirce made major advances in semiotics, so he can act as a pipeline for these forgotten ideas. Most philosophers know Peirce as the founder of American pragmatism, but few know that he also coined the term “qualia,” which is meant to capture the intrinsic feel of an experience. Since pragmatic verification and qualia are now seen as conflicting commitments, Champagne endeavors to understand how Peirce could (or thought he could) have it both ways. The key, he suggests, is to understand how humans can insert distinctions between features that are always bound.

Recent attempts to take qualities seriously have resulted in versions of panpsychism, but Champagne outlines a more plausible way to achieve this. So, while semiotics has until now been the least known branch of philosophy ending in –ics, his book shows how a better understanding of that branch can move one of the liveliest debates in philosophy forward.

A priori physicalists argue that the conceptual analysis of water, watery stuff, in the folk-theory of water mediates the identification of water to H2O. Likewise, they contend that phenomenal consciousness is reducible a priori to folk-psychology which includes  the conceptual analysis of consciousness. However, since it is questionable whether folk-psychology captures the essence of consciousness, the zombie argument that, if the zombie world in which the physical/functional duplicate of me exists but lacks qualia is possible, physicalism is defeated, works against a priori physicalism. On the one hand, if a priori physicalists answer the zombie argument by maintaining 'pain' is reducible to its conceptual analysis 'reaction-to-cell-damage' by definitional relation, they cannot avoid Quine's criticism about the analyticity by definition. On the other hand, if a priori physicalists seek empirical evidence to support the identity between 'pain' and its conceptual analysis, they make their theory trivial.

The conceivability of zombies means that the concept of zombies is coherent; that is, it does not entail a contradiction. A-type theorists argue that consciousness is conceptually definable, and so zombies are inconceivable. However, B-type theories insist that the concept of zombies does not involve a contradiction, although they deny the metaphysical possibility of zombies. This paper first shows that, since the arguments that support the inconceivability of zombies already import the functionalizability of consciousness, they are begging the question. However, A-type theorists can legitimately claim that the conceivability supporters are also questions begging, since they presuppose that consciousness is not functionalizable. I suppose that both A-type and B-type theories might beg the question. Nevertheless, I prove that zombies are still conceivable for conceivability is consistent with circularity but the inconceivability is not.

The Multiple Realizability Thesis, stating that one mental state can have at least two physical realizers, was considered as supporting anti-reductionism about mental states in general. But recently, Multiple Realizability has become a main issue regarding physicalism about consciousness, in relation to the explanatory gap that there is no explanation about a correlation between a neural and a conscious state. I aim to formulate Cognitive Neurofunctionalism as a reductive theory about consciousness which is compatible with Multiple Realizability. Cognitive Neurofunctionalism appeals to cutting-edge cognitive neuroscience to maintain reduction; at the same time, it makes reduction compatible with Multiple Realizability by virtue of a functional interpretation of a neural state. This means that Cognitive Neurofunctionalism is a better physicalistic theory than type-identity theory or reduction in defying the explanatory gap.

The public space has long provided a context in which to stage political performance. In the twenty-first century, the theatre was no longer the exclusive hub for theatrical reimaginings of the world, but became a point of departure from which other forms of performance could emerge. In the 1960s, Situationism anticipated the streets as a theatrical site in its endeavours to intervene in the public landscape for its own political agenda. Emerging from avant-garde art such as Dadaism and Surrealism, Situationism showed a resistance to the structuring of public space through an active engagement with its sign systems (often with subversive intentions). As Nato Thompson writes, '[t]he city is a spectacle', and the streets -like the theatre -are an inherently theatrical space in which new meanings can be produced and new ideas about everyday life can be played out. 1 Street reclamation in twentieth century protests, particularly with the collective, 'Reclaim the Streets', has marked a renewed interest in the city as a theatrical platform on which politically charged performances can be activated. Spectacle becomes a defining feature of such performances, with protest groups such as Occupy utilising polysemic images to project messages to their spectators. In this essay, I aim to explore how Occupy uses Situationist tactics and, more specifically, the image of the zombie as a symbol of capitalism, to actively engage with -and protest against -their contemporary economic crisis. I will analyse the public sphere as a crucial site for the dissemination of Occupy's agenda and demonstrate how the zombie motif perturbs and questions this space through creative disruption. Situationism arose as a reaction against the subdual of art under the reign of capitalism. Art and the social space were separated through the established hierarchy of commerce and industry over the creative enterprise. Members of Situationist International such as Asger Jorn and Guy Debord sought to reconcile art with the deadened social space through imaginative interference. For example, the technique of détourné entailed the 'rearrang[ement] of popular sign-systems in order to create new meanings. […] [T]his took the form of reinserting [the Situationists'] own language into the thought bubbles of popular 1 Nato Thompson, 'Trespassing Relevance', in The Interventionists: User's Manual for the Creative Disruption of Everyday Life, ed. by Nato Thompson and Gregory Sholette (Massachusettes: The MIT Press, 2004), p. 16.

