Abstract
Ball (2009) claims that without phenomenal concepts, the knowledge argument fails. In this article, I argue that Ball doesn’t succeed in proving his claim. The reason is that the Marianna case is not a case where the acquisition of the concept required for entertaining a phenomenal belief content Q alone is sufficient for Marianna, given enough physical information about her environment, to infer Q.
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Notes
As for whether Ball’s point is correct, I take no position in this article. That is, I take no position on if any version of KA could be developed on the basis of a situation like (i). As will be seen below, the Marianna case is indeed not merely a situation like (i).
The concept THIS is a phenomenal concept, not an indexical concept—it is not context-sensitive.
The concept THIS in Q is a general phenomenal concept, it doesn’t refer to a token experience, otherwise KA wouldn’t have been a threat to physicalism, for then that knowledge of Q is new to Mary doesn’t imply Q is a non-physical fact.
It is assumed here that once Marianna possesses the concept THIS, she would be able to subsume the phenomenal character of any particular experience of red under THIS. Further, it is also assumed that Marianna is doing an inference about her occurrent experience of the splash at the corner.
It is assumed here that Marianna’s occurrent experience of the splash at the corner is veridical.
Knowledge of R surely requires Marianna to have access to the particular physical facts about the chemical composition or the reflectance of the splash.
Since one can infer E from R, I would use R as the premise instead of E, for R is the relevant one in the following discussion.
It should be emphasized that this claim, namely, that Marianna could entertain Q in the splash room while Mary couldn’t in the black-and-white room, is supposed by Ball for his strategy to work even though his view that there are no phenomenal concepts might seem to be inconsistent with it. (One might not say that Marianna could entertain Q because she has an experience of red in the splash room, though one might be so tempted.) After introducing the Marianna case, Ball says:
Whether or not this is so, it seems that Marianna has made epistemic progress. Marianna can at least ask questions that Mary could not. For example, Marianna might introspectively attend to an experience of red and ask herself whether this is what it is like to see red. Call the content of Marianna’s query Q. It is plausible that Mary, on the other hand, cannot wonder whether Q, since she cannot attend to an experience of red in introspection. (p.941, emphasis added)
Indeed, if, as Ball maintains, there are no phenomenal concepts, there is no such difference between Marianna in the splash room and Mary in the black and white room.
References
Ball, D. (2009). There Are No Phenomenal Concepts. Mind, 118, 935–62.
Jackson, F. (1982). Epiphenomenal Qualia. Philosophical Quarterly, 32, 127–36.
Jackson, F. (1986). What Mary Didn’t Know. Journal of Philosophy, 83, 5–291.
Nida-Rümelin, M. (1996). What Mary couldn’t know’. In T. Metzinger (Ed.), Phenomenal Consciousness (pp. 219–41). Schoenigh: Paderborn.
Nida-Rümelin, M. (1998). On Belief About Experiences: An Epistemological Distinction Applied to the Knowledge Argument against Physicalism. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 58, 51–73.
Acknowledgments
This project is supported by National Social Science Fund (Project 11&ZD187), by Shandong University (Project 13RWZD03), and by Ministry of Education in China (Project 11YJC720036).
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Ren, H. Is the Splash Red?. Philosophia 42, 801–807 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-014-9536-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-014-9536-8