conceivability , also: conceivableness

"Or at least barely within the borders of conceivability."

Others have claimed that the conceivability of a scenario may not entail its possibility.

I find both resolutions particularly satisfying because they are not so radical that they lie outside easy conceivability.

That is, for phenomenal concepts, conceivability implies possibility.

Since upside-down and inside-out thinking suddenly rule, other recent innovations tremble on the very edge of conceivability.

Conceivability and Possibility.

Wittgenstein explicitly criticizes so-called conceivability arguments: "Could one imagine a stone's having consciousness?

The maxim of this action, says Kant, results in a contradiction in conceivability (and thus contradicts perfect duty).

The conceivability of this "Floating Man" indicates that the soul is perceived intellectually, which entails the soul's separateness from the body.

Robert Weingard: Discussion: General relativity and the conceivability of time travel, Philosophy of Science, vol.

Thus, according to Wittgenstein, mental states are intimately connected to a subject's environment, especially their linguistic environment, and conceivability or imaginability arguments that claim otherwise are misguided.

In his autobiography he wrote: "At the beginning of the 20th century the question of the conceivability of other worlds with modified physics and mathematics will be highly employed."

These include Gödel's incompleteness theorems and their relationship to concepts of artificial intelligence and the human mind, as well as the conceivability of some unconventional cosmological models.

However, such an epistemological or explanatory problem might indicate an underlying metaphysical issue-the non-physicality of qualia, even if not proven by conceivability arguments is far from ruled out.

Some philosophers find it absurd that an "armchair argument" can prove something to exist, and the detailed argument does involve many assumptions about conceivability and possibility, which are open to criticism.

Gendler, T.S. & Hawthorne, J., Conceivability and Possibility, Oxford University Press, (Oxford), 2002.

It was barely within the realm of conceivability that another as mighty as he could simultaneously exist, but they could no more have escaped each other's notice than two brontosaurs in the same pond.

Specifically, Chalmers deploys two-dimensional semantics to "bridge the (gap between) epistemic and modal domains" in arguing from knowability or epistemic conceivability to what is necessary or possible (modalities).

Levine agrees that conceivability is flawed as a means of establishing metaphysical realities, but points out that even if we come to the metaphysical conclusion that qualia are physical, there is still an explanatory problem.

Since none of the concepts involved in these sciences make reference to consciousness or other mental phenomena, and any physical entity can be by definition described scientifically via physics, the move from conceivability to possibility is not such a large one.

Joseph Levine's paper Conceivability, Identity, and the Explanatory Gap takes up where the criticisms of conceivability arguments, such as the inverted spectrum argument and the zombie argument, leave off.

The possibility of zombies would also entail that mental states do not supervene upon physical states, a claim that the reductionist physicalist is committed to, and Australian Philosopher David Chalmers argues that the coherent conceivability of a zombie entails a metaphysical possibility.