Knowledge Argument Against Physicalism Essay

Knowledge Argument Against Physicalism The knowledge argument suggests that physicalism - the claim that the world is entirely physical – is a falsified theory that should not be accepted on the basis that it disregards the metaphysical. “The knowledge argument aims to establish that conscious experience involves non-physical properties. It rests on the idea that someone who has complete physical knowledge about another conscious being might yet lack knowledge about how it feels to have the experiences of that being” (Alter & Howell, 2009). In fact, the knowledge argument is one of the most discussed arguments in opposition to physicalism. In this paper, two versions of the knowledge argument will be described in order to reveal the best reason for thinking that it’s true and the best reasons for thinking that it’s false. …show more content…
In this argument, physicalism is refuted based upon the claim that it fails to describe the subjective attributes of experience. This can be explained through the example of a girl named Mary that seeks to acquire various facts about human color vision. In the example, Mary is in a black-and-white colored room, where she learns about the two colors black and white. These two colors are the physical truths that she has acquired based upon her perception. However, after she leaves the room, Mary finds that there are facts about color vision that she did not know. She leaves the room and runs into a new color, red, in the form of a red tomato. This new experience reveals that Mary has found non-physical facts relating to human color vision (Alter & Howell, 2009). This implies that the physical truth is not the whole truth, as there is a metaphysical counterpart that must be taken into consideration in order to truly perceive the rest of the