Abstract

There is a long tradition of philosophical arguments seeking to prove substantial metaphysical theses starting from epistemic premises. In particular, in order to prove that something is possible, in an interesting metaphysical sense, some philosophers start from what is conceivable (in some sense to be determined). The aim of this paper is to distinguish and evaluate the different ways one can reject the metaphysical conclusion of a conceivability argument while accepting its epistemic premise. To do so, I will focus on a particular conceivability argument, namely the zombie argument attributed to David Chalmers (1996). However, the conclusions are intended to be generalizable to any conceivability argument