The Knowledge Intuition and the Ability Hypothesis

Dialogue ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 51 (2) ◽  
pp. 313-326 ◽  
Author(s):  
Huiming Ren
Keyword(s):  
Thought Experiment ◽  
Knowledge Argument

ABSTRACT: I argue that the Ability Hypothesis cannot really accommodate the knowledge intuition that drives the knowledge argument and therefore fails to defend physicalism. When the thought experiment is run with, instead of Mary, an advanced robot Rosemary, for whom there presumably is no distinction between knowledge-how and knowledge-that, proponents of the Ability Hypothesis would have to give a far-fetched and counterintuitive explanation of why Rosemary wouldn’t learn anything new upon release.

Knowledge argument

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Torin Alter
Keyword(s):  
Biological Sciences ◽  
Colour Vision ◽  
Thought Experiment ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Knowledge Argument ◽  
Frank Jackson ◽  
Black And White ◽  
Television Monitor ◽  
Physical Chemical ◽  
The World

The knowledge argument is an argument against physicalism, the view that the world is wholly physical. It was developed by Frank Jackson (1943–) and is based on the following thought experiment. Everything that can be known through the physical, chemical, and biological sciences – the complete physical truth – has been discovered. Mary is a brilliant scientist who is raised in a black-and-white room. She has never had colour experiences. But she learns the complete physical truth, which includes the completed science of colour vision, by reading books and watching lectures on a black-and-white television monitor. Then she leaves the room and sees colours. Jackson’s argument runs roughly as follows. When Mary leaves the room, she learns something new. She learns what it is like to see in colour. Evidently, the complete physical truth is not the complete truth about the world. Ergo, physicalism is false. Some react by denying that Mary learns anything when she leaves the room. Others react by accepting that she learns something but denying that this refutes physicalism. Still others accept the argument as sound. The ensuing discussion has led to a variety of insights about consciousness and its place in the natural world.

scholarly journals 3.3 What Mary didn’t know about values (The hard problem of value 3)

2015 ◽  
Vol 44 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Manuel Dries
Keyword(s):  
Thought Experiment ◽  
Knowledge Argument ◽  
Hard Problem ◽  
Important Idea ◽  
Standard Section ◽  
The Difference ◽  
The Hard Problem

AbstractThis article answers some criticisms raised against How hard is it to create values? and offers a further formulation of the hard problem of value. Section 1 addresses the objection that Nietzsche’s criterion of life is too vague to serve as a useful value standard. Section 2 expands on the important idea of appreciating the difference among value perspectives. Sections 3 and 4 present the “hard problem of value” as a challenge for Nietzschean value agonism and value nihilism respectively. Section 5 offers a further formulation of the “hard problem of value”: a thought experiment about Mary, an expert, anti-realist value creator, whose values may or may not lack some qualities, analogous to Mary, the colour scientist of the “knowledge argument”.

scholarly journals Mary Does Not Learn Anything New

2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 44-55
Author(s):  
Adam Khayat
Keyword(s):  
Human Behavior ◽  
Mental Causation ◽  
Thought Experiment ◽  
Knowledge Argument ◽  
Phenomenal Concept ◽  
Explanatory Role ◽  
Jaegwon Kim ◽  
Special Sciences ◽  
Reductive Physicalism ◽  
Mental Properties

Within the discourse surrounding mind-body interaction, mental causation is intimately associated with non-reductive physicalism. However, such a theory holds two opposing views: that all causal properties and relations can be explicated by physics and that special sciences have an explanatory role. Jaegwon Kim attempts to deconstruct this problematic contradiction by arguing that it is untenable for non-reductive physicalists to explain human behavior by appeal to mental properties. In combination, Kim’s critique of mental causation and the phenomenal concept strategy serves as an effectual response to the anti-physicalist stance enclosed within the Knowledge Argument and the Zombie Thought Experiment.

Mary Does Not Learn Anything New

2019 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
pp. 44-55
Author(s):  
Adam Khayat ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Human Behavior ◽  
Mental Causation ◽  
Thought Experiment ◽  
Knowledge Argument ◽  
Phenomenal Concept ◽  
Explanatory Role ◽  
Jaegwon Kim ◽  
Special Sciences ◽  
Reductive Physicalism ◽  
Mental Properties

Within the discourse surrounding mind-body interaction, mental causation is intimately associated with non-reductive physicalism. However, such a theory holds two opposing views: that all causal properties and relations can be explicated by physics and that special sciences have an explanatory role. Jaegwon Kim attempts to deconstruct this problematic contradiction by arguing that it is untenable for non-reductive physicalists to explain human behavior by appeal to mental properties. In combination, Kim’s critique of mental causation and the phenomenal concept strategy serves as an effectual response to the anti-physicalist stance enclosed within the Knowledge Argument and the Zombie Thought Experiment.

Epistemological Status of Models and Thought Experiments in Economics

2015 ◽  
pp. 123-140 ◽  
Author(s):  
O. Koshovets ◽  
T. Varkhotov
Keyword(s):  
Natural Science ◽  
Thought Experiment ◽  
Thought Experiments ◽  
Theoretical Modeling ◽  
Epistemological Status ◽  
Epistemological Analysis ◽  
Field Of Inquiry

The paper considers the analogy of theoretical modeling and thought experiment in economics. The authors provide historical and epistemological analysis of thought experiments and their relations to the material experiments in natural science. They conclude that thought experiments as instruments are used both in physics and in economics, but in radically different ways. In the natural science, a thought experiment is tightly connected to the material experimentation, while in economics it is used in isolation. Material experiments serve as a means to demonstrate the reality, while thought experiments cannot be a full-fledged instrument of studying the reality. Rather, they constitute the instrument of structuring the field of inquiry.

On Education as a Commodity (The Distinguishedl Lecture)

1993 ◽  
Vol 32 (4I) ◽  
pp. 541-582 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Ali Khan
Keyword(s):  
Undergraduate Education ◽  
Thought Experiment ◽  
British Museum ◽  
Native Literature ◽  
Correct Estimate

I have no knowledge of either Sanskrit or Arabic. But I have done what I could to form a correct estimate of their value. I have never found one ... who could deny that a single shelf of a good European library was worth the whole native literature of India and Arabia. i If truth is not to be found on the shelves of the British Museum, where, I asked myself, picking up a notebook and a pencil, is truth.2 Education is a weapon whose effect depends on who holds it in his hand and who is struck with it.Consider a shop, here and now, which stocks a finite but very large number of commodities, each of whose characteristics is known to both the shoppers and the shopkeeper, and each of whose prices is posted at the shopdoor. Let one of these cOinmodities be units of undergraduate education, measured in years. The following scenario, thought-experiment if one prefers, brings out how the shop functions. I send someone shopping. I give him a slip marked "five years of undergraduate education." He takes the slip to the shopkeeper, who.......

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