Richard, I’m unconvinced that you have any way of telling whether the existence of zombies is ideally conceptually possible; the fact that you seem to be able to imagine a zombie world certainly isn’t good evidence that it’s “free of internal contradiction”. (Consider, again, the Riemann hypothesis.)
I don’t have anything like a proof that the idea of zombies is in fact incoherent. But if you’re right that its coherence would entail the existence of these mysterious psychophysical bridging laws and all the rest of your epiphenomenal apparatus, then it seems to me that that’s at least as much evidence against as your alleged ability to imagine it is evidence for. I don’t think pointing this out constitutes “dogmatic prior commitment to materialism”.
Whether “most materialist philosophers” are right in saying that furthermore the ideal conceptual possibility doesn’t suffice to demonstrate that conscious minds don’t simply supervene physically on brains, depends on the details of what you mean by ideal conceptual possibility. I suspect that the notion isn’t in fact clear enough for such questions to have answers.
Anyway, I’ll take a look at your thesis, and shall now also desist from clogging up the comments here.
Richard, I’m unconvinced that you have any way of telling whether the existence of zombies is ideally conceptually possible; the fact that you seem to be able to imagine a zombie world certainly isn’t good evidence that it’s “free of internal contradiction”. (Consider, again, the Riemann hypothesis.)
I don’t have anything like a proof that the idea of zombies is in fact incoherent. But if you’re right that its coherence would entail the existence of these mysterious psychophysical bridging laws and all the rest of your epiphenomenal apparatus, then it seems to me that that’s at least as much evidence against as your alleged ability to imagine it is evidence for. I don’t think pointing this out constitutes “dogmatic prior commitment to materialism”.
Whether “most materialist philosophers” are right in saying that furthermore the ideal conceptual possibility doesn’t suffice to demonstrate that conscious minds don’t simply supervene physically on brains, depends on the details of what you mean by ideal conceptual possibility. I suspect that the notion isn’t in fact clear enough for such questions to have answers.
Anyway, I’ll take a look at your thesis, and shall now also desist from clogging up the comments here.