Re: What should I say to the post-grads about Godel?

On Jun 16, 10:05 pm, stevendaryl3...@xxxxxxxxx (Daryl McCullough)
wrote:
Rupert says...



Okay, look, here is an argument that consciousness is non-physical in
nature, this is called the argument from qualia. I think Thomas Nagel
might have been the first to make a version of the argument. Imagine a
neurologist who knows absolutely everything there is to know about the
neurology of colour perception. She understands colour perception qua
physical process as well as anyone could possibly understand it. But
she has spent all her life in a black-and-white room wearing black-and-
white clothes and black-and-white gloves. Now we take her outside and
show her what it is like to actually experience colour perception.
This (so the argument goes) shows that there is something about colour
perception she didn't know, even though she knew everything there was
to know about it as a physical process. The subjective character of
experience, the argument claims, cannot be understood in purely
physical terms.

That's the Mary's Room argumenthttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary's_Room

I'm not convinced by it, because I'm not convinced that Mary learns
anything new when she walks out of the room. She has a new *experience*,
namely she experiences color for the first time, but I don't see how it
counts as *knowledge*.

This might be a limited notion of what "knowledge" means, but to me,
it seems that gaining knowledge means changing one's sense of what is
possible (or alternatively, changing one's sense of the relative
likelihoods of various alternatives). If you thought that something
was possible, but you find out that it is not, then you've acquired
knowledge. Or if you thought that something was impossible, but found
that it was possible, then you have acquired knowledge. Or if you
thought that something was unlikely, but you find out that it is
actually the case (or more likely than you previously thought) then
you have acquired knowledge. I don't see how discovering "what it's
like to experience color" counts as knowledge in this sense.

Maybe Mary feels joy upon seeing a rainbow for the first time. But
if she was actually such an expert on neurology, she should have been
able to predict that she would feel joy.


Yes, this seems like a pretty good reply to me.
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: What should I say to the post-grads about Godel?
    ... She understands colour perception qua ... physical process as well as anyone could possibly understand it. ... namely she experiences color for the first time, but I don't see how it ... then you have acquired knowledge. ...
    (sci.logic)
  • Re: What should I say to the post-grads about Godel?
    ... neurology of colour perception. ... She understands colour perception qua ... physical process as well as anyone could possibly understand it. ... implicitly asserts that subjective experience cannot be learned as ...
    (sci.logic)
  • Re: What should I say to the post-grads about Godel?
    ... neurology of colour perception. ... She understands colour perception qua ... physical process as well as anyone could possibly understand it. ... implicitly asserts that subjective experience cannot be learned as ...
    (sci.logic)
  • Re: What should I say to the post-grads about Godel?
    ... neurology of colour perception. ... She understands colour perception qua ... physical process as well as anyone could possibly understand it. ... show her what it is like to actually experience colour perception. ...
    (sci.logic)
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