cts about consciousness to physical facts; therefore, one cannot explain the occurrence of consciousness just by appeal to the physical facts. Chalmers contends that materialism is committed to the view that consciousness is logically supervenient on the physical, in which case materialism is false. Although Chalmers provides other arguments for the falsity of materialism, this is his strongest, and it will be worth examining the premises and intuitions behind this argument. (1) Arguing for the logical possibility of zombies is somewhat problematic because zombies don't exist in our world. The question of whether zombies are logically possible depends upon whether one believes that there are inherent logical contradictions in the notion of a zombie. Nothing containing logical contradictions in its nature (such as a married bachelor) can be logically possible; however, everything else is fair game (flying toasters, water which freezes at 200 degrees, etc.). I agree that there does not seem to be any manifest contradiction in the idea of a being who is physically identical to a person yet completely devoid of conscious experience. Indeed, eliminativists will be happy to endorse the possibility of zombies, but with a catch: according to the eliminativist view, our picture of a "zombie" is actually an accurate picture of ourselves. Dennett, for example, does not believe that any phenomenon matching what we call consciousness exists, even in us. However, he would not endorse Chalmers' claim that there could exist an exact physical replica of a person which lacked something that the person possessed. In Chapter 12 of his book Consciousness Explained, Dennett states, "There is another way to address the possibility of zombies, and in some regards I think it is more satisfying. Are zombies possible? They're not just possible, they're actual! We're all zombies" (406). In this passage, Dennett is not denying that we experience pain or that there ...
