Mary is confined to a black-and-white room, is educated through black-and-white books and through lectures relayed on black-and-white television. In this way, she learns everything there is to know about the physical nature of the world. She knows all the physical facts about us and our environment, in a wide sense of the 'physical' which includes everything in completed physics, chemistry and neurophysiology, and all there is to know about the causal and relational facts consequent upon all this, including of course functional roles. If physicalism is true, she knows all there is to know. For to suppose otherwise is to suppose that there is more to know than every physical fact, and this is just what physicalism denies...

...It seems, however, that Mary does not know all there is to know. For when she is let out of the black-and-white room or given a color television, she will learn what it is like to see something, say RED. This is rightly described as learning - she will not say "ho, hum". Hence physicalism is false...
--Frank Jackson, What Mary Didn't Know Frank%20Jackson%20Picture

Philosophy of mind, language, epistemology and other techie bits:

This is roughly Jackson's Knowledge Argument (KA here after), a little gem piece that inspired the title for my webpage.

Now before you philosophy dorks start salivating your intellectual juices (I mean, who doesn't salivate when they think about KA? Answer: Daniel Dennett) in anticipation of the discussion that's to follow, let me point out something else.

A Gothic Aspect

KA has to be the most gothic, poetic, Kafkasque argument ever. When I first read the paper, I kept imagining this sequence of events. A little isolated girl, Mary, is part of an experiment of some mad scientist, who is always in white collars and similar to Frank Jackson in appearance. Unusually quiet and disciplined for her age, she wakes up everyday and dutifully studies the black-and-white lectures and books.

However, one day she gets out and sees a ripe apple. The first instant she observes the color red, she goes mad.

Let me tell you, my conception of Mary as a cute little girl is sheerly poetic licence. Frank Jackson never mentions that she is a little girl. (In other passages, he calls her a "brilliant color scientist", specializing "in the neurophysiology of vision", which indicate that she is not a little girl.)

"How terrible people philosophers are", I thought to myself. "For look what they have done to cute little Mary." (Seriously though, what is the nature of one's moral obligation to one's characters in a thought experiment?)

Okay maybe I am taking it a bit step further and turning it into a full- fledged horror story. However, I am constantly surprised by the fact that people almost never notice this poetic aspect to KA. (I am afraid this may be my most original contribution to this argument's debate.)

Or maybe it's just that philosophers don't read much literature.The Mask of the RedDeath by Edgar Allen Poe, anyone?

The Real Bizness

First, let's hear it from the professionals. In the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Martine Nida-Rumelin summarizes the argument as:

(1) Mary has all the physical information concerning human color vision before her release.

(2) But there is some information about human color vision that she does not have before her release.

Therefore,

(3) Not all information is physical information.

I think whoever first hears the argument notices that something is amiss about it. However, it isn't quite easy to pinpoint what exactly is wrong with it. First, I thought the problem was chiefly with the method that Mary used to gain the knowledge. I thought that our language simply wasn't "good enough" to transmit some bits of knowledge. In my final paper for a philosophy class, I came up with this rather long, complicated and fishy (if you now ask me) thought experiment to "prove my point". It was something like this:

Imagine two girls who are standing in front of a clock-tower. One of them, call her Rachel, has difficulty speaking English, even though she performs all other cognitive tasks well. (She is really good at Math for instance.) The other, Jennifer, asks Rachel what time it is. Rachel looks at the clock and perceives immediately what time it is. However, before she can transfer her perception into English, a short duration of time passes. During this time, I claim that she has supra-linguistic knowledge of what time it actually is.

Okay, the thought experiment may be a little far-fetched but I am sure we all know the feeling. I think everyone at some time has something at the tip of his or her tongue but he or she just can't say it. "Oh, I know which person you are talking about... What was her name? I know it..." Mathematicians for instance might capture a vision of a pattern in their "minds' eye" before they can fully transform it into formal notation.

I don't really know whether the "knowledge" of the qualia of red is this type of thing. For instance, all examples we considered (Rachel, mathematicians, remembering someone but not their name even though one "knows" their name) are all transformable to propositional knowledge. Mathematician can transform her vision into proofs and notation, Rachel can produce an English sentence about what time it is and you can remember your friend's name. However, is it possible to transform the qualia of red into propositional knowledge? Of course, in my final paper, I resorted to wild speculations of Paul Churchland and quoted some bits from Nagel's What is it Like to Be A Bat?, to the effect yes, qualia of red could maybe be transformed into propositional knowledge. I mean, who knows, right?

Right...

(My argument in the paper may not be as strong as those of Lewis and others. However, I think in philosophy classes, it pays off to come up with your own arguments, which have at least some claim to being original, than to just regurgitate standard replies and arguments.)

However, ever since I picked up a little book called "Epistemology" by Richard Feldman, I no longer think that this is the best way to attack KA. (I unfortunately returned the book to the library, so I will give proper citation sometime in the future.) In the book, Feldman goes over some types of knowledge... Things like moral knowledge, scientific knowledge and ..drum roll... ability knowldege. Feldman adduces ability knowledge as a challenge to the claim that all knowledge is propositional knowledge. Since knowing things like how to write, how to drive are not propositional.

What is the big surprise, you may ask. After all, this is just the line David Lewis took in criticizing KA. (And I knew perfectly this method of reply.) He wrote in "Postscript: Knowing What It's Like":

Neither can we credibly claim that lessons in physics, physiology, ... could teach the inexperienced what it is like to taste Vegemite [or to see red]. Our proper answer, I think, is that knowing what it's like is not the possesion of information at all. It isn't the elimination of hitherto open possibilities. Rather, knowing what it's like is the possession of abilities: abilities to recognize, abilities to imagine, abilities to predict one's behavior by means of imaginative experiments.

When I read this, I wasn't quiet convinced. And I think the reason is that Lewis doesn't quite stress (or even claim?) that knowing how to is knowledge. And my conviction was that Mary gained new knowledge after her release.

Finally, what convinced me that Lewis' idea had been true was to take this whole knowledge of how idea (from Feldman) and give a Searlean Chinese Room spin to it.

Here is the reductio that convinced me that KA is unsound.

(1)All physical information is of propositional type. (That is, of the type that can be learned from books and lectures.)

(2)Knowing how to drive a car is physical knowledge. (I am assuming no soul or any such thing takes over your car - even when you are drunk.)

(3)Knowing how to drive a car is propositional type. (From (2) and (3))

(4)It is not the case that people learn how to drive cars by reading books and manuals. (This is the Searlean spin I was talking about.)

(5)Knowing how to drive a car is not propositional knowledge. (From 4)

(C)Hence, not all physical information is of propositional type.

And hence, it is not possible to know everything physical just by reading books and studying lectures.

Here we go... I think this argument is a support to Lewis' conclusion but I think it is better expressed with this Searlean spin.

Even though I think KA is ultimately unsound, I still like it - if for nothing, for the poetic aspect to it.

Additional Resources

Oh well, I haven't read all these myself. I should though and you should. (Especially the paper by Jackson, in which he explains why he thinks that KA is no longer sound.) There is a vast literature on the subject - so I just put up whatever I thought was interesting. Go figure yourself!.. (Yes I got all the papers from Chalmers' link at the end.)

Bibliography

(Yet to come)