The Knowledge Argument

In this video, we look at Frank Jackson’s Knowledge Argument, also known as, Mary’s Room. I outline the thought experiment itself, look at a couple of possible conclusions we can draw in light of it, and then spend most of the video explaining why I think these options are no good, and we need to completely rethink our approach to consciousness. In particular, I attack the notion of qualia, and the belief that consciousness is ‘inner’ in some way.
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Twitter: / absurdbeing
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[@absurdbeing2219]

*Contents* 01:56 The Argument 05:22 Exploring the Conclusion 05:47 Physicalism 07:00 Substance dualism 07:22 Substance monism 10:10 Problems with substance dualism and substance monism 13:24 Going Beyond the Conclusions 14:25 What is experience? 14:50 Qualia (First obstacle to overcome) 16:22 Reifying consciousness 19:13 The hard problem 21:58 Analysing qualia (away) 27:16 Inner experience (Second obstacle to overcome) 28:17 Reifying inner experience 30:27 The extended mind 39:02 A third metaphysical option 45:10 Summary

[@domenictersigni999]

again thanks fellow being for sharing awareness and insight out loud

[@dionysianapollomarx]

Cool. Frank Jackson is interesting. Nida-Rümelin, Chalmers, and Dennett took things differently. Must be why Jackson doesn't uphold Mary's Room anymore. Chalmers' naturalistic dualism account is more solid, I think.

[@dionysiandreams3634]

Great video and I have not much to add, Bergson's Matter and Memory is one of the most underrated books I've read. Have you looked at Simondon's Individuation in light of notions of form and information? He was largely responding and critiquing first order cybernetics and Merleau-Ponty, I think you'd find it pretty interesting, just recently got translated and published. But his notions of information, preindividual being, etc I think would be pretty interesting to see how you'd react and respond to them based on all the work you've done with Phenomenology (and Bergson more recently). I'd also be really interested to see what you'd make of Derrida's speech and phenomena and his linguistic form of idealism. Of course I'm a card carrying Deleuzian so I'd be really interested to see what you make of his engagements with Bergson and Hume and his own take on ontology in difference and repetition, he has some pretty prescient critiques of Bergson that I think at minimum you'll find interesting.

[@absurdbeing2219]

Thanks for the interesting comment. Yes, I think you're dead right about M&M. I haven't cracked Simondon yet. I'm hoping to get into him this vacation, though. Deleuze has also just popped up on my radar after I read Claire Colebrook's excellent Guide for the Perplexed on him.

[@Top_Lad]

Glad to see you do a video like this, do as you please with your channel but I think that it would be nice to see you do videos where the focus is on specific arguments like this one (and it would attract viewers I think). Your enthusiasm is infectious and comes across as genuine, the presentation is never dry or overdone (like some more "blitzy" philosophy channels).

[@absurdbeing2219]

Oh - thanks for that feedback. I was actually hesitant about uploading this one given that it is such a change of pace. I think I will try to include more philosophical 'sprints' here and there in addition to the 'marathons.' Thanks again.

[@havenbastion]

Experience is whatever you're paying attention to, the focus of awareness, the part of the brain that is active.

[@havenbastion]

Change is the universal substrate of the material universe. Matter is low-entropy entangled energy. Delta (change over time) is the kernel of the ToE in physics. All physical processes can be understood in relation to it. The physical is the substrate of the spiritual.

[@Therealskxlls]

There’s no Cartesian mind because you believe their isn’t or because your belief is based in undeniable truths that lead to the impossibility of a Cartesian mind? It seems obvious to me that the hard problem of consciousness can’t be solved because the whole point of the problem pertains to ‘how qualia can be reduced to brain processes’ when they actually aren’t. The solution, as you’ve stated, isn’t just to “remove the self-referential and qualitative aspect of thought, and just pretend that it doesn’t exist, and therefore define the self out of existence,” but to use a priori arguments to prove that at least some aspect of the mind is necessarily transcendent of space, and then seek to have the experience which verifies this truth, which is possible through regular mediation. This is the epistemological leap that leads mankind to their next stage of evolution. Much to our dismay, white men can’t jump. Mankind either makes this jump, or they become extinct.

