ABSTRACT
Zombies are hypothetical beings that are behaviorally and functionally (or perhaps even physically) indistinguishable from humans, but which differ from us in not having conscious (or, at least, qualitatively conscious) mental states. Zombiphiles are those who claim that the existence of zombies is a genuine logical possibility, and that this possibility entails that the mind can never be fully understood in functional (i.e. computational), or perhaps even in physical, terms. The 'zombiphile argument', however, only succeeds if the relevant equivalences are understood quite strictly, which can only be made good by the hypothesis of a 'zombie possible-world', identical to the real world but for the fact that each person's 'zombie twin', despite sharing an identical cognitive constitution, environmental situation, and life history, lacks consciousness.
