Frank Jackson and Physicalism
Frank Jackson begins his article by writing about what he feels to be a fatal flaw in physicalism. He writes a story about a girl named Mary who is raised in a black-and-white room. In this room Mary was taught everything there is to know about the physical world. The only catch is she learned only from media, which was black-and-white, so she knows nothing of the colors outside this room. After learning everything about the physical world, she is then given the chance to see color. She will then "learn" what color is in the world. For this reason Jackson believes physicalism to be false.
Jackson contends that if physicalism were true, Mary would know what a color looks like before she would ever see that color. This, however, is false since Mary could not possibly know what the color looks like before exposure to it. It is impossible for any person to imagine what a color looks like before they see any color at all. Jackson writes, "imagination is a faculty that those who lack knowledge need to fall back on."
Another argument against ...
The concept of a two-sport or multi-sport athlete enormously filters the list of great athletes throughout history and, if used as a measuring rod, leaves us with the best of all time: Bo Jackson. “Bo Jackson is not known in Spain, despite starring in Bo Knows Nike brand campaign that remains today, the most successful of the multinational” (Williams). “In these famous ads, which have Jackson first playing football and baseball, two sports that are professional, he then tries his luck at basketball with Michael Jordan, tennis with John McEnroe, ice hockey with Wayne Gretzky and track and field with Sea and Decker” (Williams). The first ad was so successful that Nike decided to produce more ads featuring Bo Jackson as the “all-star athlete”. These new ads featured him playing and participating in cycling, football with Welshman Ian Rush, who are professional athletes, cricket, surfing, weightlifting, and horse riding. Nike used Bo Jackson’s athletic abilities to form a gold mine “The first athlete in history to be selected as an All Star in two different sports” (Askew). Bo Jackson’s work as America’s greatest athlete of all time shows him to be a representative of American culture because he changed both the American past times of baseball and football, he helps Alabamians with fundraisers that benefit tornado victims, he represents American strength along with persistence, and he set a new height to sports that still haven’t been achieved today by any other athlete. According to Martin:
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. So, the knowledge argument argues that even though Mary does know all of the facts of colour vision; because, Mary does not know the experience of colour, physicalism must be false (pg. 35). However, this argument is flawed because it seems to be based off of ignorance (pg. 36). It is possible for Mary to have never seen red, but still know what it would look like (pg. 36). My argument is that if physicalism is more likely to be able to explain the qualia of colour than property dualism, then physicalism must be possible and more plausible than property dualism. If physicalism is possible, then someone like Mary could possibly exist in the future and know everything about colour vision, including the qualia of colour, without directly experiencing it (pg. 35). Someone like Mary in the future could possibly know everything about colour vision (pg. 36). Therefore, physicalism could possibly be true. If the
“Physiognomic” is the word Allport used to explain how being black has a negative connotation. Allport adds that the English language relates black in the English language to “sinister connotations” such as “black death” or “black-hearted” (368). In this chase, the color black is associated with bad and white is associated with good or pure. If white signifies purity and morality, then why did whites own slaves? Why weren’t blacks and whites on an equal playing field? It goes back to Allport’s message that, “The very act of classifying forces us to overlook all other features…” communicates to us that the label “black” only allows us to see just that—black (365). Other words can be associated with black people such as: police officer, author, and doctor, but in the back of our minds, black is still a word with a negative
The recent International Poe conference saw a number of panels and individual presentations dedicated to examining the author’s works in their social and historical contexts, suggesting that contemporary Poe criticism is moving in a cultural direction long overlooked by scholars and critics. With no less than two full panels devoted specifically to issues of race in Poe’s writing, and other papers addressing issues of cultural identity, gender politics, Poe’s relationship to American literary nationalism, and the author’s ties to both antebellum society and Jacksonian democracy, this conference provided overwhelming evidence of a current desire to emplace Poe more specifically within his cultural and historical milieu. In a broader sense, such attention to the historical and cultural dynamics of Poe’s writing suggests increased attention of late to Poe’s own Americanness. This critical trend toward assessing Poe as a distinctly American writer has, of course, also informed such excellent recent works as Terence Whalen’s Edgar Allan Poe and the Masses (1999) and the essays collected by Shawn Rosenheim and Stephen Rachman in The American Face of Edgar Allan Poe (1995). This paper represents an attempt to further such inquiry into the American “face” of Poe by examining the ways in which Poe’s unfortunately neglected tale “The Man that Was Used Up” complicates the author’s position in relation to American racial and national politics. One of Poe’s most biting satirical pieces, this tale raises vexing questions regarding the connections between matters of race, masculinity, and national identity as these concepts were imagined and constructed in Jacksonian America.
