1 Zombies cannot be there Marco Giunti University of Cagliari email: giunti@unica.it homepage: http://giuntihome.dadacasa.supereva.it 1 THE PROBLEM OF PHENOMENAL CONSCIOUSNESS IN LATE 20 TH CENTURY 2 THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN PHENOMENAL AND PSYCHOLOGICAL CONSCIOUSNESS 3 CHALMERS’ PROBLEMS OF CONSCIOUSNESS 3.1 THE EASY PROBLEM 3.2 THE HARD PROBLEM 3.3 THE SUPER-HARD PROBLEM 4 THE ZOMBIE ARGUMENT AND CHALMERS’ CHALLENGE 5 WHAT IS AN EXPERIENCE? 6 TWO DIFFICULTIES WITH THE DEFINITION OF EXPERIENCE 6.1 ABSENT EXPERIENCES 6.2 STRANGE EXPERIENCES 7 WHAT IS A CONSCIOUS EXPERIENCE? 8 PROPOSAL FOR AN ANALYSIS OF THE PARADIGMATIC CASE OF CONSCIOUS EXPERIENCE – THE EXPERIENCE OF QUALIA 9 THEORY OF PHENOMENAL CONSCIOUSNESS AND PHYSICALISM 9.1 THE PHYSICAL REDUCTIVE EXPLAINABILITY OF CONSCIOUS EXPERIENCE AND THE LOGICAL IMPOSSIBILITY OF EITHER ZOMBIE OR ANGELIC WORLDS 9.2 THE STRONG PHYSICALIST HYPOTHESIS AND THE THEOREM OF PHYSICAL REDUCIBILITY 10 CONCLUSION: THE HARD PROBLEM IS A PHILOSOPHICAL PROBLEM, NOT A SCIENTIFIC ONE APPENDIX: CONSISTENCY OF THE AXIOMATIC THEORY REFERENCES NOTES Keywords reductive explanation; supervenience; hard problem; explanatory gap; zombie; logical possibility; conceivability; ontology; physicalism; materialism; dualism; qualia; concept of consciousness Short abstract On the basis of the distinction between phenomenal and psychological consciousness, I propose a formal framework where we can express and analyze a strong form of Chalmers’ zombie argument. By employing such formal framework, I make clear the kind of problem that this argument poses to anyone who is willing to (i) construct a theory of phenomenal consciousness and (ii) maintain the reductive explainability of phenomenal consciousness by physics. I then extend such formal framework so as to provide a theory of consciousness in axiomatized form. The explanation of phenomenal consciousness provided by this theory is by no means inconsistent with a physicalist perspective. In fact, once the theory is supplemented with a minimal physicalist assumption, we can prove the