Panpsychism, the view that phenomenal perception is a fundamental property of the universe, is one of the oldest theories in philosophy of mind. While it may seem counter-intuitive at first glance, panpsychism deftly avoids many of the glaring problems in the various forms of dualism and materialism. The central challenge to panpsychism is the combination problem: How to integrate fundamental units of conscious experience, which is usually considered an indivisible property, into one larger individual subject; in other words, how to form a macro-subject from micro-subjects. Several authors consider the combination problem to be insurmountable, and to require a retreat from a strong panphsychist view to a neutral monism. I argue that a reappraisal of the work of Leibniz in this area gives an informative perspective on this problem, and moves us further toward its dissolution.

O argumento dos zumbis surgiu em 1974 em um artigo de Robert Kirk, mas foi com o livro The Conscious Mind (1996), de David Chalmers, que ele ganha um papel de destaque dentro da filosofia da mente. Tal argumento, que tem várias versões diferentes, tem como principal objetivo uma refutação do materialismo. De maneira muito resumida, ele diz que se for possível pensar em um zumbi físico, ser que seria fisicamente idêntico a um ser humano, mas sem estados qualitativos conscientes, ou seja, sem qualia, então tais estados não podem ser físicos. Se tais estados fossem físicos teria que faltar algo a tal zumbi. Deste modo, a única coisa que precisaria ser feita para refutar o materialismo seria mostrar que tal ser é concebível. No entanto, várias críticas surgiram e seu principal crítico, Daniel Dennett, tem ganhado apoio em sua defesa de que tais zumbis são logicamente impossíveis, ou seja, são inconcebíveis.

Voice reflects corporeal transformation. In horror voice often reflects a change from human to non-human. It signals shift into the supernatural. We examine a particular moment in Michael Jackson's Thriller video and consider why such a moment is horrifying. We also contextualise the scene as being a precursor for Jackson's future voice and persona.

Braddon-Mitchell (2003), Hawthorne (2002), and Stalnaker (2002) provide a physicalistic argument that depends on the following two conditionals. If we experience dualistic pain, zombies are possible. On the other hand, if the actual world is physicalistic, zombies are impossible. Based on these conditionals, it is derived that zombies are conceivable but this does not entail their possibility. This line of argument for physicalism is referred to as the Conditional Analysis Strategy (CAS). I claim that the CAS does not help physicalists defuse the zombie argument. To show this, I first suggest that there are three possible interpretations of the strategy: the CAS explains the zombie intuition by virtue of the conceivability of zombies; the CAS conditionally disproves the entailment-link from conceivability to possibility; the CAS unconditionally denies the entailment-link. I argue that none of the three understandings brings good news to physicalism.

The scientific study of consciousness is constantly making new discoveries, but one particular aspect of consciousness remains problematic to explain. This is the fact that conscious experiences present themselves to us in a first-person way: there is something it feels like to be the subject of a conscious experience. This 'phenomenal' aspect of consciousness seems to be subjective, private, and knowable in a special way, making it difficult to reconcile with the scientific focus on objective, third-person data. This introduction provides an overview of phenomenal consciousness, explores philosophical arguments about its nature, and considers whether or not we should expect to find an explanation for the properties of phenomenal consciousness.

Plusieurs auteurs contemporains utilisent le passage de la conceva-bilité à la possibilité pour attaquer le physicalisme au sujet de la conscience phénoménale. On peut trouver la source de cette forme d'argumentation dans la Méditation Sixième de Descartes. Nous proposons une étude parallèle de l'argument de concevabilité cartésien et de ses avatars contemporains, en étant attentif aux points communs et aux différences, de façon à éclairer quelques aspects de l'évolution du problème corps-esprit.