The Knowledge Argument

Frank Jackson's knowledge argument imagines a super-smart scientist, Mary, forced to investigate the mysteries of human colour vision using only black and white resources. Can she work out what it is like to see red from brain-science and physics alone? The argument says no: Mary will only really learn what red looks like when she actually sees it. Something is therefore missing from the science of the mind, and from the 'physicalist' picture of the world based on science. This powerful and controversial argument remains as pivotal as when it was first created in 1982, and this volume provides a thorough and incisive examination of its relevance in philosophy of mind today. The cutting-edge essays featured here break new ground in the debate, and also comprehensively set out the developments in the story of the knowledge argument so far, tracing its impact, past, present, and future.

List of contributors; Introduction: the enduring significance of Jackson's knowledge argument Sam Coleman; 1. The knowledge argument is an argument about knowledge Tim Crane; 2. There's nothing about Mary David Rosenthal; 3. Acquaintance, parsimony, and epiphenomenalism Brie Gertler; 4. Acquaintance and phenomenal concepts David Pitt; 5. The knowledge argument meets representationalism about colour experience Frank Jackson; 6. The Mary-go-round Galen Strawson; 7. Conceptual mastery, social externalism, and Mary's new knowledge Torin Alter; 8. Mary's powers of imagination Amy Kind; 9. The knowledge argument is either indefensible or redundant Tom McClelland; 10. Grounding, analysis and Russellian Monism Philip Goff; 11. Phenomenal knowledge why: the explanatory knowledge argument against physicalism Hedda Hassel Mørch; 12. The knowledge argument and the self Robert J. Howell; 13. What uninformed Mary can teach us Michael Tye; Bibliography; Index.

Sam Coleman is Reader in Philosophy at the University of Hertfordshire and is the author of various articles on philosophy of mind.