[@absurdbeing2219]

Hi, thanks for the comment. I have a bit of a different take on this. First, I don’t think consciousness or mind can be grasped through third-person tools, like a priori arguments and rational proofs. Mind (and human existence in general) is not amenable to the tools of math or logic. Further, I’m not a fan of the idea that we need to use meditation to experience the ‘truth’ of consciousness either. If you go looking for mind in an artificial, ‘internal’ realm stripped of ‘external’ ‘distractions,’ what will you find? A Cartesian mind, of course; but only because you went looking for one! For me, none of this is about “belief” (as if we had nothing to go on but faith), but nor is it about “undeniable truths” (as if we could ‘deduce’ or ‘prove’ mind). It’s about looking at human existence carefully; something that phenomenology seems particularly well-suited for, and that the usual suspects of phenomenology (Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Sartre, etc.) have done particularly well. If you follow these philosophers down this path, you find that the usual extremes of mind; i.e. mysticism/religion (mind as some kind of transcendent substance / force / energy) and materialism, are both equally inadequate. Experiences which ‘verify the truth’ (a phrase that isn’t quite right here) of consciousness aren’t to be found in the depths of meditation; they are to be found in the ordinary everydayness of human life, where, we discover that, of course mind is transcendent of space (the ‘container’ space of science), but not in a way that turns it into a dualistic, disembodied substance.

[@Therealskxlls]

Absurd Being I understand well that our positions are in opposition to each other. My point is simply that your skepticism is not a healthy skepticism, but an unhealthy skepticism because you have no logical arguments for your position, and you seem to have ruled out the possibility of the transcendent as a presupposition. It seems to me that that this belief is born, not out of reason, but out of something like an appeal to authority fallacy. This is by definition, dogmatism. This could be why you have chosen to label your channel “absurd being;” because your position is absurd and you understand that that is the case?

[@havenbastion]

Physical space is the correlation between our internal and external senses. Reality is consensus experience. Certainty is always certain Enough for a specific purpose.

[@havenbastion]

A neural state is also s physical fact. Mind is merely a metaphor for the patterns in the brain. Consciousness is a feedback loop in our theory of mind. It is an advanced complexity version of the same avoid/approach mechanism in an amoeba.

[@havenbastion]

We are physically embodied beings and while all sensations are real in themselves, they are not necessarily Of something real in an external sense. If it can't be externally validated it's indistinguishable from fiction.

[@havenbastion]

Yes she learns something new. Her neurons have never been in that state before.

[@havenbastion]

I have yet to hear the hard problem phrased in such a way as allows for an answer of any kind.

[@chihironaritomi1776]

Thank you for your amazing video. It was very interesting. I agree with the idea that consciousness is not in our brain, because in some sense the world is what our consciousness is. The argument “Mary’s room “is maybe confusing two different perspectives the third person’s and the first person’s. By the way, I’d like to ask you one question. If your consciousness is your world and that is all, does it follow from it that only one single common world doesn’t exist? I feel like we perceive the same objects such as an apple and the moon etc.

[@absurdbeing2219]

Thanks for tuning in Chihiro. Hmm, although I don’t disagree with it, I think the expression “your consciousness is your world” is misleading because it still seems to me like it invokes a private realm, a Cartesian theatre, just one in which I am the only theatre-goer. And, as you note, this raises the problem of other people’s consciousnesses/worlds, and how these can coincide with mine. Rather, I would say yours, and everyone else’s, consciousnesses are _in_ the world. But even this is liable to misinterpretation because it makes it sound like consciousness is a separate thing appearing in the middle of the world; in other words, it reifies consciousness. Consciousness, to me, _has to be_ conceived of as just the result of events in the universe (waves of light, soundwaves, etc. - nothing more mysterious than basic physics) converging at a physical locus (the body). Those physical events, instead of passing by unimpeded, ‘register on,’ or are ‘caught by,’ sensory organs (nothing more mysterious than basic biology). Then, because time is real, and actually temporal (i.e. not spatial, which is how most physicists conceive of it), a past, being nothing more magical or mysterious in relation to the present than ‘there’ is in relation to the ‘here’ of space, also opens up for this physical locus. This is memory. With perception and memory, we have all we need to explain consciousness. Gone is all talk of substrates, capital ‘C’ Consciousness, capital 'M' Mind, ‘energy,’ qualia, and inner-this or inner-that. Bringing us back to the video, what all of this means is that consciousness must be understood _as an event._ To me, this is where many problems arise, because most people agree that consciousness is an event without really thinking about what this means. No sooner have they agreed to this than they return to thinking of it as a thing; again, reifying it. Consciousness is like a cake. A cake isn’t any _thing_ over and above the ingredients that go into it. Even though a cake has different properties from the ingredients, we aren’t even a little tempted to talk about the cake ‘emerging’ from sugar, flour, milk, etc.; even less do we imagine a capital ‘C’ Cake ‘supervening’ in some magical way on the ingredients; it just _is_ them. In the same way, my perception of objects _is the objects themselves,_ and my memories of events _are the events themselves._ There is nothing more going on. Sorry for the novella length response - I always work through my own thoughts when I write.

