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Chapter
What We Conceive of When We Conceive of Zombies
DOI link for What We Conceive of When We Conceive of Zombies
What We Conceive of When We Conceive of Zombies book
What We Conceive of When We Conceive of Zombies
DOI link for What We Conceive of When We Conceive of Zombies
What We Conceive of When We Conceive of Zombies book
ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the conceivability argument against physicalism. It focuses on positive rather than negative conceivability. This is an important limitation, but a discussion of arguments making use of positive conceivability is still of significance. First, positive conceivability is important in its own right. Second, arguments which rely on negative conceivability require a reason to think that negative conceivability provides a good guide to metaphysical possibility. This claim is controversial: it in effect requires what is metaphysically possible to be accessible through a priori reflection on a limited number of truths. In imagining a situation, philosophers can distinguish between qualitative and stipulative content. It is worth comparing extension rules with other proposed limitations on the connection between imagination and possibility. The chapter argues that anti-physicalist situations involve stipulative content and that for each anti-physicalist situation we lack an extension rule to support this content.