Knowledge Argument Against Physicalism

I will describe the Knowledge Argument and how it aims to prove that physicalism is false. I will go through the plausibility of the arguments two premises and how the conclusion is implied. I will then present an objection to the argument and how it might present a problem to the claims being made by the argument. Finally I will then asses the objection and how well the Knowledge Argument holds up against it.

The Knowledge Argument (KA) aims at refuting physicalism by claiming that there are more than just physical facts that can be learned. KA was first presented by Frank Jackson in his thought experiment about a super-scientist named Mary. The thought experiment is as follows; Mary has spent her entire life in a black and white room and

So Physicalism is false (Lecture). Physicalism is the thesis that all mental states are physical states. Therefore, conscious states would also have to be physical states. Concluding, that all facts about conscious states are also facts about physical states. However, in the KA there is a fact that Mary learns that is not a physical fact. Mary, knew before leaving the room and seeing red, all the physical facts about red and seeing red. But once she sees red, she goes through a conscious state of seeing red that gives her new information about what it is like to see red, that new information is a fact. And that fact is not a physical fact because she had to go through a conscious state, something that cannot be provided by all the physical

Robert van Gulick, elaborates on this objection by making a distinction of different types of propositions. The guises are different modes of propositions. There are propositions that are different in a coarse-grain or fine-grain mode. An example is, H2O and water. In a coarse-grained mode, two propositions would be the same because they would hold the “same truth value in any every possible world”. H2O and water are the same physical thing and therefore anything that is true about H2O would also be true about water. However, in a fine-grained mode, those two propositions would not be the same because it would take into account that the two propositions are communicating different concepts. If you did not know that H2O and water where the same physical thing, you could still know about both of them completely but hold them to be two different concepts (Fesser). Mary sees the color red, she did not learn a new fact but instead learned a proposition in a fine-grained mode. Seeing red has a different concept than knowing all there is to know about red. They both hold the same truth value. Mary does not learn a new fact but instead learns a new way of understanding all the facts she already knew about