People vary considerably in their physical attributes. Some scholars believe that, as will be described below, all attributes of life can be captured by physicalism. The author of the “Epiphenomenal Qualia”, however, explains the falsity of physicalism through giving an example of an experiment of Frank. To be able to understand how Physicalism is false, as discussed by Jackson, this paper will briefly explain what Qualia is and give a brief description of the example the author describes.
Qualia is a philosophical term that is used to refer to the instances of subjective, conscious experiences of individuals. There are several examples of qualia that philosophers have looked at. The taste of wine or the perceived redness of an evening sky are some of the instances that present people with the most headache as it is difficult to ponder how subjections matter. According to Erwin Schr”dinger, the sensation of color cannot be accounted for by the light-wave physical objective picture (Du Toit 11). Qualia is an important part of the philosophy of mind. The concept comes primarily from the fact that as it is supposedly causing problems for materialist”s explanations of the mind-body problem. The nature and existence of qualia remain controversial since there are people who deny some of its salient features.
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"Falsity of Physicalism".
To elaborate on qualia, Jackson gives the example of Fred, who has a better color vision that anyone else the world has ever seen. Fred makes every discrimination that any other person has ever made and, better still, makes other discrimination that no one can ever imagine. On showing him a bunch of tomatoes, Fred will sort them into two batches with extreme consistency. In other words, if Fred was blindfolded and the tomatoes were shuffled, he would sort them out the exact way he did after the blindfold is removed. On asking him how he does it, he explains that, to him, ripe tomatoes have different colors.
He adds that the same apply to a lot other objects that we classify together as having a distinct color, say red. Fred sees to colors when everybody else sees one. As a result, he developed his use of red1 and red2 for the specific colors we cannot differentiate. While he uses “red” to describe both red1 and red2, he only does so for easier relation to other people. A brief explanation of why this is possible is that he has advanced optical ability and that he can separate two spectrums of different red wavelengths as sharply as a person would separate the blue color from yellow.
While it is true that Fred can see at least one extra color than we can, there are those who do not believe that that is even possible. Fred sees us as color blind as we see those who cannot differentiate red from green. “The Country of the Blind,” by H.G. Well tells a story of a person who can see in a country of the blind. In his case, he cannot convince the people that he can see. His ability to avoid ditches and to win fights is assumed to be just that and not because he can see. If people would believe that Fred is only able to separate the tomatoes only because he can separate the two shades and not due to any development of his optical ability, then they would be making a mistake.
It is true that everyone would be interested to know what is so special about him and the ability to differentiate the colors. Still, no amount information about him can give a detailed explanation as to why his brain and the optical system are different. Information about him, that is about his cone of the eyes, his physical attributes, and behavior, his internal physiology, and all his history and relationships he has established with other people do not explain why he can possess such visual discriminating abilities. If he does not have extra cones, then it goes without saying that that physicality does not explain all aspects of life (Brenner 34). If knowing everything about Fred does not explain why he possesses his ability, it means that physicalism leaves a lot to be desired.
Physicalism is the ontological thesis in physiology that assumes that “everything is physical”, and that there is not a thing that is above the physical. Physicalism is a form of ontological monism that views nature as one substance. Jackson states that there are many qualia freaks, and there are those who argue that they have a baseless reflection of physicalism. In reality, physicalism is false and, therefore, their thought of physicalism is grounded. There is no physical description that can capture the smell of a rose, for example.
Physicalism is the opposite of pluralism and precisely the opposite of dualism. In the above example of Fred, it is true that he can differentiate between two shades of red, “red1” and “red2”. If the blindfold resulted to him separating the tomatoes differently than he had before, then it would occur that there is no difference between his color discrimination ability and ours. There is no “physical” attribute that was able to give an explanation of why he was able to do that. His eyes, relations with other people, and every other aspect of life had nothing out of the ordinary. This means hat his ability to differentiate shades of red that no one else saw different had a particular attribute that physicality could not explain summing up the argument that physicalism is false.
