title: A priori physicalism, lonely ghosts and Cartesian doubt.
abstract: A zombie is a physical duplicates of a human being which lacks consciousness. A ghost is a phenomenal duplicate of a human being whose nature is exhausted by consciousness. Discussion of zombie arguments, that is anti-physicalist arguments which appeal to the conceivability of zombies, is familiar in the philosophy of mind literature, whilst ghostly arguments, that is, anti-physicalist arguments which appeal to the conceivability of ghosts, are somewhat neglected. In this paper I argue that ghostly arguments have a number of dialectical advantages over zombie arguments. I go onto explain how the conceivability of ghosts is inconsistent with two kinds of a priori physicalism: analytic functionalism and the Australian physicalism of Armstrong and Lewis.
authors: University of Hertfordshire, Department of Philosophy, de Havilland Campus, Hatfield AL 10 9AB, UK. philgoff1@gmail.com
authors: Philip
authors: P
authors: Goff
mesh_terms: D003243:Consciousness; D006801:Humans; D010465:Perception; D010684:Philosophy; D011582:Psychological Theory