David Lewis - What Experience Teaches

Fill-in-the-blank practice flashcards reviewing David Lewis's paper 'What Experience Teaches', covering key concepts, examples, arguments, and hypotheses.

David Lewis uses the example of smelling skunks and tasting __________ to illustrate that science lessons cannot replace direct experience.

Vegemite

In Frank Jackson's thought experiment, Mary is a scientist who has lived from birth in a room where everything is __________.

black or white

Humans cannot know what experience is like for a bat because bats possess an alien __________ sense.

sonar

Lewis argues that experience being the best teacher for knowing what an experience is like is not a necessary truth, but a __________ truth.

contingent

A trained musician can know what hearing new music would be like by reading a score through the practice of __________.

sight-reading

The First Way to miss the point wrongly assumes that 'know what it's like' simply means 'know what it __________'.

resembles

Lewis illustrates the Second Way to miss the point using the example of driving a __________ fast on a cold, stormy night.

steam locomotive

The Third Way to miss the point confuses knowing what an experience is like with irreducibly egocentric or __________ knowledge.

de se

The hypothesis that there is an irreducibly different kind of non-physical information acquired through experience is called the Hypothesis of __________ Information.

Phenomenal

A person who has the exact functional organization of normal people when looking at red but has no experiences at all represents a case of __________ qualia.

absent

Minimal Materialism is defined as a supervenience thesis stating that there is no difference without __________ difference.

physical

Frank Jackson's refutation of materialism based on phenomenal information is known as the __________ Argument.

Knowledge

To avoid counterexamples involving spooky worlds, Lewis restricts the materialist supervenience thesis to worlds that have nothing wholly __________ to our world.

alien

The Fourth Way look-alike hypothesis treats information merely as distinctive __________ left in the brain or on film.

traces

The Fifth Way look-alike hypothesis relies on the idea that experience causes a person's language of thought to gain new __________.

words

The Sixth Way look-alike hypothesis replaces genuine possibilities with linguistic ersatz possibilities, which are maximal consistent sets of __________.

sentences

Lewis defines __________ as the science of all non-physical things, properties, causal processes, and laws of nature required to explain mental actions.

parapsychology

Believing that the phenomenal aspect of the world causes physical particle movement without being epiphenomenal means betting against the truth of __________.

physics

The alternative account summarized by Laurence Nemirow, which explains knowing what an experience is like as acquiring abilities rather than facts, is called the __________ Hypothesis.

Ability

According to the Ability Hypothesis, knowing what an experience is like is not knowing-that, but rather __________-how.

knowing

Under the Ability Hypothesis, having an experience equips a person with abilities to remember, imagine, and __________ the experience.

recognize

Lewis notes that memorizing a detailed geometrical description does not automatically give someone the ability to recognize a __________ locomotive by sight.

C-38

Along with information and ability, Lewis identifies __________ as a third element in mixed uses of the word 'know', such as knowing Lloyd George.

acquaintance