3.4.2 Knowledge/Mary argument for property dualism Flashcards
philosopher?
Frank Jackson
In which papers did he outline the argument in?
- Epiphenomenal Qualia
- What Mary didn’t know
Attacks which philosophical position?
physicalism
Outline the knowledge/mary arguement
Mary is bron and forced to live in an all balck and white room
She is super smart and is forced to investigate the world on a black/white TV monitor
Mary knows all the physical facts about what it is to see a colour (processes occuring in the eye and brain)
Mary does not know what it **feels **like to see colour
Would she learn anything if the monitor became colourful/she was let out?
Seems as though she would.
Therefore, what it feels like to see colour is not a physical fact
Physicalism says that all facts are physical facts
Therefore, physicalism is false
What is the general theme of the responses to the argument?
There is more than one type of/meaning of what it is to know i.e more than one type i f knowledge. We can and should accept that Mary gains new knowledge when she sees red for the first time. But this doesn’t mean that she gains knowledge of some new fact about the world.
What are the three objections?
- Mary does not gain new propositional knowledge but does gain ability knowledge (the ‘ability
knowledge’ response). - Mary does not gain new propositional knowledge but does gain acquaintance knowledge (the
‘acquaintance knowledge’ response). - Mary gains new propositional knowledge, but this is knowledge of physical facts that she
already knew in a different way (the ‘New Knowledge / Old Fact’ response).
Explain the ‘aquaintance knowledge’ response
To say that Mary knows everything there is to know about colour vision is to say that she knows every physical fact about it. So it concerns her propositional knolwdedge.
When she leaves the room, she does learn something new buyt it is not new facts (prop knowledge) rather she becomes aquainted with colours that is with certain qualia.
How can we better understand the aquaintance response?
The celebrity example
Suppose you are a big fan of a celebrity, you follow their career and know all there is to know about their proffessional and private life. Now suppose that yiu are introduced to them for the first fime. As your eyes meet and you shake hands, do you learn anything new about them?
In one sense no, you already knew what colour their eyes were, what kind of handshakes they give, what colour their nail varnish was that day, so you have not gained factual knowledge, however, you are now aquainted with the, and so have aquired a different type of knowledge.
Explain the ‘ability knowledge’ response
By becoming aquainted with colours she aquires the capacity toi remember and imagine the colour of a ripe tomato, to recognise objects of similar colours by sight and group them together according to common hues, she did not have this ability before.
So the fact that she learns something new doesn;t undermine physicalism since it is perfectly possible for her to aquire new abilities without meaning she didn’t have complete factual knowledge of what happens when people view colours. (So complete knowledge of the physical)
dWhat is Jacksons response to the ‘ability knowledge’ objection
Although Mary does aquire new ability knowlefhe she also aquires some new propositional knowledge. *Mary now knows what it is like for others who haven’t lived in black and white to experience colours. *
Explain the ‘New knowledge/Old fact’ response
- defensive strategy used by physicalists begins by accepting that tehre is a sense in which Mary aquires new factual knowldge denies that this implies tha there are non-physical facts.
- the facts she learns namely what it is like to see colours are really the same facts that she knew before but now presented in a new way or under different description.
- this is because after her release she squires a new set of concepts based on her experience of colours and it it possession of these ‘phenomenal concepts’ that now enables her to describe the same facts in a new way.
- Before her release, Mary only knew about the physical facts of colour from the third person; after her release she comes to know them from the subjective, first person perspective.
- this subjective access is simply a different way of presenting the same neurophysiological states that Mary already knew under the third person description and so is not knowledge to a new set of facts
What example could we use to explain the old fact response?
Masked man
- Mary goes to a party and meets Bruce Wayne and learns he is a billionaire
- Never having heard of Batman she could not claim to know that Batman is a billionaire
- Suppose later that night she meets Batman and learns that he is a billionaire
- Would she gain new knowledge? In a sense yes she has learnt something about Batman she had not learned before, but has she learned a new fact about reality? No.
- The fact that Bruce Wayne is a billionaire and the fact that Batman is a billionaire are not two facts but one.
How does the Batman/Bruce Wayne billionaire argument apply to Mary?
In the same way she aquires a new concept with which to pick out the same individual with meeting Batman but not learning a new fact, prior to her release Mary may know all the physical facts concerning what goes on in the brain when we see red things and when she sees red for the 1st time she learns that the experience of seeing red things involves a certain ‘red-like’ qualitative feel and she aquires a phenomenal concept from this experience. So now she is able to represent the same physical facts going on in her brain under 2 different descriptions, one involving physical, the other in phenomenal terms.
These are just 2 wayas of describing the same fact about seeing red so the kjneowledge argument fails to show that she becomes aware of new non physical facts about the world.
