And so if the only way to “know” what experiencing the color red feels like is to have the neurons fire that actually fire when seeing red, then she’s had those neurons fire.
This is going way beyond what I’d consider to be a reasonable reading of the intent of the thought experiment. If you’re allowed to expand the meaning of the non-specific phrase “knows everything physical” to include an exact analogue of subjective experience, then the original meaning of the thought experiment goes right out the window.
My reading of this entire exchange has thomblake and JamesAndrix repeatedly begging the question in every comment, taking great license with the intent of the thought experiment, while pjeby keeps trying to ground the discussion in reality by pinning down what brain states are being compared. So the exchange as a whole is mildly illuminating, but only because the former are acting as foils for the latter.
You can’t keep arguing this on the verbal/definitional level. The meat is in the bit about brain states.
Call the set of brain states that enable Mary to recall the subjective experience of red, Set R. If seeing red for the first time imparts an ability to recall redness that was not there before, then as far as I’m concerned that’s what’s meant by “surprise”.
We know that seeing something red with her eyes puts her brain into a state that is in Set R. The question is whether there is a body of knowledge, this irritatingly ill-defined concept of “all ‘physical’ knowledge about red”, that places her brain into a state in Set R. It is a useless mental exercise to divorce this from how human brains and eyes actually work. Either a brain can be put into Set R without experiencing red, or it can’t. It seems very unlikely that descriptive knowledge could accomplish this. If you’re just going to toss direct neuronal manipulation in there with descriptive knowledge, then the whole thought experiment becomes a farce.
This is going way beyond what I’d consider to be a reasonable reading of the intent of the thought experiment. If you’re allowed to expand the meaning of the non-specific phrase “knows everything physical” to include an exact analogue of subjective experience, then the original meaning of the thought experiment goes right out the window.
My reading of this entire exchange has thomblake and JamesAndrix repeatedly begging the question in every comment, taking great license with the intent of the thought experiment, while pjeby keeps trying to ground the discussion in reality by pinning down what brain states are being compared. So the exchange as a whole is mildly illuminating, but only because the former are acting as foils for the latter.
You can’t keep arguing this on the verbal/definitional level. The meat is in the bit about brain states.
Call the set of brain states that enable Mary to recall the subjective experience of red, Set R. If seeing red for the first time imparts an ability to recall redness that was not there before, then as far as I’m concerned that’s what’s meant by “surprise”.
We know that seeing something red with her eyes puts her brain into a state that is in Set R. The question is whether there is a body of knowledge, this irritatingly ill-defined concept of “all ‘physical’ knowledge about red”, that places her brain into a state in Set R. It is a useless mental exercise to divorce this from how human brains and eyes actually work. Either a brain can be put into Set R without experiencing red, or it can’t. It seems very unlikely that descriptive knowledge could accomplish this. If you’re just going to toss direct neuronal manipulation in there with descriptive knowledge, then the whole thought experiment becomes a farce.