The Knowledge Argument

The knowledge argument, or the Mary's room thought-experiment, as elaborated by Robert Stalnaker.

If our experience of colour can be seen as yielding no contingent facts about the world, what might our awareness of such an experience entail? What could it mean to say that phenomenal properties just are constituents of our knowing something?

Considered comments are welcome. I haven't made up my mind on this one yet.

Category:

Education

Tags:

• philosophy
• phenomenal
• internalism
• externalism
• knowledge
• epistemology
• mind
• qualia

[LennyBound]

Thanks for the upload. :-)

[sssswwwsssss]

Glad you got something out of this.

[ndileni]

So incredibly helpful!

[iamthewalrusQ]

The joke is, everyone knows women are all dark on the inside.

[sssswwwsssss]

an an object of knowledge. In extension, such intentional content would be incompatible with the symbolic representational computation you outlined above. So then, if one accepts the knowledge argument, one is also accepting the claim that SRC is either false or is explanitorily inadequate. Not many people do now accept the knowledge argument ( its author among them). Cheers for the comment.

[sssswwwsssss]

Hi, I think your right. Any inference from the KA toward a so-called property dualism would be far to strong. It's at it's best in honing other candiadate theories of mind, and in structuring rejoinders to suit worthy possible counterexamples. On the oter hand, it does have something to say about computation theory of mind, namely, that if my knowing something redly cannot be made intelligible within any provisional empirical claim (see Sellars) then such intentionality itself suffices

[Ormaaj]

Slight correction: it is a useful thought experiment - I'm just arguing that it is impossible to draw a conclusion from it.

[Ormaaj]

If the brain is a finite state machine akin to a cellular automaton, such that the set of functions which define possible relationships between states allowed for the the system to achieve any state from any other state over a finite number of iterations, then it would be conceivable to execute a series of thoughts which could result in any arbitrary mental state.

Because of this possibility, Mary's room says nothing about theory of computation, nor the epistemological nature of consciousness.

[riversonthemoon]

He describes it as 'mistaking failure of imagination for an insight into necessity'

[riversonthemoon]

It is an interesting problem that Jackson has proposed. Dan Dennett denies there is a problem at all by saying that if Mary did have all the scientific facts about color then that would include a complete understanding of how human neurophysiology reacts to environmental stimulus. He criticizes the way the thought experiment fools our intuitions in that 'She has all the physical information' is not readily imaginable to any of us and so we don't try.