Philosophical Perspectives - 2023 - Renero - Kripke S Knowledge Argument Against Materialism

DOI: 10.1111/phpe.
12195
ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Kripke’s knowledge argument against

materialism
Adriana Renero1,2
1 Saul Kripke Center, Philosophy
Department, The Graduate Center, City Abstract

University of New York, NYC, USA In his unpublished 1979 Lectures on the Philosophy of
2 Center
for Mind, Brain, and Mind, Saul Kripke offers a knowledge argument against
Consciousness, Philosophy Department,
New York University, NYC, USA
materialism focusing on deaf people who lack knowl-
edge of auditory experience. Kripke’s argument is a
Correspondence precursor of Frank Jackson’s better-known knowledge
Adriana Renero, The Graduate Center,
City University of New York. argument against materialism (1982). The paper sets out
Email: arenero@gc.cuny.edu Kripke’s argument, brings out its interest and philo-
sophical importance, and explores some similarities and
differences between Kripke’s knowledge argument and
Jackson’s.
1 INTRODUCTION
Lecture III of Saul Kripke’s Naming and Necessity (1972) contains an important critique of
materialism. His discussion concludes as follows:
Materialism, I think, must hold that a physical description of the world is a complete
description of it, that any mental facts are ‘ontologically dependent’ on physical facts
in the straightforward sense of following from them by necessity. No identity theorist
seems to me to have made a convincing argument against the intuitive view that this
is not the case (Kripke, 1972/1980, p. 342/155).
In unpublished Lectures on the Philosophy of Mind at Princeton University in 1979, Kripke

expands this critique in an epistemological direction:
Materialism or physicalism [is] a view that anyone who knows a complete material
description of the world knows everything that there is to be known and, therefore,
such a person should be able to deduce from a material description of the world all
the facts, including any mental facts (Lecture IV: February 28, 1979).1 But [if] there
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2 RENERO
is some fact that in principle he could not deduce, he would not know everything. If
this is so, then, it seems to me that materialism is not true. (Kripke, Lecture V: March
7, 1979)2
In these lectures he develops in detail a form of argument that has come to be called the “knowl-
edge argument” in the philosophical literature. Kripke invites us to consider a congenitally deaf
person who knows the complete physical facts or truths, and he then asks whether that person
could know everything there is to know.3 Kripke argues that a person in this sort of circumstance
could not know everything there is to know and concludes that materialism is false.
Although Kripke’s argument in these lectures remains largely unknown in the wider philo-
sophical community, it is interesting and important for several interrelated reasons: First, no
argument of this sort appears in Naming and Necessity. Lecture III of that work contains sev-
eral arguments usually classified as ‘modal arguments,’ but nowhere there does Kripke defend a
knowledge argument.
Second, while Kripke’s Lectures on the Philosophy of Mind come after Naming and Necessity,
they also predate the most famous discussion of the knowledge argument; namely, that by Frank
Jackson, which focuses on the visual case of color-blind Mary who lives in a black-and-white
room (1982), rather than, as in Kripke, which focuses on the auditory case of someone who is
hearing impaired (1979). Kripke’s argument is not the only precursor to Jackson’s; there are several
historical precursors involving similar arguments (cf., Ludlow, Nagasawa & Stoljar, 2004).4 Still
the analogies and differences between Kripke’s and Jackson’s presentations of the argument are
revealing of its nature.
Third, a central feature of Kripke’s discussion in the Lectures on the Philosophy of Mind is that
he assumes that a materialist must defend not merely that any mental facts must follow from
physical facts by necessity, but in addition that any mental facts follow from physical facts a pri-
ori: that the truth of everything is deducible a priori from a complete material description of the
world. This is a version of materialism that has come to be called “type-A materialism” or “a
priori physicalism” in the contemporary literature (Chalmers, 1996; 2002; Stoljar, 2000; Jackson
2020). It is common for presentations of the knowledge argument to make this assumption—
Jackson’s does, for example. Nevertheless, this assumption may seem unexpected in the larger
context of Kripke’s work. It is often thought that, in defending the notion of the necessary a poste-
riori in Naming and Necessity and elsewhere, Kripke provides tools for formulating a different kind
of materialism, sometimes called “type-B materialism” or “a posteriori physicalism” (Chalmers,
1996; 2002; Stoljar, 2000). Moreover, it is natural to think that, even if Kripke rejects materialism,
he would nevertheless allow that if materialism is true, then a posteriori materialism is true. How-
ever, the 1979 Lectures show that, while one might develop the ideas of Naming and Necessity in
this direction, this is not how Kripke himself saw the matter.
Additionally, Kripke explicitly introduces and explores many variations on his central case of a
deaf person, where the analogous variations seem at best implicit in Jackson’s discussion. Finally,
Kripke’s discussion of the knowledge argument anticipates responses to significant objections that
Jackson’s Mary thought experiment has faced; namely, the “ability hypothesis,” the “old-fact/new-
way” view, and the “phenomenal-concept strategy.”5
The purpose of this paper is to set out Kripke’s version of the knowledge argument against mate-
rialism, to make it more widely known, and to assess its significance not only to the development
of Kripke’s own philosophy but to philosophy of mind more broadly.
I begin in §2 by setting out the basic structure of any knowledge argument against material-
ism, noting that it has two main premises: one about what it is possible to know; and one that
connects the claim about what it is possible to know with the falsity of materialism. §§3-4 then
ARGUMENT AGAINST MATERIALISM 3
describe Kripke’s elaboration of the first premise, focusing on his central case of a deaf person,
and variations of that case. §5 turns to Kripke’s defense of the second premise, paying particular
attention to his assumption, striking in the context of his other work, that if materialism is true,
a priori materialism is true. §6 describes the ways in which Kripke’s anticipates responses to sig-
nificant objections to Jackson’s knowledge argument. §7 closes by making explicit some central
parallels between Kripke’s version of the knowledge argument and Jackson’s, and noting some
respects in which Kripke’s argument is an improvement.
2 THE KNOWLEDGE ARGUMENT IN OUTLINE
In very simple terms, we may understand a ‘knowledge argument against materialism’ to be an

