That more or less corresponds to the way I break it down, and I’d take it a step further by saying that thinking of the problem this way reduces Mary’s room to a definitional conflict. If we classify the experiential feeling of redness under “everything physical about color”—which is quite viable given a reductionist interpretation of the problem—then Mary by definition knows how it feels. This is probably impossible in practice if Mary has a normal human cognitive architecture, but that’s okay, since we’re working in the magical world of thought experiments where anything goes.
If we don’t, on the other hand, then Mary can quite easily lack experiential knowledge of redness without fear of contradiction, by the process you’ve outlined. It’s only an apparent paradox because of an ambiguity in our formulation of experiential knowledge.
If we classify the experiential feeling of redness under “everything physical about color”—which is quite viable given a reductionist interpretation of the problem—then Mary by definition knows how it feels.
That’s not how reduction works. You don’t just declare a problem to consist only
of (known) physics, and then declare it solved.You attempt to understand it
in terms of known physics, and that attempt either succeeds or fails. Reductionism is
not an apriori truth, or a method guaranteed to succeed. And no reduction of qualia
has succeeded. Whether that me we need new explanations, new physics, non-reductionism or dualism is an open question.
I’m not sure you understand what I’m trying to say—or, for that matter, what pjeby was trying to say. Notice how I never used the word “qualia”? That’s because I’m trying to avoid becoming entangled in issues surrounding the reduction of qualia; instead, I’m examining the results of Mary’s room given two mutually exclusive possible assumptions—that such a reduction exists or that it doesn’t—and pointing out that the thought experiment generates results consistent with known physics in either case, provided we keep that assumption consistent within it. That doesn’t reduce qualia as traditionally conceived to known physics, but it does demonstrate that Mary’s room doesn’t provide evidence either way.
That more or less corresponds to the way I break it down, and I’d take it a step further by saying that thinking of the problem this way reduces Mary’s room to a definitional conflict. If we classify the experiential feeling of redness under “everything physical about color”—which is quite viable given a reductionist interpretation of the problem—then Mary by definition knows how it feels. This is probably impossible in practice if Mary has a normal human cognitive architecture, but that’s okay, since we’re working in the magical world of thought experiments where anything goes.
If we don’t, on the other hand, then Mary can quite easily lack experiential knowledge of redness without fear of contradiction, by the process you’ve outlined. It’s only an apparent paradox because of an ambiguity in our formulation of experiential knowledge.
That’s not how reduction works. You don’t just declare a problem to consist only of (known) physics, and then declare it solved.You attempt to understand it in terms of known physics, and that attempt either succeeds or fails. Reductionism is not an apriori truth, or a method guaranteed to succeed. And no reduction of qualia has succeeded. Whether that me we need new explanations, new physics, non-reductionism or dualism is an open question.
I’m not sure you understand what I’m trying to say—or, for that matter, what pjeby was trying to say. Notice how I never used the word “qualia”? That’s because I’m trying to avoid becoming entangled in issues surrounding the reduction of qualia; instead, I’m examining the results of Mary’s room given two mutually exclusive possible assumptions—that such a reduction exists or that it doesn’t—and pointing out that the thought experiment generates results consistent with known physics in either case, provided we keep that assumption consistent within it. That doesn’t reduce qualia as traditionally conceived to known physics, but it does demonstrate that Mary’s room doesn’t provide evidence either way.