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shokwave comments on Seeing Red: Dissolving Mary's Room and Qualia - Less Wrong
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Say I jam an electrode into Mary's optical nerve and send a pulse down it, causing the nerve to report to the brain that she sees red. In this hypothetical, her field of vision fills with red. Does this count as her experiencing the qualia of red?
If no: your concept of qualia is magical.
If yes: qualia doesn't do the work you want it to. With the word qualia, you're drawing a distinction between knowledge of the event and the actual event of the event - the event happening as distinct from a complete understanding of the event happening. This distinction is worthless! No sane person will tell a physicist "You can't know how fast a one kilogram ball will reach the end of a 10 meter 45-degree ramp in a frictionless environment! You haven't rolled a one kilo ball down said ramp in said environment!".
Mary, with her complete knowledge of human neuroscience, will be able to predict exactly what will happen inside her head, down to her exclamation of "Oh, that's what red looks like!". She could act on this prediction in exactly the same way that someone who had seen red could act on their qualia. Yet again: the distinction is worthless.
If this doesn't solve the qualia problem for you, tell me: why not?
Yes.
Who are you addressing and how do you know?
The intended distinction is between complete theoretical or descriptive knowledge and knowledge by acquaintance.
The distinction is worthless in that case. However, that does not mean it is worthless in other cases. The intended conclusion is that qualia are a unique case.
It's possible that her ability to predict her own surprise won't involve an ability to predict what she is surprised at, how red looks.
You are saying that Mary would know what red looks like while on the room?
Why doesn't that solve the qualia problem for everybody?
Give me a case where this is a useful distinction.
This is exactly the useless distinction, right here. You're drawing a distinction between knowing how red looks, and being able to act as if you know how red looks. (Being able to predict her surprise vs being able to predict the look of red). In practice, everywhere, there is no difference. The only use of knowing how red looks is to check that your model of neuroscience is accurate, and we've already specified Mary's knowledge is complete.
I'm not sure if I am. The way I phrased the question, I think that saying "yes, she experiences the qualia of red" means that she knows what red looks like while she's in the room, and saying "no, she does not experience the qualia of red" means she doesn't know what red looks like while inside the room.
I would be greatly honored if you could quickly outline what work you feel that qualia does - what theories does it support, what does it count as evidence against, what does it rule out and what does it prove, what impact does it have? What does it mean, if qualia existed?
The intended use is to tell us whether neuroscience is complete.
That is a bold claim. Surely there is a subjective difference between predicting the surpise, and predicting the red? Or are you looking at it behaviouristically, from the outside?
No. We have specified that it is descpriptively complete. The whole point of the story is to explore whether complete descriptive knowledge is complete knowledge.
It would be helpful if you were sure.
So which is it?
That qualia exists means there is something lemons taste like, and saxophones sound like and sunsets look like. Beyond that...why do you need to know? Are you planning to deny that there omething lemons taste like, and saxophones sound like and sunsets look like if it leads to implications you don't like?