Are Mental States To Neurobiological States?

He presents Mary, a scientist who focusses on colour processing in the brain, whilst having never left a black and white room, or experienced colour. Jackson’s argument rests on the premise that upon seeing colour she will learn something new, and given that she knew everything there was to know about the physical world, there must be epiphenomenal qualia which physicalism fails to explain.

Frank Jackson successfully proves his knowledge argument in his essay “What Mary Didn’t Know”. He shows that before leaving the black and white room, Mary was said to know all the physical facts, which under physicalism, encompasses knowing everything. After leaving the room, Mary has the new experience of seeing the color red, and gains new knowledge from it. Jackson states, “The contention about Mary is not that, despite her fantastic grip of neurophysiology and everything else physical, she could not imagine what it is like to sense red; it is that, as a matter of fact, she would not know” (Jackson 292). Thus, Jackson is able to prove that when leaving her room, Mary has learned something new.

The mind-brain identity theory is an ontological perspective which centers around the idea that the mind can be closely associated with the brain to be considered the same. In other words, a person’s mind processes are coherent with their brain processes. It is a significant topic included in the philosophy of mind. According to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, the identity theory of mind is “to the effect that these experiences just are brain processes, not merely correlated with brain processes”. In this

Putnam claims that what makes up a psychological state can vary between different species (Putnam, 1975). He then attempted to undermine the validity of identity theory with the examples of octopi and aliens. Octopi and aliens have brains that are made up of totally different material, yet they can still function the same. Hence he came to the conclusion that we shouldn’t look at what our mental states are made up of, but rather their function, which is that they cause particular behaviours. By saying mental states are functional states, and not brain states, you are accepting the possibility of brainless systems having mental states (Block, 1978). One type of

This thought- experiment only posits the possibility of different qualia, but does not argue 3 anything significant or empirical. The problem of consciousness is mysterious to humans only given our current, limited understanding. Churchland claims that adding “I cannot imagine” is merely an epistemological fact about the speaker and is not significant or interesting. Such an argument merely states a fact about human limitations: There is no

As the tool of scientific investigation increase, the relationship between the mind and the brain has never been more intimate. Chemical changes in our brain could lead to heightened euphoria or it can lead to the most profound depression. Damages to the brain can lead to changes that can eliminate the some abilities of the brain, such as smell, vision, or even the ability to recognized faces. Therefore, this is at that vary lease a powerful correlation between the state of the mind and state of the brain. But this is not enough for the Identity theories, so they go above and beyond this to explain this profound view.

The Identity theory maintains a monistic belief by considering states of mind as being indistinguishable to brain states. Mental experiences including feeling pain, and possessing mental images are not correlated with, but in fact are brain processes (Smart, 2007). When dealing with the question of whether the mind and brain are identical, identity theorists differentiate between two forms, Type Identity and Token Identity (Schneider). Token Identity theory considers that mental

The idea that mental states are non-reducible properties of brain states is the central tenant of a theory of mind called property dualism. However, before we can assess the theory we must be aware that the question assumes the existence of mental states and as such we cannot answer this question from some perspectives (e.g. eliminative materialism)

One of the main assertions in opposition to this argument is that Mary does not actually learn anything new upon being released from her black and white environment. Philosopher Daniel Dennett makes a case for this objection, saying that if Mary truly already knows everything there is to know about color, then she would already be able to understand the qualia of color, or the experience of actually seeing it. Her ability to conceptualize everything there is about experiencing color points to the fact that she should be able to make a distinction between colors upon being released from her colorless room. Therefore, she would not be surprised upon actually being able to experience the color, since she knows everything there is to know about experiencing it; and in conclusion has learned nothing truly new (Dennett 2004). In line with the aforementioned point that Mary learns nothing new is the fact that with all of the information she is given, being able to actually see the color would not necessarily change anything about her experience; it would simply just be a new way of conceptualizing the knowledge she already has. For example, somebody who is colorblind can still know what it is like to experience seeing color, provided with all of the facts, even if they can never actually see it. It is impossible to say that if this colorblindness were somehow removed that the person would

Thesis: The mind-body problem arises because of the lack of evidence when looking for a specific explanation of the interaction of mental and physical states, and the origin and even existence of them.

Frank Jackson’s “knowledge argument” has been heavily critiqued since being published in the 1982 “Epiphenomenal Qualia” article. The argument seeks to refute physicalism using Jackson’s widely known “Mary’s Room” experiment. Many issues arise from the experiment, such as problems with the terms used, as well as questions about whether the premises and conclusion can be held and deductively follow one another. Examining objections to the “knowledge argument” shows how the problems the argument experiences undermines Jackson’s attempt to refute physicalism.

The following is a thought experiment by Jackson to undermine Physicalism. “Mary is a brilliant scientist who is, for whatever reason, forced to investigate the world from a black and white room via a black and white television monitor. She specialises in the neurophysiology of vision and acquires, let us suppose, all the physical information there is to obtain about what goes on when we see ripe tomatoes, or the sky, and use terms like ‘red’, ‘blue’, and so on. She discovers, for example, just which wavelength combinations from the sky stimulate the retina...What will happen when Mary is released from her black and white room or is given a colour television monitor? Will she learn anything or not? It seems just obvious that she will learn something about the world and our visual experience of it. But then it is inescapable that her previous knowledge was incomplete. But she had all the physical information. Ergo there is more to have than that, and Physicalism is false” (Jackson 130). At this point of time, Mary supposedly

This argument goes against the dualists’ agreement that the mental state is an immaterial substance which is different from the brain. The simplicity argument holds that the mental state is affected by the activities going on in the physical brain. According to Dennett, the events taking place in the mental are a correspondence of the events taking place in the brain at the same time and therefore the brain and mind cannot be distinct from each other5. Even though dualists argue that the interactions or correspondences are as a result of two different things namely the brain and mind, the materialists have a simpler explanation. Materialists believe that the events happening in the mental are the same neurological activities taking place in the brain and therefore mind and matter are not two different things. Searle explains that if mind and matter are not different things there is no way the mind can be connected to a spirit that is not in physical

Jackson explains that the goal of his paper is to refute physicalism by using an argument rather than relying merely on intuitions. He makes a declaration that he is what people call a "qualia freak." He describes qualia as the raw feel or quality of experiences that we have. There is something that the "hurtfulness of pains, the itchiness of itches, pangs of jealousy... tasting a lemon, smelling a rose, hearing a loud noise or seeing the sky" feels like (127). There 's a natural feeling or a sensation that all these conscious experiences bring for the person experiencing them. Jackson claims that qualia cannot be explained by any kind of physical information, since our knowledge of the structure of the brain, its physical states, and the function of those states is not enough to tell us what the smell

Leibniz’s law of identity states that mental and physical states are not identical, and cannot be the same entity because they do not share the same traits. The notion of sameness(considered Leibniz’s law) serves to present a case where if A equals B, then A and B share all the same properties. Even