Richard Fumerton, “Knowledge, Thought, and the Case for Dualism” (Cambridge UP, 2013)
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What is the Knowledge Argument and why does it matter for dualism?
Hello and welcome to New Books in Philosophy, a podcast channel with the New Books Network. I'm Carrie Figdur of the University of Iowa and I'm co host of the channel along with Robert Talise of Vanderbilt University. Together we bring you conversations with philosophers about their new books in ethics, metaphysics, epistemology, and many other areas of contemporary inquiry. Today's inter interview is with Richard Fummerton, F Wendell Miller, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Iowa. His new book Knowledge, Thought and the Case for Dualism, is just out from Cambridge University Press. A few years back Frank Jackson articulated a thought experiment about a brilliant neuroscientist who knew everything there was to know about the physical world, but who had never had the experience of seeing color.
When she sees a red tomato for the first time, she learns something new, what it's like to experience red. The knowledge arguments spawned a cottage industry of defenses and counter arguments for and against the claim that the mind could be identified with the brain. In his new book, Fumerton argues that the force of the knowledge argument depends on an account of knowledge and that the most motivated defense of the dualist position stems from a commitment to an internalist foundationalist epistemology, in much the way that Descartes argued for dualism centuries ago. Farmerton shows how core issues in epistemology, metaphysics, and philosophy of language play a role in the argument, weaving together a wide variety of debates in contemporary analytic philosophy into his discussion.
Let's turn to the interview. Hello, Richard Fummerton. Are you there? I am. Hi, welcome to New Books in Philosophy.
Well, thank you very much for uh agreeing to talk to me about uh my new book. Very excited about it.
Uh well it's it's hardly agreeing to. I'm looking forward to our conversation. Um Uh so maybe you can start us off by uh giving us a little background on on what led you to write uh to write the book. Um the knowledge argument has been around for a while. Um, you know, you one might think that all the permutations and possible discussions have been have been touched on, but you know, you obviously feel that, you know, it it really needs to be um approached from a from a a different perspective than it has been. Um so can you explain what uh the the history of the book.
Yeah, I suppose um uh to be honest, the history of the book goes all the way back to my my very first philosophy course at the University of Toronto. Uh like a lot of students, uh my first course uh Heavily po focused on on Descartes. It was a little tutorial. There were three people in the course and one of them dropped out. So there's no room to hide. We we we um we had some class pretty well prepared. And um I got absolutely fascinated by Descartes. You can't be fascinated by Descartes without thinking long and hard about Both his views about knowledge and his search for secure foundations and of course famously his views about the mind. uh particularly his view that it's a mistake to try to identify the mind with the body.
So I've been interested in this topic literally for about uh fifty years. You you asked a good question. You asked a s I mean the knowledge argument, I guess, as I think of it goes back well, well before Jackson, so It's not just uh a few decades now that people have been arguing back. force on a several hundred years that people have sent. arguing back and forth on In general I guess I'm inclined to think that advances in philosophy tend not to be Um with a few exceptions. They cannot The huge revolutions. uh that advances are made by making a point here a little more clearly, by making an argument here a little bit more persuasively, by coming up with a response to objections that people have raised, two of you.
Um I don't think in this book uh I've uh advanced the position in in general outline it was no ever held. Uh and I think that people have been um trying out at least arguments similar to the arguments I can get uh consider in this book.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is the Knowledge Argument and why does it matter for dualism?
0:05–9:24
2
How did Fumerton’s early encounter with Descartes shape his book?
9:24–18:46
3
What is property dualism and how does it differ from substance dualism?
18:46–26:36
4
How does internalist foundationalism support a dualist position?
26:36–35:19
5
What role does direct acquaintance play in knowing mental states?
35:19–44:34
6
How does Fumerton respond to common objections to the Knowledge Argument?
44:34–52:11
7
Why does Fumerton view physicalism as fundamentally misguided?
52:11–1:00:31
8
What are Fumerton’s future philosophical projects after this book?
1:00:31–1:10:27
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