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Question title: Discuss whether Jackson’s knowledge argument succeed in refuting physicalism.

 

Introduction

In this essay I address the topic of physicalism. The main question, arising from this topic, which I address, is ‘Whether Jackson’s knowledge argument succeed in refuting physicalism’. The central thesis in addressing this question is Jackson’s knowledge argument is itself unclear to refute physicalism. The aims and purpose in this essay are thus to discuss Jackson’s knowledge argument, based on views of other philosophers, how it fails to refute physicalism, under certain definitions. The research context of this study is in the domain of philosophical literature. I start from the premise that, from the knowledge argument, a person can acquire all physical facts about certain conscious being, but yet still might lack knowledge on the actual experience of that particular being may feel, by assuming that physicalism is true. The method I used to achieve these aims is to critically examine the premise of the knowledge argument, and possible consequences and objections to each point. My result shows that the premises of the knowledge argument is not plausible and greatly depends on the definitions used. The outcome of this study is the knowledge argument did not succeed in refuting physicalism, under certain definitions. The significance of this study lies in the importance for philosopher, both physicalist and anti-physicalist, should have common grounds on the definitions of different terms, and we do simply not know enough on the physiology of our kind. In short, this essay addresses the topic physicalism by evaluating the knowledge argument, in order to show that further proper evaluation on the knowledge argument, and arguments other than pure thought experiment are required.

 

Definitions

Some terms requires proper definition before any further discussions.

 

Physicalism is a thesis that everything is physical, or in another words, that everything supervenes on the physical, supervenience physicalism. Putting further, physicalism can be used to describe a world that is constitute of pure physical distribution, and is a minimal physical duplicate of the actual world, containing nothing more than physical respects (Jackson, 1993). This ‘bigger’ definition excludes the problem of epiphenomenal ectoplasm, pure experience that does not interact with anything else in the world. But what actually are we talking about when we are saying ‘physical’, is it what that are defined by our modern scientific findings, i.e. laws of physics, chemistry, biology, etc, that are being precisely established, or it is actually considering, ideally, a final version of physical laws, that is being able to explain any kinds of phenomena in the world, if one really exists? In the following discussion, we shall restrict our definition on the first one, physical laws that are established nowadays, as either we cannot imagine how the final version of physics will be, and in what extend can in represent all the phenomena in the world. The possibility of the second version of ‘physical’, together with its impact on the knowledge argument, will be investigated in the end of this essay. Note also that when saying physical facts are scientific formulation, this does not necessary implies all physical facts are included in scientific findings. Physical facts can also be subjective, in the process of acquisition (Deutsch, 1998).

 

The knowledge argument is a thought experiment presented by Frank Jackson (1982) in his ‘Epiphenomenal Qualia’. The thought experiment consists of two versions:

(1)   A person called Fred, having the ability to differentiate various kinds of the color red, and at least be able to tell the difference between two reds (red₁, red₂).

(2)   Mary the neurophysiology of vision specialist, who is forced to investigate the world from a black and white room via a black and white television monitor. She learned all the physical facts by normal means, except that all the things that she is able to look at are restricted to be black and white. One day, she is being released to the normal world, and encounter with colors.

 

Both of the above though experiment leads to a similar conclusion, according to Jackson, that for someone who has complete physical knowledge about another conscious being, but yet it lack the knowledge of how the subject will feels upon such experience. This is an argument against physicalism.

 

In this essay, I will first be focusing on the second version of the thought experiment, which can be rewritten as:

Premise 1 (p1):       Mary knows all the physical facts in the world, including those related to color vision of human being, before her release.

Premise 2 (p2):       But after her release, she would learn something new. She would learn new facts, on that experience of colors, prior to her complete physical knowledge acquired before her release.

Therefore (c3),       Physical facts alone are not all the facts, at least concerning color and the experience of color. Knowing all physical facts still fails to know all the facts, physicalism is false.

