Explaining Consciousness Joe Lau Philosophy HKU

Reading Lectures notes from James Pryor at Harvard : The relevant sections in chapter 8 of Braddon- Mitchell and Jackson's Philosophy of Mind and Cognition. Optional : Chapters of The Nature of consciousness : philosophical debates edited by Ned Block, Owen Flanagan, and Güven Güzeldere

Frank Jackson on qualia I am what is sometimes known as a “qualia freak”. I think that there are certain features of the bodily sensations especially, but also of certain perceptual experiences, which no amount of purely physical information includes. Tell me everything there is to tell about what is going on in a living brain, the kinds of states, their functional role, their relation to what goes on at other times and in other brains, and so on and so forth, and be I as clever as can be in fitting it all together, you won't have told me about the hurtfulness of pains, the itchiness of itches, pangs of jealousy, or about the characteristic experience of tasting a lemon, smelling a rose, hearing a loud noise or seeing the sky.

Physicalism Physicalism about the mind is the thesis that mental phenomena are physical in nature. By “physical” we include functional, neural or computational properties.

Jackson’s knowledge argument

The argument 1. Inside the room, Mary could come to know every physical fact about the world without ever had any colour experiences. 2. When Mary sees a coloured object for the first time, she learns a new fact about colour experiences. 3. So there are facts about colour experiences which Mary did not know when she was in the room. 4. So some facts about colour experiences are not physical facts. 5. So physicalism is false.

Response #1 : Something must be wrong. The argument works against dualism as well. – Mary can learn something new even after learning all physical and non-physical facts inside the room. – So there must be something wrong with the argument, even if it is not clear what it is. But if dualism is true, maybe it is not possible to know all the non-physical facts by studying inside the room. So the argument does not apply to dualism.

Response #2 : The ability hypothesis There are (at least) two kinds of learning : – Learning facts and learning skills. – The first involves acquiring propositional knowledge, the second involves acquiring new abilities. – “Knowing that” vs. “Knowing how”.

“Knowing that” & “Knowing how” Must stay calm … Move arms and legs from behind to front …

Response to Jackson 1. Mary did not learn any new facts. 2. She learns something new in the sense of acquiring new abilities. 3. These include the abilities to remember, imagine or recognize colour experiences.

Evaluating the ability hypothesis New abilities acquired? Yes. But no new factual knowledge? Not clear. Factual knowledge can be used to distinguish between and eliminate possibilities. Now Mary knows that : – This is what seeing red is like. – Seeing red is like this and not like seeing green.

Knowing what seeing red is like? R G Red thing Gray; I have G, but not R sensory representation propositional representation