Property Dualism - Recap True or False – If false, why?: Property dualists believe in two different kinds of substance. They believe that mental properties are emergent from the brain / body. They also believe these mental properties cannot be reduced to physical properties. Descartes was a philosopher who argued for property dualism. Chalmers used the example of philosophical zombies to illustrate an argument for property dualism. P-Zombies are creatures that have no mind, only qualia. Dan Dennett argued that P-Zombies are not logically possible creatures as we need consciousness to act.

Property Dualism - Recap True or False: Property dualists believe in two different kinds of substance. They believe that mental properties are emergent from the brain / body. They also believe these mental properties cannot be reduced to physical properties. Descartes was a philosopher who argued for property dualism. Chalmers used the example of philosophical zombies to illustrate an argument for property dualism. P-Zombies are creatures that have no mind, only qualia. Dan Dennett argued that P-Zombies are not logically possible creatures as we need consciousness to act.

A world of P-Zombies is not truly conceivable. Response 1: A world of P-Zombies is not truly conceivable. But just try to keep hold of this idea in the midst of your ordinary intercourse with others. Say to yourself, for example: “The children over there are mere automata; all their liveliness is merely automatism.” And you will either find these words becoming quite meaningless; or you will produce in yourself some kind of uncanny feeling, or something of the sort. - Wittgenstein According to Dan Dennett, whilst there are no explicit contradictions in the argument there are hidden ones. We may fool ourselves into thinking we can strip consciousness away from a persons ability to act, but actually having a mind is integral to performing such tasks. Some examples: People responding in a conversation without qualia would mean they don’t understand their own words or yours. People describing their sense of qualia without actually having it. Imagining someone experiencing no pain after losing an arm or leg Can a person really respond intelligibly without Qualia? Without understanding of what they’re saying?

A world of P-Zombies is not truly conceivable. Response 1: A world of P-Zombies is not truly conceivable. Imagine not experiencing anything? Can you do it? Even if you’re just thinking of a black space you’re still experiencing that thought, that blackness. The life of a P-Zombie simply can’t be imagined. The P-Zombies inner life is non-existant and is therefore unimaginable. We also struggle with imagining meeting a P- Zombie as from our perspective everything about this person is the same as everyone else. So we either are being asked to imagine something that can’t be imagined or something which is very easy to imagine but doesn’t differ from our everyday experience.

What is conceivable is not possible. Response 2: What is conceivable is not possible. A physicalist has an easy answer here: Just because we can imagine the existence of these P-Zombies does not mean they can truly exist. Any creature that has the exact physical makeup of a human would also have conscious experience because conscious experience is simply physical. And if they were to lose their minds, they simply would not behave in the same way we do. They are not possible creatures. Response: But if this were true then we would not have an issue with qualia – we would simply be able to study the physical makeup of the creature and be able to deduce it’s mental states. If mental states are simply physical states then we should be able to access them just by observing the physical (Jacksons Knowledge Argument).

Possibility tells us nothing about reality: Response 3: Possibility tells us nothing about reality: The P-Zombie argument shows us at best that there is a possible world where physical and phenomenal properties are distinct. But that does not mean it is this world. Could it not be the case that physicalism is true here, and dualism elsewhere? Response: If a physicalist wants to claim that all mental states are purely physical in nature then a dualist world would not be possible, in any universe. Dualism would add nothing we didn’t already have (due to the physical body also including mental states). P-Zombies would also not be possible. Our World Physicalist World Possible 1 Dualist world Possible 2 P-Zombie World

The Knowledge Argument A famous second argument against physicalism (and for dualism) is known as Mary’s Room or The Knowledge Argument and comes from Frank Jackson: Read the extract explaining Mary’s Room. What is Jackson attempting to show? Can you put the argument into more formal terms? (Premises and Conclusion) Do you think Mary does learn something new when she leaves the room? How does this present a problem for physicalism?

Does she learn something new? If so what?

The Knowledge Argument Mary has all the physical information concerning human colour vision before her release. But there is some information about human colour vision that she seems to gain on her release from the room. Therefore not all information is physical information. Physicalism is false.

The Knowledge Argument A famous second argument against physicalism (and for dualism) is known as Mary’s Room or The Knowledge Argument and comes from Frank Jackson: Summarise the extract explaining Mary’s Room. What is Jackson attempting to show? Can you put the argument into more formal terms? (Premises and Conclusion) Do you think Mary does learn something new when she leaves the room? How does this present a problem for physicalism?

The Knowledge Argument In outlining the Knowledge argument Jackson is stating that there are “certain features of experiences that no amount of physical information can include or explain.” This is part of Jackson’s definition of qualia and the knowledge argument aims to show that physicalists cannot explain the existence of such experiences. Jackson describes himself as a “Qualia Freak” because he thinks it’s just obvious that no amount of physical knowledge can tell you what it is like to experience Qualia. vs

Does Mary gain new knowledge?

Response 1: Different Kinds of Knowledge Think back to last year can you remember what is meant by: Propositional Knowledge? Acquaintance Knowledge? Ability Knowledge? Propositional Knowledge The knowledge of facts that can be expressed in propositions. It is knowledge that such and such is the case. For example – the wavelength of red light is between 620 and 750mm. Acquaintance Knowledge The kind of knowledge you get from encountering something, like when we know a person or a place. You are familiar with them. For example – Sanah knows her father. Ability Knowledge The knowledge involved in certain abilities. The know- how. The ability to do something. For example – How to ride a bike or drive a car.

