Essay 2
Notre Dame ID: 902008117 In Frank Jackson’s What Mary Didn’t Know, Jackson provides an argument against physicalism, the belief that the actual world is entirely physical. His argument, known as the knowledge argument, involves a woman named Mary who is educated only inside a black and white room her entire life. She is educated using only black and white pictures, books, and other black and white things. Through this education, Mary learns all the physical things that there are to know about people, physics, and the entire world. Jackson argues that, if physicalism were true and therefore the actual world was entirely physical, then Mary would know everything there is to know. However, Mary does not know certain things about other
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When Mary is released from the room she will see color. Jackson makes it clear that the important point of Mary’s release and sight of color is not that Mary has an experience that she has never had before, it is instead that she learns something new about other people’s experiences that she did not know before. Therefore, although Mary knows all of the physical facts there are to know about the world, she does not have knowledge of a truth of how she and others perceive things; color in this case. As a result, Jackson suggests that physicalisms is false because Mary’s knowledge, although it contained knowledge of all physical things, was incomplete. In this argument it is important to note that what Mary learned when she came out of the room was not the color of objects; rather, she learned what it felt like to see specific colors. One should also note that Jackson’s argument does not simply claim that Mary couldn’t imagine what sensing color was like; rather the argument is based on the fact that she would not know what it is …show more content…
Churchland’s first objection is that Jackson’s knowledge argument itself is flawed. Churchland offers a shortened version of Jackson’s knowledge argument to show that Jackson’s argument is invalid. Churchland displays Jackson’s argument as follows: 1) Mary knows everything there is to know about brain states and their properties, 2) Mary does not know everything there is to know about sensations and their properties, therefore by Leibniz’s law, sensations and their properties are not equivalent to brain states and their properties (Jackson 293). In this shortened argument of Jackson’s, Churchland claims that Jackson’s conclusion is wrong because the type of knowledge in premise one is different from the type of knowledge in premise two. Leibniz’s law suggest that two things cannot be identical unless their properties are identical. In this context, Churchland claims that the knowledge in premise one is descriptive knowledge, and the knowledge in premise two is knowledge by acquaintance. Because Mary knows the properties of one and not the other, they must have different properties and are therefore different types of knowledge according to Leibniz’s law. As a result, the shortened version of Jackson’s argument is flawed in attempting to draw a conclusion based on the fact that Mary possessed descriptive knowledge and did not know facts and information that could only be acquired through a different type of
Furthermore, there are several occurrences of the harm against women in regards to Mrs. Dempster. She undergoes a stark change in personality after being hit with the snowball, described by the denizens of Deptford as having “gone simple”. One of Mary Dempster’s most shocking acts after the fact is when she is found having sex with a tramp (later revealed to have been done in order to restore his faith). Her husband, Amasa, decides that Mary is too much of a burden to him and ties her to chair, making her unable to leave her home. Despite this, the young Dunny does not think of Mary as a burden, in fact referring to her as his “greatest friend”. He keeps her up to date on the goings-on in Deptford, he prides her on her fearlessness. He knows
We learn from conflict that sacrifices must be made to help others. In the novel The Devil’s Arithmetic by Jane Yolen, Hannah was an altruistic person that always put others before herself. Because of her heroic nature, she often risked her life for other people. For example, when Commander Breuer visited the concentration camp to choose who would be killed, Hannah risked execution by attempting to save Reuven. When he was caught, Hannah desperately tried to convince the commander to let the child go. The commandant took Reuven away in spite of her pleas. She was unsuccessful; however, this selfless act could have cost Hannah her life. These dire situations force people to jeopardize their own safety for someone else. Hannah’s protective instincts
in her view, the task of returning the church to the state it had been
Although I wish to assume Barbara Brown Taylor’s intentions here are admirable, I find A Tale of Two Heretics adds to the anti-Jewish negativity rather than detracts from it. Throughout the rest of her sermon, she seemingly presents the Pharisees as legalizers who are incapable of witnessing God’s covenantal plan. Firstly, she does so by presenting the Pharisees as callous individuals who are less concerned with the healing of the blind man and more concerned with the blind man’s potential sin. Taylor juxtaposes the Pharisees inquisition with the blind man’s miraculous healings with the result being the blind man’s expulsion from the community. Taylor represents the Pharisees as arrogant, blind leaders who deem the former blind man to be a
In the United States, the hierarchical system that dominates the social landscape has created a pool of power for those who sit at the top of the social ladder. This system has power trickling down from the top to those at the bottom: those who work hard and get recognized the least. This creates a conflict between the oppressed and the oppressor, and eventually those who are oppressed use those drops of power to fight for their basic human rights. In an excerpt from Gloria Anzaldúa’s book Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza, Anzaldúa explains the complications of oppressed people developing counterstances with their oppressors. In Helena Maria Viramontes novel Under the Feet of Jesus, Viramontes develops a female character named Estrella
The aforesaid aforesaid aforesaid aforesaid aforesaid aforesaid aforesaid aforesaid aforesaid a I am going to start off by explaining a thought experiment that was originally created by Frank Jackson, for the knowledge argument in favour of property dualism. 34). Even though Mary does not know the qualia of colour, science has advanced so far that she can correctly imagine what it is like to physically experience colour. The original thought experiment did not mention that science has advanced far enough to be able to explain the qualia of colour. Nor did it mention that Mary is able to imagine what it is like to experience colour vision.
