Frank Jackson and Physicalism Essay

In his writings, “A Contemporary Defense of Dualism,” J.P. Moreland argues the point that the mind and brain are separate from each other. It seems as a quick thought that both are the same. However, the mind deals with ideas, thoughts and hopes. The brain is made up of the neural process. Throughout the entire argument, Moreland tries to prove the theory of physicalism, which is the idea that only things that exist are composed of matter. His explanation is that the soul doesn’t exist and the brain controls everything.

Brian Loar rejects Jackson’s conclusion on the basis that he has misinterpreted Mary’s learning. He suggests the knowledge she acquires is merely “new concepts of the same properties that she learned about before her release,” and not necessarily proof of ‘non physical’ knowledge. Arguably, Jackson’s aim is too rigid to add anything considerable to knowledge of the nature of consciousness. All it requires to be discredited is that one of its premises be disproven, which predisposes it to destruction in a way that Nagel’s more circumspect argument does not. Furthermore, how can we accept an argument as useful whose advocate later completely abandoned his view and reverted to a physicalist position?

Within the realm of philosophy, new ideas are formed, applauded, often questioned, and most carefully analyzed. These new ideas are what provoke thought, and help move progressive thinkers forward. This can be said to be true in Frank Jackson’s case, with his essay “What Mary Didn’t Know”. Jackson presents an argument that challenges the thoughts of physicalism, physicalism being, “…the challenging thesis that [the actual world] is entirely physical” (Jackson 291). Jackson creates what he calls the ‘knowledge argument’. In his essay Jackson presents the example of Mary, a woman who lives in an entirely black and white world. She is confined to her room, and everything is controlled so that all that Mary views is black and white. It is

When contemplating the relationship between the mind and body, most philosophers advocate either dualism, the view that the mind and body belong to the mental and physical categories respectively, or physicalism, the stance that there is only the physical. (Gertler 108) Brie Gertler upholds the former perspective, and her essay In Defense of Mind-Body Dualism aims to disprove physicalism by establishing the possibility of experiencing pain without the firing of C-fibers, which physicalists believe is identical to pain. (110) She claims that thought experiments are best for determining matters of possibility, but only if such experiments utilize “sufficiently comprehensive” concepts. After first clarifying why Gertler emphasizes the need for

The defense of dualism stems from two questions. First, is a human being composed of just one ultimate component or two? The second asks if the answer is two, how do these two relate to one another? This idea starts Moreland argument for dualism over physicalism. Physicalism is a worldview that states that

One of the most talked about concepts of philosophy is that of the mind-body problem. In short, the mind-body problem is the relationship between the mind and the body. Specifically, it’s the connection between our mental realm of thoughts, including beliefs, ideas, sensations, emotions, and our physical realm, the actual matter of which we are made up of the atoms, neurons. The problem comes when we put the emphasis on mind and body. Are the mind and body one physical thing, or two separate entities. Two arguments have stood amongst the rest, Interactionism and physicalism. Interactionism claims that mind and matter are two separate categories with a casual integration between the two. By contrast, physicalism draws from the idea that all aspects of the human body are under one physical being, there are no nonphysical connections that come into play. While both state a clear and arguable statement regarding mind-body problem, Interactionism gives a more plausible answer to the mind-body problem because although it may seem like we are tied as one, our minds have a subconscious that influence our thoughts, actions, ideas, and beliefs, which is completely independent from the realm of our physical matter.

Lastly, I’lol be discussing Churchland 's interpretation of Frank Jackson’s Argument: Knowing our sensations. Churchland explains Jacksons argument as “showing the differences between knowing our states via introspection and knowing via non-introspective means are of such nature as to constitute grounds for denying the reducibility of psychology to neuroscience” (Churchland, 4). I 'll be summarizing Churchland 's summary of Jacksons constructed argument. A neuroscientist (Mary) who lives her entire life seeing no colors but

Physicalism is a philosophical theory that attempts to solve the mind-body problem with its explanation of the results of the interactions between our brains and our bodies. Physicalism explains that everything in the universe is made up of

Summary: The problem of the soul continues as Descartes suggested that the human is composed of two completely different substances; a physical body which Descartes compares with a machine, and a non-physical mind, related to the soul, that allows humans to think and feel even if it has no “measurable dimensions” (67). But Elizabeth put in doubt his ideologies when she realized that a non-physical thing doesn’t have the strength to push and move the body. This led to several questions unanswered and also let space for other materialist theories such as behaviorism, mind-brain identity, and functionalism, which also fail in offering an explicit solution.

The Knowledge Argument by Jackson is one of the main threats to Physicalism. Physicalism says that everything that is or could ever exist is ultimately physical in nature. The Knowledge Argument claims that there are truths about consciousness that cannot be deduced from the complete physical truth. Lewis’ response on the other hand, disagrees with the Knowledge Argument. In this paper I will address the Knowledge Argument and Lewis’ response to it.

In denying that the mind and mental properties, like qualia, are nonphysical things, mind-brain theory objects to both substance and property dualism. Therefore it is a physicalist approach to the philosophy of

There are two main theories that make up the knowledge argument. The first is Physicalism, (or better known as materialism) which is the thesis that “All facts are dependent upon physical processes.”(Smart) The other main stance taken is property dualism. The thesis of property dualism states that there are “Non-physical properties of physical substances” (Calef) or that there are physical and mental properties. In this article, I will defend the stance of property dualism by acknowledging objections and replying to these objections to show why the argument for property dualism works.

“The blacks have reality and meaning only with regard to the significance they assume as agents in the interpretation of ‘white’ phenomena, and the phenomena in question here are precisely the data of the psychic inheritance that the whites have distorted and denied, which in the blacks becomes ‘objectified’ so the such data might be ‘seen’” (Jenkins 159).

I see that the best explanation is that the mental is somehow (in some complex way, I‘ll explain how it work latter) equal to the physical actually. So, from my point of view, Physicalism is equal to Panpsychism. And this is just that Galen Strawson (2006) told us in ‘Realistic monism: Why physicalism entails panpsychism’ that Physicalism can imply Panpsychism.

Opposed to Mind-Body Materialism is Mind-Body Dualism, a view which supports that mind and body are not identical, but, in some sense, radically different kinds of thing. It denies that the mind is the same of the brain, or a product of the brain, by arguing that the thoughts and the material things are composed of different substances, and the mind is a thinking thing that lacks the usual attributes of physical objects: size, shape, location, solidity, motion, etc. According to the Dualism, the soul is comprised of a non-physical substance, while the body is constituted of matter. This view also establishes that mind and body are capable of causally affecting each other, even if they are necessarily not the same thing. When applying this notion the human body, the meaning becomes clearest: the intellect is responsible for all our acts, but it does not imply that the intellect is the brain. For example, before eating a meal, which is a physical action, you probably felt hungry,