Is there a rule, in the Mary’s room argument, against Mary doing some brain/electricity experiments on herself? Of course, she would be careful to use non-red tools and change her blood somehow so it isn’t red either.
I would expect that such a capable scientist could learn what it feels like to see red objects without any red light going through her eyeballs.
Unless I am mistaken, ESR either thinks that these experiments are not allowed, or hasn’t thought of that possibility. This makes me believe that ESR’s idea that he disagrees with Dennett might be based on reasoning from different ground rules than Dennett.
Is there a rule, in the Mary’s room argument, against Mary doing some brain/electricity experiments on herself? … I would expect that such a capable scientist could learn what it feels like to see red objects without any red light going through her eyeballs.
The way I see it, it’s possible to learn ways to produce the sensation of red, but still learn something upon seeing red.
If each brain is wired up differently from birth, but in ways that achieve similar functionality, then Mary could only learn aggregate and past statistics about the ways brains responded to seeing red. She could make a good guess about the range of responses her own brain is expected to have upon seeing red. But until she sees red, she doesn’t know which response within that range is the one she gets.
As I understood it, Mary is, in the thought experiment, supposed to be very nearly omniscient—she knows EVERY PHYSICAL FACT about color and human perception of color.
My question is whether she’s allowed (before exiting the room) to wire her brain up to a machine that stimulates her neurons exactly as if there was a red thing in front of her.
Would you agree that if she were allowed to use such a machine, then she would know which response her brain in fact would have?
Yes, I do, but I think that turns it into an unhelpful question. If she already knows enough to stimulate her neurons to generate what it feels like “exactly as if there was a red thing in front of her”, then of course she won’t learn anything from seeing red. But knowing enough to do that raises the question of how she could know she’s generating the right feeling, which just regresses to the original dilemma. It’s like saying, “If Mary knows everything, does she know a subset of everything?”
I thought the point of the scenario was to ask if Mary learns anything from seeing red if, before that, she received sensory data in all modes except color sight—that is, she could feel or smell or even see black and white images.
The above reformulation is still fair because, for example, she can run simulations of other people that have information about their reactions to red, and information about her own brain, and she can extrapolate to her internal experience. But I would still say that when she sees red, she resolves residual uncertainty, for example, about which of several branching Marys she is.
As I understand it, the point of the scenario is intended to be an argument against physicalism. Qualia are claimed to be nonphysical, because Mary knew “every physical fact” about color and human color perception, but still (it is claimed) learned something when she saw red for the first time.
Dennett, if I undersand him correctly, argues that the “knowing every physical fact” is a very strong hypothesis, which the exposition of the scenario doesn’t pay enough attention to. With so much information and comprehension, Mary is not very much like a human; our intuition that she would say “wow” is not trustworthy.
In particular, I don’t think that we actually disagree—your posts seem to come from a physicalist, rather than dualist, conception of the world.
Funny how those highly unlikely borderline cases whisk away a lot of the confusion, huh? No committed physicalist can postulate a serious difference between seeing something red and having a virtual red-thing pumped into your optic nerve, I would hope. I think that’s a far more useful scenario than thinking about someone suddenly be able to see colour. In fact, you could probably keep moving a step towards your magical ‘inner perceiver’ and asking whether ‘it’s a real experience of redness’. That’s not to say that qualia are fundamentally dualistic, simply that it’s idle to discuss that question while we clearly don’t have the capacity to get anywhere near it at this point.
I’m always surprised to see people arguing for or against the existence of ‘qualia’ or similar as though they’re making some sort of contribution to the field. Particularly when it’s such nonsense as ‘if brain science doesn’t come up with an explanation for these thingies, it’s not complete!’
Is there a rule, in the Mary’s room argument, against Mary doing some brain/electricity experiments on herself? Of course, she would be careful to use non-red tools and change her blood somehow so it isn’t red either.
I would expect that such a capable scientist could learn what it feels like to see red objects without any red light going through her eyeballs.
Unless I am mistaken, ESR either thinks that these experiments are not allowed, or hasn’t thought of that possibility. This makes me believe that ESR’s idea that he disagrees with Dennett might be based on reasoning from different ground rules than Dennett.
The way I see it, it’s possible to learn ways to produce the sensation of red, but still learn something upon seeing red.
If each brain is wired up differently from birth, but in ways that achieve similar functionality, then Mary could only learn aggregate and past statistics about the ways brains responded to seeing red. She could make a good guess about the range of responses her own brain is expected to have upon seeing red. But until she sees red, she doesn’t know which response within that range is the one she gets.
As I understood it, Mary is, in the thought experiment, supposed to be very nearly omniscient—she knows EVERY PHYSICAL FACT about color and human perception of color.
My question is whether she’s allowed (before exiting the room) to wire her brain up to a machine that stimulates her neurons exactly as if there was a red thing in front of her.
Would you agree that if she were allowed to use such a machine, then she would know which response her brain in fact would have?
Yes, I do, but I think that turns it into an unhelpful question. If she already knows enough to stimulate her neurons to generate what it feels like “exactly as if there was a red thing in front of her”, then of course she won’t learn anything from seeing red. But knowing enough to do that raises the question of how she could know she’s generating the right feeling, which just regresses to the original dilemma. It’s like saying, “If Mary knows everything, does she know a subset of everything?”
I thought the point of the scenario was to ask if Mary learns anything from seeing red if, before that, she received sensory data in all modes except color sight—that is, she could feel or smell or even see black and white images.
The above reformulation is still fair because, for example, she can run simulations of other people that have information about their reactions to red, and information about her own brain, and she can extrapolate to her internal experience. But I would still say that when she sees red, she resolves residual uncertainty, for example, about which of several branching Marys she is.
As I understand it, the point of the scenario is intended to be an argument against physicalism. Qualia are claimed to be nonphysical, because Mary knew “every physical fact” about color and human color perception, but still (it is claimed) learned something when she saw red for the first time.
Dennett, if I undersand him correctly, argues that the “knowing every physical fact” is a very strong hypothesis, which the exposition of the scenario doesn’t pay enough attention to. With so much information and comprehension, Mary is not very much like a human; our intuition that she would say “wow” is not trustworthy.
In particular, I don’t think that we actually disagree—your posts seem to come from a physicalist, rather than dualist, conception of the world.
Funny how those highly unlikely borderline cases whisk away a lot of the confusion, huh? No committed physicalist can postulate a serious difference between seeing something red and having a virtual red-thing pumped into your optic nerve, I would hope. I think that’s a far more useful scenario than thinking about someone suddenly be able to see colour. In fact, you could probably keep moving a step towards your magical ‘inner perceiver’ and asking whether ‘it’s a real experience of redness’. That’s not to say that qualia are fundamentally dualistic, simply that it’s idle to discuss that question while we clearly don’t have the capacity to get anywhere near it at this point.
I’m always surprised to see people arguing for or against the existence of ‘qualia’ or similar as though they’re making some sort of contribution to the field. Particularly when it’s such nonsense as ‘if brain science doesn’t come up with an explanation for these thingies, it’s not complete!’