{"id":10604,"date":"2017-03-16T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2017-03-16T04:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/thenewatlantis.com\/publications\/what-is-it-like-to-know"},"modified":"2020-09-26T14:33:02","modified_gmt":"2020-09-26T18:33:02","slug":"what-is-it-like-to-know","status":"publish","type":"article","link":"https:\/\/www.thenewatlantis.com\/publications\/what-is-it-like-to-know","title":{"rendered":"What Is It Like to Know?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\r\n\t If I asked you about art you\u2019d probably give me the skinny on every art book ever written. Michelangelo \u2014 you know a lot about him. Life\u2019s work, political aspirations, him and the pope, sexual orientation, the whole works, right? But I bet you can\u2019t tell me what it smells like in the Sistine Chapel. You\u2019ve never actually stood there and looked up at that beautiful ceiling\u2026. You\u2019re an orphan, right? Do you think I\u2019d know the first thing about how hard your life has been, how you feel, who you are, because I read\u00a0<\/em>Oliver Twist? Does that encapsulate you?<\/em> \t<\/div>\r\n\t<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n

So says Robin Williams, as a world-weary psychologist, to Matt Damon\u2019s callow boy genius in the famous park bench scene from Good Will Hunting<\/i>. Meant as a rebuke to the young man\u2019s conceit, the speech also inadvertently describes one of the most important thought experiments in contemporary philosophy, an experiment that itself scolds a central conceit of modern intellectual life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dubbed the \u201cknowledge argument,\u201d the thought experiment was proposed by Australian philosopher Frank Jackson in a 1982 paper<\/a>. It was posed as a challenge to physicalism, the school of thought that holds that the mind is purely material, made solely of the stuff of rocks and meat, fully explicable by physics and chemistry. Physicalists regard the common-sense view that the mind is special \u2014 whether because it\u2019s self-aware, can think and feel, or has free will \u2014 as an illusion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Aiming to refute physicalism, Jackson asks us to imagine a scientist named Mary, who is so brilliant that she acquires all of the \u201cphysical information there is to obtain\u201d about the workings of vision. Mary, that is, learns everything there is to know about how various wavelengths of light stimulate the retina, the neurology of the visual processing system, how this system interacts with the speech centers to produce spoken descriptions of images, and so on. The catch is that Mary has lived her whole life in a room in which everything is entirely in black, white, and shades of gray, including her books and the TV monitor she uses to investigate the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One day Mary is released from her room. For the first time, she sees colors with her own eyes. The question is: Does Mary learn something new?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The intuitive answer for most people is: yes, of course \u2014 Mary learns what it is like<\/i> to see color. She learns about the redness of a rose, the blueness of the sky. But recall that Mary already knew everything physical about vision. So whatever it is that Mary learns is not encapsulated in physical descriptions. We can conclude, then, that there are such things as nonphysical facts<\/i> about vision, meaning there must also be nonphysical properties<\/i> of vision. In short, there is<\/i> something special about the mind, and physicalism must be false.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The conclusion may strike many readers as obvious, but physicalism is the orthodoxy among today\u2019s physicists, biologists, and philosophers of mind. To the physicalists, their position is the beginning and the end of the modern scientific project: in principle, a core metaphysical commitment that distinguishes modern science from its forebears; in its particulars, the final theory that is supposed to await us on the distant day when science is finished.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Peruse the pop-science headlines on any given day and read about how \u201cwe now know\u201d that the love you feel looking at your child is actually just oxytocin in the limbic centers of the brain, a development that just happened to help our ancestors outbreed their neighbors, who apparently felt for their children the way we do about a plate of wet bread. The sense that your soul just died is a sign that you are now bending properly along the great de-spiriting arc of history. Thus, the knowledge argument seems to provide a welcome bulwark against the rising tide of physicalism, a relief to those who believe that love is love, whatever else it might also be.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of course, as clear and intuitive as it first appears, Mary\u2019s Room, like every other question of mind, is not nearly so simple. It would be surprising if a centuries-old philosophical project could be crumbled at its foundations by the kind of lesson taught to four-year-olds in preschool. Fittingly, then, despite three and a half decades of sustained discussion, the knowledge argument has apparently not won a single academic convert to dualism, the opposing set of theories holding that the mind is not entirely physical, or that mental and physical properties are distinct. Though it is now perhaps the go-to example of an argument against physicalism, philosophers have offered compelling reasons to doubt it. The knowledge argument seems largely to have entrenched the opposing sides, providing each with an ever more elaborate set of rationalizations for its existing views.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Physicalism and dualism are conventionally seen as enemies, and with good reason. Each position is as much a sustained rejection of its opposite as it is a positive program of explanation in its own right. But as we will see, the mutual hostility of modern physicalism and dualism conceals a deeper convergence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Understanding the thought experiment requires a return to foundational concerns about how we move past subjective experience to achieve objective knowledge of the world. These questions in turn point back to the genuine mystery of mind \u2014 of how it is that certain bits of dust, arranged just so, become capable of pondering the infinite.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\r\n\t\tPhysicalist Replies to the Knowledge Argument\t<\/h5>\r\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n

