TheAncientGeek comments on The AI in Mary's room - Less Wrong

4 Post author: Stuart_Armstrong 24 May 2016 01:19PM

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Comment author: ImNotAsSmartAsIThinK 02 June 2016 09:16:44PM *  0 points [-]

Mary is presumed to have all objective knowedge and only objectve knowledge, Your phrasing is ambiguous and therefire doesnt address the point.

The behavior of the neurons in her skull is an objective fact, and this is what I mean to referring to. Apologies for the ambiguity.

When you say Mary will know what happens when she sees red, do you mean she knows how red looks subjectively, or she knows something objective like what her behaviour will be

The latter. The former is purely experiential knowledge, and as I have repeatedly said is contained in a superset of verbal (what you call 'objective') knowledge, but is disjoint with the set of verbal ('objective') knowledge itself. This is my box metaphor.

Is that supposed to relate to the objective/ subjective distinction somehow?

Yes. Assuming the Godel encoding is fixed, [the metaphor is that] any and all statements of PA are experiential knowledge (an experience, in simple terms), non-Godel statements of PA are purely experiential knowledge; the redness of red, say, and finally the Godel statements of PA are verbal knowledge, or 'objective knowledge' in your terminology.

Despite not being Godel statements in the encoding, the second item in the above list is still mathematical, and redness of red is still physical.

So? The overall point is about physicalism, and to get to 'physicalism is false', all you need is the existence of subjective knowledge, not its usefulness in making prediction. So again I don't see the relevance

What does this knowledge do? How do we tell the difference between someone with and without these 'subjective experiences'? What definition of knowledge admits it as valid?

Comment author: TheAncientGeek 03 June 2016 12:37:01PM *  1 point [-]

The latter. The former is purely experiential knowledge, and as I have repeatedly said is contained in a superset of verbal (what you call 'objectiive) knowledge, but is disjoint with the set of verbal ('objective') knowledge itself. This is my box metaphor.

You have said that according to you, stipulatively, subjective knowledge is a subset of objective knowledge. What we mean by objective knowledge is generally knowledge that can be understood at second hand, without being in a special state or having had particular experiences. You say that the subjective subset of objective knowledge is somehow opaque, so that it does not have the properties usually associated with objective knowledge..but why should anyone believe it is objective, when it lacks the usual properties, and is only asserted to be objective?

redness of red is still physical

I can't see how that has been proven. You can't prove that redness is physically encoded in the relevant sense just by noting that physical changes occur in brains, because

1 There's no physical proof of physicalism

2 An assumption of physicalism is question begging

3 You need an absence of non physical proeties, states and processes, not just the presence of physical changes

4 Physicalism as a meaningful claim, and not just a stipulative label needs to pay its way in explanation...but its ability to explain subjective knowledge is just at is in question.

What does this knowledge do? How do we tell the difference between someone with and without these 'subjective experiences'? What definition of knowledge admits it as valid

Its hard to prove the existence of subjective knowledge in an objective basis. What else would you expect.? There is a widespread belief in subjective, experiential knowledge and the evidence for it is subjective. The alternative is the sort of thing caricatured as 'how was it for me, darling'.