Kursinformation

The Australian Philosopher David J. Chalmers made famous the notion of a philosophical Zombie. On his webpage, he writes: "Zombies are hypothetical creatures of the sort that philosophers have been known to cherish. A zombie is physically identical to a normal human being, but completely lacks conscious experience. Zombies look and behave like the conscious beings that we know and love, but "all is dark inside." There is nothing it is like to be a zombie.“

As such, Zombies pose problems for all varieties of the metaphysical position of physicalism, according to which all reality is physical reality and all phenomena can be explained in physical terms, if they can be explained at all. If Zombies are conceivable and metaphysically possible, then physicalism is false and some version of dualism of  the mental and the physical muist be embraced.

In this seminar, we will study texts defending and questioning the possibility of Zombies, thereby touching on issues in modal logic, metaphysics, philosophy of mind, as well as psychology and cognitive science. If possible, we will also inlude virtual meeting on zoom with renowned guests whose texts we will discuss.