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Philos Stud (2007) 133:473479
DOI 10.1007/s11098-006-9061-0
BOOK SYMPOSIUM
William G. Lycan
Published online: 24 January 2007 Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2007
Part V of Ways a World Might Be is entitled Subjective Possibilities and contains three concluding papers in philosophy of mind. Comparing Qualia across Persons disputes Sydney Shoemakers defense of an inverted-spectrum hypothesis and in particular his argument for the determinacy of interpersonal comparisons of the qualitative character of sensory experience (Shoemaker, 1996). What is it like to be a Zombie? assesses a generic conceivability argument against materialism. On Thomas Nagels Objective Self engages Nagels puzzle of why it is so remarkable to him that he should be Thomas Nagel of all people, defends an austere view of subjective or perspectival content, and offers some related reections on Nagels and Frank Jacksons famous Knowledge Argument (Jackson, 1982; Nagel, 1974, 1986).
I side with Shoemaker in the matter of interpersonal qualia comparisons, but I must let him defend himself against Stalnakers opposition. Here I shall remark briey on Stalnakers approach to the Knowledge Argument, and then spend the rest of my allotted pages on What is it like to be a Zombie?
Jackson puts forward the well-known example of Mary, the scientically omniscient color and color vision researcher who up till time t has herself actually seen only black and white things; then she is exposed to red, green, etc. objects for the rst time and (dramatically) learns what it is like to experience redness and the other colors. Stalnaker joins in what I believe is the mainstream response to the argument, contending that Mary does not learn a new fact in any chunky or objective sense of fact, but merely comes to represent a fact she already knew in a new, subjective way. Yet she does acquire a new propositional content; she does not, e.g., merely acquire new abilities (Lewis, 1990; Nemirow, 1990).
How is such a thingnew propositional content but no new factpossible? Stalnakers model for it, like my own and many others, is what John Perry called
W. G. Lycan (&)
Department of Philosophy, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, CB#3125 Caldwell Hall, Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3125, USAe-mail: [email protected]
Stalnaker on zombies
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