Abstract
Kwasi Wiredu’s interpreted view of the Akan concept of mind (adwene), complemented with David Lewis’s version of the ability reply, offers an alternative African statement of the ability reply, and, at the very least, in a novel way turns the negative ability reply into a positive reply to Frank Jackson’s formulation of the knowledge argument. For Wiredu the mind is not taken as a distinct substance, but rather as a cognitive ability; while for Lewis together with Paul Snowdon’s capacity thesis challenge; an ability as ‘knowledge-how’ is understood as subjective experience, so subjective experience as a cognitive faculty of the mind, adds substantive knowledge. Essentially, adwene demonstrates an integral aspect of support to the conclusion of Jackson’s knowledge argument, where the mind is a cognitive capacity. Thus such support allows an African perspective to shine new light on the knowledge argument, an enduring problem in philosophy of mind.
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Notes
- 1.
I use interpreted to specify that the “Akan concept of mind” is contested, the concept translated ‘adwene’ arises from Akan personhood debates, e.g. Kwame Gyekye offers a dualist interpretation of the view, while his fellow Akan Kwasi Wiredu gives a quasi-physicalist interpretation to the Akan theory of mind. I would like to point out that Wiredu’s work on the mind is limited, in the main, to his 1987 paper, which evolved from his 1983 paper titled ‘The Akan concept of Mind’. In this chapter, I use the 1987 publication as my primary focus from where I get Wiredu’s voice. However, I would also like to point out that a few snippets here and there on the Akan concept of mind can be gleaned in other published works by Wiredu that I appeal to in this chapter. See Wiredu (1996, 2002, 2010).
- 2.
See David Chalmers (2010) The Character of Consciousness. Oxford: Oxford University Press; Colin McGinn (1989) “Can we solve the Mind-Body problem?” Mind. Vol. xcviii. No. 391.
- 3.
Jackson (1998a, b) wrote ‘Most contemporary philosophers given a choice between going with science and going with intuitions go with science. Although I once dissented from the majority, I have capitulated and now see the interesting issue as being where the arguments from the intuitions against physicalism – the arguments that seem so compelling – go wrong. For some time, I have thought that the case for physicalism is sufficiently strong that we can be confident that the arguments from the intuitions go wrong somewhere, but where is somewhere?’ (Jackson, 1998a, b in Ludlow et al., 2004: 421).
- 4.
See also Robert Van Gulick (2004) ‘So many ways of saying no to Mary’.
- 5.
There are considerable debates regarding the concept of quasi-physicalism; a term that Wiredu coined. Part of the dispute arise from how one of the constituents that unite for Akan personhood, okra (a life-giving entity) is understood, while others postulate it as spiritual (non-physical) (Gyekye, 1995; Majeed, 2013) for Wiredu (1987) it is quasi-physical, in other words he does not accept the mind as ‘some kind of substance’ (Wiredu, 2002: 61). Wiredu says ‘far from the adwene being an entity, it is a capacity […]’ Wiredu (2002: 61).
- 6.
Physicalism comes in two varieties, viz., reductive (RP) and non-reductive physicalism (NRP). Proponents of these two varieties of physicalism are in agreement that there is one physical substance; but the locus of their disagreement arises from the fact that NRP proponents do not agree that the physical aspect is all there is to mental phenomena whilst RP proponents insist that there is only the physical. Currently, NRP is now the more acceptable formulation of the physicalist perspective in contemporary philosophy of mind.
- 7.
This terminology is due to Thomas Nagel, from his famous what ‘What is it like a bat’. Nagel’s argument is not a rejection of physicalism and other forms of reductivism. His argument merely shows that they are inadequate since they cannot describe all the facts about experience.
- 8.
- 9.
Lewis (1983) clearly credits the general idea of the ability hypothesis to this version by Nemirow (1980) as the precursor of his own statement on the view. Nemirow’s version was crafted in a book review of Nagel’s (1979) Mortal Questions. Notably, the version actually predates Jackson’s knowledge argument, the point made was in connection to a version of Nagel’s ‘knowledge’ argument: about the existence of subjective facts.
- 10.
I will explain the distinction in subsequent paragraphs. For now, suffice it to say, there is a distinction to these types of knowledge: knowledge-that (propositional knowledge) and knowledge-how (practical knowledge).
- 11.
Bence Nanay would not agree with my assertion that Lewis’s response is striking, in his view Nemirow, Lewis and D.H. Mellor’s versions of the ability hypothesis, he labelled as AH1, AH2 and AH3, in his view, ‘(AH2) and (AH3) need to be discarded: we are back with (AH1). But we have seen that (AH1) in itself will not do […]’ (Nanay, 2009: 704–705). He suggests: ‘the ability to discriminate’ (Nanay, 2009: 705): ‘knowing what it is like to experience E is having the ability to distinguish imagining or having experience E from imagining or having any other experience’ (ibid.). The scope of my argument does not cover this comparative analysis of the different versions of the ability hypothesis; I rather aim at consolidating what Lewis has offered.
