[Serious Phil] Rejecting the Hypothesis of Phenomenal Information

[Joseph Polanik]

larry_tapper wrote:

 >JP: you quoted the section in which Lewis makes the argument from
 >peculiarity. is there is something that section (or elsewhere in Lewis'
 >paper) that constitutes a claim of *objective* peculiarity?

 >I don't know what you mean by "objective peculiarity".

I'm asking whether a judgment that phenomenal information is peculiar is
a matter of applying some set of criteria or a matter of taste.

 >The exercise is to compare Lewis' Ability Hypothesis with the original
 >Irreducibly Phenomenal Information Hypothesis.

unless you define the Ability Hypothesis to include a denial of the
Hypothesis of Phenomenal Information, there is nothing in the Ability
Hypothesis that an advocate of the knowledge argument must reject.

that's why the dispute between these points of view turns on whether
there is or isn't phenomenal information (information about experience
qua qualia).

 >This is not the sort of thing that can be decided by experiment: it
 >involves classificatory judgments at the conceptual level.

experimental results may play some part. as Jackson tells it,
experiments with extra red Fred would show that he could reliably sort
objects that all looked red to the rest of us.

in any case, I agree that one's choice to accept or reject the
irrefutable Hypothesis of Phenomenal Information involves classificatory
judgments at the conceptual level; but, I would add that one's choices
between competing classificatory judgments is guided by one's
philosophical intuition as to whether Mary learns anything or not when
she leaves her room.

 >One of Lewis' relevant points is that the original KA proves too much.
 >Not only do *physical* lessons fail to help Mary understand what seeing
 >red is like --- any lesson at all will fail to do so. This is one
 >reason why the concept of "phenomenal information" is peculiar. It's
 >not easy to see in what sense something is information if it is not
 >conveyable at all.

just a few days ago (in #2541) you wrote:

"I'm reminded of an observation Walto made a long time ago in Analytic:
that in *his* experience, he'd never encountered anything either fully
describable or not describable at all. I'd agree with that. What then?"

are you now saying that there is no information about experience because
it is not conveyable at all?

Joe


-- 

Nothing Unreal is Self-Aware

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