A New Physicalist Response to the Knowledge Argument

Abstract: The knowledge argument is an argument for dualism that claims that there are both physical and non-physical facts, something we can know by reflecting on ‘Mary’ who is aware of all scientific data about colours but has yet to see any. I reject the dualist con-clusion and instead provide a new physicalist response that I call ‘bifactualism’. Bifactualism is a novel physicalist account comprising two elements. First, like dualism, it distinguishes between two kinds of facts: general and particular facts. Second, unlike dualism, it claims that the general/particular distinction (and not any physical/non-physical distinction) may explain facts about experience. There are certain facts that go undocumented in what is expressible in the language of the physical sciences because the language of the physical sciences concerns only general facts, whereas experience, I argue, essentially involves learning particular facts. Thus I argue that the case of Mary does not support mind/body dualism, and instead provides at least equal reason to support bifactualism. Since the general/particular distinction is one we are stuck with regardless of the status of mind, bifactualism emerges as a more parsimonious and hence preferable account of experience