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.

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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

[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.