Frank Jackson's What Mary Didn T Know

In What Mary Didn’t Know, Frank Jackson identifies a knowledge argument against physicalism, i.e., the view that everything that exists is no more extensive than its physical properties. The knowledge argument aims to establish that conscious experience involves non-physical properties. It rests on the idea that someone who has complete physical knowledge about another conscious being might yet lack knowledge about how it feels to have the experiences of that being.

Jackson formulates his argument around a thought experiment. He makes up a situation in which a woman, Mary, is confined to a black-and-white room and is educated through black-and-white books and through lectures relayed on a black-and white television. In this way she learns

everything there is to know about the physical nature of the world. Specifically, in the context of the argument, she learns the neurophysiology of vision, understanding which wavelength combinations stimulate the retina, how the signals travel to the brain, and how our brain processes that information. She understands the concept of colors and the physical aspect behind it. Jackson, however, asks what will happen when Mary is released from her black and white room into the real world. Will she learn anything new? If physicalism were true, then Mary would know everything about human color vision before leaving the room. But it would seem that she learns something new when she leaves. She learns what it’s like to see colors, that is, she learns about qualia, the properties that characterize what it’s like. Jackson, therefore points out that Mary, in fact, does not know everything about the world. Hence, physicalism is false.
Lewis and Nemirow form a rebuttal to this argument. They agree that Mary makes a genuine discovery when she learns what it is like to experience redness, but they deny that her discovery involves coming to know a fact of what she didn’t already know. According to them, Mary's discovery is a discovery of new abilities rather than new facts. That is, her discovery of what it is like to experience redness consists merely in her acquiring new knowledge of how to do certain things, and not necessarily actual knowledge. Knowledge is split in two types, knowledge-how and knowledge-that; she learns knowledge-how (abilities) but not knowledge-that (facts). Essentially, the rebuttal focuses qualia not as knowledge but as ability.
Jackson recognizes and agrees on some aspects of their hypothesis.

He agrees that she does acquire new abilities, such as the ability to imagine what seeing, remembering, and recognizing what red is like. But he questions, is it plausible that is all she will acquire? Earlier on in the argument, Jackson establishes that the knowledge Mary lacked is the knowledge about the experiences of others, not about her own. Upon leaving the room, she surely experiences something new and attains new knowledge, arguably abilities, but, when she sees her first red tomato, she will realize how impoverished her conception of the mental life of others had been all along. The features of their experiences were only known to them and hidden to her until she walked out of the room. Assuming again she knew all the physical facts about them, what she did not know was not the facts of experiences, but of actual facts of them. In addition to this initial claim, Jackson introduces an interesting point. He says lets assume Mary had a lecture on skepticism when she was in the room. When she is let out and sees a red tomato, she understands better what other people’s conscious experience is like. But then she remembers skepticism. She doubts herself; does she actually know more of their experience? Jackson points out that her representational abilities remained constant throughout, so what was she indecisive about? At this point, he leads the reader to his answer- she learns factual knowledge of

others. There would be nothing to agonize about if all she acquired was abilities.
Jackson’s argument here is successful in response to the abilities hypothesis.

He first acknowledges the hypothesis, accepting but also implementing it in his response. He says whether or not quale is knowledge or abilities, it still does not change the fact that she learned factual information of other people. Quale is completely subjective, we don’t know how others perceive the color red or the smell of rose, but we do know that they have their own conscious experience. Although, Mary knew that there was such an experience existent, actually seeing red gives her the knowledge of what it is like to perceive it. Therefore, the experience could give her an idea, or some kind of knowledge that she did not know before of other people. Including skepticism in the argument highlights Mary’s thought process that can only by achieved through facts. If qualia were abilities, she would have nothing to think about. This stimulates the reader to think, what if she only achieved abilities? That still wouldn’t alter the fact that the abilities now give her a way to understand people better. She was aware of the abilities before her release, knowing she did not possess them, but then acquiring those abilities would cause her to question herself; do I now know more of others. The skepticism itself highlights factual knowledge. Thus it can be conceded that qualia are real properties, since there

is
a difference between a person who has access to a particular quale and one who does not.
Conclusively, Jackson’s success in the argument is the intuition that Mary has been deprived of some vital information to do with the experience of redness. The argument rests on the idea that someone who has complete physical knowledge about the world might yet lack knowledge about what conscious experience is like from the inside, or 1st person perspective. Knowing all the physical facts of experience from the 3rd person is not enough to know what it is like to have the experience. This success of the argument is the challenge to physicalism.