argument that takes the following general or standard form:
Knowledge argument against materialism
P1. It is possible for a person to know every physical fact (and every fact deducible a
priori from physical facts), and yet not know all the facts.
P2. If it is possible for a person to know every physical fact (and every fact deducible a
priori from physical facts), and yet not know all the facts, then materialism is false.6
Materialism is false.
This argument is a knowledge argument because it concerns what is possible for a person to
know and not to know.7 Other arguments against materialism, such as those in Lecture III of
Naming and Necessity, concern what is possibly the case or not the case, rather than what it is
possible to know; in this sense those are modal arguments rather than knowledge arguments. And
it is an argument against materialism not simply in the obvious sense that it concludes with the
falsity of materialism, but in addition because its target is not intended to be one specific version
of materialism but the doctrine as such.
This latter point is explicit in Kripke’s Lectures on the Philosophy of Mind. Kripke criticizes
several materialist models of the relation between the mental and the physical, including the
mind-brain identity theory, analytic functionalism, eliminative materialism, and others, as well of
the theories of individual philosophers such as Ryle (1949), Smart (1959) and Armstrong (1968).
But analyzing them individually is not his central focus.8 Kripke’s central target is materialism in
a quite general form—e.g., he tackles general materialist claims such as “one who knows all the
physical facts [or truths] knows everything,” “anyone who knows a complete material description
of the world. . . knows everything that there is to be known,” and a number of related formulations
(Lecture III: February 21, 1979 [n]; Lecture IV: February 28, 1979).
Clearly, an argument of the mentioned sort is valid in form, and so its assessment turns on
the reason to support the premises. As we will see, Kripke’s Lectures on the Philosophy of Mind
contain several distinctive considerations in support of each premise. Hence, he defends the
knowledge argument in this form.
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Before turning to this in detail, however, it is worth distinguishing two slightly different versions
of a knowledge argument. The version we just set out starts from a premise about possibility; for
that reason, we may think of it as a possibility form of the argument. But we can also formulate an
impossibility form, as follows:
Knowledge argument against materialism (impossibility form)
P1*. It is not possible for a person to know the physical facts (including the facts that
follow a priori from the physical facts) and know all the facts on that basis.
P2*. If it is not possible for a person to know the physical facts (including the facts
that follow a priori from the physical facts) and know all the facts on that basis, then
materialism is false.
Materialism is false.
This argument is also a knowledge argument, but it begins from a premise not about what is
possible to know, but about what is impossible; namely, it is impossible to know certain facts
about experiences on the basis of physical facts alone, and this remains true even if we understand
‘physical facts’ as including facts a priori entailed by physical facts.
There are several reasons to notice this distinction between the two forms of the knowledge
argument in the context of Kripke’s Lectures. First, it is clear that Kripke endorses both forms of
the argument, often moving back and forth between them.9 Second, Jackson’s argument is usually
read as endorsing only the possibility form, which is something that separates these two classic
defenses of the knowledge argument (see §7). However, having noticed the difference between
the two forms of knowledge argument, I will for the most part restrict the following presentation
to the possibility form and Kripke’s defense of it. The extension to the impossibility form will be
left implicit here.
3 KRIPKE’S ANAUDISM CASE
Concentrating then on the possibility form of the knowledge argument, why is its first premise
true? That is, why is it possible for a person to know every physical fact (and every fact deducible
a priori from physical facts) and not know all the facts?
A central way to argue for this is to describe a possible case of a person who does know all the
physical facts but does not know some other sorts of facts. That is precisely Jackson’s procedure;
his thought experiment of Mary the blind-color super-scientist is intended to be such a case: Mary
seems to be a possible case of someone who knows all the physical facts, and yet does not know
what it is like to see color.10
Kripke likewise provides a thought experiment, but he is not concerned with color or visual
perception. Rather Kripke’s focus is on the deaf person case, or what he calls the “anaudism”
case.11 Kripke invites us to “just imagining a deaf person who knew about the complete description
of the world in non-auditory terms and see what he could know on the basis of such a description”
(Lecture IV: February 28, 1979). Kripke inquires whether this person could know everything there
is to know.
Consider, he says,
the case of the [congenitally] deaf [person] trying to deduce everything relevant to
auditory phenomena. . . from purely physical facts. . . (Lecture III: February 21, 1979)
Could he then know everything about the phenomenology of sound? Could a con-
genitally. . . deaf person know everything there is to know? It seems not, if he cannot
[know] what sounds are like. [For example,] the assertion that a sound is “high”
in pitch is mentalistic not to be included in the physical description [n]. If he just
described things in the physical vocabulary alone, he would not know what this
auditory thing [x] amounted to. (Lecture IV: February 28, 1979)
He goes on:
I actually just feel it is very vivid that a deaf person will not know what all these issues
[are] about: what [an octave apart] is, [what it is like to hear a sound getting louder,
how pitches vary according to how high or low they sound] and so on [and what]
were all [those facts] about. I mean, he knows what a ratio of 2:1 is [that such a ratio
is measured in terms of string-length—as Pythagoras found out—which depends
on 1/frequency, also that the mathematical scale results from taking intervals of an
octave: a factor of two in frequency. A deaf person would also know what] amplitude,
frequency, etc. are [n]. But the issue [of knowing] what the thing [x] sounds like is
about [i.e., its loudness, pitch, timbre, etc.] he cannot [know]. (Lecture IV: February
28, 1979)
The general picture in such passages is clear: a deaf person who knows all the physical facts
about sound will not on that account know all the facts about sound, for they will not know what
sounds are like.12 Hence, it is possible for a person to know all the physical facts about sound, and
not know all the facts.
What are the relevant facts of sound that the deaf person will not know? While Kripke offers
the example of a pitch such as a middle C, throughout the Lectures, he emphasizes that this exam-
ple may be misleading because of the erroneous tendency to identify pitch with frequency. What
is relevant for him is not frequency but “the internal auditory thing or sensation.” The deaf per-
son can judge that frequency is the rate of sound vibration measured in cycles per second called
Hertz, while failing to judge that pitch is the quality of “highness” or “lowness” of sound that non-
hearing impairment people perceive. Even if we would agree that pitch is the mental quality of a
particular auditory experience and frequency is the physical property of a particular wavelength,
Kripke warns us to be careful: the term ‘pitch’—i.e., that refers to the sensation of pitch—should
neither be used to refer to the “external phenomenon”—e.g., a property of a note or a sound which
may exist irrespective of being heard—nor be equated with ‘frequency’ (Lecture V: March 7, 1979;
Lecture VII: March 21, 1979). These are two different facts involving different properties: a mental
property and a physical property (see §6.2).
Additionally, Kripke seems to be aware that using this example may also be misleading to
capture what it is like to hear this quality, since only relatively few people can aurally find a pitch
such as a middle-C non-relationally—e.g., individuals with so-called “absolute pitch” or the
6 RENERO
ability to produce or name a pitch, referring to musical scale, without recourse to any external
cue. Kripke adds, the example of “middle-C is rather bad. . . for [the current] purpose, because
maybe if we used it. . . we cannot [experience] the sensory quality. . . that any higher or lower note
[has]” (Lecture V: March 7, 1979).13 So, Kripke brings out the special character of the octave; a
particular auditory quality which involves a feeling of duplication or a phenomenal relation—i.e.,
it appears an intrinsic property of an auditory event which allows one to experience comparisons
and changes between higher-lower sounds.
A brief characterization of an octave by researchers on this topic may be helpful to understand
its peculiarity:
If a series of successive pitches is sounded, one after another—say, running up the

