Ten years ago, way back in February 2010, the 2nd online consciousness conference would have been just starting and the papers from the first conference were coming out in the Journal of Consciousness Studies.

Even though I would change some things if I could, I am still very happy with my paper Deprioritizing the A Priori Arguments Against Physicalism . I think it is especially cool that this paper is cited by both the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy’s entry on Zombies as well as the Wikipedia entry on Philosophical Zombies. In addition I have yet to see a good response to the argument I developed there. David Chalmers assimilates the objection to a ‘meta-modal’ objection involving conceiving that physicalism is true (or that necessarily (P –> Q) is possibly true). I went to Tucson in 2012 to talk about this and we talked about it a bit here (and I wrote up a version here) but I have never seen a real response to the actual argument.

If the best response, as the SEP and Dave’s 2D argument against Materialism paper/chapter suggest (though to be fair they are talking about conceiving that physicalism is true, which is not what I am talking about), is that they find shombies inconceivable then they have revealed that the a priori arguments should be deprioritized (that’s always been my point). I find zombies inconceivable and they find shombies inconceivable. How can we tell who is doing it right? These thought experiments can give an individual who finds the first premise plausible (the conceivability of zombies/shombies) some reason to think that their view (physicalism, dualism, whatever) is rational to hold but they cannot be used as a way to show that some metaphysical view about the mind/conscious is actually true. In this sense they are sort of like the ‘victorious’ Ontological Argument of Plantinga.

I would also say that I am more convinced than ever that shombies are not Frankish’s Anti-Zombies. In fact given Keith’s views on illusionism I am pretty sure he is committed to the claim that shombies, as I envision them, must be inconceivable (or not possible).

Oh yeah, this was supposed to be a post about the Online Consciousness Conference 🙂 Below are links to the most viewed sessions from the five conferences as well as to the most commented on sessions.

Most viewed sessions

• On a Phenomenal Confusion about Access and Consciousness -Dan Dennett from the 5th conference (CO5)
• Sensory Awareness and Perceptual Certainty -Hakwan Lau with commentary by David Rosenthal, David Chalmers, and Ned Block from the second conference (CO2)
• Dissolving the Hard Problem of Consciousness -Glenn Carruthers and Elizabeth Schier with commentary by Janet Levin, Ellen Fridland, and Jennifer Matey from the fourth conference CO4
• Consciousness and its Function -David Rosenthal from the first conference CO1
• The New Mysterianism -Derek Ball with commentary by James Dow from first conference (CO1)
• Perceptual Phenomenology -Bence Nanay with commentary by Kevin Connolly and Farid Masrour from the third conference CO3

Most commented on sessions

• The Biological Cost of Consciousness
• Color-Consciousness Conceptualism
• Not a HOT Dream
• Dissolving the Hard Problem of Consciousness
• Property Dualists Should Be Panpsychists
• If Materialism is True, The United States is Probably Conscious
• In Defense of the Phenomenal Concept Strategy