Frank Cameron Jackson was born in 1943. His father, Allan Cameron Jackson, was also a philosopher, and had been a student of Ludwig Wittgenstein. Jackson studied mathematics and philosophy at the University of Melbourne, going into residence at Trinity College in 1961. In his later years in College, he was Clarke Scholar, and a member of the 2nd XVIII football team. Jackson received his PhD in philosophy from La Trobe University, where he was supervised by Brian Ellis. He taught at the University of Adelaide for a year in 1967. In 1978, he became chair of the philosophy department at Monash University. In 1986, he joined ANU as Professor of Philosophy and Head of the Philosophy Program, within the Research School of Social Sciences. At ANU, he served as Director of the Institute of Advanced Studies, Deputy Vice-Chancellor – Research, and Director of the Research School of Social Sciences. Jackson was appointed as Distinguished Professor at ANU in 2003; he became an Emeritus Professor upon his retirement in 2014. Jackson was awarded the Order of Australia in 2006 for service to philosophy and social sciences as an academic, administrator, and researcher. Jackson delivered the John Locke lectures at the University of Oxford in 1995. Notably, his father had delivered the 1957–8 lectures, making them the first father–son pair to do so.
Philosophical 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. Jackson motivates the knowledge argument by a thought experiment known as Mary's room. Jackson phrases the thought experiment as follows: Jackson speaks about this theory to Nigel Warburton on Philosophy Bites, an online podcast service . Jackson's 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..., in whch Jackson appears as a character. 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 later rejected the knowledge argument, as well as other arguments against physicalism: Jackson argues that the intuition-driven arguments against physicalism are ultimately misleading. Jackson is also known for his defence of the centrality of conceptual analysis to philosophy; his approach, set out in his Locke Lectures and published as his 1998 book, is often referred to as the Canberra Plan.
