The Knowledge Argument

Abstract

The first half of the book argues that physicalism cannot account for consciousness and hence must be false. One of the most well-known arguments that tries to show this is Frank Jackson’s form of the knowledge argument. The knowledge argument has two aims. First to show that there is an epistemic gap between the physical facts and the facts about consciousness, in the sense that there are truths about consciousness that one could not deduce from complete knowledge of the physical facts. Second, to infer from this epistemic gap to the falsity of physicalism. This chapter argues that the knowledge argument achieves the first aim but fails at the second.