Wow, thank you very much! Honestly, I tried copilot and canva without success. What I would like is an image similar to Pete Mandik's recent post, but with everything in colour except the apple. If you can't do that with ease, anything will do!
First - to clarify, by physical information I mean all the information up to a very high level of neuroscientific understanding, to the degree that she can simulate what would happen, to a good estimate. I do not mean that she has internalised all the high-level concepts that supervene on the physical, and in that sense also are physical facts. If she knew all the physical facts in that wider sense, then she would already know what it is like to see black and white, just as Jackson’s original Mary would know what it is like to see colour.
Second - building on this wider definition of physical facts and applying it to original Mary - as a fellow physician I think you will agree that it is not obvious at all that she will, even though she knows what seeing red is like to ordinary people, have that ordinary red experience when she actually sees a red apple. We would not expect the appropriate neurophysiology to be in place. It would be analogous to having a memory of what something looks or feels like, but to experience it as transformed, or significantly different, when exposed to it again.
So, back to your question. In neither case (knowing all the physical facts in the broader or more limited sense), I do not think she learns what it is like to see black and white for ordinary people. Focusing on the limited physical facts, she will have a new and strange experience - none of the ‘nostalgia’ or ‘old feel’ that you or I see. She’s never before seen the colour of objects transformed into a different colour - something we are quite familiar with. Our familiar reactions to black and white are inseparable from what it is like to see black-and-white for ordinary people. There is no primary “quale” essence, and then a secondary reaction, even if we psychologically tend to talk about it like that.
I hope it makes at least some sense. Would love to hear your response.
I wasn't familiar with the "Mary's Room" thought experiment and so looked it up. I feel I must be missing something, because to me the difference between knowing everything about the neurophysiology of an experience and having the actual experience is clear, although both are neurally mediated.
Another way to look at it might be to say - I know everything there is to know about riding my bike, i.e. how it works / what it feels like / how it looks and sounds / how to balance / etc. However, having that experience of knowing - while I'm sitting in my office - is nothing like the experience of actually riding it.
As I say - I think I'm probably misunderstanding something here?
Ah, I realise I should have included the original thought experiment. Think I'll edit it in.
You're not alone in thinking you're missing something or that others are missing something obvious (or almost obvious). There's a reason this has become the most talked about thought experiment in philosophy of mind. It invokes very strong such reactions. It is hopelessly underspecified (what does 'knowledge' mean, and what does 'physical facts' mean?, and many other ambiguities), which leads to all sorts of different interpretations.
I was in a long disagreement with philosopher Pete Mandik about Mary (he's here on substack and has written two posts on Mary, this year). He was kind enough to keep responding to my challenges. After a long time, I realised that he meant something quite different with "physical facts". As I understand him: assuming phyiscalism, then knowing all the physical facts by definition means knowing all the facts, including all the concepts. Since knowing what something is like is a physical state/process, then, by definition, Mary knows what it is like. She can, from the neuroscientific facts, extract not only simple semantic knowledge, but all the concepts.
Fair enough, but that is not what I mean by physical facts. I mean all the facts up to a certain degree of neurophysiologic detail. For example, Mary knows exactly how neurons operate, as well as large clusters of neurons, but she does not have the knowledge necessary to extract all the high-level concepts, even though they technically are “stored” in the neurophysiology. Psychology supervenes on neurophysiology, but understanding neurophysiology well does not necessarily understanding psychology well.
There’s also a distinction some make between knowing what something is like and having the experience, which you touch on. Pete Mandik thinks Mary can know what it is like, but not have the experience. I’m not sure exactly how to separate the two. Knowing what something is like is, at least partially, an ability to simulate an experience (I think).
I hope that at least partially is clarifying. I think almost everybody is misunderstanding almost everybody on this one.
With respect to the main questions, this post raises the usual Mary questions, which I won't touch for now. As you know, I am a Gap Compatabilist and Gap Deflationist.
Is there a quale for greyness? I guess so. It's a little less clear from a neuroanatomy perspective. I think that greyness might be less removed from the non-grey colour pyramid than colours are from the linear, one-dimensional grey scale. But my intuition says she would learn something.
Yes, I know. And as you no doubt have noticed, I think you still have a teeny bit Cartesian Materialism residue in your thinking about this ;) I hope you take no offence, and of course I could be wrong.
I agree that she would learn something new. I don't think she will see black&white the way you or I do, at least not inititally.
I don't think the neuroanatomy is necessary, although certainly interesting. But if you can tell grey and red apart we already know the the neuroanatomical prerequisites for discrimination and report on that discrimination are in place. I mean, what about the neuroanatomical perspective on experiencing total darkness?
