mind & identity · new to this edition
mary’s room
a woman who knows every physical fact about colour, and has never seen any.
In 1982 the Australian philosopher Frank Jackson proposed a thought experiment that has haunted the philosophy of mind ever since. It is a short story, and a trap with three doors in it. Answer each step as you would if no one were marking it, and notice which later answers your earlier ones commit you to.
when mary first sees red, does she learn something new?
Mary is a brilliant scientist who has been confined since birth to a room that is entirely black, white and grey. She has never seen a colour. She studies the world through a black-and-white monitor, and over the years she comes to know every physical fact there is about vision and colour: the wavelengths of light, the workings of the retina, the neural pathways, even what happens in a speaker’s brain when they say “the sky is blue”.
One day the door is opened and Mary walks out. She sees a ripe tomato, and for the first time in her life, she sees red.
Does Mary learn something she did not already know?
further reading
- the knowledge argument stanford encyclopedia of philosophy
- epiphenomenal qualia original paper
- what mary didn’t know original paper
- knowledge argument internet encyclopedia of philosophy
- knowledge argument wikipedia