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Subjective Character and Reflexive Content
Author(s) -
ROSENTHAL DAVID M.
Publication year - 2004
Publication title -
philosophy and phenomenological research
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.7
H-Index - 39
eISSN - 1933-1592
pISSN - 0031-8205
DOI - 10.1111/j.1933-1592.2004.tb00335.x
Subject(s) - character (mathematics) , content (measure theory) , reflexivity , citation , center (category theory) , sociology , epistemology , philosophy , computer science , library science , social science , mathematical analysis , chemistry , geometry , mathematics , crystallography
I. Zombies and the Knowledge Argument John Perry's splendid book, Knowledge, Possibility, and Consciousness, sets out to dispel the three main objections currently lodged against mindbody materialism. These are the objection from the alleged possibility of zombies, the knowledge argument made famous by Frank Jackson, and the modal objections due principally to Saul A. Kripke and David Chalmers.1 The discussion is penetrating throughout, and it develops many points in illuminating detail. Perry argues that the knowledge and modal arguments both rest on a failure to distinguish two kinds of content, which he calls subject-matter content and reflexive content. The subject-matter content of a thought consists in the truth conditions that must be satisfied by the objects and properties the thought is about. As Perry notes, discussions of content typically assume without comment that this is all there is to content.