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Conceiving the Inconceivability of Conceivability

Publikace na Fakulta humanitních studií |
2020

Tento text není v aktuálním jazyce dostupný. Zobrazuje se verze "en".Abstrakt

One of the most famous arguments against physicalism is Chalmers' so-called "Conceivability Argument", which infers possibility of a physical state being without a phenomenal state from the conceivability of such a state. This thesis leads to a rejection of physicalism's main thesis of physical states causing phenomenal states.

However, Chalmers' idea of conceivability makes a contradictory appeal to something which by his own definition cannot be externally represented, namely the non-existence of zombie twin's phenomenal states. Thus, in general, Chalmers' account lacks a sufficient criterion of representability of the entities and concepts his argument invokes, and the idea of consciousness crossing borders of physically investigable reality loses its foundations.

This give rise to a question whether by supplying such criteria drawing from Peirce's semiotics, the conclusion of the argument could be maintained, which the paper aims at answering positively.