[ZenGum]

I swear this is true.

My PhD Thesis is about zombies.

Absolutely really utterly true!

The title is :

Conceivability Arguments Against Physicalism,
..........................Or ,
How to Slay Zombies and Banish Spectres.


In this context, "zombie" is a short expression for "non-conscious microphysical duplicate of a conscious creature". The point is that if consciousness can be explained by science, then we should be able to derive the facts of consciousness from the microphysical facts (and thus show that zombies are inconceivable, and hence impossible); however, it is notoriously difficult to do this because the essentially first person relationship we have with our own consciousness renders it inaccessible from a scientific approach which is necessarily third-person.
I argued that it is possible to show that there will be some facts of consciousness (thus proving that zombies are impossible) by showing that some computational cognitive systems would take first person approaches to their own states.
However, this reasoning also showed that it is impossible to specify the exact nature of the conscious experience, thus allowing that "spectres" (short for "differently-conscious microphysical duplicate of a conscious creature") are conceivable. However, this conceivability can also be explained by the same reasoning, and so is not taken as evidence for possibility.

Funny, I hadn't been into this stuff for years, but just today I went to the library to get a few books out about this stuff.