Philosophy- the Physicalist

And In This Corner… Levine Vs. Jackson To Be Or Not To Be a Physicalist A physicalist is one who believes that all information is physical. This is a view that sees all factual knowledge as that which can be formulated as a statement about physical objects and activities. Thus, the language of science can be reduced to third Person descriptions. Philosopher Frank Jackson, an anti-physicalist, proposes the knowledge argument against physicalism, which goes as …

…without an adequate explanation. This explanatory gap makes Jackson’s knowledge argument not completely sound. By saying that Mary “learns something new”, Jackson is implying that phenomenal properties are physical ones. Yet Levine points out that although Jackson shows that they could be identical, there is no explanation to back it up. Since we can’t know that phenomenal properties are equated with physical properties, there is an explanatory gap which devaluates the knowledge argument.