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Full Idea
If it could be supposed that a body exists without a mind, then a man would do everything in the same way as if he did not have a mind, and men would speak and write the same things, without knowing what they do. ...But this supposition is impossible.
Gist of Idea
It's impossible, but imagine a body carrying on normally, but with no mind
Source
Gottfried Leibniz (Paper of December 1676 [1676], A6.3.400), quoted by Daniel Garber - Leibniz:Body,Substance,Monad 5
Book Ref
Garber,Daniel: 'Leibniz: Body, Substance, Monad' [OUP 2009], p.196
A Reaction
This is clearly the zombie dream, three centuries before Robert Kirk's modern invention of the idea. Leibniz's reason for denying the possibility of zombies won't be the modern physicalist reason.
| 12727 | It's impossible, but imagine a body carrying on normally, but with no mind [Leibniz] |
| 9177 | Identity theorists must deny that pains can be imagined without brain states [Kripke] |
| 4967 | It seems logically possible to have the pain brain state without the actual pain [Kripke] |
| 3487 | Without internal content, a zombie's full behaviour couldn't be explained [Searle] |
| 3288 | Can we describe our experiences to zombies? [Nagel] |
| 3390 | Are inverted or absent qualia coherent ideas? [Kim] |
| 3414 | What could demonstrate that zombies and inversion are impossible? [Kim] |
| 2413 | If I can have a zombie twin, my own behaviour doesn't need consciousness [Chalmers] |
| 7061 | Philosophers' zombies aim to show consciousness is over and above the physical world [Heil] |
| 7063 | Zombies are based on the idea that consciousness relates contingently to the physical [Heil] |
| 7064 | Functionalists deny zombies, since identity of functional state means identity of mental state [Heil] |