Frank Jackson

Frank Jackson is an Australian philosopher, long associated with the Australian National University, who has worked on the philosophy of mind, conditionals and metaethics. His knowledge argument, built around Mary, a scientist who knows all the physical facts about colour vision but has never seen colour, became one of the most discussed arguments against physicalism. Unusually, Jackson later concluded that the argument fails and defended a representationalist form of physicalism, while the argument itself remains a central reference point.

Key ideas

• If Mary learns something new on first seeing red despite knowing all physical facts, then not all facts are physical.
• In his early work he defended epiphenomenalism about qualia.
• He later rejected the argument's conclusion, holding that experience can be explained in physical and representational terms.
• Conceptual analysis has a role in showing how higher-level facts are fixed by the physical facts.

Major works

• "Epiphenomenal Qualia" (1982)
• "What Mary Didn't Know" (1986)
• Conditionals (1987)
• From Metaphysics to Ethics: A Defence of Conceptual Analysis (1998)

In the conversation

• Discussion Frank Jackson gave up on Mary. Should the rest of us? Lars Eriksen · 5 replies