One can observe that if both premises p1 and p2 are accepted, the conclusion c3 should be a sound one. So, the main consideration here will be to investigate whether those premises are really true or not. In the following paragraphs, I shall explain why those premises are actually not that convincing.

 

Knowing all physical facts (p1)

It is still very difficult to imagine, even if we are restricting our definition on physicalism to modern scientific findings, that one can acquire all physical facts in the world. Jackson claims that Mary learned all physical facts via a black and white environment, is able to master all knowledge, including anatomy, physiology, physics, chemistry, and especially in vision and color. Is it in principle possible to learn all physical information from a black and white learning environment? Minimally, is it really possible to learn color if not encountering any? It is no doubt possible that one can learn all knowledge, for example, like mathematics, from pure black and white environment, as their basics of information is in form of numbers and characters, signs and strings. As long as the readers have suitable ability on language and counting skills, there shouldn’t be any problem mastering those theories. But is the story the same for learning concepts that are in a more complex form, like the interpretation of colors? Surely, color can be learnt from several aspects. Like Mary, she can know all the anatomy and physiology of the human eye, the psychological outcome for a normal when seeing different colors, and all the physics, like wavelength, combination of colors, but to have a full picture of what color is, there are some subjective information that Mary should have known, how she will react and feel, upon experiencing color. The question turns out to be, ‘Are experience physical? Are subjective information a kind of physical facts, the subjective physical facts?’

 

According to Max Deutsch (1998) in his ‘Subjective Physical Facts’, the definition to physical facts is not restricted to objective ones, and there are physical facts that are one-way knowledgeable and its existence bears a relationship to the objects or properties involved in ‘ordinary’ physical facts. These facts, unlike objective physical facts, that are what normally defined to be physical facts in general, are subjective physical facts that can only be known by having experience of the entity that the physical fact is referring to. Let’s use the red color as an example. Suppose one is going to learn what is red, even if you know apples are red, blood is red, the wavelength of red is about 650nm, and so on, but you are still lacking the experience of how red is, not until you actually see something red. Pure objective information alone is not enough to tell you what red really is, and even a good storyteller may exhaust all his vocabulary explaining how it feels when he/she looks at red, but it does not constitute the personal experience that is generated when you yourself first encounter red, and such subjective information can only be know once you have looked at red. This is what Mary cannot learn in her black and white environment.

 

On the other hand, objective physical facts are multi-way knowledgeable. Let’s say, Peter the student, wanted to learn what Newton’s Second Law is. He can either learn it from a good physics textbook, from doing classical experiments, or sign up a course on classical physics. There are multiple ways to learn such a fact, and any single method, or a combination of two or so, is sufficient for Peter to learn the law completely.

 

Some may argue that, under this definition, facts are no longer facts, as they are not objective anymore. This is a miss conception on the word subjective. The meaning of objective and subjective is simply a differentiating term on two types of physical facts that are acquired under two different conditions. Subjective physical facts are still facts and the fact itself is still objective (for example, Mary is experiencing red, that something that Mary uses to experience red as an medium, like blood, a piece of red paper, red rose, is red, and the fact that that something is red is still objective). While the main focus here is when acquiring such ‘subjective’ physical fact, experience is a necessary condition.

 

So, what Mary did manage to learn in her black and white room are only objective physical facts, while most of the facts that requires experiences, subjective physical facts, are missed. Mary cannot learn all physical facts in a black and white room, Premise p1 is wrong, and thus we cannot draw the conclusion c3. Physicalism is not refuted.

 

Mary learn something new (p2)

Having subjective physical facts in mind, it is easy to conclude that the second premise, Mary learn something new upon her release, is false. In order to learn what it is like to see red, Mary has to have experience to red in advance as to acquire a full picture of red (and this contradicts to having a pure black and white learning environment). So, even when she is release to the outside world, she already knew what red is, and did not experience anything new.

