Re: A troubling paradox...

Eray Ozkural  exa says...

>The knowledge argument to my mind never showed the impossibility of
>characterizing subjective experience. Rather, it showed the
>categorical difference between a computation and a theory of
>computation, or should I say the meta-language and object-language
>distinction!?

I don't quite see the connection with meta-language and
object-language, but it seems clear to me (for example)
that there is a difference between (1) *knowing* everything
there is to know about seeing the color blue and (2) actually
*seeing* the color blue. No amount of knowledge about vision
can put you into a state of seeing a particular color, and so
when you *are* in that state for the first time, it's a new
experience. It may not be correct to call it new *knowledge*
because unlike other sorts of knowledge, you can't reason
with it, you can't apply it to solve problems.

The difference between intellectual knowledge and experiential
knowledge is subtler in a case such as knowing how to ride
a bicycle or knowing how to play a piano piece. You can
memorize the physics of bicycle movement and stil not be
able to ride a bicycle, because riding a bicycle requires
not just factual knowledge, but the ability to move one's
arms and legs and body in the right way. That ability is
(I believe) something beyond conscious knowledge. Or in
the case of playing a piano, I may very well *know* the
sequence of keys to strike to play Gershwin's "Rhapsody
in Blue", but until I practice it, my fingers just won't
move fast or accurately enough.

So, to me, there is a clear difference between intellectual
knowledge and experiential knowledge, but I don't think that
difference has anything to do with refuting materialism.