Richard Fumerton, “Knowledge, Thought, and the Case for Dualism” (Cambridge UP, 2013)

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 seen colors. When she sees a red tomato for the first time, she learns something new: what it’s like to experience red. The Knowledge Argument has been a key move in philosophical debates about whether the mind is just the brain. In Knowledge, Thought, and the Case for Dualism (Cambridge University Press, 2013), Richard Fumerton argues 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. Fumerton, F. Wendell Miller Professor of Philosophy at the University of Iowa, weaves together discussion of core debates in epistemology, metaphysics, and philosophy of language to show how critical choices in these areas affect the force of the knowledge argument.