Abstract
It is well-known that philosophical zombies are putative counterexamples to standard physicalism. While “broad” physicalist theories —such as constitutive Russellian monism— are not similarly threatened by zombies, they allegedly are threatened by philosophical ghosts. In response, physicalists have argued that zombies and ghosts, respectively, are metaphysically impossible, perhaps because inconceivable.
The present essay brings to the fore a third potential horror for both standard and broad physicalists: chuckies. A chucky is a physical twin of a typically inanimate object (such as a toy doll), which nonetheless enjoys human-like phenomenal consciousness. Chuckies are significant because their conceivability is clearer and more robust than that of ghosts, rendering them substantially ‘scarier’ to defenders of broad physicalism. If this is correct then chuckies pose a deeper threat to extant physicalisms than do either zombies or ghosts.
The essay then suggests how the physicalist may be able to respond to this threat by expanding to a sort of ‘superbroad’ physicalism, which subsumes under its explanatory domain not just the mental and the standardly physical, but also the very nature of property exemplification for material objects. While this option is worth exploring, it comes at a metaphysical cost that physicalists may find prohibitive.
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Upcoming seminars
27/11, 10-12 Tricia Magalotti
4/12, 10-12 Alva Stråge
11/12, 13-15 Ulrike Heuer (joint seminar)
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