The CEU Department of Philosophy cordially invites you to a talk by Katalin Balog (Yale University) on Physicalism and Conceivability Arguments Thursday, 17 July, 5.30 PM, in Zrinyi str. 14/ room 412 ABSTRACT In this paper I want to take a new look at the history and wider landscape of recent arguments against physicalism and physicalist responses to them. These arguments - I will call them conceivability arguments after Descartes’ famous conceivability argument for the distinctness of mind and body - start from conceivability considerations, or more generally, from a premise about an epistemic or explanatory gap between physical and phenomenal descriptions and conclude from this that physicalism is false. The main goal of this paper is to defend what I believe to be the most powerful physicalist response to these arguments, recently dubbed the “Phenomenal Concept Strategy”. The Phenomenal Concept Strategy explains the epistemic or explanatory gap between phenomenal and physical descriptions by appeal to certain unique features of phenomenal concepts in a manner consistent with physicalism. This strategy can be viewed as an important part of a general physicalist answer to the dualist arguments. The physicalist can answer the a priori concerns of the dualist by asserting the conceivability of “qualia-heads”, i.e., purely physical beings that are our physical duplicates and have phenomenal experiences. I will show in detail that such beings are (at least) conceivable, in spite of the epistemic gaps the dualists are drawing attention to, and that their conceivability is enough to rebut the anti-physicalist arguments. This argument, let’s call it Counter Conceivability Argument, is the Master Argument that physicalists who admit to the epistemic gaps can rely on to rebut any conceivability argument. Kriszta Biber Department Coordinator Philosophy Department Tel: 36-1-327-3806 Fax: 36-1-327-3072 E-mail: biberk(a)ceu.hu