Where do you think I have "Cartesian materialism residue"?
I think it is worth distinguishing between what I believe, versus the cognitive habits I engage in because I have a human brain. Those are not necessarily in synch.
I need to expunge Cartesian materialism from my understanding of the world, but not necessarily from the way I engage with that understanding - which might be impossible anyway. Hopefully I can distinguish between them, or at least try my best.
As someone said, everything is contaminated with the scent of thinking. I think that's unavoidable. There is phenomenality in our conception of a zombie world, for instance.
Copernican views of the solar system have never made me feel bad using the word "sunset"; the discussion of the mind has many such leftovers.
I can understand an optical illusion without being able to escape it. It is no doubt the same with many intuitions about the mind. As long as I know they are bullshit, I can quarantine them.
But I do like to know about them, so I'm always happy to have them pointed out.
You are right of course. And you express it beautifully! I do not intend to point out every time you may talk as if feel is non-physical, for example, when I know that you believe that feel is physical. It's certainly worth distinguishing.
I may very well be reading you wrong. Where I think (perhaps wrongly) that you have Cartesian Materialism-residue is that you seem to be thinking of a feel to arise, physically, in some part of the brain, and then that feel being observered, physically, by some other part of the brain. That is my impression of your thinking, and that, in my view, retains the subject-object view of Decartes (and indeed, it is pretty hard-wired into our self-modelling). For example, you seem to think that the redness of red is a particular neurological state in V4 and that that state is then observe, or downstream expressed, by other parts of the brain. Almost kind of physicalist qualia realism view, if you know what I mean? (I'm sorry to use such harsh, even patronising language!. Especially since we're supposed to be on the same team. Sorry! lol). I speak based on my own journey, and I could very well be reading you wrong, of course.
If I read you correctly, your view, I think, leads to qualia inversion paradoxes, and in the end, anti-functionalism. Borrowing from Dennett's quining qualia: say I modify your brain, without touching V4, so that you remember all red objects as green, and all green objects as red. Now, when you recall what a ripe tomato looks like, your V4 greeness circuitry activates, and that seems completely natural to you. When you see a tomato plant with ripe tomatoes - you'll confirm the stem looks red and the tomatoes look like unripe green ones and you'll express the weirdness. If I instead just rewire your optic nerve, or somewhere else prior to V4, so that your greenness circuitry in V4 is activated by red stimuli and vice versa, then, functionally, we get exactly the same result, you saying exactly the same things. This proves beyond doubt, to me at least, that there is no feel or quale produced somewhere in the brain and then observed somewhere else. It is all about the global process, fame in the brain, so to speak. Redness is not localised somewhere in the brain.
Am I correct in my critique or misunderstanding you?
I would say misunderstanding. There are specilaised modules that are called upon to do things. A seizure in V4 will literally be interpreted as incoming colour. A seizure in motor cortex causes movement. The requirement for one module is solely related to the role it plays.
Parts of the brain absolutely do observe each other. It's the key to locating the source of positive symptomatology in neurology. The seizing part produces random outputs that are interpreted by the rest of the brain in representational terms.
There is no redness in V4 though. We know a virtual world.
I could see why you might read it that way, though.
Yes, of course parts of the brain observer each other. But the redness isn't in one part and becomes conscious in another part. It's the whole process, a continuum. There is not the redness of red somewhere in my brain, and then my reaction to that redness somewhere else. That is not what the observation is. That's a false separation and categorisation based on how we model ourselves. That's what I'm pushing.
So a seizure in v4 is interpreted as colour, yes, because of the downstream effects. Likewise with motor cortex. I'm totally on board with that. But, crucially, it's all about the downstream effects, as I see it.
I see now that we are more aligned than I thought. Yes, a virtual world.
In the case of a colourful seizure, the bit doing the representation has, ironically, completely abandoned its representational duties. So it can't get credit for any semantic significance; it is the rest of the brain that makes the best interpretation it can out of the situation.
I would actually say redness as I naively know it does not exist.
Describe an artistic style and I will gift you a picture for your post.
Wow, thank you very much! Honestly, I tried copilot and canva without success. What I would like is an image similar to Pete Mandik's recent post, but with everything in colour except the apple. If you can't do that with ease, anything will do!
Hello Mark - does she not learn the experience of seeing black and white? That is not the same as understanding them, and so it would be new to her.
Hello Saj!