white keys on the piano—there comes a point at which the pitch seems in some
sense to “duplicate” an earlier pitch, but a higher level. This new pitch does not
sound identical to the old one, but somehow the two sounds are very similar. They
blend extremely well; they almost seem to melt into each other. [This is called] the
phenomenon of octaves. . . (Kerman & Tomlinson, 2000, p. 11)
The relevant point is that the deaf person would not be able to know about the phenomenal
character of an octave: “what it is like” to hear a high sound an octave apart—i.e., one note being
higher than another—even though he had an idea that there is something phenomenally special
about it by knowing the Pythagorean story about the string-length of certain instruments. The deaf
person cannot know what the experience of hearing an octave is like through the information he
got in physics books. Such auditory facts are not included in any of the physical facts he knows,
and concomitantly are “not to be included in the physical description.” The implication is that
there is an “epistemic gap” between mental facts and physical facts.14
4 VARIATIONS ON THE ANAUDISM CASE
Kripke appeals to the deaf person case “to dramatize” the first premise of the knowledge argu-
ment. But there are several different variations of the case along these lines, and not all of them
can be used in an argument against materialism. Suppose, for example, that the deaf person does
not have the relevant concepts to understand the facts about sound that Kripke is interested in.
In that case, there would seem to be a simple explanation why the deaf person might not know
the facts about sound, even if he has all the relevant physical knowledge, namely, he does not
even understand the facts about sound. It is hard to see any case like this putting pressure on
materialism.
One of the interesting features of Kripke’s discussion is that he discusses several different vari-
ous scenarios of the deaf person case, several of which have greater application to the knowledge
argument than the one just described. In their purest form, the scenarios that Kripke discusses
are as follows:
D1 is congenitally deaf and remains deaf; he gets no auditory concepts and no understanding
of auditory statements.
D2 is congenitally deaf up to a certain time before his hearing is fixed through surgery and he
gets auditory concepts (I will return to this case in §6.3).
D2 * lived in a soundproof room before he was brought into a musical room—or his brain
is repaired until he becomes a person with normal hearing (notice that this case is very
similar to Jackson’s Mary, but Kripke does not rely on this case alone).
D3 was able to hear, then lost his hearing, forgot some, but not all auditory experiences and
concepts, and remains in a state of partial auditory amnesia (I will return to this case in
§6.3).
D4 is like D3 but had surgery and although his hearing is restored, he remains in a state of
total auditory amnesia (cf. Lecture IV: February 28, 1979; Lecture V: March 7, 1979; Lecture
VII: March 21, 1979; Lecture VIII: April 4, 1979).
A synthesis of Kripke’s descriptions of these variations with additional details may illustrate his
idea:
[Consider] one person [D1 ] who has been deaf for life. . . D2 is someone who has been
deaf up to a certain time, but then his hearing has [been] restored, and he. . . gets
the auditory concepts at that point. . . [D2 * is different,] instead of his hearing being
restored, he gets tinkered with in some manner suggested by Unger’s paper.15 [He has
a whole vocabulary of auditory experiences [n]. . . The third person [D3 ] is someone
who could hear up to a certain time, but then went deaf, and moreover forgot some of
his earlier auditory experiences and auditory concepts. . . [though] he has not lost any
concept of the present time, he cannot remember. . . particular auditory experiences
he may have had in the past]. And the fourth person [D4 ] is. . . someone who goes deaf
and forgets just like the third person. But later on, his hearing is restored, without. . .
any specific memories of the past being restored. (Lecture IV: February 28, 1979)
Together with the dramatization and the elaboration of the first premise, Kripke specifically
focuses on D2 and D3 as he alternates between them throughout the Lectures on the Philosophy
of Mind. He takes D2 and D3 as analogous scenarios given that both cases exhibit more clearly
the first premise of the knowledge argument. So, what Kripke says about D2 should apply mutatis
mutandis to D3 .
Kripke elaborates:
I had set [all this] up in order to dramatize the fact that [D2 and D2 *] do not have
access to non-material facts. . . [and] that [D3 ] has forgotten all kinds of things like
that. Then. . . given that [D3 has] forgotten this, he cannot make the derivation. But
the important part of this just was a dramatization that [D3 ] has forgotten certain
facts. [And so,] it is hard to see how given the entire [past] record, he could deduce
this [fact f now]? (Lecture V: March 7, 1979)
Kripke indicates that whatever is deducible should be restricted up to time t:
I [have] put [the] things in terms of a totally non-auditory description of the history
of the world. But I thought [that in order] to make things more manageable and also
[to] be helpful for other purposes, we should be able to localize. . . if someone is hear-
ing something. . . is just a fact about time t. Then if materialism is true, it should be
8 RENERO
deducible from the material history of the world, up till then. (Lecture IV: February
28, 1979)
Although an additional variation is to think about the case in a temporal way, and Kripke indeed
stresses the temporal condition as an issue worth considering, in other passages, he notices there
are two epistemic stages in play; any time before t—calling it t0 —and any time including t and
simultaneously with it—calling it t1 —explicitly excluding anything future: here “future physical
events are irrelevant” (Lecture II: February 14, 1979 [n]). This temporal condition is important
in order to ascertain the kinds of facts and knowledge at stake. It shows both (a) that at t1 —i.e.,
once his hearing is restored through a brain surgery procedure as D2 —the person learns new facts
which she did not know at t0 —i.e., before he is able to hear—and (b) that phenomenal knowledge
cannot be acquired via a different form.
Kripke concludes the discussion about the various scenarios of deaf people:
I have considered various varieties of deaf people. To avoid. . . pitfalls though, it is

