Frank Jackson
born 1943 · Adelaide; Canberra
The Australian philosopher who created Mary, the scientist who knows everything about colour but has never seen red, and later changed his mind about her.
Key ideas
In 'Epiphenomenal Qualia' (1982), Jackson imagined Mary, a brilliant scientist raised in a black-and-white room who learns every physical fact about colour vision. When she first sees a ripe tomato, she seems to learn something new: what red looks like. If so, not all facts are physical. This knowledge argument is the heart of Mary's room.
At the time he defended epiphenomenalism, the view that qualia exist but have no physical effects. By the late 1990s he had become a physicalist, concluding that the intuition that Mary learns a new fact must be mistaken somewhere, though he remained impressed by how hard it is to say where.
He has also worked on conditionals, the analysis of concepts and the relation between ethics and metaphysics.
Life, briefly
Jackson grew up in Australia, the son of two philosophers, and spent most of his career at the Australian National University in Canberra, also teaching regularly at Princeton.
Major works
- Epiphenomenal Qualia (1982)
- What Mary Didn't Know (1986)
- From Metaphysics to Ethics (1998)
Appears in
Further reading
- WikipediaFrank Jackson (philosopher)