Product Description
In Frank Jackson's famous thought experiment, Mary is confined to a
black-and-white room and educated through black-and-white books and lectures on a
black-and-white television. In this way, she learns everything there is to know
about the physical world. If physicalism -- the doctrine that everything is physical
-- is true, then Mary seems to know all there is to know. What happens, then, when
she emerges from her black-and-white room and sees the color red for the first time?
Jackson's knowledge argument says that Mary comes to know a new fact about color,
and that, therefore, physicalism is false. The knowledge argument remains one of the
most controversial and important arguments in contemporary philosophy.There's
Something About Mary -- the first book devoted solely to the argument -- collects
the main essays in which Jackson presents (and later rejects) his argument along
with key responses by other philosophers. These responses are organized around a
series of questions: Does Mary learn anything new? Does she gain only know-how (the
ability hypothesis), or merely get acquainted with something she knew previously
(the acquaintance hypothesis)? Does she learn a genuinely new fact or an old fact in
disguise? And finally, does she really know all the physical facts before her
release, or is this a "misdescription"? The arguments presented in this
comprehensive collection have important implications for the philosophy of mind and
the study of consciousness.
