Editing Knowledge argument (section)

=== Dualist responses ===
Jackson's argument is meant to support [[mind–body dualism]], the view that the mind, or at least some aspects of the mind, are non-physical. Nida-Rümelin contends that, because mind–body dualism is relatively unpopular among contemporary philosophers, and there are also not many examples of dualist responses to the knowledge argument; nevertheless, she points out that there are some prominent examples of dualists responding to the Knowledge Argument worth noting.<ref name="plato" />

Jackson himself went on to reject epiphenomenalism and mind–body dualism altogether. He argues that, because when Mary first sees red, she says "Wow!", it must be Mary's qualia that causes her to say "Wow!". This contradicts epiphenomenalism because it involves a conscious state causing an overt speech behavior. Since the Mary's room thought experiment seems to create this contradiction, there must be something wrong with it. Jackson now believes that the physicalist approach (from a perspective of [[Direct and indirect realism|indirect realism]]) provides the better explanation. In contrast to epiphenomenalism, Jackson says that the experience of red is entirely contained in the brain, and the experience immediately causes further changes in the brain (e.g. creating memories). This is more [[Consilience|consilient]] with neuroscience's understanding of [[color vision]]. Jackson suggests that Mary is simply discovering a new way for her brain to represent qualities that exist in the world. In a similar argument, philosopher [[Philip Pettit]] likens the case of Mary to patients with [[akinetopsia]], the inability to perceive the motion of objects. If someone were raised in a [[stroboscopic effect|stroboscopic]] room and subsequently 'cured' of the akinetopsia, they would not be surprised to discover any new facts about the world (they do, in fact, know that objects move). Instead, their surprise would come from their brain now allowing them to ''see'' this motion.<ref>{{cite book | last = Pettit | first = Philip | editor1-last = Ludlow | editor1-first = Peter | editor2-last =Nagasawa | editor2-first =Yujin | editor3-last =Stoljar | editor3-first =Daniel | title = There's Something about Mary: essays on phenomenal consciousness and Frank Jackson's knowledge argument | chapter = Motion Blindness and the Knowledge Argument | pages = 105–142 | publisher = MIT Press | location = Cambridge | year = 2004 | isbn = 978-0-262-12272-6 }}</ref>

Despite a lack of dualist responses overall and Jackson's own change of view, there are more recent instances of prominent dualists defending the knowledge argument. [[David Chalmers]], one of the most prominent contemporary dualists, considers Jackson's thought experiment to successfully show that materialism is false. Chalmers considers responses along the lines of the "ability hypothesis" objection (described above) to be the most promising objections, but unsuccessful: even if Mary does gain a new ability to imagine or recognize colors, she would also necessarily gain factual knowledge about the colors she now sees, such as the fact of how the experience of seeing red relates to the physical brain states underlying it. He also considers arguments that knowledge of what it is like to see red and of the underlying physical mechanisms are actually knowledge of the same fact, just under a different "mode of presentation", meaning Mary did not truly gain new factual knowledge. Chalmers rejects these, arguing that Mary still necessarily gains new factual knowledge about how the experience and the physical processes relate to one another, i.e. a fact about exactly what kind of experience is caused by those processes.<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://archive.org/details/consciousmindins00chal|title=The conscious mind: in search of a fundamental theory|last=Chalmers|first=David John|date=1996-01-01|publisher=Oxford University Press|isbn=978-0195105537|series=Philosophy of mind series|location=New York}}</ref> [[Martine Nida-Rümelin]] defends a complex, though similar, view, involving properties of experience she calls "phenomenal properties".<ref>{{Cite book|last=Nida-Rümelin|first=Martine|pages=307–338|doi=10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195171655.003.0013|title = Phenomenal Concepts and Phenomenal Knowledge|year = 2007|isbn = 9780195171655|chapter = Grasping Phenomenal Properties|citeseerx = 10.1.1.188.7921}}</ref>