The Knowledge Argument (Qualia)

The argument

Frank Jackson put forward a version of the following argument in his article 'Epiphenomenal Qualia' in 1982. Imagine an incredibly gifted scientist who was born deaf. He or she dedicates his life profession to studying hearing, and the processes and mechanisms involved in hearing sound. The stipulation is deliberately total: whatever there is to know about acoustics, about the anatomy of the ear, about the neural pathways that carry a signal and the brain states that result, this scientist knows it. The thought experiment is designed to grant physical science everything it could ask for, so that nothing is left out through mere ignorance. Finally, after knowing everything there is to know about hearing from a purely functional and physical perspective, the scientist undergoes an operation to repair his or her deafness. The knowledge argument proposes that this scientist, when they hear sound for the first time, will learn something new. The scientist will experience what it is like to hear. That moment is what the argument turns on. If the scientist learns something, then something was missing beforehand — and by construction it cannot have been a physical fact, because every physical fact was already in hand. We call this qualitative way of experiencing something qualia, and the claim is that not every experience can be reduced to something physical. The conclusion follows from the gap the case exposes. The actual feeling of what it is to experience music and sound cannot be reduced to physical processes, since a complete physical description leaves a person able to acquire new knowledge on first hearing. Therefore, there must be a non-physical component to our experiences — which is to say that a purely physical account of the mind is incomplete, and that dualism has something to explain that physicalism does not.

Context

In reducing all experiences to physical processes, we are unable to explain the full depth of "experience" and what it feels like. How can we reduce emotive activities like listening to music, watching a moving play, or seeing a beautiful piece to art to physical processes?

Premises

Counter-arguments

Evolutionary Argument Critics of dualism have often pointed to evolution as scientific evidence against the theory. As humans, we evolved from a single-cell organism, into the complex human species we have today. Because we began as a purely physical entity, it is impossible that a non-physical entity was later added. Our species evolved through random cellular mutations and the natural selection process. There is simply no scope for the evolution or development of the mind as a non-physical aspect of our species.

Rejecting the premises

Humans evolved from single cells. Single cells do not have non-physical minds. Therefore, humans do not have non-physical minds.