28m
Michelle Liu gives these test sentences:
"I know what gold looks like but I don't know what gold really is."
Sounds fine.
"I know what an itch feels like but I don't know what the feeling of an itch really is."
Sounds contradictory.
"We have all seen diamonds, but do you know what a diamond really is?"
Sounds fine.
"You have experienced toothaches, but do you really know what the feeling of a toothache really is?"
Sounds like a self-answering question because if we have experienced toothaches then the answer must be yes, we really know what the feeling of a toothache really is.
When we're talking about appearances themselves, the appearance/reality distinction collapses and you have phenomenal / noumenal collapse where the thing-as-it-appears and the thing-in-itself are one and the same.
So I have the intuition in favor of revelation.
Revelation is the theory that just by having an experience, the nature of that experience has been revealed to you. Or as Goff puts it (4m): "A feeling is defined by how it feels, and you know how it feels when you feel it." Or, "We grasp the nature of the feeling just by attending to introspectively." (14m)
Goff mention's Ned Block's idea of overflow where we can be blind in the peripherals of our experience, and change blindness apparently provides some empirical evidence of this. However, "insofar as we grasp what it is like or how it feels, to that extent we grasp the essence."
Goff and Liu mention that while the word 'essence' or 'nature' might sound mysterious to non-philosophers, it's an entirely unproblematic notion. If you accept that words have definitions, then you accept that things have essences. A triangle is defined as a closed shape with three sides. So having more or fewer than three sides would get you kicked out of the triangle club so to speak. Being a non-shape would also get you kicked out. While being a shape helps you get into the triangle club, it's not enough by itself because you can be a shape without being a triangle, so that's a necessary but not sufficient condition for being a triangle. Having exactly three sides is also necessary but not sufficient, because you could have a square with one side removed. Only a closed shape with three sides is allowed in the triangle club.
Argument against physicalism:
Structure (modus tollens):
1) If P, then Q.
2) ~Q.
3) Therefore, ~P.
Argument:
1) If physicalism is true, then to know the nature of a feeling is to know the physical mechanisms of that feeling.
2) To know the nature of a feeling is to not know the physical mechanisms of that feeling.
3) Therefore, physicalism is not true.
The controversial premise here is premise 2. So why believe premise 2 is true?
Structure (modus ponens):
1) If P, then Q.
2) P.
3) Therefore, Q.
1) If revelation is true, then by experiencing a feeling we know the nature of this feeling just by feeling it.
2) Revelation is true.
3) Therefore, by experiencing a feeling we know the nature of this feeling just by feeling it.
(Note: To know the nature of something does not require that you know the underlying cause of it. You can know that an ingot of gold is in fact gold without knowing where that ingot came from.)
If it's true that when we experience our feelings, we know the essence of this feeling, then it's also true that when we experience our feelings we don't know the physical mechanisms behind them, supporting premise 2 in the first argument.
If premise 1 of each argument is accepted, and they both seem uncontroversial, then the physicalist will have to deny either premise 2 of the first argument or premise 2 of the second argument.
Goff asks Liu (33m) how to respond to the demand of defining something phenomenal. What is the essence of pain? What is the essence of red?
The answer is that phenomenal definitions are not propositional. Liu mentions how know-how knowledge often cannot be put into words, but you still have the knowledge. Maybe know-how knowledge is a kind of phenomenal knowledge? Though I suppose know-how knowledge is also bundled up with thoughts of goals, success, and step-wise instruction.
A hint that you've stumbled onto a phenomenal definition is whether trying to define the thing in question leads to a circular or restated definition. What is an itch? It's that itchy feeling. What is pain? It is that painful feeling. What is red? It's that red color.
No comments:
Post a Comment