KA Again

Back to the knowledge argument (KA; prior post here).  As in that post, I continue to hash stuff out right here, right now.  A commenter at that post and a commenter on this post (which was part of Philosophers' Carnival #55 at The Brooks Blog) at Evanescent pointed me toward some helpful stuff.    The Evanescent post includes this Dennett quote (about halfway through the post) wrt KA:

The philosopher Daniel Dennett however “argues that Mary would not, in fact, learn something new if she stepped out of her black and white room to see the color red. Dennett asserts that if she already truly knew “everything about color”, that knowledge would include a deep understanding of why and how human neurology causes us to sense the “quale” of color. Mary would therefore already know exactly what to expect of seeing red, before ever leaving the room. Dennett argues that the misleading aspect of the story is that Mary is supposed to not merely be knowledgeable about color but to actually know all the physical facts about it, which would be a knowledge so deep that it exceeds what can be imagined, and twists our intuitions.”

That's the kind of stuff I was looking for.  For reference, here's KA:

1. Mary (before her release) knows everything physical there is to know about other people.
2. Mary (before her release) does not know everything there is to know about other people (because she learns something about them on her release).
3. Therefore, there are truths about other people (and herself) which escape the physicalist story.

From the first reading of it, something struck me as kind of odd about KA.  It seemed like it proved an awful lot, which is certainly something to write home about, yet it did so too easily.  As I mentioned before, what's to keep the physicalist from arguing (I'll call this 'PA'):

1. Mary (before her release) knows everything physical there is to know about other people. (same as #1 above)
2. ' Mary (before her release) knows everything there is to know about other people (bc she does not learn anything about them upon her release)
3. ' Therefore, all truths about other people (and herself) are part of the physicalist story.

But PA doesn't seem as plausible and intriguing as KA.  Why is that?  PA has the same structure, the same #1, relies on a similar intuition in #2, but I don't expect it would be as attractive (i.e., seeming immediately plausible) as KA.  A large part of KA's plausibility probably comes from the idea that, in this thought experiment, yes, it would seem like Mary learns something on her release.  As I said, something didn't sit right with me wrt KA, yet I still felt (and continue to feel) the pull of its second premise.   Obvs, I'm not alone (also obvs, I'm late to the party): there's a vast literature about KA and much of that is focussed on premise 2.

I wonder if there isn't more to think about wrt KA's #1.  I don't have it at hand, but I think Jackson argues somewhere that it's not about imagination.  Yet if you imagine physicalism to have a certain amount of explanatory power one way, you might argue KA; the other way and you might argue PA.  Or, as in the Dennett quote above, complete physical knowledge might be (at this point) beyond our imaginative ability; our ignorance may well be limiting our knowledge, yet definitely influencing our intuitions.  This is part of why I think:

• KA allegedly proves too much
• KA assumes rather than proves its conclusion

What about the argument as a whole?  Yer basic Christian might think something along the lines of:

• There's a world.
• I'm part of this world.
• I wonder where it came from?
• I know I didn't make the world.
• It would take something pretty powerful to make a world.
• There must be something pretty powerful that made the world.

Please note that I stress the 'might think' bc I realize that not all Christians (or other individuals of an identifiable group) think the same way.  By this particular thought pattern, I mean to suggest the 'All I have to do is look around me to know that God exists' belief, which is, I think, not uncommon.

If you prefer, think about the (IMHO, all too quick) tendency of some to identify certain currently inexplicable events as miracles, including (my favorite), the medical miracle.

• The doctors said she'd never get pregnant and now she's a mother of six.
• The doctors don't know why the cancer went away, but it did.  It's a miracle.
• Our 17th IVF attempt took on the day my mother died; she was our guardian angel that made it happen.

Most people who make these kinds of claims surely don't think them all the way through in a rigorous manner; it's likely not a priority for them.  If I wanted to challenge such a speaker, I'd want to know how they got from 'unusual thing X happened' to 'it's a miracle'.  In the case of an alleged miracle, I'd expect a huge chain of reasoning.  I apply these thoughts about the structure of the miracle claims apply to the KA itself.

Hold that thought.  Time to go.

Comments

[evanescent]

The problem with quale analogies is that I don't think they're fair.

There is a difference between types of knowledge. One can know what flying is, but one cannot know WHAT IT IS LIKE to fly. This is experiential knowledge. One cannot know what it is like to experience seeing the colour red unless one sees it, but the experience comes from experiencing a particular brain state in oneself. I don't see how this denies physicalism.