21–30 of 62 posts
Here is a short summary of the idea: https://leibgruber.blogspot.com/2022/08/the-missing-knowledg...
An analogy with a computer makes this quite obvious. If we imagine an AI running on a CPU similar to those we know, and given free reign to interact with everything including the contents of the computer as well, it's easy to see that an AI-Mary would not need to leave the room to experience the color red - it could simply alter its input channels/memory to generate the exact experience that its sensors would detect if they were pointed at a red object.
If however we alter the AI such that it can't access/modify its sensors directly, and it's sensors write data to a piece of memory that the AI also can't write to, then the AI-Mary will not be able to put itself in exactly the same state it would be in were its sensors pointed at a red object, and so would have some kind of a new experience when leaving the room.
But, this would not be some fundamental fact about subjective experience or qualia, it would simply be a limitation of the architecture.
Not sure I follow the original premise. If Mary knows everything there is to know in physics, then Mary knows about the wave theory of light and the colour spectrum. She may not have experienced the colour red but she is aware of the concept of the colour red. Additionally, while Mary may only receive information in black and white, she perceives in full colour and can see the colours of her own skin and clothes. The…
I have written another comment on why I think this conclusion is wrong.
Related to this would be Nagel's paper, "What Is It Like to Be a Bat?" We can't say what sort of echolocation sensation a bat has anymore than Mary can say what a color looks like before she leaves the black and white room. We're in the same position when it comes to bird vision. We can't say what the world would look like with four primary colors. What does that fourth primary color look like? We don't have a word f…
On an aside, I've always loved the idea of a computer game where your character's primary sense is smell. But how could you really convey it to a human, except visually? Although maybe something like Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice's audio hallucinations could be a way, whispering voices that tell you the scent blows stronger this way.
This whole thought experiment is actually presenting what is quite possibly a limitation specific to human minds - no reason to extrapolate to all possible minds. That is, human minds seem to have two very distinct ways of altering their internal state. "Raw" sensory data gets stored in one way ("experiences"), while higher order data gets stored in another way ("memories"). That we can, to some extent at least, crea…
How to define “mind”? If all human minds turn out to have a certain property, how do we decide whether that property is essential or accidental to “being a mind”? Obviously if the property is “being human”, it can’t be essential to the property of “being a mind” (unless someone wants to claim that only humans can have minds by definition-a claim very few would make). But, if the property is “having two very distinct ways of altering their internal state”, how do we know if that is just an accidental property that all human minds happen to have, but non-human minds might lack, or an essential property of being a mind, which all minds must have to be “a mind”?
Not sure I follow the original premise. If Mary knows everything there is to know in physics, then Mary knows about the wave theory of light and the colour spectrum. She may not have experienced the colour red but she is aware of the concept of the colour red. Additionally, while Mary may only receive information in black and white, she perceives in full colour and can see the colours of her own skin and clothes. The…
The point of the thought experiment is to ask if Mary would interpret the experience of seeing the specific color with her own eyes as a new experience. If yes, and given the premise that she knows everything that it is possible to know about the physics of color and the human brain, the conclusion is supposed to be that an experience is not a physical fact of the world. I have written another comment on why I think…
"Mary knows every fact"
"Experiences are not facts"
"Therefore physicalism is false" I mean come on how did this get published ???
This whole waste of breath is based on the obviously artificial distinctions between knowledge, experience, sensing, imagination and whatever other made up modes of thought this person comes up with. "Mary knows every fact" "Experiences are not facts" "Therefore physicalism is false" I mean come on how did this get published ???
This whole waste of breath is based on the obviously artificial distinctions between knowledge, experience, sensing, imagination and whatever other made up modes of thought this person comes up with. "Mary knows every fact" "Experiences are not facts" "Therefore physicalism is false" I mean come on how did this get published ???
There are facts about experiences. What is the experience of a fourth primary color? We're in a similar position to Mary before she leaves the room.
Case in point, I can guess that the experience of a fourth primary color is going to be close to one of another color. I know it's not going to be warm or anything (I'll guess that it looks kind of shimmery purple, why not, purple's mysterious). People do the same with drugs - it binds to XYZ receptor, releases ABC hormone; and just from some pharmokinetic principles you can guess fairly well how it's going to feel.