First - to clarify, by physical information I mean all the information up to a very high level of neuroscientific understanding, to the degree that she can simulate what would happen, to a good estimate. I do not mean that she has internalised all the high-level concepts that supervene on the physical, and in that sense also are physical facts. If she knew all the physical facts in that wider sense, then she would already know what it is like to see black and white, just as Jackson’s original Mary would know what it is like to see colour.
Second - building on this wider definition of physical facts and applying it to original Mary - as a fellow physician I think you will agree that it is not obvious at all that she will, even though she knows what seeing red is like to ordinary people, have that ordinary red experience when she actually sees a red apple. We would not expect the appropriate neurophysiology to be in place. It would be analogous to having a memory of what something looks or feels like, but to experience it as transformed, or significantly different, when exposed to it again.
So, back to your question. In neither case (knowing all the physical facts in the broader or more limited sense), I do not think she learns what it is like to see black and white for ordinary people. Focusing on the limited physical facts, she will have a new and strange experience - none of the ‘nostalgia’ or ‘old feel’ that you or I see. She’s never before seen the colour of objects transformed into a different colour - something we are quite familiar with. Our familiar reactions to black and white are inseparable from what it is like to see black-and-white for ordinary people. There is no primary “quale” essence, and then a secondary reaction, even if we psychologically tend to talk about it like that.
I hope it makes at least some sense. Would love to hear your response.
I wasn't familiar with the "Mary's Room" thought experiment and so looked it up. I feel I must be missing something, because to me the difference between knowing everything about the neurophysiology of an experience and having the actual experience is clear, although both are neurally mediated.
Another way to look at it might be to say - I know everything there is to know about riding my bike, i.e. how it works / what it feels like / how it looks and sounds / how to balance / etc. However, having that experience of knowing - while I'm sitting in my office - is nothing like the experience of actually riding it.
As I say - I think I'm probably misunderstanding something here?
Ah, I realise I should have included the original thought experiment. Think I'll edit it in.
You're not alone in thinking you're missing something or that others are missing something obvious (or almost obvious). There's a reason this has become the most talked about thought experiment in philosophy of mind. It invokes very strong such reactions. It is hopelessly underspecified (what does 'knowledge' mean, and what does 'physical facts' mean?, and many other ambiguities), which leads to all sorts of different interpretations.
I was in a long disagreement with philosopher Pete Mandik about Mary (he's here on substack and has written two posts on Mary, this year). He was kind enough to keep responding to my challenges. After a long time, I realised that he meant something quite different with "physical facts". As I understand him: assuming phyiscalism, then knowing all the physical facts by definition means knowing all the facts, including all the concepts. Since knowing what something is like is a physical state/process, then, by definition, Mary knows what it is like. She can, from the neuroscientific facts, extract not only simple semantic knowledge, but all the concepts.
Fair enough, but that is not what I mean by physical facts. I mean all the facts up to a certain degree of neurophysiologic detail. For example, Mary knows exactly how neurons operate, as well as large clusters of neurons, but she does not have the knowledge necessary to extract all the high-level concepts, even though they technically are “stored” in the neurophysiology. Psychology supervenes on neurophysiology, but understanding neurophysiology well does not necessarily understanding psychology well.
There’s also a distinction some make between knowing what something is like and having the experience, which you touch on. Pete Mandik thinks Mary can know what it is like, but not have the experience. I’m not sure exactly how to separate the two. Knowing what something is like is, at least partially, an ability to simulate an experience (I think).
I hope that at least partially is clarifying. I think almost everybody is misunderstanding almost everybody on this one.
https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F7da8074d-31af-4644-bc4a-1ec46953bb32_1024x1024.png
I will remove my copy once you have yours.
Hey, thanks a lot! I now have it.
To be clear, I’ve been talking about color and you seem to be talking about something called “colour”. 😉
Haha yes! But what is it like for you to talk about "color"? To me it's very unfamiliar ;) (honestly, so is "colour", naturally I talk about "färg")
Min farfar var svensk men talade väldigt lite om det när jag växte upp (det här meddelandet är med tillstånd av maskinöversättning).
Häftigt! (cool!)
Do you know where in Sweden he was from?
unfortunately, no
Onto it
With respect to the main questions, this post raises the usual Mary questions, which I won't touch for now. As you know, I am a Gap Compatabilist and Gap Deflationist.
Is there a quale for greyness? I guess so. It's a little less clear from a neuroanatomy perspective. I think that greyness might be less removed from the non-grey colour pyramid than colours are from the linear, one-dimensional grey scale. But my intuition says she would learn something.
Yes, I know. And as you no doubt have noticed, I think you still have a teeny bit Cartesian Materialism residue in your thinking about this ;) I hope you take no offence, and of course I could be wrong.