T<\/span>here are certain facts that can be learned only \u201cfrom one point of view\u201d \u2014 from a subjective perspective. So argues Thomas Nagel in his landmark 1974 paper \u201cWhat Is It Like to Be a Bat?<\/a>\u201d Such subjective facts are what philosophers call raw feels<\/i>, phenomenal properties<\/i>, or qualia<\/i> (from Latin for \u201cof what kind\u201d). They are facts about sensation, or what it is like<\/i> to have some experience. Qualia are the basic units of experience: redness, pain, the wetness of water, the taste of sweetness. Nagel argues that qualia define consciousness itself: \u201cfundamentally an organism has conscious mental states if and only if there is something that it is like to be<\/i> that organism.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The general approach of dualists is to demonstrate that qualia are an additional set of properties of the world, over and above its physical traits. The general approach of physicalists is to deny that there is anything extra about qualia. To the physicalist, it is only a mystical belief in the soul or in human uniqueness, abetted by the current incompletion of science, that creates the illusion that qualia cannot be accounted for by biology, chemistry, and physics. But just as we now know that the wet stuff in rivers and the fluffy stuff in the sky are all the same molecule made of hydrogen and oxygen, so too will sensations someday be shown to be the same thing as certain physical events.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With this sketch in mind, we can consider the most important lines of criticism of the knowledge argument.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The physicalists\u2019 first line of reply is that Mary gains new abilities, but not new knowledge<\/i>. Laurence Nemirow writes<\/a>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some modes of understanding consist, not in the grasping of facts, but in the acquisition of abilities…. I understand the experience of seeing red if I can at will visualize red.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

David Lewis, one of the most insightful critics of today\u2019s dualist theories, adds<\/a> that seeing red allows you to \u201cremember, imagine, and recognize\u201d various experiences of red. But these abilities do not amount to \u201cthe possession of any kind of information.\u201d Recognizing the shape of a C-38 locomotive by sight \u201cdoesn\u2019t enable you to write down the geometrical description\u201d of it. Likewise, knowing the complete geometrical description of a locomotive doesn\u2019t necessarily enable you to identify it by sight.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This reply offers a distinction that will prove crucial and vexing \u2014 that between ability and information, or knowledge of how<\/i> to do something and knowledge that<\/i> something is the case. Factual information can contribute to ability, but they are not the same thing. As Lewis points out, \u201cThat\u2019s why music students have to practice.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A second, more popular reply is that Mary gains new acquaintance with what she already knew<\/i>. Paul Churchland, a prominent physicalist, says<\/a> that the knowledge argument has the following structure (modified here for clarity):<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Premise 1: Before leaving the room, Mary knows everything there is to know about brain states.<\/p>

Premise 2: After leaving the room, Mary comes to know something new about sensations.<\/p>

Conclusion: Sensations have some property that brain states don\u2019t, so they are not identical, and physicalism is false.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

