Zombie KillerThomas, Nigel J.T. (1998) Zombie Killer. In: Toward a Science of Consciousness II: The Second Tucson Discussions and Debates. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, pp. 171-177. ISBN 0-262-08249-7 Full text available as:
Alternative URL: http://www.imagery-imagination.com/zom-abs.htm AbstractIt is argued that the concept of a philosophical zombie, as it figures in arguments designed to refute functionalism or physicalism, contains inherent contradictions, and that, therefore, despite superficial intuitions to the contrary, zombies are not conceptually possible (as the anti-functionalist/materialist arguments require). Zombies will, ex hypothesis, claim to be conscious, but there is no coherent way to construe the truth value of this claim. Attempts to construe it either as true (by the zombie's own lights), as false, or as having no truth value all inevitably lead to contradictions and incoherencies. Thus zombic arguments agains functionalism and physicalism fail. Comments/DiscussionThis draft version differs noticeably, although not in substance, from the published version. The published version was badly damaged by an overzealous and philosophically incompetent copy editor, who introduced several logical and terminological errors, as well as many stylistic changes, very few of which seemed to me to be improvements. Although I did manage to get the worst errors corrected at the proof stage, many of the gratuitous stylistic changes remain, and, as I never got a chance to see the final printer's proofs due to this debacle, there are also some typographical errors in the published version. All in all, this draft version is to be preferred.
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