Mary in the Coloured Room

The super-scientist who has never seen black-and-white

“Mary’s Room” aka “Mary the Brilliant Color Scientist” aka “the Knowledge argument” by philosopher Frank Jackson is perhaps the most discussed thought experiment in philosophy of mind in recent decades. Notably, Jackson has changed his view and now identifies as a physicalist. My post is a variation with the purpose of questioning one rarely discussed assumption - that Mary knows what it is like to see black-and-white. Here is the original:

”Mary is a brilliant scientist who is, for whatever reason, forced to investigate the world from a black and white room via a black and white television monitor. She specialises in the neurophysiology of vision and acquires, let us suppose, all the physical information there is to obtain about what goes on when we see ripe tomatoes, or the sky, and use terms like 'red', 'blue', and so on...What will happen when Mary is released from her black and white room or is given a colour television monitor? Will she learn anything or not?”

Mary is a brilliant scientist who is, for whatever reason, forced to investigate the world from a vividly coloured room using a colour television monitor. She is familiar with every colour—including the shades of the grey-scale spectrum. She learns about the grey-scale colours from some of the objects in her room, as well as by observing rocks, blackberries, snow, and so forth, via her monitor. There is an important restriction: she only has access to highly coloured imagery. For example, she never gets to see any black-and-white film, photography, or art—instead being provided with perfectly colourised versions. She is also deprived of naturally occurring black-and-white-reminiscent scenery, such as moonlit landscapes. In short, everything she sees is vividly coloured.

Mary specialises in the neurophysiology of vision. She takes a particular interest in how ordinary humans interact with black-and-white photo and film material. She learns, let us suppose, all the physical information there is to obtain about what goes on when an ordinary person becomes absorbed in Hitchcock’s Psycho or views a black and white photograph of a raspberry bush laden with ripe raspberries. She discovers, for example, just which wavelength and luminosity combinations from such a photo stimulate the retina and exactly how this produces via the central nervous system the contraction of the vocal cords and expulsion of air from the lungs that results in the utterance: “I love the old, classic feel of this black and white photo. It reminds me of photos from my grandmother’s childhood, an era long gone. What kind of bush is this? It’s hard to see—oh, is that a raspberry? It’s quite hard to tell, isn’t it?”.

What will happen when Mary is released and gets to see the original version of Psycho? Or if her captors inform her that she will undergo surgery to alter her eyes so that she sees everything in black-and-white, and she then wakes up out in the world? Will Mary learn something new?

Mary already knew what it was like to see all the different shades of grey. Yet it seems just obvious that if she is released into a world that appears completely void of colour, something she has never seen before, she will learn something new. But Mary already knew all the physical information about seeing black and white, and she already knew what it is like to see all the grey-scale colours. Ergo, there is more to have than that—whatever it may be—or else intuition-invoking thought experiments are just not reliable.

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Questions to the reader: if Mary learns something knew, then what does she learn? Does she learn something about what it is like for you see black-and-white, a highly familiar experience, or does she learn something quite different: what it is like to see black-and-white for the first time? Alternatively, is there an essence of black-and-whiteness that both you and Mary experience, while your reactions to that black-and-whiteness may differ? Please let me know what you think!