I think you haven’t zeroed in on the point of the Mary’s Room argument. According to this argument, when Mary exclaims, “So that’s what red looks like!” she is really pointing to a non-verbal belief she was previously incapable of forming. (I don’t mean the probability of her statement, but the real claim to which she attached the probability.) So it won’t convince any philosophers if you talk about mAIry setting a preexisting Boolean.
Of course this argument fails to touch physicalism—some version of mAIry could just form a new memory and acquire effective certainty of the new claim that “Red looks like {memories of red},” a claim which mAIry was previously incapable of even formulating. (Note that eg this claim could be made false by altering her memories or showing her a green apple while telling her “Humans call this color ‘red’.” The claim is clearly meaningful, though a more carefully formulated version might be tautological.) However, the OP as written doesn’t quite touch Mary’s Room.
According to this argument, when Mary exclaims, “So that’s what red looks like!” she is really pointing to a non-verbal belief she was previously incapable of forming.
That belief is called “the changes that result in cp being true” in mAIry’s case. I mean, it even explicitly stated that these changes could not trigger ahead of time.
The Boolean np was a simplification of “a certain pattern of activation in the neural net”, corresponding to seeing purple. The Boolean cp was tracking the changes in a still-learning neural net caused by seeing purple.
So there are parts of maIry’s brain that are activating as never before, causing her to “learn” what purple looks like. I’m not too clear on how that can be distinguished from a “non-verbal belief”: what are the key differentiating features?
One is phrased or presented as knowledge. I don’t know the best way to approach this, but to a first approximation the belief is the one that has an explicit probability attached. I know you talked about a Boolean, but there the precise claim given a Boolean value was “these changes have happened”, described as an outside observer would, and in my example the claim is closer to just being the changes.
Your example could be brought closer by having mAIry predict the pattern of activation, create pointers to memories that have not yet been formed, and thus formulate the claim, “Purple looks like n<sub>p</sub>.” Here she has knowledge beforehand, but the specific claim under examination is incomplete or undefined because that node doesn’t exist.
Really, no link to orthonormal’s sequence?
I think you haven’t zeroed in on the point of the Mary’s Room argument. According to this argument, when Mary exclaims, “So that’s what red looks like!” she is really pointing to a non-verbal belief she was previously incapable of forming. (I don’t mean the probability of her statement, but the real claim to which she attached the probability.) So it won’t convince any philosophers if you talk about mAIry setting a preexisting Boolean.
Of course this argument fails to touch physicalism—some version of mAIry could just form a new memory and acquire effective certainty of the new claim that “Red looks like {memories of red},” a claim which mAIry was previously incapable of even formulating. (Note that eg this claim could be made false by altering her memories or showing her a green apple while telling her “Humans call this color ‘red’.” The claim is clearly meaningful, though a more carefully formulated version might be tautological.) However, the OP as written doesn’t quite touch Mary’s Room.
That belief is called “the changes that result in cp being true” in mAIry’s case. I mean, it even explicitly stated that these changes could not trigger ahead of time.
Added a link to orthonormal’s sequence, thanks!
The Boolean np was a simplification of “a certain pattern of activation in the neural net”, corresponding to seeing purple. The Boolean cp was tracking the changes in a still-learning neural net caused by seeing purple.
So there are parts of maIry’s brain that are activating as never before, causing her to “learn” what purple looks like. I’m not too clear on how that can be distinguished from a “non-verbal belief”: what are the key differentiating features?
One is phrased or presented as knowledge. I don’t know the best way to approach this, but to a first approximation the belief is the one that has an explicit probability attached. I know you talked about a Boolean, but there the precise claim given a Boolean value was “these changes have happened”, described as an outside observer would, and in my example the claim is closer to just being the changes.
Your example could be brought closer by having mAIry predict the pattern of activation, create pointers to memories that have not yet been formed, and thus formulate the claim, “Purple looks like n<sub>p</sub>.” Here she has knowledge beforehand, but the specific claim under examination is incomplete or undefined because that node doesn’t exist.
Not all philosophers are qualiaphiles.