Notes for 10/30/2025

 

10/30/2025

[Philosophy Club every Tuesday at 5:00pm in CAS 436 ("The Cave")]

[Challenge for today: Try to think of (and possibly ask) at least one question.]

Do you believe in ghosts?

 

(ectoplasm)

What, exactly, is consciousness?

(Why take one view over another and what is at stake?)

 

 

 

Property dualism

Non-reductive physicalism

(Epiphenomenalist dualism / emergentism)

 

Frank Jackson “Knowledge Argument” (paper: “What Mary didn’t know”)

 

Mary is the world’s greatest color scientist. She knows EVERYTHING that can be known about color.

She knows all the physical facts about color.

But she has never seen the color red.

Suppose she sees red for the first time.

She will gain a new kind of knowledge. Knowledge of a new FACT = the fact regarding what red looks like. Therefore, what red looks like is not a physical fact. (it is non-physical subjective experiential fact)

 

 

1. Mary knows all the physical facts about red. (all the OBJECTIVE facts)

2. Mary doesn’t know what red looks like. (the SUBJECTIVE fact)

3. Therefore, what red looks like is not a physical fact about red.

 

 

This argument is NOT supposed to show that any non-physical substances exist. It is not an argument for dualism. (At least not for substance dualism – it could be an argument for “property dualism” which is the view that physical things can have both objective and subjective properties. This view is sometimes also called “non-reductive physicalism” – also sometimes called “Emergentism”.)

 

Most of these kinds of argument are really just variations of Leibniz’s Mill.

 

 

Qualia (singular = quale) : irreducibly subjective ways things seem/feel to us. “What it is like to…” There is “something that it is like” to see red, or taste a quince, etc.

 

“Problem of qualia” = how, exactly, do qualia fit into models of mind/brain/cognition/perception/etc.?

 

“What red looks like.”

“What a quince tastes like.”

 

Zombies

 

David Chalmers’ Zombie argument:

 

1. You and your duplicate are exactly alike in respect of physical properties.

2. But you and your duplicate are not alike in respect of consciousness (you are conscious – your duplicate is a P-zombie).

3. Therefore, consciousness is not a physical property.

 

 

 

 

Chalmers’ argument depends on the Conceivability Principle:

     Whatever is conceivable without contradiction is possible.

 

(P-zombies are conceivable, so they are possible.)

 

It also implicitly depends on something like the following (Dependency Thesis): If P is a property of X, then it is impossible to have X without having P.

 

 

(Types of possibility)

Logical (possible given certain definitions/concepts/meanings)

 

Physical (possible given the laws of physics)

 

Real (possible given how we think the world normally works)

 

Metaphysical possibility (possible given what reasonably can be thought to be real)

 

Epistemic (possible as far as we reasonably believe)

 

 

 

Is the conceivability principle true?

 

 

Is the dependency thesis true?

 

Suppose I have two identical cars.

Can I really conceive that car A runs, but car B doesn’t?

(I can say this, but can I conceive it?)