important to see that the deaf people are to a certain extent just a dramatization [of
P1 or the non-deducibility claim]. There are [some] things at issue [e.g.,] . . . whether
the appropriate kinds of a priori deductive relations subsist, so that one could [know]
a priori from a physical description of the world whether a [deaf] person. . . is having
auditory experiences [or not]. . . To some extent this is dramatized by deaf people. . .
but the main important thing is to avoid smuggling in. . . —what is really trying to
pursue the materialist program—any non-physical premises into the data from which
[the materialist] is working. (Lecture IV: February 28, 1979)
5 KRIPKE ON MATERIALISM
We have seen why the first premise of the knowledge argument is true according to Kripke: it
may be dramatized by the case of the deaf person and variations on that case. Why then is the
second premise of the knowledge argument true? That is, why is it the case that if it is possible for
a person to know every physical fact (and every fact deducible a priori from physical facts), and
yet not know all the facts, then materialism is false?
A central way to argue for this is to focus on what physicalism requires. The passage I began
with from Naming and Necessity already points out one thing that physicalism requires: physical-
ism must “hold that a physical description of the world is a complete description of it, that any
mental facts are ‘ontologically dependent’ on physical facts in the straightforward sense of follow-
ing from them by necessity” (Kripke, 1972/1980, p. 342/155). But this alone does not render the
second premise of the knowledge argument true. Even if P follows from Q by necessity, it might
be possible for someone to know P and yet not know Q. Why then is the second premise true?
The answer Kripke develops in the Lectures on the Philosophy of Mind is that physicalism
must hold, not simply that mental facts follow from physical facts by necessity, but that it must
be possible to deduce mental facts from physical facts:
We are getting to discussing what I take is the key problem. . . we are presenting the
following kind of principle. . . for a materialist or a physicalist view of the world.
The physicalist so at any rate. . . seems to hold that someone who knows the mate-
rial constitution [or complete] history of the world. . . is in fact omniscient. [But] if
there were. . . a genuine fact, which could not be deduced by someone who knew
the entire material history of the world, then, he would not know everything. There
would be something else, some other fact not dreamt of in his philosophy. And in that
important metaphysical sense, materialism would not be true, no matter how many
physicalistic particular theses were in fact true. Of course, one way of stopping this
argument [or to object to it] is somehow to say that this is a bad characterization of
materialism. “It is not just a matter of the word,” someone might say: “all I mean by
materialism is. . . ” and then state some weaker thesis. [However,] anything weaker
[than this] characterization loses some desideratum of what we call materialism. If
[there is] some fact [which] is not deducible from physical facts, there is something
in the world which is not physical [n]. [And] as long as there is something that both
we and he were ignorant of. . . it seems to me [that materialism is] false. (Lecture V:
March 7, 1979)
The core of Kripke’s view is that there are facts that are not deducible from physical facts and
that there are facts that are not physical. This point is recurrent throughout the Lectures: “the
vocabulary of physics is not a complete. . . record. . . There are some other facts, other than. . .
whatever things are thought to be part of the physical record.” Those other facts seem to involve
non-physical properties. But “if materialism is [true], there should be some way of deducing from
this record.” Specifically, Kripke holds that mental facts are not physical facts: “there are two
kinds of facts [say, a] physical fact [and]. . . a mental fact. We need to know both kinds of facts to
make the connection. Knowing just the physical facts is not enough” (Lecture III: February 21,
1979 [n]). It is likely, then, that the entire record of the world that the materialist defends is just a
“partial” or an “incomplete record,” “because it. . . leaves something out.” Kripke closes the idea:
there are other facts “that though appearances to the contrary notwithstanding, they probably
do have some mentalistic components that are not deducible” (Lecture V: March 7, 1979), and “as
long as there are still some remaining facts to be known, materialism is false” (Lecture I: February
7, 1979 [n]).16
Similarly, Kripke argues that if materialism is true, then a complete description of the world
in physical terms a priori entails a complete description of the world in mental terms. In the fol-
lowing passage, he explicitly endorses the view that if physicalism is true, then the relevant sort
of entailment must be both metaphysically necessary—i.e., true in every possible world—and a
priori:
[According to] materialism, someone who knows the material constitution of the
world, knows everything that is knowable. This entails if we were given a complete
and necessarily infinitary description of the world in material terms [P], then [Q],
‘Jones has a headache’. . . must follow from [P]. Suppose [Q] ‘Jones has a headache,’
then [the conditional if P then Q, where Q is] ‘Jones has a headache’ must be
metaphysically necessary, also it must be a priori. If not, one would not really have
materialism (Lecture II: February 14, 1979 [n]). Materialism will be given just that
the material [constitution or] history of the [world] up to t, plus the physical laws, is
sufficient for saying that ‘Jones has a headache.’ (Lecture IV: February 28, 1979)
This passage illustrates that it is necessary that the fact that Jones has a headache follows a
priori from a physical fact: “If not, one would not really have materialism.”17
10 RENERO
6 OBJECTIONS TO THE KNOWLEDGE ARGUMENT
We have seen so far that in support of the first premise, Kripke offers various thought experiments,
and in support of the second premise he offers a thesis about the requirements of physicalism.
Kripke’s Lectures on the Philosophy of Mind not only set out the knowledge argument, but they
also preempt several well-known responses to it, responses that were only isolated and discussed
well after 1979. In this section, I will set out Kripke response to the “ability hypothesis” (§6.1), the
“old-fact/new-way” view, (§6.2), and the “phenomenal-concept strategy” (§6.3).
6.1 The ability hypothesis
Some philosophers have objected to the knowledge argument by rejecting the assumption that
phenomenal knowledge or knowledge of what it is like is factual or propositional. On being
released from the black-and-white room, for example, Jackson’s Mary on this account does not
learn new facts about the world; she only acquires abilities such as imagining, recognizing, and
remembering color experiences. So, knowing “what it is like” is just getting abilities concerning
the relevant experience or “knowing-how” (Lewis, 1966; 1988; Nemirow, 1980; 1990). This view is
known in the literature as the “ability hypothesis.”
The ability hypothesis, if correct would apply to Kripke’s argument just as much as Jack-
son’s, but Kripke is explicit in the Lectures that no response along these lines will be successful
against his argument. In particular, he argues that the new knowledge that D2 gets post-surgery
is propositional knowledge which is not a priori deducible from physical knowledge:
