scholarly journals Alien worlds, alien laws, and the Humean conceivability argument

Ratio ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-13
Author(s):  
Lok‐Chi Chan ◽  
David Braddon‐Mitchell ◽  
Andrew James Latham
2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 162-174
Author(s):  
Timofey S. Demin ◽  

2020 ◽  
Vol 22 (3) ◽  
pp. 105-113
Author(s):  
Yasser Delfani ◽  
Ahmadreza Hemmatimoghaddam ◽  
Reza Mosmer ◽  
Mohammad Sadat Mansouri ◽  
◽  
...  

Noûs ◽  
2001 ◽  
Vol 35 (s15) ◽  
pp. 393-413 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Stoljar

Analysis ◽  
2001 ◽  
Vol 61 (3) ◽  
pp. 187-193 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. Brueckner

Author(s):  
Torin Alter

Anti-materialist arguments such as the knowledge argument, the conceivability argument, and the explanatory gap argument do not establish the existence of brute phenomenal facts about consciousness. First, those arguments work by exploiting specific features of the physical, which some nonphenomenal entities might lack. Even if the arguments establish an ontological gap between the physical and the phenomenal, they do not establish a gap between the nonphenomenal and the phenomenal. But they would have to establish such a gap to show that there are brute phenomenal facts. Second, the arguments do not rule out certain views on which there are no such facts. The chapter’s conclusion leaves open the possibility that combining the anti-materialist arguments with other considerations would establish the existence of brute phenomenal facts. However, whether that strategy can succeed is unclear. That and other considerations are used to support agnosticism about the existence of brute phenomenal facts.


Author(s):  
B. V. Faul ◽  

In this paper the author presents an argument in favor of minimal dualism — thesis, according to which conscious agents are able to exist without bodies. Author demonstrates the advantages of this argument. Firstly, he shows that this argument is invulnerable to the epistemic strategy of criticizing the conceivability argument. Secondly, the epistemic approach restricts the conceivability of creatures, the possibility of which is incompatible with the minimal dualism


Author(s):  
Philip Goff

A core philosophical project is the attempt to uncover the fundamental nature of reality, the limited set of facts upon which all other facts depend. Perhaps the most popular theory of fundamental reality in contemporary analytic philosophy is physicalism: the view that the world is fundamentally physical in nature. The first half of this book argues that physicalist views cannot account for the evident reality of conscious experience and hence that physicalism cannot be true. However, the book also tries to show that familiar arguments to this conclusion—Frank Jackson’s form of the knowledge argument and David Chalmers’ two-dimensional conceivability argument—are not wholly adequate. The second half of the book explores and defends a radical alternative to physicalism known as “Russellian monism.” Russellian monists believe that (i) physics tells us nothing about the concrete, categorical nature of material entities, and that (ii) it is this “hidden” nature of matter that explains human and animal consciousness. Throughout the second half of the book various forms of Russellian monism are surveyed, and the key challenges facing it are discussed. Ultimately the book defends a cosmopsychist form of Russellian monism, according to which all facts are grounded in facts about the conscious universe.


2021 ◽  
pp. 214-251
Author(s):  
Jessica M. Wilson

Wilson considers whether consciousness is either Weakly or Strongly emergent. Some have seen consciousness as the best case for a Strongly emergent phenomenon, reflecting that subjective or qualitative aspects of consciousness depart so greatly from physical features that some anti-physicalist view (perhaps Strong emergence) must be true. Wilson considers two such ‘explanatory gap’ strategies, associated with the knowledge argument (Jackson 1982, 1986) and the conceivability argument (Chalmers 1996, 2009). She argues that each strategy fails, for reasons not much previously explored; hence while the Strong emergence of consciousness remains an open empirical possibility, there is currently no motivation for taking this to actually be so. Wilson then argues that attention to the determinable nature of qualitative conscious states provides good reason to take such states to be Weakly emergent by lights of a determinable-based account, and defends the application of such an account to mental states against various objections.


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