Task – Responses to Jackson Read through the information on page 248 – why do some philosophers think that Mary gains no new propositional knowledge instead gaining acquaintance knowledge? Read through the information on page 249 – How do some philosophers argue that Mary gains ability knowledge? What type of abilities has she gained? How does Jackson respond to these criticisms? Is he correct to say we still gain propositional knowledge?

Response 1a: Acquaintance Knowledge One possible response is to say that Mary does not gain any new propositional knowledge about the colour red (that is, she knows no new facts about it) but she does gain acquaintance knowledge, she is now familiar with the colour and the experience of seeing it. Mary may know all about this physical property of qualia, what it is, when it occurs and so on before she leaves the room. However she is not acquainted with the property until she has this experience - when she sees red she gains new acquaintance knowledge, something that is still purely physical. The philosopher Conee argued for this view, stating that Mary has gained new acquaintance knowledge and this can be accounted for within the physicalist framework. He argued that Qualia are a physical property gained from experience of an object. There will be a part of the brain that triggers these Qualia when encountering an object.

Response 1b: Ability Knowledge A second response using a similar theme is to say that Mary gains ability knowledge – the ability to imagine and remember particular colours, to recognise colours in the environment and objects of similar colours etc. This is the argument of Nemirow (1980) and Lewis (1983, 1988). They argue that knowing what “an experience is like” is simply to have certain practical abilities (mentioned above). For example – knowing all the physical facts there is to know about bikes and the physics of riding does not give you the ability to ride a bike. But gaining the ability to ride is still a physical brain state and can be observed.

Counter: Still New Propositional! In both of these cases Jacksons response is to deny that Mary’s learning is confined merely to acquaintance or ability knowledge. Instead, he argues that she has also gained some type of propositional knowledge. Yes, she may now become acquainted with colour, or gain the ability to identify and imagine particular colours – but she's also gained factual knowledge about what it is like for another human to see colour (remember she is not worried about her own experiences, but the experiences of others), something that is very much propositional knowledge. Jackson states that by seeing red she will realise how impoverished her ideas about other peoples mental lives have been. That other people have much more going on in their minds than she has previously realised, these experiences that she can’t access just by looking at pictures of brains – and this is very much factual.

Response 2: She Would Know! If, as the argument allows, Mary does understand all that there is to know regarding the physical nature of colour vision, she would be in a position to imagine what colour vision would be like. It would be like be ing in physical state Sk, and Mary knows all about such physical states. Of course, she herself has not been in Sk, but that is no bar to her knowing what it would be like to be in Sk. For she, unlike us, can describe the nomic relations between Sk and other states of chromatic vision...Give her a precise description in the notation of neurophysiology of a colour vision state, and she will very likely be able to imagine what such a state would be like - Maloney

Response 2: She Would Know! Daniel Dennett and J. Christopher Maloney assert that if she already truly knew "everything about colour", that knowledge would necessarily include a deep understanding of why and how human neurology causes us to sense the "qualia" of colour. Moreover, that knowledge would include the ability to functionally differentiate between red and other colours. Mary would therefore already know exactly what to expect of seeing red, before ever leaving the room. “She would certainly be able to imagine what such a state would be like.”

Response 2: Jackson’s Change of Mind Later on in his career Jackson changed his mind about the thought experiment and came to accept that “all physical knowledge would include knowledge of qualia”. He argues that maybe Mary would first think she had learned something new (as do we) but actually we simply have a very confused idea of what it means to have all the physical information about a particular experience. Qualia may in fact represent complex internal states, so that if Mary genuinely knew everything about such states she would be able to work out what colours would look like before she saw them. NOTE: This is not to accept that this amount of knowledge will ever actually be possible, but this is a flaw of neuroscience and our understanding rather than the information. It remains IF Mary knew all the physical information, she wouldn’t learn anything new when first seeing red.

Critique 3: Different Kind of Info One possible response is to deny that Mary gains any kind of new knowledge from encountering red for the first time – instead she just comes to know the same facts via a different route. Before her release she had a set of physical concepts that allowed her to explain what happens when someone encounters the colour red. 3rd Person perspective. 3rd After her release she acquires a new set of “phenomenal” concepts that allow her to describe the same facts but in a new way. 1st Person perspective. 1st

Critique 3: Different Kind of Info An easy way to imagine this might be to look to chemistry: If we look at the glass to the right we can see that it is filled with water. Someone who is proficient in chemistry may describe it as filled with H20. Are these two truly different facts? Surely it is the same fact in two different ways – after all H20 is just Water. We could say the same about Mary’s experience.

The Knowledge Argument If you haven’t already, complete your summary of the knowledge argument. Why might others argue that she gains a different kind of knowledge when she leaves? Either ability or acquaintance knowledge (summarise each). How does Jackson respond to these arguments? Why might people argue that Mary would know what it is like to experience red, even when she was in the room? Is it possible she already had the information about seeing red, just in a different way? Are the responses we’ve discussed good?