The knowledge argument (Mary)

The Mary passage, as run through the tool

As written, the conclusion doesn't follow from these premises.

Steps marked ‘assumed’ state what you'd have to assume to reach the conclusion.

1. 1.

   It seems just obvious that when Mary is released from her black and white room or given a color television monitor, she will learn something about the world and our visual experience of it.

2. 2.

   Mary had all the physical information.

3. 3.

   It is inescapable that Mary's previous knowledge was incomplete.

4. 4.
   assumed

   If [1] and [2] and [3], then there is more information to have than all the physical information, and Physicalism is false.

   Assumed so the listed premises lead to the conclusion.

5. 5.

   Therefore, there is more information to have than all the physical information, and Physicalism is false. [1,2,3,4]

View run

Editor's note

The as-found layer matches the textbook reconstruction (Mary has all the physical information; she learns something on release; so not all information is physical) but flags the passage as non-atomic because the final line bundles two claims. Disagreement with the repair: the deterministic fallback demoted the intermediate conclusion (her previous knowledge was incomplete) to a premise instead of deriving it from lines 1 and 2, which weakens the structure the text has. The source link is the Stanford Encyclopedia entry, which quotes the passage in full; the original is behind JSTOR.