PhilGoetz comments on Seeing Red: Dissolving Mary's Room and Qualia - Less Wrong

38 Post author: orthonormal 26 May 2011 05:47PM

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Comment author: PhilGoetz 30 May 2011 05:52:17PM 1 point [-]

For example, we don't experience the feeling of ineffability for something like counting, which happens consciously (above a threshold of five or six). If Mary had never counted more than 100 objects before, and today she counted 113 sheep in a field, we wouldn't expect her to exclaim "Oh, so that's what 113 looks like!"

What about the case of 3 sheep? Are small numbers understood both analytically, and as qualia?

Comment author: orthonormal 31 May 2011 04:00:26PM 0 points [-]

That's a really good question, and I just wanted to avoid that extra complication in this example. (As noted in the last post, I couldn't even fully do that. Oh well.)