Only insofar as the definition of physical is limited to things you can find in books. I wholly reject such a definition.
@ Orthonormal. The conclusion seems to me to come very naturally from the thought experiment, if you allow for its assumptions. But that is what I think is silly, its assumptions. The thought experiment tries to define “all knowledge” in two different and contradictory ways.
If Mary has all knowledge, then there is nothing left for her to learn about red. If upon seeing red she learns something new, then she did not have all knowledge prior to seeing red.
It is their definition of knowledge, which is inconsistent, that leads to the entire thought experiment being silly.
The practical point is that, if not all knowledge reduces to mathematical patterns of physical objects (the sort of thing that we can organize and learn from textbooks), then the actual project of reductionists becomes futile at a really early stage- we’d have to give up on fully understanding even a worm brain, since we could never have the knowledge of its worm-qualia.
I want to respond to your claim more thoroughly, but my response essentially consists of the second and third posts here. If you want to pick up this conversation on those threads, I’m all for it.
Only insofar as the definition of physical is limited to things you can find in books. I wholly reject such a definition.
@ Orthonormal. The conclusion seems to me to come very naturally from the thought experiment, if you allow for its assumptions. But that is what I think is silly, its assumptions. The thought experiment tries to define “all knowledge” in two different and contradictory ways.
If Mary has all knowledge, then there is nothing left for her to learn about red. If upon seeing red she learns something new, then she did not have all knowledge prior to seeing red.
It is their definition of knowledge, which is inconsistent, that leads to the entire thought experiment being silly.
If you want to call someone’s attention, replying directly to their comment is a great way of doing that.
The practical point is that, if not all knowledge reduces to mathematical patterns of physical objects (the sort of thing that we can organize and learn from textbooks), then the actual project of reductionists becomes futile at a really early stage- we’d have to give up on fully understanding even a worm brain, since we could never have the knowledge of its worm-qualia.
I want to respond to your claim more thoroughly, but my response essentially consists of the second and third posts here. If you want to pick up this conversation on those threads, I’m all for it.
Also, welcome to Less Wrong!
Your later posts do a better job of describing your position here. I don’t think we disagree.