Erkenntnis
June 1, 2026
Daniel Giberman
The philosophical zombie argument holds that if we can conceive of a being physically identical to a conscious person but lacking consciousness, then such zombies are metaphysically possible, which would refute physicalism. This essay offers a new objection: the conceivability of zombies requires that consciousness facts be entirely independent of mereological (part-whole) and spatiotemporal complexity facts. However, this same premise also makes conceivable a version of panpsychism that is modally powerful enough to either render zombies inconceivable or break the link between conceivability and possibility. Either conclusion neutralizes the threat that zombies pose to physicalism.
Erkenntnis
May 14, 2026
Yaron Wolf
Whether experience itself unfolds in time is debated. This paper defends the extensional account of temporal consciousness, where the temporal properties we directly experience match those of experience itself. After showing that introspection alone cannot settle the question, a new argument is developed based on introspection into and the veridicality conditions of awareness of bodily actions. The paper critiques a prominent version of the extensional view that gives temporally extended experiences explanatory and metaphysical priority over their temporal parts. Attention to facets of agential awareness suggests that extended experience should instead be understood as processual in its temporal character.
Erkenntnis
May 9, 2026
Mahammad Ayvazov
Finite cognitive agents achieve reliable knowledge not by minimizing error through optimal model selection, but by attaining “asymptotic coherence”—a form of epistemic stability that emerges through structured simplification. Perfect epistemic coherence is a formal attractor that embodied knowers approach but cannot reach due to physical and computational limits. This challenges both foundationalist and coherentist theories. Instead, human knowledge is characterized by bounded rationality: inference strategies that maintain structural coherence across informational insufficiency. This is not a deficient approximation of ideal rationality but an irreducibly distinct epistemic form, constituted by the structure of cognitive environments. The framework draws on embodied and enactive approaches to cognition.
Erkenntnis
February 16, 2026
Marcelino Botin, Markel Kortabarria
Grounding is a non-reductive relation that helps physicalists address the hard problem of consciousness, but grounding physicalists face a new challenge: explaining substantive phenomenal knowledge, especially revelation—the claim that such knowledge reveals the essence of phenomenal properties. Revelation appears to conflict with the view that grounding relations are essence-mediated. Two solutions are offered: first, drop essence-mediation and adopt a law-based formulation of grounding physicalism, though this risks resembling dualism; second, retain essence-mediation and argue that, despite introspective appearances, phenomenal properties do not have purely phenomenal essences. Both approaches are viable, showing grounding physicalism can address the challenge.
Erkenntnis
January 1, 2022
Clare Mac Cumhaill
A novel anti-sceptical argument against the brain-in-a-vat (BIV) scenario is developed by examining the conditions under which the locative preposition 'in' is produced and used. Two uses of 'in' are distinguished: material and descriptive phenomenological. Movement is central to the concept that use of 'in' expresses. A functionalist semantics of the intelligible use of 'in' demands a materialist philosophy of action in the spirit of G.E.M. Anscombe, but the structure of space is not irrelevant; it unsettles the causal-empirical assumptions grounding the BIV narrative's picture of subjectivity and agency. Finally, functionalist semantics demands a Naïve Realist metaphysics of perception, consistent with some of Putnam's later writings.