I’m not sure that this enterprise should be called “dissolving the question”.
The question at hand is, “Is there something about red things that Mary can learn only by having certain kinds of input fed into her visual cortex?” This seems like a question that should be answered, not dissolved.
If you were trying to dissolve this question, you would probably proceed by trying to show that the concept of the things that Mary can learn about red things is itself meaningless, or at least that its meaning is too vague to give meaning to the question. But I don’t see why we would expect this concept to be so problematic. And I don’t think that we need it to be problematic for there to be a satisfying reductionist resolution to the Mary’s Room paradox.
But rather than dissolving the question, you seem to me to be “dissolving an answer”. More precisely, you are trying to dissolve the intuitions that make the answer “Yes” seem so probable to so many people. This is a valuable thing to do, and I look forward to your next post.
I’m not sure that this enterprise should be called “dissolving the question”.
The question at hand is, “Is there something about red things that Mary can learn only by having certain kinds of input fed into her visual cortex?” This seems like a question that should be answered, not dissolved.
If you were trying to dissolve this question, you would probably proceed by trying to show that the concept of the things that Mary can learn about red things is itself meaningless, or at least that its meaning is too vague to give meaning to the question. But I don’t see why we would expect this concept to be so problematic. And I don’t think that we need it to be problematic for there to be a satisfying reductionist resolution to the Mary’s Room paradox.
But rather than dissolving the question, you seem to me to be “dissolving an answer”. More precisely, you are trying to dissolve the intuitions that make the answer “Yes” seem so probable to so many people. This is a valuable thing to do, and I look forward to your next post.