Department of History and Philosophy of Science will hold the 62nd Tokyo Colloquium of Cognitive Philosophy. Everyone is welcome.

Date & Time: December 6th (Tue.), 17:00-19:00
Venue: the 14th Building, Room 710 on the 7th floor, Komaba Campus, The University of Tokyo

Presenter
Adriana Renero (The Graduate Center, City University of New York)

Title
The Knowledge Argument: The Deaf Person Case

Abstract
Central contributions to the philosophy of mind by Saul Kripke include well-known refutations of physicalism: the type-type identity theory, e.g. a mental state (a pain) is identical to a physical state (C-fiber stimulation). In 1979 spring lectures at Princeton University, Kripke offers an argument against physicalism via a thought experiment in the auditory domain which has remained unexplored. Kripke claims that the physicalist thesis that “one who knows all the physical truths—or all the physical facts—knows everything” is false. He argues that all the physical truths do not determine the complete truths of the world. He provides an interesting picture of the auditory domain to show the limits of physicalism. I rebuild several cases of deaf people that he provides and adapt those cases into one single case: the deaf person case against physicalism (or “anaudism”). I claim that Kripke’s argument is a precursor of Frank Jackson’s “knowledge argument against physicalism” i.e. the often-quoted “Mary case” or the blind-color person (1982). I argue that Kripke’s deaf person case is more persuasive than Jackson’s Mary case. Kripke offers a novel picture of auditory descriptions for the phenomenal character of auditory experiences. I close by showing central parallels of Kripke and Jackson’s arguments and I stress important aspects that Jackson’s argument misses.