Mary's room

[calimac]

Looking around Wikipedia at other things, I came across this article describing a philosophical thought experiment attempting to prove that there is more to knowledge than physical facts. It postulates a person who knows everything there is to be known about the physical facts of color perception but who has never herself perceived color. When she is brought out from her room for the first time and sees color for herself, does she learn something she had not known before? The thought experimenter considered that the answer was obviously yes, and therefore there is more to knowledge than the possession of facts.

This argument sounded familiar somehow. And sure enough, the science fiction writers had been there first, in this case about 15 years earlier, when Roger Zelazny imagined two robots arguing over the knowability of human feelings and emotions.

Mordel drove a shaft of metal downward into the snow.
He retracted it, raised it, held up a piece of ice.
"Regard this piece of ice, mighty Frost. You can tell me its composition, dimension, weight, temperature. A Man could not look at it and do that. A Man could make tools which would tell Him these things, but He still would not know measurement as you know it. What He would know of it, though, is a thing that you cannot know."
"What is that?"
"That it is cold," said Mordel, and tossed it away.

Frost objects that he could find out what temperature is considered cold and "then I, too, would know cold," but Mordel says, "No, you would possess another measurement. 'Cold' is a sensation predicated upon human physiology. [You could be] aware of its existence, but not of the thing itself."

I have had the experience of learning the likes of cold or color through perception, haven't you? Two examples come to mind.

1. I had read something about minimalist music before I ever heard any. I didn't seek it out; the descriptions did not sound like something I would care for. When a piece of it did flitter across my ears, I was astonished. What none of the descriptions had revealed to me was the entrancement with which I would respond to it. For the second, and so far last, time in my life I experienced the world-shifting reaction of I'd had no idea that music could do something like this.

Watch on YouTube

2. This was even odder. I had already read much on the JFK assassination when I visited Dealey Plaza in Dallas some years ago. My reaction was unexpected, even to me. What I was thinking as I walked around was, "My goodness, it looks exactly like all those miniature models of itself." The question I now offer for contemplation is, Why did this surprise me?

Comments

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

1. I'd had no idea that music could do something like this.

I wish I had some concept of what the "this" you refer to is. Can you explain a bit? (Also, I'm curious as to what was the first time.)

2. I have no idea why. I think I would have been surprised if it didn't, though I can't be sure.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

I'm not going to try to explain technically, but compare that piece with your typical 19th or even 20th century classical music, and the conceptual jump is tremendous.

The first time I had the reaction of "I had no idea that music could so something like this"? That came the very first time I heard this work:

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

I know virtually nothing about the technical side of music, so it probably wouldn't help even if you did explain technically. I'm finding myself mentally flailing about, trying to grasp the idea of music "not being able to do" something (anything). I just have no inkling, no tiniest clue, what that means.

In a way, music never surprises (much less astonishes) me. I don't perceive any limitations on what it can "do." Of course, I realize that certain classifications of music have certain structures, certain "rules"; even I would be surprised if you told me I was going to hear a grunge band, and it sounded like ... well, either of the pieces you link to here, for example. Or vice versa. But aside from that, I can't grok the idea of being surprised by something that anything called "music" does.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

It doesn't mean I thought of something and said, "Nah, music can't do that." It means simply that somebody came up with a kind of music whose possible existence had never occurred to me, and that enraptured and spoke to me instantly when I heard it.

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

The enrapturing and speaking, I get that--some music has done that to me. It's the concept that there wouldn't be some kind of music whose possible existence had never occurred to me that my mind can't quite grasp. The category "music" seems to me so nearly infinite.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

Again, I had no positive thought that there wouldn't be any particular sort of music. It's that I had never thought of the existence of anything like this.

Have you never had the experience of reading a thought or an idea that immediately appealed to you, but that you'd never thought of for yourself before?

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

Sure. But I can't imagine saying, "I'd had no idea that words/language coulddosomething like this."

I'm probably too stuck on your saying that, and probably you mean something different from what those words create in my brain. We have discovered before that we think very differently.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

Actually, I've kind of had that experience too, though it didn't strike me as forcefully as did music.

I think most of the world had that reaction when Gertrude Stein first appeared. She did things with words that had never been done before. Some readers were enchanted, some mystified, but none of them had ever seen anything like that, and it's doubtful any of them had been able to imagine that it could be done, or it would already have been.

Once again, the reaction I'm describing is neither imagining a certain thing and declaring it impossible, nor is it supposing that nothing could be done that you couldn't think of yourself. It consists merely of being taken totally by delighted surprise when it is done.

[mithriltabby]

I was first exposed to minimalist music when my English teacher showed Koyaanisqatsi in 8th grade. That was quite an experience, as I’d also never seen anyone do such a good job with time lapse photography...

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

Koyaanisqatsi was released just about the time I discovered Glass (in 1982, the same year The Photographer, the chamber opera I excerpted above, appeared). I first saw it a couple years later, and was quite taken with both music and visuals.

[mithriltabby]

I think it’s the best of the trilogy. In that vein, have you seen Baraka?

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

I certainly agree with your first sentence, though I enjoyed the music of Powaqqatsi.

Regarding the second, my first thought was, um, well, I've seen Baraka Obama, does he count?

[scribblerworks.livejournal.com]

I think the distinction between merely knowing the facts and the knowledge that comes from actual perception of a thing is that our perception/experience of a thing always takes in more data than the mere "fact list".

For instance: the matter of "cold" from the fiction passage -- what the robots do not take into account is how a human would compare the temperature of the ice to his own body temperature. Even though we do not consciously register our body temp ("it is what it is"), we are still conscious of when we contact something that has a different temperature. But there are also all the bodily reactions to cold, all the minute effects, none of which fit into any of the little "fact lists".

The subjective experience of things is actually crucial knowledge for humans, but "mere reason" often discounts it.

[whswhs.livejournal.com]

I have come to think that what you are calling "subjective" is actually something different. Consider the difference between abstract knowledge of pain and the experience of pain, for example. If you have a headache, I may know that you're in pain, from the look on your face and the way you move; I may be able to imagine your pain, which is what we mean when we say "I feel your pain"; but it's you and only you who feel your pain. But that's not because the pain exists in some hidden, private inner sanctum of your consciousness to which no one else can ever gain access; it's because the pain exists in your body, in the state of your nervous system, and your body is uniquely and privately yours. Qualia are private not because minds are private but because bodies are private.

And if we had true telepathy, it would not be the sharing of thoughts that struck us, or perceptions, or intentions, or even emotions. It would be the sharing of embodiednesses. It would be my being able to say "I have a pain in Katherine's head!" We can share all the rest already.