I agree that she would learn something new. I don't think she will see black&white the way you or I do, at least not inititally.
I don't think the neuroanatomy is necessary, although certainly interesting. But if you can tell grey and red apart we already know the the neuroanatomical prerequisites for discrimination and report on that discrimination are in place. I mean, what about the neuroanatomical perspective on experiencing total darkness?
Anyway, thank you for your comment!
Where do you think I have "Cartesian materialism residue"?
I think it is worth distinguishing between what I believe, versus the cognitive habits I engage in because I have a human brain. Those are not necessarily in synch.
I need to expunge Cartesian materialism from my understanding of the world, but not necessarily from the way I engage with that understanding - which might be impossible anyway. Hopefully I can distinguish between them, or at least try my best.
As someone said, everything is contaminated with the scent of thinking. I think that's unavoidable. There is phenomenality in our conception of a zombie world, for instance.
Copernican views of the solar system have never made me feel bad using the word "sunset"; the discussion of the mind has many such leftovers.
I can understand an optical illusion without being able to escape it. It is no doubt the same with many intuitions about the mind. As long as I know they are bullshit, I can quarantine them.
But I do like to know about them, so I'm always happy to have them pointed out.
You are right of course. And you express it beautifully! I do not intend to point out every time you may talk as if feel is non-physical, for example, when I know that you believe that feel is physical. It's certainly worth distinguishing.
I may very well be reading you wrong. Where I think (perhaps wrongly) that you have Cartesian Materialism-residue is that you seem to be thinking of a feel to arise, physically, in some part of the brain, and then that feel being observered, physically, by some other part of the brain. That is my impression of your thinking, and that, in my view, retains the subject-object view of Decartes (and indeed, it is pretty hard-wired into our self-modelling). For example, you seem to think that the redness of red is a particular neurological state in V4 and that that state is then observe, or downstream expressed, by other parts of the brain. Almost kind of physicalist qualia realism view, if you know what I mean? (I'm sorry to use such harsh, even patronising language!. Especially since we're supposed to be on the same team. Sorry! lol). I speak based on my own journey, and I could very well be reading you wrong, of course.
If I read you correctly, your view, I think, leads to qualia inversion paradoxes, and in the end, anti-functionalism. Borrowing from Dennett's quining qualia: say I modify your brain, without touching V4, so that you remember all red objects as green, and all green objects as red. Now, when you recall what a ripe tomato looks like, your V4 greeness circuitry activates, and that seems completely natural to you. When you see a tomato plant with ripe tomatoes - you'll confirm the stem looks red and the tomatoes look like unripe green ones and you'll express the weirdness. If I instead just rewire your optic nerve, or somewhere else prior to V4, so that your greenness circuitry in V4 is activated by red stimuli and vice versa, then, functionally, we get exactly the same result, you saying exactly the same things. This proves beyond doubt, to me at least, that there is no feel or quale produced somewhere in the brain and then observed somewhere else. It is all about the global process, fame in the brain, so to speak. Redness is not localised somewhere in the brain.
Am I correct in my critique or misunderstanding you?
I would say misunderstanding. There are specilaised modules that are called upon to do things. A seizure in V4 will literally be interpreted as incoming colour. A seizure in motor cortex causes movement. The requirement for one module is solely related to the role it plays.
Parts of the brain absolutely do observe each other. It's the key to locating the source of positive symptomatology in neurology. The seizing part produces random outputs that are interpreted by the rest of the brain in representational terms.
There is no redness in V4 though. We know a virtual world.
I could see why you might read it that way, though.
Can't edit the typos out. Substack glitching today. Now they've gone. Lag in the refresh.
Ah, thanks. That's good to hear haha...
Yes, of course parts of the brain observer each other. But the redness isn't in one part and becomes conscious in another part. It's the whole process, a continuum. There is not the redness of red somewhere in my brain, and then my reaction to that redness somewhere else. That is not what the observation is. That's a false separation and categorisation based on how we model ourselves. That's what I'm pushing.
So a seizure in v4 is interpreted as colour, yes, because of the downstream effects. Likewise with motor cortex. I'm totally on board with that. But, crucially, it's all about the downstream effects, as I see it.
I see now that we are more aligned than I thought. Yes, a virtual world.
In the case of a colourful seizure, the bit doing the representation has, ironically, completely abandoned its representational duties. So it can't get credit for any semantic significance; it is the rest of the brain that makes the best interpretation it can out of the situation.
I would actually say redness as I naively know it does not exist.