1. State your view on mental states and the argument you are to disagree with.
The mind is one of the most significant organs of a human being's body as it determines how an individual comprehends and understands different issues. Generally, the mental state of an individual's mind refers to the emotional and mental condition of an agent and how it relates to a proposition (Armstrong, 1981). In most cases, the mental state of a person arises from a combination of mental representations and propositional attitudes. Even though most scholars agree about what mental state refers to, the arguments that most of them provide tend to conflict as they focus on individual perspectives on the topic (O'sullivan, 2017). From my perspective, the subject of mental state is quite broad and has various elements, which combine to determine a person's mental condition. As such, I refrain from developing a personal view. However, this paper disagrees with Frank Jackson's argument about physicalism as a determinant of an individual's mental state.
2. Explain the position of the author and present a clear explanation of the argument.
According to Frank Jackson's knowledge argument, physicalism is false as an individual's knowledge of the world is not entirely physical. Jackson formulates his argument by studying Mary a super scientist, who spends her entire life in a black and white room. The experience of Mary will take place in the future after the discovery of all the physical facts in the world, including aspects of physics, chemistry, and neurophysiology. These discoveries are all the elements that one needs to know about the causal and relational facts, including their functional roles (Jackson, 1986). As an academic person, Mary learns and understands her world by watching lectures on a black and white television. Her learning consists of everything that she needs to comprehend things that go on physically when viewed from a color perspective. Even though Mary gets to learn about color, she does not have an opportunity to see a red thing as red. Her first experience of color is when she leaves the room for the first time.
From this observation, Jackson concludes that physicalism is false because if it were true, then Mary would know everything about the relationship between human color vision and the environment before leaving the room. However, she only moves with a general understanding of color but lacks the physical experience of the things that the color represents. Instead, Mary begins to learn new elements in the environment after leaving the room (Jackson, 1986). For instance, she gets to experience and understands what it feels like to see colors as well as the properties that characterize this feeling. In essence, her new experience includes gaining knowledge about the truth. For example, while Mary learns about the color red, she begins to understand the new phenomenon of experience by being around the object that contains that specific color. As such, Jackson concludes that physicalism is false because it relies on Mary's imagination failing to consider the knowledge and the experience of the others. As such, Mary had an impoverished perspective of the mental life of others.
3. Show why you disagree with it and produce an argument that it is wrong. You may attack premises to show that it is unsound or the deduction to show that it is invalid or both.
The basis of Jackson's argument is the physicality of the world based on the notion that Mary knows everything she needs to understand through the lecturer videos she watches in her monochromatic television in the room. However, that is not the case because she does not get an opportunity to experience the sensation of the different issues that she learns and their properties. As such, although she has a general idea of the world and various things, she cannot claim to understand the mental state of others because she has not experienced these elements in their physical form so that she can develop a sensation to them and their properties. In essence, the foundation for Jackson's argument stems from his assumptions that Mary can gain a holistic view and the knowledge of the world through the lecture videos. For instance, he supposes that Mary watched the video about skepticism about other minds on her black and white TV (Jackson, 1986). According to Jackson, this experience should help Mary to reject uncertainty about the brain condition of others, which primarily helps her to understand their mental state. However, this is not the case because the brains of different people respond differently to different physical objects (Nagel, 1974). As such, the reliance on the theoretical experience of Mary does not fulfill the requirements that a person needs to consider to understand the mental state of others.
Consequently, the claim that Mary knows everything from the lecture videos she watched in her room is unfounded because despite the all the things that she learns, having a physical experience plays a significant role in understanding the issue. For instance, if Mary watches a video tutorial about ectoplasm and qualia, she can get a chance to learn something new about seeing the color red that dualism failed to cover. However, despite gaining this new knowledge, she is still unable to have a holistic view of the color red because she has not physically seen it or interacted with it in the environment. As such, although the new video lectures provide additional knowledge to Mary, it does not tell about all that there is to know about qualia, such as what it is like to see red (Jackson, 1986). Therefore, the reliance on Mary's experience is invalid for understanding the mental states of other individuals because her knowledge is defective as what she can imagine is irrelevant to the situation.
4. Discuss your view in the light of your objection.
Following the examinations of Jackson's argument, it is evident that physicalism plays a significant role in determining an individual's mental condition as it provides a person the opportunity to experience the sensation of something and its properties before formulating a mental picture about it. As such, from my perspective, for an individual to gain a comprehensive understanding of the brain condition of others, one needs to consider their knowledge as well as experience in the physical world. According to the physicality theory and the notion of physicalism, having a physical experience of a thing contributes to the development of knowledge on the properties of the matter, which then leads to the formulation of mind properties (Lewis, 1988). These properties tend to combine with an individual's academic knowledge about the world to come up with an overview imagination or a picture of the mental states of different people (Ryle, 2009). Therefore, from my perspective, physicalism combined with one's experience and comprehension of the world can help an individual to understand the mental conditions of others.
References
Armstrong, D. M. (1981). The nature of mind, and other essays (pp. 55-67). Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Jackson, F. (1986). What Mary didn't know. The Journal of Philosophy, 83(5), 291-295.
Lewis, D. (1988). What Experience Teaches [Audio file]. https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/247198
Nagel, T. (1974). What is it like to be a bat?. The philosophical review, 83(4), 435-450.
O'sullivan, M. (2017). The Concept of Mind. New York: Macat Library.
Ryle, G. (2009). The concept of mind. Abingdon: Routledge.
