Torin Alter

Sawyer characterizes the zombie intuition as the claim that zombies are metaphysically possible. That’s not what I mean by the phrase. On my usage, ‘the zombie intuition’ refers to a conceivability claim: the claim that there’s no a priori incoherence in the hypothesis of a minimal physical/functional duplicate of the actual world but without consciousness, i.e., that PT&~Q is conceivable. The claim is the first step of a two-step argument, the second step of which is to infer the corresponding metaphysical possibility. The inference is controversial, but that’s not my concern here. By ‘the zombie intuition’, I mean the first step, which is a claim of conceivability, not metaphysical possibility.

Some argue that God’s omnipotence and moral perfection prevent God from being afraid and having evil desires and thus from understanding such states—which contradicts God’s omniscience. But, I argue, God could acquire such understanding indirectly, either by (i) perceiving the mental states of imperfect creatures, (ii) imaginatively combining the components of mental states with which God could be acquainted, or (iii) having false memory traces of such states. (i)–(iii) are consistent with the principal divine attributes.

Some argue that split-brain cases undermine the thesis that phenomenal consciousness is necessarily unified. This paper defends the phenomenal unity thesis against Michael Tye's (2003 ) version of that argument. Two problems are identified. First, his argument relies on a questionable analysis of the split-brain data. Second, his analysis leads to the view that in experimental situations split-brain patients are not single subjects – a result that would render the analysis harmless to the phenomenal unity thesis.

RÉSUMÉMichael Tye soutient que certains noms sont vagues parce qu'ils réfèrent à des objets vagues. Tye, cependant, ne distingue pas entre référer à un objet vague et référer vaguement. Je suggère, à partir de certaines suppositions, que les noms vagues doivent référer vaguement. Et si les noms vagues doivent référer vaguement, alors l'argument de Tye échoue, puisque des noms qui réfèrent à des objets vagues n'ont pas besoin de référer vaguement. Néanmoins, l'indétermination dans la méta-sémantique de la relation d'être porteur d'un nom peut créer des noms qui réfèrent vaguement. Cette conclusion ne dépend pas de la supposition que les noms ont un contenu descriptif, ni de l'idée que les énoncés d'identitè peuvent être indéterminés quant à leur valeur de vérité.