Knowledge - consciousness

Question 1

Jackson - knowledge argument - mary

Answer 1

Mary, hypothetical scientist who has lived her whole life in a black and white room, she has only see black, white and grey things her entire life, but she has all the facts about light, colours, optics, etc. She knows everything there is to know about colour and perception. But she doesn’t know what colouts look like, she’s never seen it before. When she leawves the room and sees colour, something changes, she knows something she dind’t know before, something different from all of these physical facts. She can only get knowledge on what its like by seeing it herself. There is something more to the world than physical knowledge.

1. Mary has completel physical knowledge before her release
2. Mary lacks phenomenal knowledge before her release
3. If mary has complete physical knowledge without phenomenal knowledge, then phenomenal facts are not physical facts
4. Materialism says that phenomenal facts are physical facts
5. Therefore, materialism is false (that mental events are physical events is false)

Question 2

Rejections to Jackson’s mary argument

Answer 2

Materialists ought to reject premise 3

Some reject premise 2 - that she lacks phenomenal knowledge before her release
Most reject 3 - If mary has complete physical knowledge without phenomenal knowledge, then phenomenal facts are not physical facts - materialists argue that that doesn’t mean that there were facts about the nature of reality that she didn’t have before that she acquires after
Objection 1: Mary just gains new abilities - she gains know-how
Lewis says there is knowledge that and knowledge how - knowledge of facts and know-how, they are different, we can know that a bunch of notes need to be played in a different sequence on the piano, and actually being able to do it. Before mary leaves the room she has all the knowledge that, but lacks the ability to make a mental image in her brain on colour
Objection 2: Mary learns old facts in a new way, she gains new knowledge of facts but did not gain knowledge of new facts

Fact that water is in my glass = Fact that H2O is in my glass
Knowledge that water is in my glass =/ knowledge that H2O is in my glass

Fact that seeing red causes r-stimulation = Fact that seeing red is like this
Knowledge that seeing red causes r-stimulation =/ knowledge that seeing red is like this

Question 3

Descartes modal argument

Answer 3

1. I can understand a scenario where I exist but no material object exists
2. Every understandable scenario is possible
3. If it is possible for X to exist without Y existing, then X is not Y
4. I am not a material object

Question 4

Jackson’s modal argument

Answer 4

1. A scenario where our physical duplicates lack consciousness is logically consistent
2. Every logically consistent scenario is possible
3. Materialism says that consciousness supervenes on the physical
4. Materialism is false

Question 5

Materialists argue against premise 2
(Every logically consistent scenario is possible)

Answer 5

Epiphenomenalism: mental states have physical causes but no physical effects
If we are going to be dualists, we should accept epiphenomenalism, our consciences sensations don’t acutally cause our behaviour, they are byproduces of the mental states that cause our behaviour

Mind-body interaction directly perceivecd
Objections to epiphenomenalism

Question 6

Objection to epiphenomenalism: Qualia must promote fitness - we are produces of natural selection

Answer 6

Qualia, sensations, conscious experience, what’s it like to see the colour red, etc
According to this objection, we have evolved by natural selection, so every trait that we have must be adapted in some way, we have eyes and ears, and a digestive system, they are forced to fill specific adpative purposes

Organisms that survive to reproduce channel their metabolic energy into something that gives a purpose
Some traits are directly adapted to enhance reproductive fitness, others are byproducts, that may not help reproductive fitness, but they are a necessary byproduct of things that promote reproductive fitness

Eg. polar bears carry around a heavy layer of fur - doesn’t sound like it enhances reproductive fitness, but the polar bear does need a warm coat to survive in the cold
This is the same with consciousness, consciousness from an evolutionary perspective may just be a byproduct of the brains tates that drive our behaviour

Behavioural effects needed for evidence of other minds
We cannot be sure that other people have minds, we notice others feelings from their behaviours
According to epiphenomenalism, we do not have these behaviours due to their feelings, so how can we be sure about other peoples feelings

Question 7

Is matter conscious

Answer 7

The hard problem of consciousness: explaining qualia or phenomenal character

When mary knows all the facts about colour, but not know how colours look like, she is missing phenomenal knowledge, which is knowledge about qualia

