The Arrow That Cuts Both Ways: Strong Causality, Causal Reversibility, and the Dissolution of the Philosophical Zombie
Year: 2026
Type: preprint
Abstract: This paper introduces Strong Causality as a meta-level framework for examining the conditions under which causal and temporal discourse become possible. We argue that the unidirectional arrow of time—treated as absolute in David Chalmers's philosophical zombie argument—is not a fundamental given but an emergent, stage-dependent product of local causal regimes. Drawing on quantum indefinite causal order and thermodynamic emergence, we demonstrate that causal sequences are locally reversible and that the distinction between cause and effect dissolves at the ontological boundary. Chalmers's zombie scenario presupposes a static, asymmetric causal coupling ("physical facts fixed, experiential facts free") that Strong Causality reveals to be a parochial cognitive artifact rather than a metaphysical truth. Once the causal arrow is treated as reversible and stage-dependent, the conceivability of zombies collapses: what appears as a modal intuition is merely the projection of a locally stable inferential habit. We conclude that the zombie argument does not threaten physicalism; it exposes the limits of unexamined causal presuppositions in modal epistemology.
Author: Niu, Gangbei
Language: English
Subfield: Experimental and Cognitive Psychology
Field: Psychology
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7222589970
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