- 12.
‘The Concept of Mind with Particular Reference to the Language and Thought of the Akans’.
- 13.
As translated into the Akan language.
- 14.
The use of the term quasi-physicalism in this chapter is not meant as a label for Wiredu’s theory of mind. In coining the term quasi-physicalism Wiredu, in my view, uses the term to structure Akan metaphysics of the person and the relation to the world. Consequently, I am using the term quasi-physicalism to refer to Wiredu’s logical construction of the theory of mind.
- 15.
It is important to clarify that ‘mind’ and ‘thought’ are equivalent as the noun forms of the verb dwen (to think).
- 16.
- 17.
Cath (2019: 1) has pointed out that the distinction between two components of knowledge-how: the negative claim (anti-intellectualism) and the positive claim (abilitism or dispositionalism), which for a period of time was uncontested and taken as philosophical orthodoxy, is far from that straightforward facade. The scope of this discussion is something beyond what I aim to achieve so I will not go into a detailed epistemology debate on the distinction.
- 18.
A disclaimer, I am not saying the Snowdon is only epistemological, nor do I imply that Wiredu is only metaphysical.
- 19.
Cath (2019) has weighed in with another approach that acknowledges, but shifts from the traditional Rylean argument; ‘accounting for the relationship between knowledge-how and action’ (Cath, 2019: 9). The shift is to understand the intelligence of knowledge-how without appealing to knowledge (Cath, 2019: 6). For Cath there are grounds for an argument that says ‘knowledge-how has a different epistemic profile from knowledge-that’ (ibid.), which allows a window for viewing know-how not just in terms of a capacity. And, Habgood-Coote’s (2019) approach has also sought to illuminate Ryle’s traditional knowledge-how distinction. What he calls a ‘compromise position’, a position that seeks to synchronize claims about knowledge-how “as a kind of propositional knowledge” (Habgood-Coote, 2019: 86) and knowledge-how taken ‘to be a kind of ability’ (ibid.). see also Cath (2009).
- 20.
Joshua Habgood-Coote (2019) has also expressed what he calls the Interrogative Capacity View: ‘knowledge-how to do something is a certain kind of ability to generate answers to the question of how to do it’ (Habgood-Coote, 2019: 86). He says, ‘[…] combining a propositional object with an abilitative relation makes the view uniquely well-placed to defuse the tension between semantic theory and the practicality of knowledge-how, and allows it to illuminate the relation between knowledge-how, propositional knowledge, and abilities’ (Habgood-Coote, 2019: 88).
Habgood-Coote (2019) argues that ‘knowledge-how is not identical with just any ability to answer a how-to question’ (my emphasis ibid.). I think Habgood-Coote to his credit has made an important point that I agree with, knowledge how is ‘not a distinctively practical kind of knowledge’ (Habgood-Coote, 2019: 93) only; instead in a simplified way, knowledge-how is knowledge. That suggest that being able to perform (ability) entails already the possession of certain other forms of knowledge-that. The position is similar to what Snowdon (2003) put across as the positive CT, which also forms part of his analysis to re-evaluate the danger as arising from such an interpretation, that limits knowing-how to capacity only.
- 21.
The view is different from functionalism, an account of the theory of mind that says the essential or defining feature of any type of mental state is the set of causal relations it bears to (1) environmental effects on the body, (2) other types of mental states and (3) bodily behaviour (Churchland, 1985: 36).
- 22.
Property dualism is the view that, while there is only one kind of substance (viz., matter), the matter referred to can have two kinds of properties (viz., physical and mental).
- 23.
The point is functionalists stress that what is important about mental states is not how they are realized (i.e. as physico-chemical states) in the brain, but – according to David Armstrong (1968) and other central states materialists-rather the role they play within the causal system.
- 24.
Smart’s (1959) identity thesis, given as a “contingent statement, […] A is identical to B […]” (Smart in Robinson (Ed.), 1998: 190). Such a statement suggests that all the properties of either A or B are in common. Rosenthal (1991) has expressed it as follows, “[…] every mental state, such as a sensation of red, is also a physical state. Since states count as mental or physical in virtue of having properties that are mental or physical, mental states have both mental and physical properties” (Rosenthal, 1991: 162).
- 25.
The idea of a merger is about offering an argument that shows that both sides – as people – can augment each other, on the basis of mutual equality and recognition, in the quest to solve a philosophical issue that has been portrayed as mainly a Western philosophical issue, while it has always been considered in African thought as well.
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Mangadza, C.F. (2023). An Alternative Response to the Knowledge Argument. In: Attoe, A.D., Temitope, S.S., Nweke, V., Umezurike, J., Chimakonam, J.O. (eds) Conversations on African Philosophy of Mind, Consciousness and Artificial Intelligence. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-36163-0_5
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