We Are All Zombies:

Does the Zombie Argument Disprove Physicalism?

Abstract

This paper seeks to defend physicalism from the zombie arguments proposed by David Chalmers and Saul Kripke. If philosophical zombies are conceivable and thereby metaphysically possible then the physicalistic stance falls. However this paper contends that the zombie argument is entirely reliant on the concept of qualia and its properties of ineffability, intrinsicness, privacy, directness, and immediate access to consciousness. Drawing on Daniel Dennet’s arguments to “Quine Qualia”, this paper ultimately concludes that a stalemate is reached between both positive and negative arguments for the existence of qualia and thus the most parsimonious solution would be to reject qualia from one’s ontology: dissolving the central tenet of the zombie argument.