Mind: A Brief Introduction (John R. Searle) / quote 79 of 138
Mary has never seen red
A similar argument was advanced by the Australian philosopher, Frank Jackson.2 Jackson imagines a neuro-biologist, Mary, who knows all there is to know about color perception. She has a total and complete knowledge of the neurophysiology of our color-perceiving apparatus, and she also has a complete knowledge of the physics of light and of the color spectrum. But, says Jackson, let us imagine that she has been brought up entirely in a black and white environment. She has never seen anything colored, only black, white, and shades of gray. Now, says Jackson, it seems clear that there is something left out of her knowledge. What is left out, for example, is what the color red actually looks like. But, then, it seems that a functionalist or a materialist account of the mind would leave something out, because a person might have the complete knowledge of all there was to know on a functionalist or materialist account, without knowing what colors look like. And the problem with colors is only a special case of the problem of qualitative experiences generally. Any account of the mind that leaves out these qualitative experiences is inadequate.