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Reply to Nagasawa on the Inconsistency Objection to the Knowledge Argument

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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.

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Notes

  1. 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.

  2. 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.

  3. 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.

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Acknowledgments

My thanks to two anonymous referees for their helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper.

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Correspondence to Neil Campbell.

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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

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-011-9284-0

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