Final Presentations

Round One

Livstrom

Jeshua Livstrom

• Frank Jackson (1982)• Fred• Mary

– P1: Physicalism says that all facts are physical facts. – P2: In the room, Mary has complete physical knowledge of color perception.– P3: When she leaves the room, Mary acquires new knowledge (i.e. what it is

like to see red). – C: Physicalism if false: there are facts (i.e. about phenomenal properties)

which escape the physicalist story.

• *Source: Mark Collier, in-class slides (March 30, 2009).

• Frank Jackson (1982)• Fred• Mary

– P1: Physicalism says that all facts are physical facts. – P2: In the room, Mary has complete physical knowledge of color perception.– P3: When she leaves the room, Mary acquires new knowledge (i.e. what it is

like to see red). – C: Physicalism if false: there are facts (i.e. about phenomenal properties)

which escape the physicalist story.

• *Source: Mark Collier, in-class slides (March 30, 2009).

• Physicalism - “The theory that all reality is explicable in terms of physical properties and laws” (Oxford English Dictionary, 2009).

• Explication - “The action or process of stating or describing in detail; a detailed statement or description” (Ibid.).– Consequent knowledge or understanding are not referenced by either definition. Thus, these

are not essential for successful explication or, therefore, the sanctity of physicalism.

• Jackson’s equivocation fallacy – between explication of physical information and knowledge of physical information– Even the best possible physical explanation does not necessitate consequent understanding

• Fallacy of excluded alternatives

• Explication (complete)

» Communication interface error

» Consonant conversion

• Understanding/Knowledge (incomplete)

• This arguments fails on the grounds that Jackson commits the equivocation fallacy, thereby not adequately proving the necessary existence of non-physical information.

• P1: If the knowledge argument succeeds in refuting physicalism, then any new knowledge Mary gains must be non-physical.

• P2: If the new information Mary gains upon seeing red is necessarily non-physical, then the access that Mary had to all physical information must have necessarily translated into complete and accurate knowledge.

• P3: Complete and accurate physical explication does not necessarily translate into complete and accurate physical understanding (or knowledge).

• P4: Upon seeing red for the first time, either (A) Mary necessarily gains new physical knowledge, (B) Mary necessarily gains new non-physical knowledge, or (C) Mary does not necessarily gain any new knowledge.

• P5: ~B (grounds: P2 & P3, modus tollens).• P6: ~C (grounds: she did not have complete knowledge of the experience of seeing

red before leaving the room).• P7: Therefore A (grounds: P4-P6, disjunctive syllogism).• C: The knowledge argument does not succeed in refuting physicalism (Grounds: P1

and P7).

• By offering the Mary’s room thought-experiment, Jackson merely shows that physical explanation does not predictably necessitate understanding.

• Which is, in itself, a valuable contribution, because it does expose limitations of the physicalist view.

• But he does not adequately disprove physicalism.

• How he might respond– Different interpretation

• How I would respond– My interpretation is better– Ockham’s Razor

• Stuck in interpretation limbo??

Mohr

Knowledge Argument

• Thesis: Jackson argues that all physical knowledge about the brain is not all the knowledge about minds, since qualia is knowledge but not physical knowledge. This argument fails, since qualia is not knowledge.

• Statements like “Qualia X is what it is like to see red” lack information

Thomas Mohr

“Rewired” Brain

• “Normal” person: A red objects sends a wavelength, red, to their eye. Their brain gets information, Fred, and they have qualia, Qred.

• “Rewired” person: A red objects sends a wavelength, red, to their eye. Their brain gets information, Fblue, and they have qualia, Q?.

• Q? can either be (a) Qred or (b) Qblue

Problem with (a)

• The “rewired” person sees and experiences red, but they will say that they see blue– Grounds: Since Fblue, they will behave as if they saw blue

• If F doesn’t depend on Q, then Q can change all the time without affecting the person’s behavior

• The Q you have when you see a red object could change from moment to moment and you would not know it.

• Thus, which qualia is associated with a red object is arbitrary; there is no such thing as “what it is like to see red”

Problem with (b)

• Q does depend on F

• Mary doesn’t know what others are experiencing since their brains could be wired differently

• Jackson’s (potential) reply: Mary would now know what someone with the same “brain-wiring” experiences when they see red.

