Today we shall be looking at an argument that centres around the phenomenon of consciousness (hence the name). Consciousness is something that is at once both something intimately familiar to us and yet something that is particularly difficult to explain. It is a feature unique to sufficiently advanced living systems, such as humans. According to the argument from consciousness, consciousness possesses features that are inexplicable if naturalism is true.
Whilst there may be more examples than this, for the purposes of today's post, we shall just be focusing on two of these: qualia and intentionality. Qualia refers to the subjective, first-person character of conscious experience. Intentionality is the quality of mental states to be about other things. To show how these elements of conscious experience cannot be explained under naturalism, we shall be exploring two sub-arguments: the knowledge argument, and the Chinese Room argument.
The knowledge argument asks us to imagine the following scenario. Suppose there exists a scientist who has, since birth, been locked in a black-and-white room, and their only information of the world outside comes from a black-and-white monitor. Suppose also that they learn all the physical information there is to know about human colour vision. Nevertheless, when the scientist is released and sees objects in colour for the first time, they acquire new information.
1. The scientist has all the physical information about human colour vision before their release.
2. But there is some information that the scientist lacks before their release.
3. Therefore, not all information is physical information.
The Chinese-Room argument is somewhat similar. It asks us to imagine a person who is locked in a closed room. They receives slips of paper under the door that contain Chinese symbols, and they possess a rule-book written in their native language explaining what symbols to reply with based on the symbols received. In this setup, the person in the room is manipulating symbols they do not understand according to a set of rules without actually understanding Chinese.
This is meant as a refutation specifically of the notion of strong AI, which is the claim that a sufficiently programmed computer/computer program can understand natural language as well as possessing other mental faculties humans possess.
1. If Strong AI is true, then the man must gain an understanding of Chinese by following the rule-book.
2. The man does not gain an understanding of Chinese.
3. Therefore, Strong AI is false.
If naturalism is true, then strong AI must be true. Since Strong AI is false, it likewise follows that naturalism is false. Moving back to the knowledge argument, if naturalism is true, then all information must be physical information. Since not all information is physical information, then naturalism is false. This furnishes us with the following argument against naturalism:
1. If naturalism is true, all mental states must be reducible to physical states.
2. Not all mental states are reducible to physical states.
3. Therefore, naturalism is false.
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