چکیده:
In this paper, I argue for a new solution to Mary’s puzzle in Jackson’s famous knowledge argument. We are told that imprisoned Mary knows all facts or truths about color and color vision. On her release, she learns something new according to B-type of materialism and according to property dualism. I argue that this cognitive improvement can only be accounted for in terms of what Schellenberg has recently called “capacitism,” namely the claim that that experience is constitutively a matter of discriminating and singling out particulars by employing perceptual capacities. Of course, I am not claiming that knowing the phenomenal character is simply the possession of abilities, let alone that the phenomenal character is a sort of know-how. That is why my claim is not affiliated with Lewis and Nemirow's ability hypothesis position. I take for granted here a sort of property-representationalism, according to which the phenomenal character of experience supervenes on the cluster of properties that the respective experiences represent. On her release, Mary acquires those perceptual abilities on the basis of which she learns to discriminate all shades of color. And after applying her old physical concept RED to the shade of red, she comes to know what it is like to experience red (propositional knowledge).
خلاصه ماشینی:
Keywords: Mary’s puzzle, Jackson’s famous knowledge argument, capacitism, concept RED Introduction As Jackson’s tale goes, Mary finally leaves the black-and-white room and, without the mediation of black-and-white monitors, sees something red, in this case a ripe tomato, for the first time.
1 The most popular reaction to the knowledge argument is the assumption that, on her release, Mary acquires new special phenomenal concepts of some physical property or fact she already recognized as a physical concept in her confinement.
In his book of 2009, Tye has argued that what makes the difference, what accounts for Mary’s cognitive improvement is the fact that Mary got acquainted with the color red for the first time on her release.
The most popular version is the type-B materialism assumes that Mary’s cognitive progress can be accounted for by assuming that she acquires new special phenomenal concepts of what it is like to experience red.
Knowledge by Acquaintance However, if the traditional PCS strategy fails because there are no phenomenal concepts in the required sense to explain Mary’s cognitive improvement, one of the remaining options for a type-B materialist is to assume that Mary’s discovery takes the form of knowledge by acquaintance of the phenomenal character of Mary’s new experience of red.
Given this, if we follow Tye’s assumption that Mary could possess a demonstrative concept of what it is like to experience red via a cerebroscope, we must assume in addition that in her confinement she has already a thing-knowledge by acquaintance of the phenomenal red.