Have you ever had big dreams of playing football or baseball for the National Football League or Major League Baseball? Many young kids have this dream but not many attain their dreams. Vincent Edward Jackson better known as Bo Jackson is one of the few men who achieved the goal of getting to play not only one, but both of those sports at the same time. He was born on November 30, 1962 in Bessemer, Alabama. Bo is the son of A.D. Adams and Florence Bond. Bo was one of 10 children in the family. He graduated from McAdory High School and attended Auburn University. Bo Jackson is a phenomenal multi-sport athlete participating in three sports while attending college and two in the professional leagues. Bo was a running back with the Auburn Tigers
An author’s contributions to the world of literature are many times welcomed as a brilliant piece of work or a genius accomplishment. However, during the life of Shirley Jackson, her stories were many times received poorly due to their dark nature or their pedestrian humor. Even her most famous work, “The Lottery”, was met with outrage and criticism by Americans and literary critics. During her time, horror and humor were seen as minor writings that no one took much notice of. In Janet M. Ball’s analysis of Shirley Jackson, she states that, “Because Jackson chose to handle unusual topics, such as psychosis and ghostly apparitions, some literary critics relegated her to minor status.” (1). Even though she was disregarded during her own time,
The idea that Andrew Jackson was a man of the people and thus the first people’s president is positively accurate. Born in a log cabin, and the child of two Irish born immigrants, Andrew Jackson was the first president to come from humble beginnings. He became an orphan at a very young age and earned everything that was ever given to him, including a scar on his face from a British soldier that epitomized his character for the rest of his life. After becoming a prominent lawyer and moving down to Nashville, Jackson became involved in politics and was part of the group that drafted Tennessee’s constitution. Following that, Jackson was the U.S. representative from Tennessee, and later one of the first senators to represent
Materialism is the belief that all things can be explained in physical terms or by science. Frank Jackson argues against this belief. Jackson’s philosophy is that not only are materialism false, but he also claims that consciousness is a subjective experience that can not be defined by any physical term or by science. The nonphysical experience known as qualia is Jackson’s explanation of consciousness. Qualia is the nonphysical feeling that can not be explained in physical terms or by science. Humans can not understand the feeling of qualia without experiencing it themselves.
This paper aims to endorse physicalism over dualism by means of Smart’s concept of identity theory. Smart’s article Sensations and the Brain provides a strong argument for identity theory and accounts for many of it primary objections. Here I plan to first discuss the main arguments for physicalism over dualism, then more specific arguments for identity theory, and finish with further criticisms of identity theory.
Physicalism is the position that nothing can exceed past what is physically present, and what is physical is all that there can be. This idea is reductive in that it suggests there is no more to the universe than physical matters, including brain processes, sensations, and human consciousness. J.J.C. Smart explains sensations as a means of commentary on a brain process. He believes that, essentially, brain processes and what we report as sensations are essentially the same thing in that one is an account of the other. He writes in “Sensations and Brain Processes” that “…in so far as a sensation statement is a report of something, that something is in fact a brain process. Sensations are nothing over and above brain processes,” (145). Though
When Bo hit the ground his hip popped out of socket and as he rolled over he managed to pop it back in. The doctor that he told this too told him that it was not possible, but it turns out that it was. Bo’s injury has been pinned as one of the worst sports injuries ever. Dislocating a bone from its socket is one of the worse things that you can do before breaking a bone, but putting it back into its socket by yourself is going to be immensely painful. “When I stood and took a step, the pain was like someone stabbed a ice pick into my pelvis.” was what Bo said about the pain he felt after the hip went back into socket and he tried to walk. Jackson had to be helped off the field. It was the last time he ever played professional Football ever.
Philosophers like Locke are called the empiricists and they want to understand the physical world. Locke and the empiricist said that in order to have these mental representation all objects have to exist in time and have a mass, shape, size, and color. There also has to be a consciousness in a body in order for individuals to have mental representations. Locke also makes the argument that we gain experience of the physical world through sensation and physical
Materialists claim that everything is either a physical thing or an aspect of a physical thing, and no physical thing is dependent on the mind. A physical thing is not necessarily a solid object, but...
Physicalism, also known as materialism, is a view on the relationship between the mind and the body. Physicalism states that the mind and body are connected; every nonphysical thing can be explained by physics and/or occurs in a physical form (Physicalism, 1999). Philosophers who have studied and trust this concept believe that things like feelings, thoughts, and other similar things are explainable through science. There are philosophers who argue that though one can know everything there is to know about the color red, while never having experienced red (Demircioglu, 2013). Though, in physicalism, red may not be solely scientific, it is also not just a concept. On the other hand, dualism claims feelings, thoughts, and the like are totally separate from the body because they are not physically there in the brain or elsewhere (Robb, 2005). Dualism, however, brings the mind body problem up for
I once spent a full three minutes looking for a bullfrog that was so unexpectedly large I couldn’t see it even though a dozen enthusiastic campers were shouting directions. Finally I asked, ‘What color am I looking for?’ and a fellow said, ‘Green.’ When at last I picked out the frog, I saw what painters are up against: The thing wasn’t green at all, but the color of wet hickory bark” (p. 695). This example illustrates how we can perceive colors differently from one another. Annie had visualized her idea of what the green bullfrog should look like, possibly from a picture she had seen in the past. The person that told her the frog was green may have meant that it was an olive green. For instance, what some might call burgundy, others would call dark red or even crimson. Furthermore, people who are colorblind have an entirely different perception of colors; depending on the degree of colorblindness, they may not be able to recognize the colors red, green, or