If. . . [the auditory fact] were deducible. . . , [D2 ] just reads off, [since he] had “all”
the relevant information even before he was given this [auditory] concept. . . If there
were. . . such a fact about each and every other person, and there [were] such a fact
about himself in the past. . . [it would be possible to determine what] piece of proposi-
tional knowledge is. . . What [does D2 ] hear? . . . He hears at time [t1 this sound]. . . and
then [he puts that experience e] in terms of his auditory vocabulary. . . [in a statement
p] or ‘that the sound [here] gets louder, and now higher’.18 [If] he would not know
[that]—whether or not he has the [exact] words—[then] this is a piece of proposi-
tional knowledge that he is lacking. . . The point is what [this sensory quality is [like]
at this time (Lecture V: March 7, 1979). If he knows that, then, [he is] no longer in
ignorance. [And] when [D2 is]. . . able to judge ‘that it is [one sound being higher than
another]. . . ’ [and] if he really make[s] any judgment which involves the notion of [an
OCTAVE]. . . no doubt a fortiori he better has the concept of [an OCTAVE], because
it is part of [the] attributing to [oneself] precisely [the experience in question—e.g.,
that ‘I am having an experience of such-and-such quality’]. (Lecture VIII: April 4,
1979)
Notice that Kripke here refers to a piece of knowledge that D2 is lacking at t1 rather than lacking
an experience e—even if e may be a condition of possibility for D2 ’s knowledge. However, since
D2 is able to entertain the proposition p, that e has such-and-such quality, it follows that D2 has
propositional knowledge that p. This assertion rules out the ability hypothesis on which D2 would
obtain only abilities and not propositional knowledge.
It is worth noting in connection with the ability hypothesis that one of its key defenders, David
Lewis, was in the audience during the Lectures. At one point, Lewis asks whether D2 would not
be just acquiring an “ability” or a “recognitional capacity” and whether experiencing a sound and
having the concept would not simply involve an ability such as “detecting” or “recognizing” a
sound (Lecture V: March 7, 1979). The discussion continues:
Lewis: The question is. . . why is not this capacity to recognize itself the whole story?
Kripke: I do not accept the characterization of what I am saying as it is [a] capacity
to recognize. That is something else. That is not what I mean by having the concept
of [an OCTAVE and/or knowing what it is]. If [D2 ] know[s] what. . . this is [like],
it is the [the quality of sound] that [D2 ] is referring to whenever he uses the term
[‘octave’]. Just as Beethoven [or D3 ], even after being deaf, could say ‘this sound’
[rather than ‘that sound’] and may not be [recognizing or] remembering any particu-
lar auditory experiences. There is a ‘this,’ according to me, that is what the denotation
of the [sound] is. [This discussion has] all just been phrased in terms of recognitional
capacity, which I do not think is a correct statement of what I had in mind. . . [and]
this keeps being said again and again. . . I think someone could have the capacity to
recognize [an experience] and not know what the term [OCTAVE] is in my sense. . .
[All I can] tell [is] that. . . if you know what it is [like to hear this particular sound],
then you know what sound you are talking about; otherwise, not.19 (Lecture VIII:
April 4, 1979)
Before closing the point, Kripke adds the following:
Cases where we would have an ability. . . [or] various kinds of recognitional capacity in
terms of correctly produced [responses] are not sufficient for having various concepts
without experiences. Either because there are no experiences to have the concepts of,
or because though there are these experiences, we [judge] them in the wrong way.
(Lecture VIII: April 4, 1979)
6.2 Old-fact/new-way
A different response to the knowledge argument in Jackson’s version is that, while Mary does gain
propositional knowledge in a sense, really this is just a “new way” of “representing” or “conceptu-
alizing” facts that she already knew while she lived in the black-and-white room—i.e., “old facts”
under different “modes of presentation” (e.g., Horgan, 1984; Loar, 1997/1990; Tye, 2000). This view
is known in the literature as the “old-fact/new-way” view.
Some proponents of the “old-fact/new-way” view, are inspired by Kripke’s account of meta-
physical truths provided in Naming and Necessity; in particular by his examples of a posteriori
necessities: facts that are necessarily true, and yet knowable only by empirical investigation. These
proponents embrace Kripke’s account—arguably, to dismantle criticisms of materialism in fur-
therance of a form of “a posteriori materialism”—and claim that mental facts—e.g., the facts about
color experiences that Mary learns—are identical with physical facts. If physical facts are identical
to mental facts, then physical facts are necessarily mental facts since the physical concept and the
mental concept rigidly designate the same properties in every possible world.
12 RENERO
Even though proponents of this view accept that physical concepts are different from or “cogni-
tively independent” of mental concepts, they maintain that the mental fact is identical a posteriori
to the physical fact. The implication of this claim is that the new knowledge that post-release Mary
gets would be analogous to knowledge of identity statements such as “Hesperus is Phosphorus”—
i.e., a single fact under different modes of presentation: the morning star and the evening star—or
“heat is molecular motion”—i.e., the same property instantiated by a single fact under two differ-
ent concepts: ‘heat’ and ‘molecular motion.’ If we can know that the physical fact (P) is identical
to the mental fact (M) only by empirical investigation, the implication—if P then M—would be
an a posteriori entailment.20
Kripke seems to respond to the “old-fact/new-way” view by adopting a version of what is known
either as the “Max Black objection” (Smart, 1959), the “distinct-property thesis” (Chalmers, 2010),
or the property-dualism argument (White, 1986; 2007; 2010; Block, 2007). According to this thesis,
when P is a posteriori identical with M, there must be distinct properties associated with P and
M, since the physical concepts and the mental concepts pick out their referents through distinct
properties:
If a thing X and a thing Y cannot be contingently “identical,” what can be the case. . .
is that it is a contingent fact about a single thing X, that a single thing X satisfies two
different descriptions, or has two. . . uniquely identifying properties [i.e., the a pos-
teriority must have something to do with one thing having two uniquely identifying
properties [n]. Now, if there is some. . . identity that, say. . . ‘a certain type of brain state
is a type of [auditory state],’ this “identity” will have to boil down to one thing hav-
ing two different properties [entirely different in kind] . . . One will be the property of
being-this-brain-state and the other one will be the property of being-[this-auditory-
state] . . . So, it cannot be. . . that one and the same thing is identified in both ways.
(Lecture III: February 21, 1979)
Further, if the distinct property thesis is true, then the deaf person might have a new way to
refer to the relevant state. The way to respond to the old-fact/new-way view is by introducing a
new property associated with the auditory terms, and that by itself would falsify materialism in
the first place. Kripke suggests that there is a “special property.” The auditory experience—unlike
