Qualia: The Knowledge Argument
Updated 2026-09-10
INTRODUCTION
English translation pending.
CORE DEFINITION
The knowledge argument tries to show that conscious experience involves non-physical properties. Its starting point is that a person who has complete physical knowledge about another conscious being may still not know what it is like to have that being's experiences. It is one of the most cited arguments against physicalism, and Frank Jackson's Mary case is its best-known presentation.
SCAFFOLDING EFFECT
Reduce cognitive load
- Completeness questioning: ask whether a physical description omits what it is like, testing whether physicalism exhausts the facts. - Knowledge sorting: distinguish propositional knowledge from acquaintance, judging which content can only be gained through firsthand experience.
Anchor fast decisions
The argument rests on the intuition that a complete physical description does not include the phenomenal fact of what it is like, and that knowledge of this fact cannot be deduced from physical knowledge. If knowledge is closed under deduction, then learning the phenomenal fact implies facts omitted by the physical description, and physicalism is refuted.
MINIMUM ACTION
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Source support: Explicit
- plato.stanford.eduhttps://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qualia-knowledge/verified
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