Mary vs physicalism

An actual real life report from stroke victims can open up a bit of a window into this problem. People who've had strokes don't understand (lose the ability to see colour) the concept of 'colour' yet when they 'recall' what colour is they see colour again.

I think this is much more about how we order and prioritise concepts. For example a table is not a table to people who have no use or need for tables. It is just an object of curiosity perhaps but they don't 'see' a table.

Quoting frank

She specializes 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. She discovers, for example, just which wavelength combinations from the sky 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 uttering of the sentence "The sky is blue". ...

Too far fetched to make sense imo. I've never been fond of Dennett's Mary tbh. If all the 'physical information' is all the 'information' then what this has to do with actual subjective experience doesn't seem to be on the same plane.

Reply to frank I wouldn't say she learns anything new, so much as has a new experience. No implications for physicalism.

Quoting I like sushi

For example a table is not a table to people who have no use or need for tables. It is just an object of curiosity perhaps but they don't 'see' a table

But how would you describe the concept of color? Of red?

Quoting khaled

No implications for physicalism.

I think the thought experiment is supposed to have implications for physicalism, along the lines of: there are aspects of the mental that aren't physical.

Reply to frank Quoting frank

I think the thought experiment is supposed to have implications for physicalism, along the lines of: there are aspects of the mental that aren't physical.

I don't.

There was clearly a physical change that led to mary's new experience wasn't there? Why can't her reaction simply be attributed to that? If you can change something mental without changing anything physical, then you'd have a case for aspects of the mental that aren't physical. But as it stands, someone being surprised for seeing something for the first time, isn't a challenge to physicalism.

Quoting frank

But how would you describe the concept of color? Of red?

I don't understand how that has anything to do with it? I can describe colours to congenially blind people by way of referring to others senses.

As with 'table' (for someone who has no concept of what a table is) I'd maybe go for it's use rather than it's physical appearance.

Mary would understand that there are different shades of things. She would know this. There are people who cannot see colour but can distinguish between colours by the shade and the item they are looking at (reds and greens) by experience. There is a professional photographer who takes colour photos even though she cannot see colour.

Quoting I like sushi

I don't understand how that has anything to do with it? I can describe colours to congenially blind people by way of referring to others senses.

I think that shows it's more of a sense than a concept. But maybe your point is that without the concept of color, we wouldn't remember seeing color?

Reply to frank Basically he is asking is there anything to do with the perception of colour other than our sensory input. Clearly the answer is yes because we can see colours whereas once we couldn't.

How much this is due to experience or not is up for debate. I don't think the thought experiment does much for ideas of 'Qualia' OR pure forms of 'Physicalism'. It is an interesting thing to ponder though and makes us think about what we mean by colour and perception, as well as how perception and sensory input relate and amalgamate into a consciousness.

We would have a hard time saying the same thing about circular objects. Could Mary live in a room that only contained straight lines and sharp angles learn all there is to know about circles and not find anything astounding about the sight of a curved line outside of her straight lined and angled room? She could certainly make some attempts at imagining such (much like we can understand how a fourth dimensional space object may appear to us) but the 'learning' something new is irrelevant to the actual experience of. WE can read about riding a bike, watch people ride bikes and maybe even dream of riding bikes ... but that isn't riding a bike.

That is why I have an issue with how people approach this one sometimes.

Reply to frank Assuming that Mary is an adult female and that she has got a functional uterus, at a minimum she sees the color red every 28 days. Some thought experiment... :razz:

Quoting khaled

There was clearly a physical change that led to mary's new experience wasn't there? Why can't her reaction simply be attributed to that?

She already knew about those changes.

Quoting I like sushi

Basically he is asking is there anything to do with the perception of colour other than our sensory input

This is an argument for qualia, and against physicalism.

Reply to frank I think you’ll find it’s the other way around. Daniel Dennett right? Or am I going slowly mad?

@frank Turns out I’m wrong. I guess I’ve just heard him haro on about it so much I assumed it was his baby :D

Reply to I like sushi
He did write a response to it.

The whole point of Mary's room thought experiment seems to be that Mary knows everything physical about the color red and yet, when Mary sees red, she learns something new. This then implies there's something nonphysical about red (?) and Mary, to be precise her mind.

