Frank Jackson is responsible for one of the most famous thought experiments in the philosophy of mind, one that was intended to show that qualia, the 'feely' aspects of our exprience can't be explained by physicalism. This is sometimes known as The Knowledge Argument. In this episode of the Philosophy Bites podcast he talks about the thought experiment and explains why he has changed his mind about it.
Listen to Frank Jackson on What Mary Knew
Philosophy Bites is made in association with the Institute of Philosophy
I was reminded of this documentary on language's influence on color perception:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4b71rT9fU-I
Thanks for an interesting interview!
Posted by: David Kraftsow | September 04, 2011 at 07:52 PM
I love this thought experiment! It was great to hear Frank Jackson talking about it to Nigel, including his conversion to representationalism.
However, wouldn't Phenomenology be a more logical step?
Merleau-Ponty would have loved Marys Room. He tried to describe our actual embodied perception, for which science is a reduced epistemology when it comes to understanding our actual experience of the World.
Sure, we form representations in our head, but only on reflection, not in our pre-reflective coping with the world, which we do without thinking? Significantly, this has been bourne out by the failure of AI which attempted use symbol systems and rules. And the role of qualia? It is to call our attention to the smell of food, or a beautiful blond, or the call to write a revolutionary idea with the pen on the page, which no representationalist system can do. It is to feel something as true or false, which becomes meaningless in purely physicalist terms. Just another combination of neurones firing. Merleau-Ponty's Chiasm is the synthesis of Phenomenology and Science.
Posted by: Jim Vaughan | September 14, 2011 at 10:12 AM