the “sound out there” (Lecture V: March 7, 1979)—seems to determine its referent by a “spe-
cial property”: the property of being-an-auditory-experience itself, by virtue of its phenomenal
character.
He goes on:
According to me, if [we assume that] the physical state is the [auditory] experience, it
still must have some property: being experienced. . . [But this is not a physical property,
and it cannot be true of the physical state. Instead, such property: “being experienced”
or] felt quality, as far as his conscious experience is concerned [is true of the auditory
state] (Lecture VIII: April 4, 1979). So, the auditory state has a property that the physi-
cal state does not have. [Therefore,] it is granted that we cannot identify the [auditory]
quality [with any physical property]. (Lecture V: March 7, 1979)
As these two passages suggest, Kripke not only endorses a form of property dualism to respond
to the old-fact/new-way view, but he also seems to offer further response by arguing that the facts
or truths at stake are not necessary and a posteriori. So, that is not the reason for which the deaf
person fails to know the relevant mental truths—e.g., an auditory fact instantiated by a particular
experience such as hearing notes an octave apart. The deaf person could know the antecedent
of the conditional without knowing the consequent. If there were a necessary a posteriori truth
there must be “a corresponding truth” that the deaf person already could have known—because
he knew all physical facts (or truths) if materialism is true. And if he knew this, then he also
would have to know the necessary a posteriori truth. Kripke reminds us that coming to know an
a posteriori identity always involves also coming to know some contingent fact: “Wherever you
have a necessary a posteriori truth there is a corresponding contingent truth which, so to speak,
allows us to grasp the [alleged] “necessary truth” in the way we do” (Lecture I: February 7, 1979
[n]).
However, since the deaf person did not know the mental fact (M), and if M “is not settled from
[or not entailed by P or] the entire physical [fact]” (Lecture V: March 7, 1979), it follows that such
an M cannot be the same (single) fact that the deaf person knew under a different mode of presen-
tation. M is not necessitated a posteriori by P. So, the conditional ‘if P then M’ cannot be necessary
and a posteriori.
6.3 The phenomenal-concept strategy
It has been objected in the literature that Jackson’s Mary’s ignorance is just the result of lacking
the relevant concept. Mary does not know “what it is like” to see red just because she does not
have the concept RED; but once she has it, materialists claim, she can know it. This strategy is at
the core of the so-called the “phenomenal-concept strategy” (PCS) (Stoljar, 2005). This strategy is
also committed to the claim that having the experience is the condition of possibility for having
the concept. In its simplest form, it argues that since Mary has not had the experience of redness,
she cannot have the concept RED. But once Mary has the experience, she has the concept and can
know “what it is like” to see red.
Kripke seems to respond to this strategy. Even if the deaf person has the relevant concept, he
still cannot know everything there is to know. The deaf person cannot deduce the relevant mental
fact—about himself and other people—from the complete physical description of the world. If this
is true, it seems there is a way in which Kripke’s formulations for his thought experiment may be a
response to PCS. If Kripke holds that the deaf person may have the concept, and yet cannot make
the deduction from the complete physical description of the world, it follows that Kripke goes
through his D2 and D3 cases in the same direction as Marianna’s case (Nida-Rümelin, 2004/1995;
1998) and Experienced Mary’s case (Stoljar, 2005; 2006) which do the work to respond to the PCS.
Kripke also seems to anticipate that having the experience is not the condition of possibility to
have the concept; the deaf person can learn there are certain mental concepts, without having
had the relevant experience. So, it turns out that, basically, there is also another possible response
to PCS.
Recall that throughout his view, Kripke confirms that one of the purposes of offering the vari-
ous scenarios is to dramatize “the fact that [the deaf person] cannot know certain things a priori.”
Arguably, one of the initial reasons for the impossibility of such a deduction is that auditory con-
cepts are not even available to someone who is deaf. Nonetheless, as an anticipation of a materialist
objection, Kripke has right in the development of his various scenarios the following thesis: even
if the deaf person were to have the concept c, yet he would not know all the facts fs there are to
know—henceforth, the ‘having the concept’ thesis.
14 RENERO
Addressing some gaps may shed light on this thesis. In going through Kripke’s cases, notice
his D1 congenitally deaf case: There are certain things that D1 cannot figure out using a priori
reasoning. Namely, from knowing all physical facts and having a complete description of the world
in physical terms, D1 cannot even understand auditory statements; there is a gap in understanding.
In contrast, notice the D2 case: D2 has all physical knowledge, and once she gets the concept c,
she starts “recording,” “labelling,” and “classifying” auditory states [n]. But there is still an epis-
temic gap which leads to the knowledge argument. Namely, even if D2 has the concept by having
exposure to books about music and, in principle, she understands the relevant statements, D2
still would not know all facts there are to know. For example, D2 “has all these auditory concepts:
[middle-C, octave, and so on,] but he cannot tell [both particular auditory experiences and] which
wave-vibrations. . . were correlated with middle-C” (Lecture V: March 7, 1979).
Further, notice the D3 case: D3 also has all physical knowledge, but also there is still an epistemic
gap. If D3 does not know something, it may be because even having had the experience and having
the concept—gotten from a “musical group,” for example—she does not remember some of them.
Yet D3 does not know all the facts there are to know. So, for both D2 and D3 cases, the PCS does not
apply. The having the concept thesis holds and the second premise of the knowledge argument is
still true.
7 A COMPARISON WITH JACKSON
I conclude by filling in the central details as to how Kripke’s deaf person thought experiment
(1979) run in parallel to Jackson’s Mary thought experiment (1982), and how Kripke’s knowledge
argument contributes to or goes beyond Jackson’s knowledge argument.
First, there are important aspects in which Kripke’s thought experiment seems to run parallel
to Jackson’s thought experiment. Both thought experiments agree with “the complete physical-
knowledge claim”: that individuals in similar circumstances, who are experts respectively in the
neuroscience of vision and audition, know everything that there is to be known about the mate-
rial description of the world at t0 —either on Mary’s pre-release from a black-and-white room or
the deaf person’s pre-surgery. They also agree with “the learning claim”: that at t1 the individ-
uals learn new facts which they did not know at t0 . Mary is able to see some colors while the
deaf person comes to know “what it is like” to hear a particular sound for the first time. If the
complete physical-knowledge claim and the learning claim are true, then “the non-deducibility
claim” holds—i.e., the facts—about vision and audition—that the individuals learn at t1 cannot be
