Philosophy 1: Introduction to Philosophy

Los Angeles Pierce College

Department of History, Philosophy, & Sociology

Lecture Notes for Jackson's "What Mary Didn't Know"

Instructions: In a sentence or two summarize the following quote. Then, in a paragraph, explain it. Finally, in a distinct paragraph, provide an example it.

1) "She knows all the physical facts about us and our environment, in a wide sense of '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."

2) "Physicalism is not the noncontroversial thesis that the actual world is largely physical, but the challenging thesis that it is entirely physical. This is why physicalists must hold that complete physical knowledge is complete knowledge simpliciter."

3) "The contention about Mary is not that, despite her fantastic grasp of neurophysiology and everything else physical, she could not imagine what it is like to sense red; it is that, as a matter of fact, she would not know."

4) "The trouble for physicalism is that, after Mary sees her first ripe tomato, she will realize how impoverished her conception of the mental life of others has been all along."

5) "She will realize that there was, all the time she was carrying out her laborious investigations into the neurophysiologies of others and into the functional roles of their internal states, something about these people she was quite unaware of."