Work
Jackson's philosophical research is broad, but focuses primarily on the areas of philosophy of mind, epistemology, metaphysics, and meta-ethics.
In philosophy of mind, Jackson is known, among other things, for the knowledge argument against physicalism—the view that the universe is entirely physical (i.e., the kinds of entities postulated in physics). Jackson motivates the knowledge argument by a thought experiment known as Mary's room. Jackson phrases the thought experiment as follows:
| “ | Mary is a brilliant scientist who is, for whatever reason, forced to investigate the world from a black and white room via a black and white television monitor. She specializes in the neurophysiology of vision and acquires, let us suppose, all the physical information there is to obtain about what goes on when we see ripe tomatoes, or the sky, and use terms like ‘red’, ‘blue’, and so on. She discovers, for example, just which wavelength combinations from the sky stimulate the retina, and exactly how this produces via the central nervous system the contraction of the vocal cords and expulsion of air from the lungs that results in the uttering of the sentence ‘The sky is blue’. (…) What will happen when Mary is released from her black and white room or is given a color television monitor? Will she learn anything or not? It seems just obvious that she will learn something about the world and our visual experience of it. But then is it inescapable that her previous knowledge was incomplete. But she had all the physical information. Ergo there is more to have than that, and Physicalism is false. | ” |
(As a side note, this thought-experiment was dramatised in the three-part Channel 4 documentary "Brainspotting." It also forms the central motif of author David Lodge's novel Thinks... (2001). Jackson makes an appearance in Lodge's novel as, of course, himself.)
Jackson used the knowledge argument, as well as other arguments, to establish a sort of dualism, according to which certain mental states, especially qualitative ones, are non-physical. The view that Jackson urged was a modest version of epiphenomenalism—the view that certain mental states are non-physical and, although caused to come into existence by physical events, do not then cause any changes in the physical world.
However, Jackson has since rejected the knowledge argument, as well as other arguments against physicalism:
| “ | Most contemporary philosophers given a choice between going with science and going with intuitions, go with science. Although I once dissented from the majority, I have capitulated and now see the interesting issue as being where the arguments from the intuitions against physicalism—the arguments that seem so compelling—go wrong. | ” |
Jackson argues that the intuition-driven arguments against physicalism (such as the knowledge argument and the zombie argument) are ultimately misleading.
Jackson is also known for his defense of the centrality of conceptual analysis to philosophy; his approach, set out in his Locke Lectures and published as his 1997 book, is often referred to as "the Canberra plan" for how to do philosophy.
Read more about this topic: Frank Cameron Jackson
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