a priori deducible from the complete material description of the world. Also, both thought exper-
iments agree that consciousness poses a challenge to materialism; physical information cannot
amount to “what it is like” to experience a particular color or sound. There are facts about visual
or auditory experiences that are not entailed by the physical facts, or that are not included in the
“complete” physical description of the world. So, the alleged complete physical-knowledge claim
is not sufficient for those individuals to know all the facts about human vision and audition.
Second, while Kripke endorses the knowledge argument against materialism in the general
or standard form of the argument for the possibility to know, he also seems to establish another
form of the argument for the impossibility to know. In contrast, Jackson seems to formulate his
argument only in virtue of the possibility form. Nonetheless, it may be the case that Jackson’s Mary
potentially endorses the impossibility form of the argument. If Mary is someone who knows only
the physical facts and every fact deducible from them, it is not the case that she knows all the
facts. Otherwise, she could have known what it is like to see color. In that sense, it is not possible
for her to know only the physical facts (understood as to include every fact deducible a priori from
physical facts) and know all the facts. This aspect has not been explored in Jackson’s discussion
yet. How exactly the possibility and impossibility arguments differ and whether endorsing only
the possibility form leads to endorsing the impossibility form or not, are questions that I leave for
future work.
Furthermore, unlike Jackson, Kripke seems to anticipate objections to three major materialist
strategies for responding to the knowledge argument: the ability hypothesis, the old-fact/new-
way view, and the phenomenal concept strategy.21 If Kripke meets the challenges posed by these
materialist strategies, then there are no further apparent shortcomings of the knowledge argu-
ment along the lines of the mentioned objections. As we have seen, Kripke also provides a picture
of the change in the deaf person’s knowledge when he used physical concepts at t0 versus when
he uses phenomenal concepts at t1 , which is exhibited in the deaf person thought experiment.
In my view, these contributions also illustrate Kripke’s attempt to show that certain mental facts
cannot be described in physical terms—or that phenomenal content cannot be described using
physical terms. Hence, mental facts are not deducible from physical facts. Kripke’s thought exper-
iment provides an account of descriptions of the phenomenal character of auditory experiences,
including phenomenal relations and phenomenal changes.
Most importantly, similar to Jackson, Kripke’s formulation of materialism in terms of “a priori
physicalism” suggests that a priori physicalism cannot accommodate consciousness. The com-
plete physical description of the world does not a priori entail the facts about consciousness.
At stake is not merely the acquisition of knowledge, but also the understanding of conscious
states, which has important implications for phenomenal knowledge and for the prospects of
materialism. I have shown the significance of Kripke’s knowledge argument against materialism
by emphasizing important respects where it goes beyond Jackson’s argument. The deaf person
thought experiment strengthens the case against materialism and offers new challenges for the
materialist.
AC K N OW L E D G E M E N T S
The paper entitled “Kripke’s knowledge argument against materialism,” which is one part of a
larger project, was supervised by Saul Kripke from August 2016 to April 2022. The manuscript is
based on audio recordings of his Lectures on the Philosophy of Mind delivered at Princeton Uni-
versity in the Spring term of 1979, which I transcribed and supplemented from notes on Kripke’s
lectures by Nathan Salmon. I am deeply grateful to Saul Kripke for making this project possible
by giving me the opportunity to work on his philosophy of mind for the past six years. He was
consulted and involved in every stage of the manuscript. Most importantly, I thank him for giving
me permission to include unpublished excerpts from his Lectures on the Philosophy of Mind. I
dedicate this paper to the memory of Saul.
I worked on this project while being both an Affiliated Research Scholar in the Philosophy
of Mind in the Saul Kripke Center at the Graduate Center, City University of New York (2018-
present)—previously on Optional Practical Training also at the Kripke Center (2017-2018)—, and
a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Center for Mind, Brain, and Consciousness, Philosophy
Department at New York University (2017-2021).
Three people have been key in this project and deserve special acknowledgement: first, I am
indebted to David Chalmers for his time and guidance. David was the first one to understand
the philosophical relevance of this project. He offered extensive and invaluable comments while
being my supervisor and mentor. Second, Nathan Salmon made the project possible through doc-
umenting Saul’s lectures using audio recording and making notes. Nathan’s generous donation
16 RENERO
of his materials to the Kripke Center for research provided the opportunity to continue Saul’s
legacy. Third, Daniel Stoljar offered his time for deep discussion. Daniel’s mind was a constant
inspiration, and his support was fundamental when I was finishing this project.
Shorter versions of this project were delivered at UNAM (August 2016); University of Tokyo,
Japan (December 2016); the Graduate Center, CUNY (May 2017); New York University (Decem-
ber 2017); Kripke’s online seminar the Graduate Center, CUNY (April 2021); Princeton University
(October 2021), Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain (September 2022), and the Pacific
Division Meeting of the American Philosophical Association (April 2023). Thanks to those audi-
ences for feedback. I am also grateful to Ned Block, Paul Boghossian, John Burgess, Aslan Cohen,
Michael Devitt, Miguel Ángel Fernández-Vargas, Hartry Field, Mario Gómez-Torrente, Eliza-
beth Harman, Allen Hazen, Daniel Isaacson, Frank Jackson, Victoria McGeer, Barbara Montero,
Thomas Nagel, David Papineau, Philip Pettit, Teresa Robertson-Ishii, Howard Robinson, Gideon
Rosen, and Iakovos Vasiliou for their input.
Special thanks to the Saul Kripke Center: Oliver Marshall, Gary Ostertag, Romina Padró, Yale
Weiss, and the GC Philosophy Department at CUNY for providing the materials and conditions
for working on this project.
ENDNOTES
1
Kripke uses ‘materialism’, ‘material’ ‘physicalism’, ‘physical’ interchangeably, as I do here. He acknowledges the
term ‘physicalism’ was used by Neurath and Carnap as a linguistic thesis “about a complete language of science,”
but Kripke considers it a metaphysical thesis.
2
Unless I indicate otherwise, I will quote key passages from Kripke’s 1979 Lectures on the Philosophy of Mind and
notes [n] by referring to their dates.
3
The use of the term deaf to refer to hearing impaired people or those who have not hearing at all, is not intended
to be disrespectful.
4
Robinson (1982) alludes to a deaf hypothetical visitor and to a deaf omniscient scientist who do not know “what
it is like” to hear a sound. Although his and Jackson’s Mary case were published the same year, the latter was
preferable because Robinson’s scientist was not “made to hear” (Stoljar & Nagasawa, 2004, p.12).
5
Kripke’s responses come with caveats: some responses arise from explicit prevention of objections and further
