Phenomenally Conscious Philosophical Zombies: How epiphenomenalism undermines free will

The debate on free will is long and expansive. The conventional debate revolves around the truth of determinism and whether it is compatible with free will. However, most of the discussions between compatibilists and incompatibilists seem to get bogged down on what it means to have freedom and end in a frustrating back-and-forth about semantics - a place which we so far have not been able to escape. In this paper, I approach this debate from a different perspective in order to avoid this familiar dead end. First, by drawing on our intuitions, I will argue that phenomenal consciousness is necessary for any conception of free will that is true to our intuitions. Next, I will explain the concept of epiphenomenalism: the view that phenomenal consciousness is an epiphenomenon and so has no causal power. Taken together, these ideas form an obvious problem for any free-willer: if phenomenal consciousness is essential for free will but it does not have any causal power, free will does not...Show moreThe debate on free will is long and expansive. The conventional debate revolves around the truth of determinism and whether it is compatible with free will. However, most of the discussions between compatibilists and incompatibilists seem to get bogged down on what it means to have freedom and end in a frustrating back-and-forth about semantics - a place which we so far have not been able to escape. In this paper, I approach this debate from a different perspective in order to avoid this familiar dead end. First, by drawing on our intuitions, I will argue that phenomenal consciousness is necessary for any conception of free will that is true to our intuitions. Next, I will explain the concept of epiphenomenalism: the view that phenomenal consciousness is an epiphenomenon and so has no causal power. Taken together, these ideas form an obvious problem for any free-willer: if phenomenal consciousness is essential for free will but it does not have any causal power, free will does not exist. It seems unreasonable to claim that adding phenomenal consciousness to a philosophical zombie (a being that functions exactly like a human being but has no phenomenal consciousness and so has no free will) makes him free. Anyone arguing for the existence of free will now faces a dilemma: they can either dispute the claim that consciousness is necessary for a conception of free will that is true to our intuitions, or they can dispute epiphenomenalism. The problem of disputing the claim that consciousness is a necessary condition for a conception of free will that is true to our intuitions is quite simple: I deem it impossible to give an example of an unconscious entity that has free will. Alternatively, disputing epiphenomenalism puts the burden of proof on the free-willers, since it would require denying the idea of causal closure in order to avoid the problem of explanatory exclusion. Defenders of free will would need to address the hard problem of consciousness and possibly even ‘solve’ it. The investigation in this paper therefore results in a robust conclusion about free will – that it is in fact an impossibility – and also provides a different perspective from whichShow less

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Phenomenally Conscious Philosophical Zombies: How epiphenomenalism undermines free will