Frank Jackson argues that qualia cannot be "captured" by "physicalism." Summarize and critically evaluate his "knowledge argument" for this conclusion.


WAT? Discuss.

It is impossible to know what it feels like to walk in one's shoes through mere materialistic and physical justifications. Each individual has a unique, separate conscious state of mind and therefore he has no choice but to be subjective in his perspective of things. One cannot
"capture" all of the emotions, the thoughts, and views of an individual through physical means; to do so would just be an insult to the appreciation of the complexity of one's lifetime gathering of experiences.

His argument A goes something like this (my words):

A1. True physicalism can not produce qualia.
A2. Qualia exist.
A3. Therefore physicalism has problems.

He never really addresses #A2, and assumes that is common knowledge that qualia exist. I think this could be argued either way, but I believe you are looking for a discussion about #A1.

His knowledge argument B for #A1 goes something like:

B1. Suppose person A knows everything about the physical world.
B2. Person A still won't know about love, pain, the feelings of loss, and other similar things, sorely because of #B1
B3. Therefore even if you know everything about the physical world, you still won't know everything.
B4. Therefore there are things which are not physical.

Critical evaluation:
Line #B2 could easily be totally wrong, so I see no reason to take anything else seriously.

Beautiful, thanks.



What would an argument be to go against #B2?

If love, pain, feelings of loss, and other similar things are physical or have physical causes (which certainly seems possible), then Person A will know about them (from proposition B1). This would make B2 wrong, and the entire argument depends on B2 being true.

This post was edited by Rocinante on Nov 24 2013 02:01pm