[@chihironaritomi1776]

@@absurdbeing2219 Thank you for your reply! Sorry , I guess I misunderstood your thought. Your idea that consciousness is an event sounds understandable. At the same, this made me think of Sartre’s definition of consciousness, which is “ consciousness exists only when it appears to itself “. Back to the metaphor of cake, cake is nothing but a sum of sugar , flour, and milk etc., but they are conceived as a cake only for a human being ( or consciousness ). Just like this, consciousness is consciousness only for the person. We cannot experience others’ consciousness, rather, consciousness appears only for itself. Is this a right interpretation of your thought? I suppose your idea that consciousness is kind of an event makes a sense, but it almost made my brain boil haha.

[@absurdbeing2219]

Hi Chihiro, no apologies necessary. These videos are just my opinions. I don’t expect everyone to agree with them. Consciousness as event definitely should make your brain boil. It's a completely different way of thinking about consciousness that goes against the way our minds naturally work. First, the cake is an analogy for consciousness, so you can’t posit an extra consciousness _in addition to_ the cake. (In the context of the analogy, a consciousness that could conceive of the cake would be God!) Second, don’t forget that Sartre was doing phenomenology, not metaphysics. We have to be careful about drawing metaphysical conclusions from his phenomenological pre-reflective consciousness. Third, “consciousness appears only for itself.” Fine. As long as we’re clear that this consciousness isn’t a separate ‘inner’ world unto itself which therefore requires a separate, ‘inner’ explanation. It is also true that I cannot experience other consciousnesses, but this is saying nothing more than no other ‘collection of events’ (i.e. consciousness) is the same as the ‘collection of events’ that is me. How could they be? Every ‘collection of events’ is, by definition, unique, but still isn’t a separate, reified _thing_ over and above the events of which it is a collection. When I look at a cup, what is happening from a metaphysical perspective? It is tempting to think about what I, as a ‘consciousness,’ am seeing. You can see that this is already slipping into reified thinking though; a consciousness here, and an object over there. Then we postulate mental representations to explain how the object can appear ‘in’ my consciousness… and now we’re well and truly in the Cartesian rabbit hole. Rather, when I look at the cup, the cup is simply appearing in the universe _from a certain, unique perspective._ I am (or, ‘my consciousness is’) this perspective. We want to object that ‘to appear’ means ‘to appear _for someone,’_ but this is precisely the error of reification I keep ranting about. As soon as you posit a “someone” (metaphysically, not phenomenologically) to see the cup, you are in Cartesian territory, no matter how you try to avoid it afterwards. When I perceive the cup, I _am_ the cup, not in some hokey, mystical fashion (which is still reifying consciousness); rather, I _am_ the cup in the sense that there is _literally_ nothing else metaphysically going on. All that exists metaphysically is the cup. “I” am the event that reveals the cup; nothing more, nothing less. Oh man, this is exactly Heidegger’s Dasein _as clearing_ we’re talking about! I now totally get why Heidegger avoided talking about consciousness, and what he meant when he said Dasein, rather than being active, is actually appropriated by beyng; i.e. passive. What a productive exchange this is. Thanks!

[@chihironaritomi1776]

Hi, Absurd Being! Thank you for your detailed reply. I think I got your idea. What we call consciousness when we perceive the world is nothing but just a pure perspective, defined by physical locations. As to other features of consciousness such as imagination and our inner voice, we need further explanation, I guess. Looking forward to discuss again!

[@havenbastion]

OUGHTs must come from ISes because there's nowhere else for them to come from.

[@joshua_finch]

What about ....... a divine commander?