[과제] On Lewis's Ability Hypothesis Refutation to the Knowledge Argument

Readings: "Epiphenomenal Qualia" by Frank Jackson, and "What Experience Teaches" by David Lewis

 

Issue: Lewis's Ability Hypothesis--a counterexample?

 

As far as I understand, the Ability Hypothesis objection that Lewis brings to Jackson is in a way adopting a Skinnerian understanding of what knowledge is--that the knowledge of the experience of red "just is the possession of these abilities to remember, imagine, and recognize," that there is no additional "phenomenal information" that causes this change in ability. I think the former part of the counterargument is similar to how I thought Searle's Chinese Room thought experiment could be countered. Indeed, I think framing the new knowledge learned as an ability is congruent with the understanding that Mary has truly learned the semantics of red.

 

However, I am reluctant to actually acknowledge that this makes Jackson's proposal of phenomenal information go away. Imagine that Mary, when exiting the black-and-white room, still has a pair of sunglasses on, which serve as a black-and-white filter to all the actual colors in the world. This pair of sunglasses may nevertheless be equipped with a light-sensing digital function, that tells you the exact information about the frequency of the light in Mary's view has. Then, Mary will have successfully gained the ability to distinguish red, and will later be able to "remember, imagine, and recognize" the experience of distinguishing and recognizing the red color, since for sure, that experience through the filter sunglass will also come equipped with some distinct experience. But I think it is intuitive for us to say that despite all this "ability" in later engaging with the color red in consistent, successful ways forward, there is a sense in which Mary still does not know what it "feels" like to see red. Thus in the case of Jackson's "red" quale, I think the ability hypothesis is not enough to counter that there is something more than physical information, unlike is the case for Searle's semantic understanding of Chinese.