It’s Immaterial - A Critical Review of the Knowledge Argument

Abstract

What is the relationship between the brain and the mind, the physical and the mental? While Monists believe no such distinction exists,Dualists believe a human to be comprised of some unextended mental substance which is the seat of consciousness and some physical substance. In recent years, the knowledge argument, the idea that it is impossible to know what a color is like without seeing it first, has emerged as a strong case for Dualism. According to Frank Jackson, who proposed the knowledge argument first, even if a person knows all the physical facts about a color and the nature of perception, they will not understand what the color is actually like (its phenomenology) unless they see it for themselves. To defend against the knowledge argument, there are three possibilities: rejecting the premise of the knowledge argument, the abilities hypothesis, and the phenomenal concept strategy. Ultimately, this paper finds the phenomenal concept strategy to be the most successful.