First, since AH identifies knowledge of what an experience E is like with the abilities to remember, imagine, and recognize E-type experiences (call these 'Lewis abilities with respect to E'), then AH is true if and only if:
S knows what it is like to undergo experience E if and only if S has the Lewis abilities with respect to E.
This means that, if we can find cases in which either
1. S knows what it is like to undergo E but lacks the relevant Lewis abilities,
or
2. S has Lewis abilities with respect to E but does not know what it is like to undergo E,
then AH is false.
Now, Tye's claim is that we can easily find cases of both kinds:
1. S introspectively attends to the experience of a particular shade of, say, red (and so, knows what it is like), but cannot later recognize or imagine or remember this experience. (After all, we don't have concepts for all of the different shades of color that we can experience--right?) (See CCC, pp. 11-13)
2. S has Lewis abilities with respect to E, but S isn't paying attention to E, so she doesn't know what E is like. (See CCC, pp. 13-15)
Are these criticisms convincing?
i'm not sure that i'm completely convinced by tye's arguments, although i suppose i could be.
ReplyDeletei have a particular problem with his first criticism. to me, it does not fully address what it means to have an ability (and from what i gather, lewis means "ability" in a fairly colloquial sense). i'm not sure that the inability to exercise an ability necessarily means that the ability is not present. i realize that is wordy, so let me hash out what i mean with a couple examples:
i have the ability - the "know-how," as lewis would put it - to ride a bike. but i cannot ride a bike right now because the conditions are not right (namely, i don't have a bike). certainly tye would not say that this is sufficient to say that i do not know how to ride a bike. in another case, i know how to read. but suppose i am temporarily blind, and therefore unable to read. surely it remains that i know how to read, even though i cannot in this moment.
i take the problem herein to be that just because i cannot exercise my abilities to recognize, remember, or imagine right now does not necessarily mean that i do not possess those abilities at all.
Does the Ability Hypothesis require all three of Lewis' requirements?
ReplyDeleteIn the case of riding the bike, I can recognize riding a bike if I am ridint a bike, I can remember riding a bike if I have ridden a bike, and I can imagine riding a bike if I have a similar enough experience to riding a bike and knowledge that those experiences are similar.
In the case of color, I do not think Lewis' three requirments are always present due to the conditions of the brain (sort of having to do with the podcast from the email). In the case of red, all three are the same as the bike. My issue is that "red" is not descriptive enough. There are many different reds. Today in class, there were at least four different kinds, just by looking at clothing and books. I can remember seeing four different kinds of red, I can recognize that I am seeing four different kinds of red, but I do not think that I can imagine all four different kinds of red. As David Papineau suggests, we have thousands and thousands of colors that we can see, but only thirty that we can conceptualize/virtualy represet (which I take to mean imagine).
I wanted to ask if Lewis requires all three (imgaination, recognition, and rememberance) and if so how would he deal with the fact that we cannot conceptualize/represent/imagine all of the colors that we can see. Class ended before I could ask.
I also take issue with Tye's first criticism. This argument must show that Mary knows what seeing red17 is like but does not have the Lewis abilities associated with it. Obviously she does not have the Lewis abilities after some time (though could she if she trained herself to?). And Tye says that we must accept that she knew red17 because she must know what red17 is like if she is staring right at it.
ReplyDeleteBut Tye's job is to show that Mary CURRENTLY knows what it is like to undergo red17 but CURRENTLY lacks the relevant Lewis abilities. He hasn't done this because Mary loses the lewis abilities as soon as she no longer knows what red17 is like. Mary did know what red17 was like when she was looking at the rose, and at this time she had the lewis abilities. Tye failed to show that Mary knew what red17 was like at the same time as she did not have the lewis abilities.