Combining Texts

Ideas for 'Good and Evil', 'Phenomenology of Spirit' and 'What Mary Didn't Know'

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5 ideas

15. Nature of Minds / B. Features of Minds / 1. Consciousness / b. Essence of consciousness
Consciousness is shaped dialectically, by opposing forces and concepts [Hegel, by Aho]
     Full Idea: In 'The Phenomenology of Spirit' Hegel offers a panoptic account of Western consciousness as a dialectical process shaped by opposing principles - such as subject/object, freedom/determinism, temporal/eternal, and particular/universal.
     From: report of Georg W.F.Hegel (Phenomenology of Spirit [1807]) by Kevin Aho - Existentialism: an introduction 2 'Subjective'
     A reaction: A helpful pointer, for us poor analytic philosophers, who stare in bewilderment at Hegel's stuff, despite its apparent importance. At moment it is the politics that strikes me as most interesting in Hegel. This is cultured consciousness, pre-Marx.
15. Nature of Minds / B. Features of Minds / 1. Consciousness / c. Parts of consciousness
Consciousness is both of objects, and of itself [Hegel]
     Full Idea: Consciousness is, on the one hand, consciousness of the object, and on the other, consciousness of itself.
     From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Phenomenology of Spirit [1807], p.052), quoted by Stephen Houlgate - An Introduction to Hegel 03 'The Method'
     A reaction: Hume challenges whether there is any knowledge of consciousness purely in itself. Schopenhauer flatly disagreed (Idea 4166) - but then he would, wouldn't he?
15. Nature of Minds / B. Features of Minds / 5. Qualia / a. Nature of qualia
I say Mary does not have new knowledge, but knows an old fact in a new way [Perry on Jackson]
     Full Idea: I say Mary knows an old fact in a new way, but I do not find a new bit of knowledge and a new fact.
     From: comment on Frank Jackson (What Mary Didn't Know [1986]) by John Perry - Knowledge, Possibility and Consciousness §7.3
     A reaction: This seems roughly the right way to attack Jackson's 'knowledge argument', by asking exactly what he means by 'knowledge'. It is hard to see how 'qualia' can be both the means of acquiring knowledge, and the thing itself.
Is it unfair that physicalist knowledge can be written down, but dualist knowledge can't be [Perry on Jackson]
     Full Idea: Jackson seems to imply that it isn't fair that all physicalist knowledge can be written down, but not all dualist knowledge can be.
     From: comment on Frank Jackson (What Mary Didn't Know [1986]) by John Perry - Knowledge, Possibility and Consciousness §7.5
     A reaction: This pinpoints a problem for the 'Mary' example - that Mary's new sight of colour is claimed as 'knowledge', and yet the whole point is that it cannot be expressed in propositions (which seems to leave it as 'procedural' or 'acquaintance' knowledge).
Mary knows all the physical facts of seeing red, but experiencing it is new knowledge [Jackson]
     Full Idea: Mary knows all the physical facts. ..It seems, however, that Mary does not know all there is to know. For when she is let out of the black and white room .. she will learn what it is like to see something red.
     From: Frank Jackson (What Mary Didn't Know [1986], §1.4)
     A reaction: Jackson is begging the question. A new physical event occurs when the red wavelength stimulates Mary's visual cortex for the first time. For an empiricist raw experience creates knowledge, so it can't BE knowledge. Does Mary acquire a new concept?