Abstract
Yujin Nagasawa has recently defended Frank Jackson’s knowledge argument from the “inconsistency objection.” The objection claims that the premises of the knowledge argument are inconsistent with qualia epiphenomenalism. Nagasawa defends Jackson by showing that the objection mistakenly assumes a causal theory of phenomenal knowledge. I argue that although this defense might succeed against two versions of the inconsistency objection, mine is unaffected by Nagasawa’s argument, in which case the inconsistency in the knowledge argument remains.
Notes
Though for a contrary treatment of qualia see (Rosenthal 2002). Those who follow Rosenthal think there can be unconscious qualia, which suggests that ones epistemic relationship to qualia must be more complex than the relation of constitution.
To deny Mary has such knowledge of the workings of her own brain seems to require the denial of the claim that she possesses all causal knowledge about vision.
Notice how the thought experiment about Fred also seems to encourage the idea that qualia are causally efficacious. Jackson seems to depend on the idea that Fred’s special discriminative abilities are caused by his unique qualia.
References
Campbell, N. (2003). An inconsistency in the knowledge argument. Erkenntnis, 58, 261–266.
Chalmers, D. (2003). The content and epistemology of phenomenal belief. In A. Jokic & Q. Smith (Eds.), Consciousness: New philosophical perspectives. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Churchland, P. (1985). Reduction, qualia, and the direct introspection of brain states. Journal of Philosophy, 82, 8–28.
Dennett, D. (1991). Consciousness explained (1st ed.). Boston: Little Brown and Co.
Jackson, F. (1982). Epiphenomenal qualia. Philosophical Quarterly, 32, 127–136.
Jackson, F. (1986). What Mary didn’t know. Journal of Philosophy, 83, 127–136.
Nagasawa, Y. (2010). The knowledge argument and epiphenomenalism. Erkenntnis, 72, 37–56.
Rosenthal, D. (2002). Explaining consciousness. In D. J. Chalmers (Ed.), Philosophy of mind: Classical and contemporary readings. New York: Oxford University Press.
Stjernberg, F. (1999). Not so epiphenomenal qualia or, how much of a mystery is the mind? http://www.lucs.lu.se/spinning/categories/language/Stjernberg/index.html.
Watkins, M. (1989). The knowledge argument against the knowledge argument. Analysis, 49, 158–160.
Acknowledgments
My thanks to two anonymous referees for their helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Campbell, N. Reply to Nagasawa on the Inconsistency Objection to the Knowledge Argument. Erkenn 76, 137–145 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-011-9284-0
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-011-9284-0