How does Physicalism Solve the Problem of Qualia?

• Main Authors: Paul Chen(Chin-Wei Chen), 陳今偉
• Other Authors: Allen Y.-H. Houng
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2001
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/74129043016541780628

碩士 === 國立中正大學 === 哲學研究所 === 89 === In our actual world, is everything physical? Can a complete story of physical science explain all these facts? Among these facts, one of the most confusing things is our mental phenomena. It seems that, in our subjective conscious experience, there exists a certain phenomenal character which physical science leaves out, i.e. what it is like to experience something. But, is that true? This is a thesis about some objections to knowledge argument, which are made by physicalists to solve the problem of qualia. Through the discussion of these responses, we can see how the contemporary physicalists deal with this thorny problem. Frank Jackson’s knowledge argument, through a vivid thought experiment (Mary in the black-white room), tries to argue that even someone learns about all the facts of the actual world through physical science, he/she still leaves out one thing: the phenomenal character of the sensational experience. Therefore, there is a non-physical property, and physicalism is false. To this challenge, there are mainly two kinds of responses, one is the hypothesis of ability provided by Lewis and Nemirow. They thought that knowing what it is like is not the possession of information at all, instead, it is the possession of abilities to recognize, to imagine, and to remember. The difficulty of this claim is that sensational experience itself seems not identical with those abilities one will gain after. And the second one is the so-called “Old fact/ New representation analysis”. I mention several philosophers’ discussions, including Horgan, Conee, Churchland, Loar, Lycan, Tye, and Van Gulick. They all, roughly speaking, think that, about the fact of the sensational experience, what Mary gains outside the room is only a new representation about the old facts. They both represent the same facts. I think the Old-fact/New-representation analysis is a reasonable refutation; knowledge argument cannot be justified. If physicalists want to justify themselves, they must explain that these two kinds of representations represent the same facts.