 

There are various objections to the second premise (p2) of the knowledge argument while accepting the first premise (p1). All of these arguments have the common idea that Mary, upon release, did experience something, but it did not constitute new facts, but rather, a new mode of presentation, or a new ability. But without a better definition on physicalism in mind, neither objection to the p2 is convincing.

 

In the mode of presentation response (Churchland, 1989), the main concept is that Mary, still having all the physical facts in mind, while she first encounter red, learns a new presentation of red (the presentation of how she will feels when seeing red). Churchland used water as an analogy, someone may know that river contains water, without knowing that river contains H₂O. This is not a good analogy as if a person does not know that H₂O equals to water, thus implies that this person does not know all physical facts at all. This contradicts to premise p1. Even though this is not a good analogy, this gives us a taste that having two unequal facts (river contains water and river contains H₂O, in contrast, apple is red and Mary’s experience while she first encounters red) that are describing the same object (the river, in contrast, the color red), it does not necessary implies that the ‘new’ fact raised must be a non-physical one.

 

The ability hypothesis (Lewis, 1990), one the other hand, focuses on the ability to recognize, remember and imagine experience, knowing-how, and these are not counted as acquiring any new knowledge, knowing-that. But the problem here is that, while she is experiencing red, on one hand she gains the ability to recognize, remember, and imagine the experience of red, the knowing-how part, one the other hand, she also knows that how it is like to see red, the knowing-how part, the first time as this is the first time for Mary to see red. Also, for a person to learn a physical fact, must respective abilities be accompanied with the fact? For example, when Mary is still in her black and white environment, one day, she is told to imagine what it is like to see grey, given that grey is just like light black and a dark white, will she be able to do so? I think it is reasonable to think that it is possible for her to visualize what grey is, as for a normal human being, we, in our mind, can generate a spectrum of grey colors from white to black, even we haven’t experience all of them. Having the ability to imagine something does not implies one have to know respective physical fact beforehand.

 

This should not have caused any conflicts with the subjective physical facts that are previously explained. Here in the ability hypothesis response, I am talking about the ability itself is not sufficient to prove that one knows certain physical fact, while in the subjective physical fact response, the focus is on subjective experience is necessary when learning certain kind of physical facts.

 

Both responses to the premise p2 are not strong enough to deny the knowledge argument. In defending physicalism through rejecting p2, a stronger argument is in need. Here, for physicalist, refuting p1 seems to be a better way out.

 

In favor argument against subjective physical facts

It is obvious that the whole structure of definition on physical facts, the objective physical facts and subjective physical facts, are in favor of physicalism and to be used against the knowledge argument, and seems the whole theory is being made up for such intension. This does not affect the fact that such definition is true. Historically, there were various encounters of a true theory being treated to be wrong, centuries ago, people believe that the earth is the centre of the solar system, geocentrism, but it turns out that the sun is the centre, heliocentrism. People believe that sickness is a punishment from a superior kind, the God, but it turns out to be related to virus and bacteria. For anti-physicalist to reject the subjective physicalism proposal, they have to prove that subjective experiences are not necessary when learning some class of physical facts, which seems implausible to prove.

 

Something about Fred, the first version of the thought experiment

Jackson formulates another thought experiment on Fred, a person that has better color vision than anyone, and able to discriminate two reds, red₁ and red₂. He gives his rebuttal to physicalism, through Fred, at different time points, and can be summarized as follows:

At time t1:      We know, for example, that Fred is different from a normal human being by, perhaps, his cones cells by having a more sensitive response to a particular domain of wavelength (in our case, near red). But we cannot draw any conclusion on his color experience. It seems that physicalism leaves out something.

At time t2:       Assumes that one day, everybody has the exact visual system, including those special cone cells that Fred owns, by surgical operation, and we know what exactly Fred’s color experience is after t2. But before t2, by knowing all physical accounts of mind and consciousness, body and brain of Fred, it still left out such experience. Hence, physicalism is incomplete.

