Knowledge Argument Against Physicalism

I will describe the Knowledge Argument and how it aims to prove that physicalism is false. I will go through the plausibility of the arguments two premises and how the conclusion is implied. I will then present an objection to the argument and how it might present a problem to the claims being made by the argument. Finally I will then asses the objection and how well the Knowledge Argument holds up against it.

The Knowledge Argument (KA) aims at refuting physicalism by claiming that there are more than just physical facts that can be learned. KA was first presented by Frank Jackson in his thought experiment about a super-scientist named Mary. The thought experiment is as follows; Mary has spent her entire life in a black and white room and

never seen color. However, she does have all the facts about color and has learned them. After learning everything about color, Mary goes outside and sees the color red. (Alter). The KA, claims that when Mary sees red she learns a new fact, one that is not physical. The argument is based on two main premises.
Premise one is; Before leaving the room, Mary knows all the physical facts (Lecture). The premise is stating, that Mary has available all the physical facts and that she can learn them. It is also claiming that all the physical facts can be provided in the colorless room Mary inhabits. Although, the scenario does is not possible since it would be dependant on two main necessities. One that Mary and her surroundings be heavily controlled. And two, that Mary be provided all physical facts, even ones that have yet to be discovered. However, the thought experiment does not have to be plausible in real life just that it can be hypothetically plausible. Because, that is how thought experiments function, they present curated scenarios.
Premise two is where the KA makes its main points. It states that; after leaving the room, Mary learns a new fact, and it is a fact about the conscious state of seeing red (Lecture). When Mary sees red, she is also learning a new fact. Since, she already knew all the physical facts before seeing red, then the fact she learns is a non-physical fact. The non-physical fact that she learns is about the conscious state of seeing red. The premise is stating that, knowledge of all physical facts will not lead to knowledge of all conscious states (Fesser). The fact learned about the conscious state of seeing red is a non-physical fact because you cannot learn the fact without going through the conscious state.
The conclusion is as follows; there is a fact about the phenomenology of a conscious state, which is not a physical fact.

So Physicalism is false (Lecture). Physicalism is the thesis that all mental states are physical states. Therefore, conscious states would also have to be physical states. Concluding, that all facts about conscious states are also facts about physical states. However, in the KA there is a fact that Mary learns that is not a physical fact. Mary, knew before leaving the room and seeing red, all the physical facts about red and seeing red. But once she sees red, she goes through a conscious state of seeing red that gives her new information about what it is like to see red, that new information is a fact. And that fact is not a physical fact because she had to go through a conscious state, something that cannot be provided by all the physical

facts.
The strongest objection to the KA is one that objects to premise two, by claiming that Mary does not learn a new fact but instead learns the same fact under a different guise (Alter).

Robert van Gulick, elaborates on this objection by making a distinction of different types of propositions. The guises are different modes of propositions. There are propositions that are different in a coarse-grain or fine-grain mode. An example is, H2O and water. In a coarse-grained mode, two propositions would be the same because they would hold the “same truth value in any every possible world”. H2O and water are the same physical thing and therefore anything that is true about H2O would also be true about water. However, in a fine-grained mode, those two propositions would not be the same because it would take into account that the two propositions are communicating different concepts. If you did not know that H2O and water where the same physical thing, you could still know about both of them completely but hold them to be two different concepts (Fesser). Mary sees the color red, she did not learn a new fact but instead learned a proposition in a fine-grained mode. Seeing red has a different concept than knowing all there is to know about red. They both hold the same truth value. Mary does not learn a new fact but instead learns a new way of understanding all the facts she already knew about

red.
I do not think that the objection succeeds because, Mary still learned a new fact, that there are different propositions about the color red (both readings). Although they are different modes of the same propositions they are still different propositions and therefore different facts. She learned the fact about what red looks like. I think that the KA succeeds at demonstrating a problem with in physicalism, its inability to fully connect conscious states to the physical. It shows that the debate about our mental states is more complicated than what just physically occurs within the brain of a person. However, I do not think that it settles the debate because there are also physical arguments against dualist theories that have no immediate solutions. This can be due to the fact, that we have yet to have all the available information to make a clear decision.