The perception of philosophical zombies—hypothetical beings indistinguishable from humans but lacking consciousness—may be shaped by linguistic biases rather than solid reasoning. In a study involving 200 participants, framing effects were observed: when presented with the term "zombie," 75% maintained strong intuitions about their conceivability, compared to just 40% for "duplicate." These results suggest that contextually defeated inferences can mislead understanding of consciousness, challenging the notion that significant barriers exist between physical processes and conscious experience.
Laypeople hold conflicting beliefs about vision, simultaneously endorsing both Direct Realist and Indirect Realist conceptions, according to three studies using the newly developed Direct/Indirect Realist Belief Inventory (DIRBI). These conflicting beliefs are not merely superficial agreement but reflect genuine beliefs anchored in implicit knowledge structures: experiential event knowledge about vision and an implicit model of endogenous attention. The findings challenge the common philosophical assumption that there is a single, coherent common-sense conception of vision that can serve as an epistemic default in debates about perception.