WRITING EXERCISE #3 (Frank Jackson, “Epiphenomenal Qualia/What Mary Didn’t Know”

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WRITING EXERCISE #3
(Frank Jackson, “Epiphenomenal Qualia/What Mary Didn’t Know” and “Postscript on Qualia”;
David Chalmers, “The Puzzle of Conscious Experience” and “The Hard Problem of Consciousness”; Thomas Nagel, “What Is It Like to Be a Bat?”)
Choose one topic from the two listed below:
(1) Jackson (in “Epiphenomenal Qualia” and in “What Mary Didn’t Know”) and Chalmers (in “The Hard Problem of Consciousness” and “The Puzzle of Conscious Experience”) both argue against physicalism. (You may take the thesis Jackson calls “physicalism” to be the same as the one Chalmers calls “materialism.”) Jackson, in a subsequent article, “Postscript on Qualia,” now argues for physicalism essentially on the ground that we should not “have opinions that outrun what is required by the best theory of those opinions’ causal origins.” What do you think he means by this? If physicalism is true, where do you think the knowledge argument and the zombie argument go wrong? If physicalism is false, what do you think is the flaw in Jackson’s later argument for it? (Make sure to define clearly what you think Jackson and Chalmers mean by “physicalism,” i.e. materialism.)
(2) A philosopher, Patricia Churchland, has objected to Jackson’s knowledge argument on the following grounds:
How can I assess what Mary will know and understand if she knows everything
there is to know about the brain? Everything is a lot, and it means, in all
likelihood, that Mary has a radically different and deeper understanding of the
brain than anything barely conceivable in our wildest flights of fancy.
Her objection has been interpreted in three different ways:
a. We have no idea whether someone who knew everything that current neuroscience tells us about the brain would know what it’s like to see red.
b. Granted, someone whose knowledge was limited by current neuroscience wouldn’t know what it’s like to see red, but we have no idea whether someone who knew everything that complete neuroscience(neuroscience that human scientists could not improve any further) tells us about the brain would know what it’s like to see red.
c. Granted, someone whose knowledge was limited by complete neuroscience would not know what it’s like to see red, but this is no reason for denying that consciousness is entirely physical. Why should our physical theories, even the ones that we cannot improve any further, tell the whole physical story about the universe? Maybe there are physical aspects of the universe (and in particular, of our brains) that our best physical theories are going to leave out. And we have no idea whether someone who knew about these hidden physical aspects of our brains would know what it’s like to see red.
Do you think any of these three versions of Churchland’s objection is strong enough to refute Jackson’s argument? If so, which one(s) and why? Which version(s) do you think presents the strongest argument? What is wrong with the other version(s)?

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