Outline the Knowledge Argument for the nature of the mind

The knowledge argument purports to show that the human mind is not a physical thing by showing that no amount of physical information can capture all the information there is about it. It invites us to consider a thought-experiment: a future neuroscientist possess all the physical information (i.e. information about the brain) regarding the experience of seeing red. Yet she has never experienced red herself. The question is: upon seeing red for the first time, does this neuroscientist gain information about that experience that she did not have before?

So-called property dualist philosophers think that she does, namely she now knows what seeing red feels like, the raw qualitative aspect of the experience. This deomonstrates that mental states are not merely physical states, because if that were the case, there should not be any kind of information about them other than physical information. Other philosophers, so-called physicalists, agree that the neuroscientist learns something new, yet what she learns is not propositional knowledge, but rather a kind of know-how: an ability to recognize, remember, and imagine red on future occasions. Still others deny the intuition altogether: they bite the bullet by maintaining that the neuroscientist learns nothing new upon seeing red for the first time.

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Answered by Eno A. Philosophy tutor

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