I predict color quales might feel like new information when they actually aren’t.
I am curious if you disagree with the claim that (human) Mary is gaining implicit information, in that (despite already knowing many facts about red-ness), her (human) optic system wouldn’t have successfully been able to predict the incoming visual data from the apple before seeing it, but afterwards can?
Now that I think about it, due to this cognitive architecture issue, she actually does gain new information. If she sees a red apple in the future, she can know that it’s red (because it produces the same qualia as the first red apple), whereas she might be confused about the color if she hadn’t seen the first apple.
I think I got confused because, while she does learn something upon seeing the first red apple, it isn’t the naive “red wavelengths are red-quale”, it’s more like “the neurons that detect red wavelengths got wired and associated with the abstract concept of red wavelengths.” Which is still, effectively, new information to Mary-the-cognitive-system, given limitations in human mental architecture.
I am curious if you disagree with the claim that (human) Mary is gaining implicit information, in that (despite already knowing many facts about red-ness), her (human) optic system wouldn’t have successfully been able to predict the incoming visual data from the apple before seeing it, but afterwards can?
That does seem right, actually.
Now that I think about it, due to this cognitive architecture issue, she actually does gain new information. If she sees a red apple in the future, she can know that it’s red (because it produces the same qualia as the first red apple), whereas she might be confused about the color if she hadn’t seen the first apple.
I think I got confused because, while she does learn something upon seeing the first red apple, it isn’t the naive “red wavelengths are red-quale”, it’s more like “the neurons that detect red wavelengths got wired and associated with the abstract concept of red wavelengths.” Which is still, effectively, new information to Mary-the-cognitive-system, given limitations in human mental architecture.