Bloody Mary! On Sun, Jul 11, 2010 at 9:18 AM, Alan Wostenberg <[email protected]> wrote:
> According to Ed Feser at http://bit.ly/a6rSTn, "Physicalism claims > that if you know all the physical facts that there are to know about > people, then you know all the facts there are to know about them, > period;" > > I came across Frank Jackson (1982) "knowledge argument" against > physicalism. Is it sound? Persuasive? > > "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 specializes 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 wavelength 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’.… What will happen when Mary is released from her black and > white room or is given a color 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 is it > 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. " > > > > -- \--/ Peace
