What Mary Didn't Know (1986) [pdf]

Post by tsimionescu » Wed, Feb 22, 2023, 1:15 PM UTC

denton-scratch wrote: post #60

tsimionescu wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's part of the argument thoigh: > She knows all the physical facts about us and our environment, in a wide sense of 'physical' which includes everything in completed physics, chemistry, and neurophysiology (emp. mine), and all there is to know about the causal and relational facts consequent upon all this, including of course functional roles. If she knows all there is to know about neurophisiology, she obviously k…

> which includes everything in completed physics, chemistry, and neurophysiology "Completed", which I take to mean stuff that someone already understands, now. But nobody understands how changes at a neurophysiological level affect mental states and thoughts. At best, we can say that some mental states are correlated with some neurophys. phenomena. > she obviously knows exactly how her own brain works. Not if I have…

I believe "completed" means precisely the opposite - current physical theories are incomplete, but Mary has access to the completed version. Otherwise, the whole argument would only prove that qualia are not part of currently understood physical theories, which not even the most convinced physicalist would contest I think.

Post by temphypercube » Thu, Feb 23, 2023, 9:28 AM UTC

HEmanZ wrote: post #12

tshaddox wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is a fundamental epistemological limit to our ability to know how to combine the two. It doesn't mean the world itself has such a division. We just can't cognate how to reconcile the two. I’m not convinced there’s any indication of a fundamental limit to our cognitive abilities. What if we just don’t know how subjective experience works in the same normal way that we’ve not known how other stuff works until w…

You’ll end up in a category of your own if you “figure out” subjective experience. You’d be the greatest philosopher that ever lived. It’s not the same problem as figuring out how the brain works physically or how subjective experiences compare in peoples brains or observable states, but whether say our experience of seeing red is the same. Or what it’s like to be a bat. You can’t break that barrier, there is not obs…

You're just assuming that, though. All evidence is correlational. We observe phenomena, and build causal models. The particles move this way when near this bit of metal. Given this, what's "really" there? The magnetic field, or the magnetic potential field?

I don't think there's great cause to say that this is a seperate magisterium. We just have a paucity of data compared to what future beings will have. When everyone can spin up a hundred simulated copies of their brain and trace thought-patterns in realtime, it'll seem much less mysterious.

Re: What Mary Didn't Know (1986) [pdf]

Re: What Mary Didn't Know (1986) [pdf]