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Knowledge Argument Against Physicalism Essay

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Knowledge Argument against Physicalism

Physicalism is a branch of philosophy which states that everything in this world is physical. There is nothing like non-physical. Physical facts are the truth in this world. Physicalism is also called ‘materialistic monism’. Monism is a singular existence theory like only one substance exists in the world. Physicalism says all objects in nature satisfy conditions for being physical but there is a divide among philosophers on the conditions themselves. There are questions raised as to what exactly are the conditions for something to be physical. Physicalists say that if something is not visibly physical at the first glance it supervenes on something that is physical. The use of ‘physical’ in physicalism is different from it’s use in general sense. Any property which is a metaphysical or logical combination of the general physical properties is a physical property. Any property supervenes some or the …show more content…

The knowledge argument claims the existence of consciousness in a way that one cannot have complete knowledge about physical truth until he/she has experienced the same. In short the knowledge argument proposes the existence of non-physical factors in physical truths. Even if you have complete information about an experience, human response to the experience, effects of the experience still you don’t have complete knowledge about the experience until you have experienced the same. The knowledge argument was proposed by Frank Jackson through what is called Mary’s experiment. In the experiment Mary experiences the world through a black and white monitor screen and knows everything that is to be known. But when she steps out of the room and sees the colorful world she experiences something new even when she knew about usual human response to seeing something like

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