| Phi 109-02 Fall 2013 |
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The papers we will discuss this week focus on issues concerning consciousness. The term qualia in the titles of Jackson’s papers is the plural of the noun quale. This word can simply mean ‘quality’; but, in this context, it refers to felt qualities that make up “what it’s like” to have an experience.
In the first paper, Jackson considers three arguments for qualia and then argues that it is possible to regard qualia as epiphenomena (hence the title).
• The “knowledge argument” of §1 is associated with Jackson and is very well known. Pay attention to the second of Jackson’s examples (concerning the neurophysiologist Mary, an example on which Gennaro modeled his example of Maria). Although he presents it here more briefly than the first, it has become the standard way of approaching the knowledge argument.
• Jackson considers two further arguments in §§2-3, mainly, it seems, to argue that his is better—or, at least, that it is not subject to the same objections. However, both of these other arguments are well known.
• Jackson considers the “modal argument” in §2 only briefly, and it may seem lackluster; but people began to call the sort of creatures he describes in the first paragraph “zombies,” and the argument has acquired the snazzier label “zombie argument.” (On the other hand, if you are taken by that label, you should remember that it is a technical term, and these philosophical zombies don’t necessarily have the same properties as the ones in pop culture.)
• The paper Jackson mentions in §3 is also well known and was an early source of revived philosophical interest in issues of consciousness. As Jackson remarks in a footnote, the paper isn’t easily reduced to an argument, but the argument he distills from it is worth considering. (You’ve already seen a version of it in Gennaro’s dialogue.)
• You’ve run into the term “epiphenomalism” before, but no one we’ve discussed so far has had too much to say about the idea. Although Jackson is considering a fairly special example of epiphenomena in §4, he addresses issues that would arise in other cases, too.
The title of Jackson’s second paper may suggest that he will add a few further remarks; but, in fact, he rejects the knowledge argument that he had offered 16 years earlier. (The postscript originally appeared in a collection of Jackson’s papers that included the first paper.)
He starts to present his reasons for rejecting it by way of a comparison with what he calls the “at-at” theory of motion. Although he doesn’t say explicitly what that theory is, the last clause of his first paragraph amounts to a statement of it. The analogy with case of the knowledge argument depends in part on the fact that some philosophers have held that there must be more to motion than simply being at a series of places at a series of times.
Of course, you should think whether you like 1998 vintage Jackson better than the 1982 vintage, or vice versa. The knowledge argument is important enough for the views of David Chalmers, which will be the topic of our last class, that thinking about the two sides of Jackson will be good preparation for discussing Chalmers, too.