Peterdjones 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: Peterdjones 31 May 2011 07:05:47PM 0 points [-]

Not really; it just means that our ability to imagine sensory experiences is underpowered.

Why does Mary need to imagine red in order to know what it looks like? If the physical understanding she already has accounts for it, then she should be able to figure it out from that, as per the Dennett response. Like several people in this thread, you are tacitly assuming that there is something special about qualia, such that they need to be imagined or instantiated in order to be known -- something that is unique about them, even though they are ultimately physical like everything else.