• Mary could “re-wire” her own brain and figure out the qualia others have when they see a certain color (see table on next page)

Mary’s table of qualia

• Qualia Wiring 1 Wiring 2 Wiring 3

• “red” 700 nm 450 nm 550 nm

• “blue” 450 nm 550 nm 700 nm

• “green” 550 nm 700 nm 450 nm

Reply to table of qualia

• Would you and Mary construct the same table?

• We don’t know, we’d have to try it to figure it out

• The reply fails unless it can show that everyone would construct the same table

Pile

The Knowledge Argument• P1: All physical knowledge can be explained linguistically (a.k.a.

with sentences) using physical facts.

• P2: Knowledge of qualia cannot be explained linguistically using physical facts.

• P3: If some knowledge is not physical knowledge, materialism is false.

• P4: Knowledge of qualia is not physical knowledge.

• C: Materialism is false.

– Thesis: The knowledge argument makes it more logical to reject rather than accept materialism.

• Strongest Objection

• Reject P1. As Churchland argues, knowledge of qualia being unable to be expressed linguistically does not mean that it is not physical knowledge. “It just means that the brain uses more modes and media of representation than the simple storage of sentences.”

Troubles With The Objection• Churchland does not provide evidence for the claim that the brain uses mores

modes/medias of representation than just the storage of sentences.• Without evidence, it is begging the question to say the brain must have these other

modes/medias of representation because knowledge of qualia must be physical knowledge.

• Burden of Proof• There are prima facie reasons to accept the definition of physical knowledge as

knowledge that can be explained linguistically using physical facts (ex. Explaining water as H2O), since the definition seems to be compatible with nearly everything the materialist would want it to be, with the exception of qualia.

• Since it appears prima facie to be a strong definition because of how often the definition can be applied without problems, the burden of proof lies on whoever is disputing the definition.

• This means that the burden of proof is on the materialist to show why this definition should be rejected (without begging the question), and not that a non-materialist should need to give more than prima facie reasons for accepting the definition.

Robinson

The Knowledge Argument

In which there is much armchair-

armchair-neurophysiology

The Argument – A Breakdown

• P1 – If physicalism is true, all truths are physical truths.

• P2 – Mary knows all the physical truths

• P3 – There are truths of which Mary, prior to her daring escape, is not aware.

• C1 – Therefore, physicalism is false.

The Argument – A Breakdown

• P1 – If physicalism is true, all truths are physical truths.

• P2 – Mary knows all the physical truths

• P3 – There are truths of which Mary, prior to her daring escape, is not aware.

• C1 – Therefore, physicalism is false.

The Objection• Mary may know

what a brain does when it perceives red, but not her brain.

• Additionally, understanding a brain state is not enough to make a judgment about its content.

Rasmussen

Mmmmm…Brains

A Quick Glance At The Zombie Argument

By: Jeremy Rasmussen

What Is The Zombie Argument?Clarification:

Philosophical Zombies are not brain eaters.

P1. We can conceive of Zombies.

P2. If this is true, then it is metaphysically true.

P3. If it’s metaphysically possible, then consciousness would not be physical.

C: Consciousness is not physical.

What does this do?

It Takes A Bite At Materialism

• This is potentially devastating to materialism: If the conscious is not physical than how can materialism explain everything in physicalistic terms? Well, it can’t.

Thesis Statement • Saul Kripke’s argument against

materialism is called the modal argument (Zombie argument) and claims that Materialism is not a tenable position on the grounds that we have intuitions that zombies are metaphysically possible, which would infer that consciousness is not physical; however, Hill refutes this idea on his claim that we have two separate imaginations called the perceptual imagination and the sympathetic imagination, which we splice together and there is no reason to rely on these “spliced intuitions.”

Hill: Zombie Killer

• This Idea of splicing images together would show that such intuitions are mechanics of the brain rather than some non-physical entity.

• And they should not be trusted.

Wrap Up

• It seems that Hills account runs into its own problems. Hill’s theory is based off a concept of imagination which is a phenomenon in itself; therefore, if you use phenomenal language to explain something in materialistic terms than it fails to reduce anything in materialistic terms. In other words, you cannot use phenomenal language to reduce something in

materialistic terms.