Affect and the Philosophical Zombie - A Structural Argument Against Hardism
Charles S. Thomas
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research) April 21, 2026 preprint DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.19673121 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper |
|---|---|
| Key points | Argues that the philosophical zombie scenario is structurally incoherent: because a physical and functional duplicate of a conscious human would instantiate the structural conditions for affect, and affect under substrate coupling is phenomenal character, the zombie cannot lack phenomenal character without contradicting its own first stipulation. The author presents this as a third route distinct from logical and dissolutionary critiques. |
Abstract
The philosophical zombie thought experiment — the conception of a being physically and functionally identical to a conscious human but lacking phenomenal experience — has shaped consciousness discourse for three decades. Arguments against zombie-possibilism have proceeded through two main routes: logical analysis identifying self-referential or symmetry problems in the thought experiment, and conceptual dissolution of the notion of phenomenal consciousness the experiment invokes. This paper develops a third route. The structural specification of affect developed in the companion paper (Affect as Constraint-Relative Evaluation) makes the zombie scenario structurally incoherent: a physical and functional duplicate of a conscious human instantiates the structural conditions for affect by the terms of the duplication; affect under substrate coupling is phenomenal character; therefore the zombie cannot lack phenomenal character without contradicting the first condition of its own specification. The argument does not dissolve the notion of phenomenal consciousness, does not depend on logical problems in the thought experiment's framing, and does not require rejecting the explanatory gap. It denies that the scenario specifies a coherent object, by showing that the structural conditions its first stipulation requires entail what its second stipulation denies. The paper develops the argument, distinguishes it from existing dissolutionary alternatives, specifies the metaphysical commitments it depends on, and addresses predictable objections.