During Lily's journey the Black Mary helps change Lily's life by providing structure. The ritual of the Calendar Sisters, Rosaleen, and Lily praying before the Black Mary everyday provides Lily with time to focus on her emotions and thoughts. Structure gives Lily a routine with helps her stay organized. "'I reached out and traced Black Mary's heart with my finger'" (Monk Kidd 164). Lily is able to touch the Black Mary on her second attempt. This gives Lily as physical connection to the Black Mary, which she never had with her real mother. The Black Mary acts like a silent mother towards Lily because Lily can connect with the Black Mary physically, but not as much socially. Lily can relate to the Black Mary socially but only through prayer, which is not as strong of a connection as the physical aspect. After Lily learns about the stories that tell the Black Mary's past, she can relate to the Black Mary even more. "'You know, she's really just the figurehead off an old ship, but the people needed comfort and rescue, so when they looked at it, they saw Mary, and so the spirit of Mary took over'" (141). When L...
Agnes of God is about a young, simple-minded nun Sister Agnes who gets pregnant and her newborn child is found dead in a wastebasket in her room. Sister Agnes claims to not remember the conception or the birth so psychiatrist Dr. Martha Livingston is appointed by the court to determine whether Sister Agnes is fit to stand trial for the murder of the baby. When it comes time to question about who the father is, who is never mentioned in the play, it becomes a mystery of it all as that the nuns lead a sequestered life and so it seems there are no men who could possibly have been the father other than old Father Metineau. Dr. Livingston a lapsed Catholic is determined to get to the bottom of this. She meets her match in the convent's mother superior, Mother Miriam Ruth, who seems determined to protect the fragility of Sister Agnes and the story she says of her immaculate conception. Agnes is not concerned with the solution to the gruesome murder; it merely uses the suspense generated as the backdrop for a much wider debate between science and rationality on one hand, and religious faith on the other.
Jackson’s Knowledge Argument, while relying on the validity of epiphenomenalism, manages to stand to arguments of physicalism. The ability of conceivable ‘zombies’ to register qualia without experiencing it responds to the claims of acquaintance arguments. Furthermore, beliefs that qualia would provoke physical changes and reactions are accompanied by flawed assertions of attempting to capture the nature of causation. Qualia and the necessity of non-physical knowledge to their existence provide valid arguments to upholding dualist beliefs.
teach him. When the woman realized that, she did what she had to do. She
He uses the limited omniscient to give am intimacy in what Mary’s thinking and also the restriction of not knowing the other character’s actions until they are revealed at the end of the story but he balances this with providing context to her thoughts with the dramatic point of view. Usually, a person’s thoughts don’t need to provide ourselves with context for our own experiences, so Berry uses dramatic point of view to provide what would be missing from exclusively Mary’s thoughts. Berry uses the point of view illuminate Mary’s experience with belonging and the differences between the community of her birth and her new community. Her family had rejected her, “her parents told her. She no longer belonged to that family. To them it would be as if she had never lived” (67). That is enough to damage anyone’s sense of belonging and even though her new community welcomes, includes, teaches, and loves her like the family she lost, perhaps in her sickness a deeply buried insecurity of not belonging rears its head. Because her family didn’t accept her, Mary worries that her new community won’t accept her when she is at her worst, sick and insecure. But when she wakes she realizes that Elton had noticed, cared, and worried for her and in her sleep, her neighbor had come to her and cared for her. “It was a different world, a new world to her, that
Elizabeth Bishop’s Sestina is a short poem composed in 1965 centered on a grandmother and her young grandchild. Bishop’s poem relates to feelings of fate, detriment, and faith that linger around each scene in this poem. There are three views in which we are being narrated in this story; outside of the house, inside of the house, and within the picture the grandchild draws. The progression of the grandmother’s emotions of sadness and despair seen in stanza one to a new sense of hope in stanza six are what brings this complex poem to life. Bishop’s strong use of personification, use of tone, and choice of poetic writing all are crucial in relaying the overall message. When poetry is named after its form, it emphasizes what the reader should recognize
Because of their Puritanical beliefs, it is no surprise that the major theme that runs throughout Mary Rowlandson and Jonathan Edwards’s writings is religion. This aspect of religion is apparent in not only the constant mentions about God himself, but also in the heavy use of biblical scriptures. In their respective writings, Rowlandson and Edwards utilize scripture, but for different purposes; one uses it to convey that good and bad events happen solely because of God’s will, and the other uses it, in one instance, to illustrate how it brought him closer to God, and, in another instance, to justify his harsh claims about God’s powerful wrath.
In the excerpt from the novel Under the Feet of Jesus by Helena Viramontes, the story of a girl named Estrella is described. Throughout the story, Estrella learns a valuable lesson from a box of tools. Viramontes’s use of the literary elements such as selection of detail, figurative language, and tone are implicated to display the development of Estrella’s character. Estrella, a very timid girl at first, eventually becomes confident and capable of succeeding in school after she learns a lesson from a box of tools.
Here she celebrates in a way her freedom and identifies with the struggle of other women. According to Mary Jane Androne Ramatoulaye uses her “range of emotions and opinions to express her evolving consciousness of women’s roles in her culture” (38). She also not only stands up for herself, she speaks on behalf of her girls and other women. When Dieng, her love interest from childhood refer to women as “mortar shells” Ramatoulaye quickly rises to the defense saying “But we are not incendiaries; rather we are stimulants! And I pressed on “In many fields and without skirmishes, we have taken advantage of the notable achievements that have reached us from elsewhere, the gains wrested from the lessons of history. We have a right, just as you have,