No Zombie Can Ask: The Self-Excluding Question and the Symmetry of Unanswerability

Abstract

The zombie argument treats the unanswerability of “why is there experience?” as evidence against physicalism. This paper grants conceivability and poses the inverse question — given that experience exists and is metabolically expensive, what would have made it necessary? — showing that it is equally unanswerable, and for the same structural reason: both questions can only be posed from within the faculty whose existence they interrogate. This yields an observation-selection effect at the level of the faculty rather than the observer, and a deflationary result: unanswerability is symmetric and therefore not differentially evidential between physicalism and dualism. The paper then argues that the transcendental standpoint is not free. In an organism, the conditions of possibility of reflexive inquiry are implemented, and implementation is metabolically priced — reflection pays twice, once to suppress the automatism it overrides and once to sustain the representation it entertains. An ordinal prediction about the sequence of functional failure under global energetic restriction follows, together with a constraint on any theory of consciousness that treats phenomenality as thermodynamically free. The hard problem is not solved here. It is constrained, and the standpoint from which it is asked is shown to be purchased and provisional. Preprint. Not peer reviewed. Comments welcome.