But, according to Churchland, the argument equivocates. It sounds as if \u201cknow\u201d has the same meaning in both premises, when in fact the two uses refer to two different kinds of knowledge. Before leaving the room, Mary has knowledge by description. After leaving the room, she has knowledge by acquaintance. The difference, explains Churchland, is \u201cin the manner of the knowing, not in the nature of the thing(s) known.\u201d So the conclusion that brain states and sensations are different things, with different properties, doesn\u2019t follow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The German philosopher Martine Nida-R\u00fcmelin, an innovative dualist and a strong defender of the knowledge argument, clarifies Churchland\u2019s point by offering a modified version of the Mary\u2019s Room thought experiment. Remember that Mary already knows what colors particular objects like stop signs and ripe bananas are, so if someone were to bring these objects into the room, she would be able to name their colors. So instead, suppose that someone brings Mary objects that are randomly colored \u2014 say, toy blocks. Again, Mary sees colors for the first time \u2014 but in this case, she cannot identify them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This scenario, says Nida-R\u00fcmelin, shows knowledge by acquaintance, or knowing what it\u2019s like<\/i>. Mary becomes acquainted with colors whose descriptions she already knew, but at this point she is not yet able to relate correctly the new experience of each color with her knowledge of it. For instance, she may think that the color of the red block is what people call \u201cblue.\u201d Churchland and Nida-R\u00fcmelin agree that no learning has occurred at this stage, and so no disproof of physicalism. We can see this because Mary has not actually learned anything new about the world: she\u2019s wrong about the red block being blue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But, Nida-R\u00fcmelin continues, when Mary then leaves the room and sees the blue sky, she does learn something new: she learns that the color of the blue block she saw earlier is what people are referring to when they say the sky is blue. Mary acquires knowledge about other people\u2019s experience (assuming they have normal vision). According to Nida-R\u00fcmelin, the knowledge argument only claims that Mary learns something in this final stage. Jackson himself has offered this interpretation<\/a>, claiming that what Mary learns when she leaves the room is actually \u201ctruths about other people,\u201d and that these are the truths missing from physicalism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Notice how perplexing the debate remains: friends and foes of the knowledge argument alike use the ideas of acquaintance and know-how as proof for their own side. Both sides agree that, in order to prove some new property exists, one must demonstrate that Mary gains new factual knowledge of this property. And both agree that acquaintance and know-how do not count as this factual knowledge. Their disagreement is over whether Mary\u2019s new acquaintance or know-how leads her to learn some additional fact, the kind of knowledge that can be conveyed in sentences. But dualists are in a difficult position, because of course the very premise of the knowledge argument is that Mary already began with all conveyable factual knowledge about color.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Ashley Benham Yazdani<\/cite><\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The difficulty for dualists here applies more generally. Dualists argue that what Mary learns is some piece of self-knowledge, or some knowledge about other people. Now, we know Mary is inquisitive, so she very well might gain these things \u2014 but not necessarily. These bits of knowledge are all secondary to the experience, and are gained by reflection. Even the formulation that Mary learns \u201cwhat it is like to see red\u201d subtly separates the experience from the knowledge it imparts. Consider the point this way: our intuition is that babies and animals who had never seen color would gain the same thing that Mary does. But we would deny that babies and animals are capable of propositional knowledge, of knowing facts stated in sentences. And even \u201cI know what it is like to see red\u201d takes this form.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The result is that dualist interpretations add complexity to the knowledge argument while weakening its initial intuitive force. Dualists have set themselves a perplexing task by making Mary\u2019s experience the object<\/i> of knowledge, instead of arguing that the experience itself is a form of knowledge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The acquaintance and know-how replies, however, are at least as damning for physicalism. Physicalism is a unitary aspiration. Its thesis is that everything that exists is made of the same kind of stuff. For physicalists, there is nothing special about conscious things; we differ from rocks and bacteria only in degree of complexity. We must be entirely explainable, then, in terms of conveyable sentences about objective facts. Physicalism\u2019s whole point is that accounting for consciousness cannot require any special mode of knowledge like subjectivity. Yet in responding to the knowledge argument, physicalists invoke paradigmatic examples of our subjectivity \u2014 sensation and action. This seems to be the exact special pleading that physicalism claims triumphantly to overcome. And physicalists are invoking subjective categories, no less, to refute an argument for the existence of subjectivity.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\r\n\t\tQualia: Things without Stuff\t<\/h5>\r\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n

I<\/span>n ordinary ways of talking, observed<\/a> the psychologist Peter G. Ossorio,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

only objects straightforwardly \u201cexist\u201d or \u201care real.\u201d Processes and events \u201coccur\u201d and states of affairs \u201cobtain\u201d or \u201care the case.\u201d … Thus, to ask, \u201cWhat exists?\u201d is more than just to bias the answer in favor of objects. It amounts to hardly more than asking of everything \u201cHow object-like is it?\u201d And, while there is nothing wrong with asking that, it seems unlikely to contribute appreciably to our understanding of things.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Ossorio\u2019s point clearly damns physicalism, which regards a methodological premise of science \u2014 that physical objects are the paradigm of being \u2014 as a metaphysical conclusion proven in everything but the details. But it is less obvious that Ossorio\u2019s point also damns dualism, or at least one of modern analytic dualism\u2019s central explanatory concepts, qualia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is something peculiar about the notion of qualia. As Ossorio notes, one can naturally say that raindrops exist. But to assert the existence of the event of falling raindrops, one must use an awkward sentence like \u201cThe falling of the raindrops is real.\u201d Events must be mashed into nouns, and staked on the defensive \u201cis real.\u201d It\u2019s as if events can secure for themselves only some metaphorical existence, derivative of the objects they\u2019re made of.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now consider the status of the \u201csomethings\u201d in \u201cthere is something it is like to see blue.\u201d The words \u201cthere is\u201d assert existence, particularly the existence of an object: \u201cther<\/i>e<\/i>\u201d \u2014 right there, at that location in space I\u2019m pointing at and you can see \u2014 \u201cis<\/i> some thing.\u201d This is curious. The purpose of the phrase is to pick out precisely those traits that are not<\/i> like physical objects \u2014 traits with no location or mass, that belong to particular subjects, and are not out in the world. Yet, as in the manner Ossorio describes, \u201cthere is something it is like\u201d establishes a contrast with objects by appropriating the semantics of objects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We should be similarly suspicious of qualia. Consider the structural roles they play in philosophical arguments:<\/p>\n\n\n\n