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The knowledge argument (also known as Mary's Room, Mary the Colour Scientist, or Mary the super-scientist) is a philosophical thought experiment proposed by Frank Jackson in his article "Epiphenomenal Qualia" (1982) and extended in "What Mary Didn't Know" (1986).
Jackson motivates the knowledge argument by a famous thought experiment known as Mary's room. In a much cited passage [14] he phrases the thought experiment as follows: Mary is a brilliant scientist who is, for whatever reason, forced to investigate the world from a black and white room via a black and white television monitor.
A stronger form of the knowledge argument [52] claims not merely that Mary would lack subjective knowledge of "what red looks like," but that she would lack knowledge of an objective fact about the world: namely, "what red looks like," a non-physical fact that can be learned only through direct experience (qualia).
Mary the color scientist. Mary's room is a thought experiment underpinning the knowledge argument. It was an argument to counter color realism and more broadly physicalism. The thought experiment was originally proposed by Frank Jackson as follows:
Specifically, the knowledge argument is an attack on the physicalist claim about the completeness of physical truths. The challenge posed to physicalism by the knowledge argument runs as follows: While in the room, Mary has acquired all the physical facts there are about color sensations, including the sensation of seeing red.
Earl Conee invoked the idea of acquaintance knowledge in response to Frank Jackson's knowledge argument. Conee argued that when Mary the neuroscientist first sees a red object, she doesn't gain new information but rather "a maximally direct cognitive relation to the experience."[2] Michael Tye makes similar use of the distinction between ...
PCS would help physicalists answer the knowledge argument because upon seeing red, Mary would have new thoughts about phenomenal concepts, even though those thoughts would only re-express physical facts she already knew. Likewise, we can conceive of zombies even if they are not possible because when we think about their functional/physical ...
(2004) There's Something About Mary: Essays on Phenomenal Consciousness and Frank Jackson's Knowledge Argument (Edited with Peter Ludlow and Daniel Stoljar), MIT Press, 2004. Papers (2019) ‘Panpsychism versus Pantheism, Polytheism, and Cosmopsychism’, in William Seager (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Panpsychism, Routledge, pp. 259-268.