Since Mary the color scientist kept buzzing in my brain for the last 3 days, and forced me to walk around the campus talking to myself like an unhinged human, I will dedicate this post to her. Mary is a hypothetical smartpants scientist postulated by the philosopher Frank Jackson in his paper Epiphenomenal Qualia in 1982, as thought experiment supporting the existence of qualia or subjective phenomenal experience. In a brief look: Mary is a brilliant scientist, she learned everything physical concerning the red color beginning with what range of wavelengths from the visible spectrum it lies within, to the complete neurological pathways of vision. Now the twist: Mary spent her entire career in a black and white with all shades in between environment, she saw no other colours in her life. After Mary completed her acquisition of knowledge, she was introduced to the red color for the first time. The question here: did Mary learn something new? if she did, then qualia (the experience of redness of the color red in our case) is an irreducible non-physical property of the mind. After hours of self-talk and people staring at me, I came with the following observation: sure Mary learned every thing about the brain states of people perceiving the red color, but what about the big elephant in the room; Marys brain itself, was she capable of tinkering her own brain producing similar brain states, if so I think she already saw the color red, even before going out the black/white environment. To my surprise I was thinking along the same line of Dan Dennett, (of course Dennetts response is formulated and fleshed out in a manner that I can never produce in my mortal days on earth). In a nutshell, Dennett states: the argument does not hold water, simply because Mary did learn everything concerning the red color, if she really learned all physical aspects of it and its perception. He draws the analogy of Robo-Mary. Robo-Mary is a clever robot who had the capacity for learning, simulating and controlling its own internal states, and simulating others internal states, yet it had a color-lock program that does not allow it to see other than black and white. If Robo-Mary can simulate the internal sates of other non-color-lock robots when seeing red, and it can control its own internal states, it just need to alter its internal states to correspond to the simulation, ergo Robo-Mary would know what is it like to see red, without seeing red to begin with. Keep in mind the philosophical literature on Marys Room is vast and Dennetts response is one of many. ase.tufts.edu/cogstud/papers/RoboMaryfinal.htm
Posted on: Sat, 16 Nov 2013 15:07:40 +0000