What Mary Didn T Know Summary

Physicalism, as described in Frank Jackson’s “What Mary Didn’t Know”, is the theory that the universe is entirely physical. Jackson writes “Physicalism is not the noncontroversial thesis that the actual world is largely physical, but that it is entirely physical. This is why physicalists must hold that complete physical knowledge is complete knowledge simpliciter,” in the second paragraph of page 303. Physicalists believe that everything in the universe is comprised solely of physical properties, and that all facts about the universe are physical facts. Physicalism is also the opposing viewpoint to mind-body dualism, which is the theory that the mind is a separate entity from the body, and that the mind is non-physical in nature.

Jackson

Jackson argues that Mary learns what it feels like for other people to experience color, therefore she learns a new fact, not about herself, but about the experiences of other people. However, she had already learned that other people can see color while inside the room.

Jackson’s knowledge argument is incorrect regarding knowledge and physicalism, and it does not effectively disprove physicalism. His argument relies on the existence of qualia, and the notion that Mary learns something when she sees color, and not just that she applies her previous knowledge to a new situation. One problem with the concept of qualia is that it's not entirely proven. By our current understanding of neuroscience, experiences can be simplified to brain states, not necessarily anything different.

Mary’s experience of colors can still be explained under the rules of physicalism. By redefining physicalism as the theory that everything that happens has a physical explanation, rather than the theory that every fact is a physical fact, Jackson’s argument is drastically weakened. Physicalism is then about to describe Mary’s experience of color as a complex chemical process within the human

The average person doesn’t learn everything about color before seeing color. Because of this, it's difficult to say whether there truly is a difference between learning something by acquaintance and learning by description. We typically learn in a way that uses both knowledge by acquaintance and knowledge by description. For example, when most people learn a new skill, they first get a verbal or written description of the task, then they do the task themselves. After practicing, they get better and better until they have acquired the skill. This type of learning is very common, and it combines both types of knowledge to effectively learn something and retain that information. Because this style of learning is very common, it's difficult to conceptually separate them in context of the knowledge argument.

Imagine that instead of a black and white room, Mary is stuck in a room where the only food she has to eat is flavorless oatmeal. In the room, she learns everything about the physical world, including how human taste buds work, and how the human body responds to certain flavors. Upon release of this room, Mary eats a habanero pepper. Mary would have a physical response to the pepper, maybe her eyes water or she feels pain in her mouth. But because she had learned everything about the physical world, she already knew that her body would respond similarly to the way it