Necessarily, Probably I am not a Zombie

Authors

  • Danilo Fraga Dantas Doutor em Filosofia pela Universidade da Califórnia

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.15448/1983-4012.2018.1.31457

Keywords:

Argumento Zumbi, Probabilidade, Epistemologia Modal

Abstract

The negative zombie argument has as premises that p ∧ ¬q is ideally negatively
conceivable, that what is ideally negatively conceivable is possible, and that physicalism is incompatible with p ∧ ¬q being possible and as conclusion that physicalism is false. In the argument, p is the conjunction of the fundamental physical truths and laws and q is an arbitrary phenomenal truth. A sentence φ is
ideally negatively conceivable if and only if an ideal reasoner does not believe that ¬φ on a priori reflection. The argument presupposes a version of the scrutability thesis stating that, for all φ that supervene on p, the ideal reasoner
believes that p → φ on a priori reflection. In this paper, I argue that, given relevant interpretation of probabilities, the ideal reasoner believes truly, for all φ, that p → pr(φ) = x on a priori reflection. But then, depending on the value of pr(q) and the correlations between q and other sentences, the ideal reasoner also believes (probably, truly) that p → q on a priori reflection. For some elevant qs, p ∧ ¬q is not ideally negatively conceivable and the zombie argument has a false premise. The choice of an adequate q depends on empirical information, what makes the zombie argument neither conclusive nor a priori.

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Author Biography

Danilo Fraga Dantas, Doutor em Filosofia pela Universidade da Califórnia

Bacharel em Comunicação Social (Universidade Federal da Bahia - UFBA), mestre em Comunicação e Cultura Contemporâneas (UFBA), mestre em Filosofia (Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul - UFRGS) e doutor em Filosofia (Universidade da Califórnia, campus de Davis - UC Davis). No mestrado em Filosofia, estudou as consequências da existência de falsas lembranças para a epistemologia e metafísica da memória. No doutorado, utilizou modelos formais e computacionais para lidar com questões em epistemologia, como onisciência lógica, concebilidade, epistemologia Bayesiana, raciocínio não-monotônico, etc.

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Published

2018-07-30

How to Cite

Dantas, D. F. (2018). Necessarily, Probably I am not a Zombie. Intuitio, 11(1), 19–32. https://doi.org/10.15448/1983-4012.2018.1.31457

Issue

Vol. 11 No. 1 (2018): Dossier in Philosophy and Probability

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Dossiê

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