The physical and conscious states are separate from one another

Philosophical zombies look just like us, act like us, everything like us, they just lack the inner conscious experience that you and I have

Question 8

Easy problem of consciousness

Answer 8

Easy problem - explaining human behaviour, anatomy, information processing, physical and functional account of how we distinguish between different colours, but that leaves out consciousness, what is it like to see colours

Question 9

Hard problem of consciousness

Answer 9

Hard problem - explaining the phenomenal experiences of conscious experience

Immanuel Kant:
- we know the phenomenal world (things as they appear to us)

• we cannot know the noumenal world (things in themselves)
• Russell: Physics tell us what matter does, not what it is

Question 10

Knowledge of consciousness

Answer 10

• physical knowledge = knowledge of structure/relations
• phenomenal knowledge = non-relational knowledge of intrinsic nature
• If Mary hallucinates red, she gains phenomenal knowledge without gaining any relational knowledge

Question 11

The idea that there is a hard problem of consciousness actually gets things backwards

Answer 11

The idea that there is a hard problem of consciousness actually gets things backwards

There is rather a hard problem of matter
The nature of material reality is the hard thing to explain
We know the phenomenal world (things as they appear to us)
We cannot know the noumenal world (things in themselves)

We don’t know what reality is fundamentally like in and of itself

Russell: Physics tells us what matter does, not what it is

Question 11

can gain phenomenal knowledge without gaining relational knowledge

Answer 11

Morke says that Mary can gain phenomenal knowledge without gaining relational knowledge
She sees red and gains knowledge about what that experience is like in and of itself, previously she knew the knowledge of the brain state, of physical knowledge, how that experience bheaves and interacts with the world

Physical knowledge of brain states is knowledge on how the brains states interacts with other brains tates and other parts of physical reality

Question 12

Russellian Monism

Answer 12

Russellian Monism: Brain is software, mind is hardware - it says that the mind and the consciousness is the hardware, and the physical facts including facts about the human brain, when you know about those, are just like knowledge of the software
Knowledge of software - knowledge of how it functions
Fundamentally, relaity has a mental nature, it is revealed to us in our own consciousness
Kant was right when he said our perceptions only give us phenomenal knowledge, he was wrong when he said we can’t get knowledge of nuemol knowledge at all

Question 13

Russellian monism (Nagel, Morch)

Answer 13

a kind of monism, but it is a rejection of materialism, it says that the fundamental nature of reality is what we know through our conscious experience, and hte physical knowledge we have through science and observation is giving us behavioural/funcitonal knowledge of how matter behaves, not on what it is really like

Question 14

Objections to russellian monism

Answer 14

Panpsychism - is the view that everything is conscious
Everything has mental characteristics
Eg. An electron is concious

Objections to russellian monism - combination problem - every atom in my brain has a bit of consciousness associated with it
How does ascribing a little bit of consciousness to parts of my brain explain that I have consciousness
My brain is made up of a bunch of little parts

Eg. we have colour experiences, some colour experiences seem like they are composed of other experiences, the experience of purple, may be made out of red and blue experience, my experience of a harmony, may be made out of the experience of individual notes
What are the fundamental experiential properties that individual electrons are supposed to have that get added together so that we have the distinct experiential qualities that we are all familiar with
My experience of purple can be from the experience of red and blue, but what about the experience of red and blue

Question 15

Leibniz - reality is made out of minds

Answer 15

Leibniz said that reality fundamentally is made out of minds, and the true atoms of nature, monads, are like little minds, and the physical reality that we know is actually just a bunch of little minds whose internal mental states are all coordinated with one another that is represented in our conscious experience

Question 16

The Hard Problem

Answer 16

The Hard Problem
“Why is the neural correlate of an experience the correlate of that experience rather than another one or none at all?”
The hard problem is explaining why a specific brain state is the neural correlate of a specific experience