refinements; others can be inferred by his interchange with the audience or recurrent clarifications.
6
The sentence in parenthesis is present in some versions and absent in others.
7
Unfortunately, I cannot do justice to all the contributions to the discussion of the knowledge argument here. For a
list of contributions to it, see Ludlow et al., 2004, pp. 443–456. For contemporary discussion on what physicalism
requires, see Stoljar, 2010; Jackson, 2020.
8
For discussion about some of these views by Kripke in N&N and elsewhere, see for example: Burgess, 2013;
Buechner, 2011; Shoemaker, 2011.
9
For example: “The point is that if these [physical facts] are all the facts about the world, someone who knew them
would not know everything, whether we are in a position to know all these things or not. Therefore, if there is
something—whether or not it is still unknown to us—that he could not know (even given that he knew all these
[physical facts]), he would have to ask God. God knows more than he does somehow because he [God] knows
the answer to this question that he [the physicalist] does not know the answer to. Given that, then, materialism
is not true, I mean it might be interesting if someone who knew the entire materialist history of the world could
know everything that we in practice can know, but if that were true, then it would be a very striking fact, though
it seems to me to be false from some of [my] examples [of deaf people].” (Lecture V: March 7, 1979).
10
Recall Jackson’s thought experiment and his argument: Pre-release Mary knows all the physical facts there are to
know. Although Mary has complete physical knowledge, she seems to lack phenomenal knowledge. Post-release
Mary learns something new concerning visual experiences. If Mary gains knowledge which was not included in
the complete knowledge she had, then materialism is false.
11
The standard definition of ‘audism’ is a belief or prejudice that those who can hear are better to those who are
hard of hearing. Kripke uses ‘anaudism’ to refer to the person who lacks hearing—where ‘an’ means ‘without’
and ‘audism’ means ‘hearing.’ Other connotations of the term are not intended here.
12
Kripke also argues that treating conscious states as mere physical states is unconvincing and indicates that this
issue is in urgent need of attention. He expresses sympathy with Thomas Nagel’s ideas in, at least, two respects:
that “questions of identity between brain and mind are also somehow rather ‘dark sayings’ that we do not really
grasp” (Lecture III: February 21, 1979). And that “one of the purposes [of the deaf-person case is] to give some
kind of. . . support to [the] kind of issue that. . . Nagel is talking about in his “bat” paper [1974]; namely, what an
experience is like for the being (who experiences), what [Nagel] called the subjective character of experience”
(Lecture V: March 7, 1979).
13
The difficulty is that even the hearing person cannot distinguish a middle-C from a C-sharp (C♯) which raises
the pitch a half-step or semitone, or this from a B natural.
14
Similarly, to Jackson, Kripke seems to suggest that the epistemic gap leads to a metaphysical gap. “If the [thesis
that the] totality of all facts [holds]. . . it ought to be able to settle everything [or it entails every fact. However
there are facts of some other kind that actually are facts over and above all the physical facts. [If] there is some
fact ‘over and above’ the physical facts. . . [then,] there are more things in heaven and earth than there are dreamt
of in the physicalist philosophy” (Lecture V: March 7, 1979).
15
Kripke refers to Unger (1966) who claims that empiricism is false as a purely conceptual doctrine. Unger invites
us to imagine a person who had “fully developed empirical concepts but did not have any experience” (p. 49).
Kripke agrees with his claim: “I think that is right and important. But of the deaf people I am. . . [talking] about,
I will assume they are not like it, unless I stipulate otherwise” (Lecture IV: February 28, 1979).
16
In addition, “the [complete physical] description still leaves out [some facts that] must be metaphysical facts”
(Lecture I: February 7, 1979 [n]). By ‘metaphysical facts’ Kripke means those facts that are beyond the physical—
e.g., in this case, facts about the nature of the mind such as mental properties like being-an-auditory-experience.
According to Kripke, mental facts are metaphysical independent on physical facts—i.e., mental facts do not
follow from physical facts by necessity.
17
In some passages, Kripke hints that those non-physical facts such as the property or character of auditory expe-
riences “might be analogous to the case of pain—and this is what is really primary to [him]’ (Lecture VII: March
21, 1979). ‘At least formally speaking. . . it might similarly be the case about Jones has a headache” (Lecture V:
March 7, 1979). For a discussion about whether or not physical facts a priori entail mental facts, see Jackson 2000.
18
Kripke warns the audience to be careful in not using any psychophysical information of the form: “a certain
sound wave is middle-C,” “440 is A above middle-C,” etc.
19
Furthermore, Kripke claims: the individual “must know that it is to judge that a certain pair of sounds is harmo-
nious [in tone, for example] (Lecture IV: February 28, 1979 [n]). Kripke adds: ’what is important [once] having
the concept is application to the relevant [fact or] internal experience” [n], then he would be “able to judge ‘that
it is a [low pitch]’” (Lecture VIII: April 4, 1979).
20
For discussion on the necessary a posteriori, see Stoljar, 2000.
21
While it is true that Jackson does not discuss responses in ‘Epiphenomenal Qualia’ (1982), he responds to the
ability hypothesis in ‘What Mary Doesn’t Know,’ a paper published just a few years later (1986), which is often
included in his own statement of the knowledge argument.
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UNPUBLISH ED WORK
Notes by Nathan Salmon of Saul Kripke’s Lectures on the Philosophy of Mind delivered at Princeton University in
1979.
Transcriptions by Adriana Renero of Saul Kripke’s Lectures on the Philosophy of Mind delivered at Princeton
University in 1979.
How to cite this article: Renero, A. (2023). Kripke’s knowledge argument against
materialism. Philosophical Perspectives, 1–18. https://doi.org/10.1111/phpe.12195

Philosophical Perspectives - 2023 - Renero - Kripke S Knowledge Argument Against Materialism

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DOI: 10.1111/phpe.

Kripke’s knowledge argument against

1 Saul Kripke Center, Philosophy

Department, The Graduate Center, City Abstract

In unpublished Lectures on the Philosophy of Mind at Princeton University in 1979, Kripke

Philosophical Perspectives 2023;1–18. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/phpe © 2023 Wiley Periodicals LLC. 1

2 THE KNOWLEDGE ARGUMENT IN OUTLINE

In very simple terms, we may understand a ‘knowledge argument against materialism’ to be an

Knowledge argument against materialism

Knowledge argument against materialism (impossibility form)

3 KRIPKE’S ANAUDISM CASE

If a series of successive pitches is sounded, one after another—say, running up the

4 VARIATIONS ON THE ANAUDISM CASE

Kripke indicates that whatever is deducible should be restricted up to time t:

I have considered various varieties of deaf people. To avoid. . . pitfalls though, it is

6 OBJECTIONS TO THE KNOWLEDGE ARGUMENT

6.1 The ability hypothesis

Before closing the point, Kripke adds the following:

6.3 The phenomenal-concept strategy

7 A COMPARISON WITH JACKSON

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