Is There a Possible World in which Imagining Zombies Can Shed Light on Our Understanding of Consciousness?

In this article I criticize the explanatory reductionism underlying the zombie argument from the point of view of the philosophy of science. I argue that it is a thesis that finds no support in the available models of reduction, a thesis that is based on an unfounded idealization of the natural sciences and that depends on an uncertain appeal to the possibility in principle of a future unified physics. I conclude that the uncertain character of these assumptions calls for a reassessment, not only of the implications of this type of argument for methodological naturalism but also of the role such arguments play in the study of consciousness.