Question 17

Binocular Rivalry

Answer 17

Visual rivalry between two different experiences
An alternation in visual experiences between the image presented to the left eye vs the image presented to the right eye
When the message comes from the primary visual cortex to the visual stream, the stages of visual processes start out by detecting lines and shading and then figure out basic shapes and then the particular objects
It is a sequence in our brain from back to front, and the at the front it reaches the prefrontal cortex responsible for reasoning and object categorization
If you look at the brain activity, it does not seem to be alternating but by the time you reach the end stages of the ventral stream processing there is a shift happening every 1-2 seconds in image processing
Primary visual cortex processing is unconscious, the visual experiences show up later in processing
Doesn’t answer the hard problem, doesn’t give us much, but it tells us it is somewhere in the later visual processing
There is another set of data that points in a different direction
Neglect/unconsciousness of half the visual field (left or right), or as a neglect/unconsciousness of half the body (left or right), or as a neglect/unconsciousness of each particular object a patient sees
There is some kind of visual processing corresponding to the left half of objects, they recognize it, but in their unconscious awareness it doesn’t show up
This is a problem for unconsciousness aware because this condition of spatial neglect is associated with neglect to the prefrontal cortex, it doesn’t just affect vision it also affects other perceptual systems
Neural correlate of visual experience cannot be in the visual experience itself, it must be subsequent
Damage to prefrontal cortex, not visual experience because it is with the processing
Block suggests the conscious visual experience is not correlated with the prefrontal cortex

Question 18

Phenomenal consciousness

Answer 18

Qualitative, what it is like, unconscious

Question 19

Access consciousness

Answer 19

Functionalist notion, might align with phenomenal, centrally available for reasoning, decision-making, planning, verbal report, some part of information processing like feature detection, language comprehension, the stuff that gets centrally shared for further action

Question 20

Block on phenomenal consciousness and access consciousness

Answer 20

Block thinks that phenomenal consciousness and access consciousness go together
They are not the same thing even if phenomenally conscious states tend to be access or vice versa
Inattention to conscious experience: air conditioner stops, you’ve been hearing it all along but only realize it when it stops
Conscious experience of a sound that wasn’t affecting you
Conscious experiences that are not access consciousness in the same way as verbal report and reasoning
More extreme version of what happens in the case of not paying attention to conscious experience

Theories:
They do not have a phenomenally conscious experience of the left side of the visual field
They do have a phenomenally conscious experience of the entire scene, it is just that they do not have access to all of their conscious experience
We aren’t paying attention to consciousness of experience, but we can pay attention to it
Some parts of their conscious experience that they are systemically unable to report
Blocks conclusion: Phenomenal consciousness without access consciousness

Question 21

In the case of split brain, Nagel questions how many minds are in the one person

Answer 21

• It would seem that there is only one mind, as everyone agrees that there is just one person
• A possible argument is that it seems that there is one mind in the left hemisphere, and the right hemisphere is an automation

It would seem that joe (the person with split brain) is only the left brain, and the right brain has no mind within it
But that doesn’t seem to make sense either

• An alternative from saying that the right hemisphere is an automaton, but it actually has mental processes, it just doesn’t form a unified mind
  One mind in left hemisphere, isolated mental phenomena in right hemisphere

The functions that the right hemisphere can perform is not just isolated events of perception, they show a kind of functional integrity, we would normally would not hesitate to attribute to a human mind

He can interpret information, basic language processing and integrating that into a motor output in a rational and intelligent way

• One mind in left hemisphere, another mind in right hemisphere
  It would be a mistake to refer to joe as one person
  Rather there are two people, with their own minds that happen to cohabitate the same body
  Single mind in both hemispheres collectively
  This single mind has two separate functional components that are detached from one another and are unable to function in an integrated way
• Usually one mind collectively, two minds in experimental situations
  The number of minds present actually changes - there is not a constant, sometimes there’s one, sometimes there’s two

Nagel thinks that this does not make sense, when does this happen that a single conscious mind splits
And how does this happen?

Question 22

Degrees of unity

Answer 22

Nagel: There is no whole number of individual minds that these patients can be said to have
Nagel says that there is some things about joe that drives us to say there are two minds, there are other things that seem to show that there is one mind present
But the truth about joe is that it is kind of in between one or two minds
Our psychological functions imperfectly integrated