Qualia

Some Connections to Epistemology

If you like rationalism or common sense, you're likely to find the difference arguments for dualism to be sound, and the inductive arguments for physicalism to be unconvincing.

If you like empiricism, you might have good reason to think that the inductive arguments for physicalism are convincing, and that the difference arguments for dualism are unsound.

If you like pragmatism, you'd probably be swayed by the life after death argument for dualism.

An Epistemological Question?

If you're a coherentist, you'll probably be especially worried about the ghostly causation objection against dualism, and somewhat convinced by the inductive arguments for physicalism.

Philosophy of Mind

If this unit piqued your interest, I recommend enrolling in PHI376 (Philosophy of Mind) or PHI378 (Minds and Machines), where you'll hear more!

More Philosophy of Mind

Jackson on Nagel (132)

Quote

Thomas Nagel argues that no amount of physical information can tell us what it is like to be a bat, and indeed that we, human beings, cannot imagine what it is like to be a bat. His reason is that what this is like can only be understood from a bat's point of view, which is not our point of view and is not something capturable in physical terms which are essentially terms understandable equally from many points of view. [...] Nagel speaks as if the problem he is raising is one of extrapolating from knowledge of one experience to another, of imagining what an unfamiliar experience would be like on the basis of familiar ones [... and] the trouble with bats et al. is that they are too unlike us. It is hard to see an objection to physicalism here. Physicalism makes no special claims about the imaginative or extrapolative powers of human beings, and it is hard to see why it need do so. Anyway, our Knowledge argument makes no assumptions on this point. If Physicalism were true, enough physical information about Fred would obviate any need to extrapolate or to perform special feats of imagination or understanding in order to know all about his special colour expereience. The information would already be in our possession. But it clearly isn't.

Attacking an Argument vs. Attacking a View.

View: "We shouldn't let people eat in the library."

Argument: "We shouldn't let people eat in the library because it's gross."

An Analogy

Attacking Argument: "It's not gross at all - it's highly envigorating to smell somebody else's food while working!"

Attacking View: "Legislating where people should or should not eat is a violation of our fundamental rights. Any argument you give will be no good!"

It's also the name of a scam medical supplement!

It's also a scam!

https://evolutionsupplements.com.au/neurohacker-collective-qualia-stack/

The Dress

Taylor Swift, Jaden Smith, Frankie Muniz, Demi Lovato, Mindy Kaling, Justin Bieber, and Kanye West see blue and black.

A slightly dated example

Anna Kendrick, B.J. Novak, Katy Perry, Julianne Moore, Sarah Hyland, and Kim Kardashian see white and gold.

Their experiences differ in terms of the qualia!

Jackson, "Epiphenomenal Qualia", page 130.

Quote

Mary is a brilliant scientist who is, for whatever reason, forced to investigate the world from a black and white room via a black and white television monitor. She specialises in the neurophysiology of vision and acquires, let us suppose, all the physical information there is to obtain about what goes on when we see ripe tomatoes, or the sky, and use terms like 'red', 'blue', and so on. She discovers, for example, just which wave-length combinations from the sky stimulate the retina, and exactly how this produces via the central nervous system the contraction of the vocal chords and expulsion of air from the lungs that results in the uttering of the sentence 'The sky is blue'. (It can hardly be denied that it is in principle possible to obtain all this physical information from black and white television, otherwise the Open University would of necessity need to use colour television.)

What will happen when Mary is released from her black and white room or is given a colour television monitor? Will she learn anything or not? It seems just obvious that she will learn something about the world and our visual experience of it. But then it is inescapable that her previous knowledge was incomplete. But she had all the physical information. Ergo there is more to have than that, and Physicalism is false. [...]

The conclusion in each case is that the qualia are left out of the physicalist story. And the polemical strength of the Knowledge argument is that it is so hard to deny the central claim that one can have all the physical information without having all the information there is to have.

The Knowledge Argument in Numbered Form

1. If physicalism is true, someone who knows all the physical facts about color perception would learn nothing by seeing color for the first time.

2. Someone who knows all the physical facts about color perception would learn something by seeing color for the first time.

3. Physicalism is false.

In Numbered Form

The Giver, by Lois Lowry

But suddenly Jonas had noticed, following the path of the apple through the air with his eyes, that the piece of fruit had - well, this was the part that he couldn't adequately understand - the apple had changed. Just for an instant. It had changed in mid-air, he remembered. Then it was in his hand, and he looked at it carefully, but it was the same apple. Unchanged. The same size and shape: a perfect sphere. The same nondescript shade, about the same shade as his own tunic.

There was absolutely nothing remarkable about that apple. He had tossed it back and forth between his hands a few times, then thrown it again to Asher. And again - in the air, for an instant only - it had changed.

It had happened four times. Jonas had blinked, looked around, and then tested his eyesight, squinting at the small print on the identification badge attached to his tunic. He read his name quite clearly. He could also clearly see Asher at the other end of the throwing area. And he had had no problem catching the apple.

Jonas was completely mystified. (page 24)

A Similar Situation in Literature

"I'm right, then," The Giver said. "You're beginning to see the color red."

"The what?"

The Giver sighed. "How to explain this? Once, back in the time of the memories, everything had a shape and size, the way things still do, but they also had a quality called color.

"There were a lot of colors, and one of them was called red. That's the one you are starting to see." (page 94)

Another version of the argument - Fred.

Another Version of the Argument

Unlike Mary, Fred sees two colors - "red1" and "red2" - where we see one. Even if we were to know all there is to know about Fred,

Jackson thinks we would be really interested to find out "what it is like to see the extra color," and that we'd look forward to the day when "at last we will know how Fred has differed from us in the way he has struggled to tell us about for so long."

Thought Experiments

The fact that the situation with Mary which Jackson describes never happened, or couldn't even happen in any future, doesn't matter.

Thought Experiments in Philosophy

Thought experiments are pure fictions, but they are supposed to help us to figure out what we think about a complicated issue.

The conclusions of thought experiments are then taken to help guide our theorizing about more complicated questions.

Mary learns nothing!

C.L. Hardin (a former SU philosopher) thought this was the right response

According to some physicalists, if Mary truly knew all there is to know about visual perception, she would learn nothing new!

Mary learns nothing

The argument misleads our intuitions - our knee-jerk reaction is that she would be surprised, but that's just because we aren't imagining someone who genuinely knows all there is to know!

Mary learns some "know-how".

Mary learns a new skill

Some people think that Mary learns only a new practical ability or skill when she first sees the color red. For example, she learns how to recognize or recall the color red.

Of course, since Mary knew all there is to know about color, she already knew that people see that particular color when they see apples and sunsets. But she didn't have the relevant know-how.

David Lewis thought this.

Mary learns a new description

Some people think that Mary learns only a new way to describe a fact that she already knew. That is, she learns a different way that the same fact can be represented, just like "there is H2O in the cup" is a different representation of the fact "there is water in the cup".

There is nothing non-physical to know about color perception!

In each case...

So the second premise of the Knowledge Argument is false: Mary does not learn anything new when she sees the color red for the first time.

So physicalism is saved from this objection!