Imagining subjective absence: Marcus on zombies

Abstract

The claim that zombies are conceivable is a premise of one of the most important anti-physicalist arguments. Eric Marcus (2004) challenges that premise in two novel ways. He observes that conceiving of zombies would require imagining total subjective absence. And this, he argues, we cannot do. However, his argument turns on the assumption that absence is imaginable only against a background of presence and, I argue, that assumption is dubious. Second, he proposes that the premise's intuitive plausibility derives from a scope confusion. However, I argue, on reflection that proposal is untenable.