Tuesday, September 17, 2013

jackson's knowledge argument

Sometimes I feel these philosophers need to take some neuroscience classes.  This Jackson guy has this argument about a neuroscientists in a black and white room who learns everything there is to know about red and who then leaves the room and sees something red.  He says she learns something, so she doesn't know everything there is to know even though she knows everything physical.  Well of course she doesn't know everything physical, or at least she hasn't experienced it, because she hasn't had the activation of her red photoreceptors.  So maybe she *knows* everything physical about red, but she hasn't experienced everything physical about it.  So you could say that what the learns is still physical, which doesn't really serve Jackson's original argument that seeing red provides something beyond the physical.

The real question is this- if she's in a black and white room, but I stimulate her retinal ganglia such that they emit a signal identical to that elicited by the color red, and then I take her out of the room and she actually *sees* red- is there a difference to her?

I'm inclined to say no, judging from other experiments of stimulating parts of the brain producing believable sensations, but who knows.  I am a dualist at heart.

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