Added: 2 years ago
From: philosophertoby
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  • epiphenomenalism could still affect future behaviour by fooling us into thinking we are responsible for our decisions. If we thought (wrongly) we were consciously responsible for something we would endeavour to repeat or avoid those 'conscious decisions' next time round...

  • im writing a paper about frank jackson, your video really helped me out

  • I'm glad you found my video useful. Thanks for the feedback. And watch out for more videos coming soon!

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  • You assume her neuro-scientific knowledge is insufficient. Jackson's argument specifically states it is sufficient to describe colour-experiencing brain states. It's true that once Mary leaves the bunker her brain wishes to engage in subjective colour talk but if the Mary-Brain already knows everything about colour experience, it ALSO already knows about subjective brainstate behaviour and so is capable of reinterpreting its apparent subjective experiences as predictive neurological states.

  • Once Mary has experienced colour, she has the ability to put her brain into the "seeing colour" state, whereas previously she just knew the neural arrangement of such a state but couldn't put herself in it.

    We often have new experiences (although not always as pronounced) and find ways to describe them. But Mary would know that she is experiencing colour so would probably describe it thus.

    "my" is subjective but can be understood objectively, like a robot programmed to talk about itself.

  • Jackson certainly plays a sleight-of-hand trick in claiming that Mary knows everything, yet can learn something extra. And once she steps outside the monochrome bunker she behaves in a new manner because, guess what, she's in a new physical state (the physical state of being in a colourful world). Jackson is the proverbial 'have his cake and eat it' man.

  • The point is phenomenal facts and physical facts are two different things.

    Frank Jackson has since changed his mind, he is no longer a dualist. Jackson, in fact, wishes to refute his own argument but it appears that his argument was just too strong.

  • Correct. However, there's no necessary recourse to Qualia to explain why Mary appears to experience something extra when she enters the coloured world. It's a new physical situation thus Mary is placed in a new physical state. The argument therefore does not pose a threat to eliminative materialists. It doesn't even logically deduce the reality of phenomenological facts, acting only as an intuition pump for their existence. For this alone we should be suspicious of Jackson's argument.

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