怪人假设为我们理解和把握心灵哲学的核心问题提供了很好的方式。怪人假设的核心是怪人的可能性问题,这一问题被认为是物理主义的一个严重挑战。由于怪人与意识生物的同一性存在行为、功能和物理三个层面,对可能性的理解同样存在严重的分歧与争议,因而怪人的可能性问题实际上是何种怪人在何种意义上可能的问题,通过这样一种方式怪人假设几乎与每一种意识理论都紧密相关,任何一种成功的意识理论都无法完全回避怪人假设。
The Zombie Hypotheses provide us a sensible way to understand the core issues of philosophy of mind. The crux of Zombie Hypotheses is its possibility, which was taken as a serious challenge to physicalism. Given there are three ways in which zombies can be stipulated as identical to conscious creatures: behavioral, functional, and physical, while there are substantial disagreements and divergences on the conception of possibility, the problem of zombie's possibility thus can be specified as "in what sense of possibility a behavioral/ functional/physical zombie is identical to a conscious creature". In this way, the Zombie Hypotheses is associated with almost all kinds of theories of consciousness, which means a successful theory of consciousness has to face up to the Zombie Hypotheses.