Chalmers (2007) has argued that any version of the phenomenal concept strategy will fail, given that phenomenal concepts will either fail to explain our epistemic situation, or fail to be physically explicable themselves. Carruthers and Veillet (2007) have offered a response, arguing that zombies do share our epistemic situation. In the following paper I aim to show that philosophical-zombies do not share our epistemic situation concerning phenomenal consciousness. I will begin with some background material regarding the general dialectic I am addressing in section (I) before outlining the debate between Chalmers (2007) and Carruthers and Veillet (2007) in more detail and its relevance for mind-body considerations in section (II). Next, in section (III) I will suggest a worry related to Carruthers and Veillet’s position: that phenomenal concepts fail to refer in zombie worlds in the first place. Finally, in section (IV) I will argue that even if a zombie’s phenomenal concepts successfully refer, there is still good reason to think that zombies will fail to share our epistemic situation. I will defend this claim by explaining three asymmetries between me and my zombie twin’s corresponding epistemic situations. / Master of Arts / In the following paper I defend the position that philosophical zombies don’t share our epistemic situation. Philosophical zombies are hypothetical creatures that are identical to humans concerning all physical and functional properties, yet lack any phenomenal experiences. While zombies have identical brain states compared to non-zombies, they lack any felt, private, and subjective experiences. Next, I understand epistemic situation in this paper as the justificatory status of one’s beliefs. So, I am arguing that the beliefs of a physical duplicate of me who lacked experiences would not be equally justified as mine. Specifically, I am responding to Carruthers and Veillet (2007) who argue that philosophical zombies do share our epistemic situation, so long as we allow the zombies’ beliefs to differ in content. That is to say, if we understand zombie beliefs to be about different states (other than phenomenal states), then there is an available physical referent for the zombie belief that will ensure all his beliefs are as equally justified as their non-zombie twin. I suggest a difficulty for the existence of such a referent, and point to a collection of asymmetries in justificatory status between the beliefs of zombies and non-zombies to argue that the Carruthers and Veillet (2007) strategy is unavailable.

Phenomenal consciousness presents a recalcitrant problem for the scientific conception of the world and the physicalist thesis that claims that everything that exists (including whatever is involved in any mental phenomena) is physical and physically explainable. Thus, on this view, every truth is a physical truth. By Putnam-Kripkean considerations and for several other reasons, I defend the claim that any version of such a physicalist thesis must be a necessary thesis, which ultimately means that contingent physicalism is not tenable. Against this thesis, philosophers have put forward several anti-physicalist arguments including the knowledge argument, the conceivability/modal argument, the explanatory gap argument, and the property dualism argument. All these arguments rest on the assumption of an epistemic/explanatory gap, which I call the &ldquo / phenomenal-physical gap,&rdquo / between the phenomenal and the physical. I claim that the phenomenal-physical gap (the PP-gap) is unbridgeable, from which it can be concluded that a priori physicalism is not tenable. The phenomenal concept strategy (PCS), which is a specific strategy within a posteriori necessary physicalism, aims at offering an explanation in physical terms of why we have such an unbridgeable gap by differentiating between phenomenal and physical concepts in a fundamental way. Nevertheless, proponents of PCS&mdash / the most promising version of a posteriori necessary physicalism&mdash / face a severe problem that I call &ldquo / the problem of phenomenal subjecthood&rdquo / in explaining in physical terms why we have the PP-gap. The phenomenon of &ldquo / experiencing&rdquo / consists of three substantially existing elements: the phenomenal subject (the experiencer), the experiential item (what is experienced by the subject), and the phenomenal s-v-o relation (the experiential relation) between the first two. I argue for the substantial existence of phenomenal subjects based on an argument I provide, the reality of some mental phenomena such as phenomenal unity and continuity, and the mental facts concerning phenomenal peculiarity, phenomenal agency, and the sense of phenomenal I-ness, the reality of all of which one cannot deny. Since PCS accounts are mostly qualia-centered accounts that ignore the reality of phenomenal subjects and the phenomenal s-v-o relation, they cannot account for the PP-gap in physical terms without first offering substantial theories of phenomenal subjecthood. But once they grant the substantiality of phenomenal subjects, they face severe difficulties in establishing their accounts of the nature of phenomenal concept, and thus the PP-gap in physical terms.