Editing Knowledge argument (section)

== Implications ==
Whether Mary learns something new upon experiencing color has two major implications: the existence of [[qualia]] and the knowledge argument against physicalism.

=== Qualia ===
If Mary learns something new upon seeing red, it shows that qualia (the subjective, qualitative properties of experiences, conceived as wholly independent of behavior and disposition) exist. Therefore, it must be conceded that qualia are real, since there is a difference between a person who has access to a particular quale and one who does not.

=== Refutation of physicalism ===
Jackson argues further, saying that if Mary does learn something new upon experiencing color, then [[physicalism]] is false. Specifically, the knowledge argument is an attack on the physicalist claim about the completeness of physical explanations of mental states. Mary may know everything about the science of color perception, but can she know what the experience of red is like if she has never seen red? Jackson contends that, yes, she has learned something new, via experience, and hence, [[physicalism]] is false. Jacks<ref name="p130">{{Harvnb|Jackson|1982|p=130}}</ref>
=== Epiphenomenalism ===
{{Main page|Epiphenomenalism}}

Jackson believed in the explanatory completeness of [[physiology]], that all behaviour is caused by physical forces of some kind. And the thought experiment seems to prove the existence of qualia, a non-physical part of the mind. Jackson argued that if both of these theses are true, then [[epiphenomenalism]] is true—the view that mental states are caused by physical states, but have no causal effects on the physical world.
{| cellpadding="10" style="margin:auto;"
|-
| style="width:25px;" |&nbsp;
| style="text-align:center;" |Explanatory completeness<br />of physiology
|&nbsp;+
| style="text-align:center;" |qualia<br />(Mary's room)
|=
|epiphenomenalism
|}

Thus, at the conception of the thought experiment, Jackson was an epiphenomenalist.