more from this thinker | more from this text
Full Idea
Imagine a neuroscientist who is intimately familiar with the physiology of headaches, but who has never actually experienced a headache.
Gist of Idea
A scientist could know everything about the physiology of headaches, but never have had one
Source
John Heil (Philosophy of Mind [1998], Ch.3)
Book Ref
Heil,John: 'Philosophy of Mind' [Routledge 1998], p.55
A Reaction
A more realistic version of Frank Jackson's 'Mary'. Doctors need to know that headaches are unpleasant; what they actually feel like seems irrelevant (epiphenomenal). What's it like to only have two pairs of shoes?
| 7880 | If a blind persons suddenly sees a kestrel, that doesn't make visual and theoretical kestrels different [Papineau on Jackson] |
| 7378 | No one bothers to imagine what it would really be like to have ALL the physical information [Dennett on Jackson] |
| 7377 | Mary learns when she sees colour, so her complete physical information had missed something [Jackson] |
| 2327 | Knowledge and inversion make functionalism about qualia doubtful [Kim] |
| 7866 | Mary acquires new concepts; she previously thought about the same property using material concepts [Papineau] |
| 4094 | Experience teaches us propositions, because we can reason about our phenomenal experience [Crane] |
| 4594 | A scientist could know everything about the physiology of headaches, but never have had one [Heil] |