Comment on Seeing Red: Dissolving Mary's Room and Qualia

Mon, 06 Jun 2011 15:44:34 GMT

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?

Yes.

If yes: qualia doesn't do the work you want it to.

Who are you addressing and how do you know?

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.

The intended distinction is between complete theoretical or descriptive knowledge and knowledge by acquaintance.

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!".

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.

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!".

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.

She could act on this prediction in exactly the same way that someone who had seen red could act on their qualia.

You are saying that Mary would know what red looks like while on the room?

If this doesn't solve the qualia problem for you, tell me: why not?

Why doesn't that solve the qualia problem for everybody?

Discuss