What Mary Didn T Know

Frank Jackson’s, “What Mary Didn’t Know” is a thought experiment that argues against physicalism, a philosophical view that insists everything in the actual world, including consciousness, is exclusively physical. Physicalism claims that all mental states can be reduced to, or explained by, physical states of the brain. Jackson argues that if someone can discern complete physical proficiency of a phenomenon, they may not possess absolute knowledge of that phenomenon. The subjective experience of qualia, or what it feels like to experience a particular sensation cannot be diminished to physical states. Jackson uses Mary as a symbol to illustrate this subject. Mary is a brilliant scientist who has spent her entire life enclosed in a black-and-white

This includes the neurological processes that develop in the brain when someone sees the color red. Physicalism states that everything that exists in the world can be elucidated by physical processes. Therefore, since color perception is a physical phenomenon, Mary should have sufficient cognizance of the physical process to be aware of color perception. However, when Mary leaves the black-and-white room for the first time and sees color, she has a new experience, something that was not in her understanding of the physical processes. If physicalism were true, then Mary's new knowledge would be reducible to physical facts. However, since Mary's new awareness is not generalized to physical facts, physicalism must be faulty. Jackson proclaims that the encounter of seeing color cannot be fully described by physical knowledge alone. He claims that there is a qualitative aspect to conscious experience that cannot be diminished to physical processes. Jackson's argument is further reinforced by the fact that the concept of qualia is irreducible. Consequently, qualia cannot be lessened to physical processes because they are inherently subjective

Even if we had complete physical proficiency of the world, like Mary, there would still be particular aspects of the world that we could not fully comprehend without undergoing them directly. In Mary’s case, Jackson declares that her recognition of the physical world that produces color perception is not adequate to prepare her for the ordeal of actually experiencing color. Her intelligence of the physical world only provided her with a deficient perception of the occurrence. This suggests that there are various aspects of consciousness that cannot be thoroughly explained by physical processes alone and that there may be an “explanatory gap” between physical processes and the conscious experience. Jackson's assertion has been the subject of much debate and criticism. Some philosophers have debated the idea that Mary's new wisdom is not reducible to physical data, indicating that it is purely a matter of capturing new information about the physical processes involved in color vision. Nevertheless, others have suggested that Mary's new insight is not knowledge of a new fact, but rather understanding of an already-known fact in a new