Panpsychism vs. the Zombie Argument

The zombie argument against physicalism holds that if philosophical zombies—beings identical to humans but lacking conscious experience—are possible, then physicalism is false, and either zombies are possible or panpsychism is true. Giberman (2015) argues that the mere possibility of panpsychism rules out the possibility of zombies, thereby defeating the zombie argument. This paper contends that Giberman's argument fails because it confuses two senses of possibility. Using two-dimensional semantics, the zombie argument requires zombies to be possible in a specific sense (2-possible), which is incompatible with panpsychism being possible in that same sense. However, Giberman only shows panpsychism is possible in a different sense (1-possible), which does not conflict with the relevant possibility of zombies. Thus, the anti-zombie argument does not succeed.

Study at a glance

Abstract

The zombie argument against physicalism (Chalmers, 1996; 2010), if successful, shows that one of two things must be true: either zombies are possible (and therefore physicalism is false) or some form of panpsychism is true. Moreover, this is generally understood as an exclusive 'or': the truth of panpsychism at the actual world would be incompatible with the possibility of zombies in the relevant sense. But is the mere possibility of panpsychism incompatible with the possibility of zombies? Giberman (2015) argues that it is, and uses this claim to further argue that zombies are not really possible. My aim in this paper is to show that Giberman's anti-zombie argument fails. I argue that, in terms of 2D semantics, the zombie argument needs to show that zombies are 2-possible. However, while the 2-possibility of zombies is incompatible with the 2-possibility of panpsychism, it is perfectly compatible with panpsychism's 1-possibility. And, since Giberman's argument shows at most that panpsychism is 1-possible, it fails to show that zombies are not possible in the relevant sense.