Physicalism is being refuted two times in this single case, but I will conclude that none of these conclusions are convincing. Consider time t1, it is easy to visualize that the biggest possible difference between Fred and normal person is that special cone cells, and these cone cells are most susceptible to such a lack of color experience, the subjective physical fact, in us. A physical change supervenes on physical fact, how physicalism is refuted?

In the second time point t2, Jackson is arguing that knowing all physical facts before t2 do not gives us color experience of Fred at t2, but after t2, having the surgical operation, experience is gain. This only proves that before t2, what ‘all physical facts’ mentioned is actually an incomplete one, while having ‘completed’ physical facts after t2, such experience is explained. It is obvious that the term physical facts is time dependent in this situation, physicalism seems to be refuted before t2, while it is not refuted after t2. Such time dependence arise the concern of the definition of physical facts, and shall be discussed in the following session.

Time dependence of the definition of physicalism

At the very beginning of this essay, I restricted the very best theories and laws that are well established by our scientific findings as physical facts (always, this definition is not exhaustive, as there are subjective physical facts), this is because of the convenience that it is easier to argue with facts that we have on hand, and this definitely can reduce confusions due to wild guesses. It is questionable that in what extent our future scientific findings will enable us to explain what extent of matters. There shouldn’t be any surprise that, someday, what considered as ‘non-physical’ nowadays are defined as ‘physical’ entities later. This makes physicalism trivially true, but rejecting such new definition most probably is rejecting a truism, assuming that such physical fact is precisely formulated. Even if there is a final version of physical facts, it will be impossible, at least at this moment, that there is a method to know that it is really the final one. The best strategy to this, as I will suggest, is to keep the definition of physicalism changing, just as our ever evolving scientific findings. Physicalist and anti-physicalist should keep their arguments as simple as possible, and should avoid concepts of unknown scientific findings as assumptions. A strong argument is always simple and stable through time.

Conclusion

The success of the knowledge argument relies heavily on an unclear definition of physical facts in physicalism. After careful adjustment to a better definition of physical facts, physicalist has a better stand point in rejecting the knowledge argument, while such definition can easily to be agreed by anti-physicalist as well.

 

References:

Churchland, P.M. (1989). ‘Knowing Qualia: A Reply to Jackson’, repr. in N. Block, O.

Flanagan, and G. Guzeldere, (eds.) The Nature of Consciousness, pp. 571-578. Cambridge: MIT Press. First published in A Neurocomputational Perspective, pp. 67-76. Cambridge: MIT Press.

 

Deutsch, M (1998). Subjective Physical Facts. Retrieved January 3,

2009, Web site: http://neologic.net/rd/chalmers/mdeutsch.html

 

Jackson, F. (1982). ‘Epiphenomenal Qualia’, The Philosophical Quarterly 32,

127-136

 

Jackson, F. (1993). ‘Armchair Metaphysics’, in J. Hawthorne and M. Michael (eds),

Philosophy in Mind, Amsterdam: Kluwer.

 

Lewis, D. (1990). ‘What Experience Teaches’, repr. in N. Block, O. Flanagan, and G.

Guzeldere, (eds.) The Nature of Consciousness, pp. 579-596. Cambridge: MIT Press. First published in W. Lycan (ed.) Mind and Cognition, pp. 499-519. Cambridge: Basil Blackwell.

 

Nida-Rümelin, Martine Qualia: The Knowledge Argument. (2002). In

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy [Web]. Metaphysics

Research Lab, CSLI, Stanford University. Retrieved January 3,

2009, from http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qualia-knowledge/

 

Stoljar, Daniel Physicalism. (2001). In The Stanford Encyclopedia of

Philosophy [Web]. Metaphysics Research Lab, CSLI, Stanford

University. Retrieved January 3, 2009, from

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/physicalism/

 

Tye, M., (forthcoming). “Knowing What it is Like: The Ability Hypothesis and the

Knowledge Argument,” Protosociology, Collection of Essays for David Lewis.

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