@khaled's objection isn't valid because the thought experiment specifically mentions Mary knows everything physical. Looking and seeing red is a physical activity of course but don't forget that the mind is involved too - we don't know in what way, to what extent the mind affects the process of seeing and that's exactly what the thought experiment is about.

Quoting Olivier5

Assuming that Mary is an adult female and that she has got a functional uterus, at a minimum she sees the color red every 28 days. Some thought experiment...

:up: :rofl:

Quoting TheMadFool

khaled's objection isn't valid because the thought experiment specifically mentions Mary knows everything physical.

You're confused. khaled's objection is valid because the thought experiment specifically mentions Mary knows everything physical. If I know everything about how Neil Armstrong landed on the moon, would that mean I'd need a space suit? Or would we have proven something non-physical since actually being on the moon leads to my suffocating, but presuming I know everything about landing on the moon doesn't require me to suffocate? Both of these are kind of ridiculous.

So why should Mary likewise knowing everything physical about seeing red be expected to "be on the moon"... to actually be seeing red? When Mary sees red, she "goes to the moon". Mary knowing about red is simply "knowing how Neil Armstrong landed on the moon"; it doesn't require a space suit.

Unless, of course, by "knowing everything physical" about going to the moon, you mean Mary actually goes to the room... in which case, she saw red.

Quoting InPitzotl

You're confused

It takes time to understand these things. Allow me to explain: In the bodily and mental activity of seeing red, is the mind not involved? How come then Khaled believes it's all physical? Petitio principii.

Quoting I like sushi

I don't understand how that has anything to do with it? I can describe colours to congenially blind people by way of referring to others senses.

I agree. It has always seemed to me the idea that a blind or color blind person could not have a concept of color is wrong.

It's a derivative of Wittgenstein's beetle in a box.

Quoting TheMadFool

It takes time to understand these things.

It's kind of presumptuous to diagnose disagreements. You should just state your business, not theorize what you think is wrong with me such that I dare disagree with you.
Quoting TheMadFool

In the bodily and mental activity of seeing red, is the mind not involved?

The mind is involved when you ride a ship to the moon. Surely Neil had quite an astounding experience. There's an argument to be had that Neil's experience of going to the moon is still physical, and knowing everything physical about Neil's experience is either not equivalent to going to the moon, or requires going to the moon.

Surely you can picture the dramatic difference between sitting in your chair and pondering a 480,000 mile trip, and actually going 480,000 miles. But that's a physical difference, right?

Mary's not all that different. Knowing about going to the moon can be interpreted in the same two ways; either it requires Mary actually experience seeing red, which is physical (it's different but physically different for Mary to read about seeing red in a book and for Mary to see red monochromatic light), or does not require it, in which case it can be novel for Mary to see red versus know how to see it in the same exact way it could be novel for Mary to go to the moon versus know everything about going to the moon.

Quoting InPitzotl

It's kind of presumptuous to diagnose disagreements. You should just state your business, not theorize what you think is wrong with me such that I dare disagree with you.

Sorry if you took offense. It was unintended.

Quoting InPitzotl

Mary actually experience seeing red, which is physical

This is where you slip up I'm afraid. This is exactly what's up for debate. Is experiencing red completely physical or not? That, my friend, is the question. You can't assume what needs to be proven unless you want to run around in circles.

To clarify further, the experience of red, true, involves the body, to be precise the eyes but the mind is too and since we don't know if the mind is physical or not, you can't say that experiencing red, the whole mind + body experience, is all physical.

Reply to InPitzotl

The argument is that Mary's experience is new knowledge.

She has knowledge of something that isn't physical.

Reply to frank Quoting frank

This is an argument for qualia, and against physicalism.

Not all arguments against physicalism assume qualia. Approaches which see the conceptual-subjective and the empirical-object as inextricably interdependent will reject both physicalism and qualia.

Reply to frank Quoting frank

The argument is that Mary's experience is new knowledge.

She has knowledge of something that isn't physical

Or you could say that she has knowledge of something that isn’t couched in physicalistic terms. But one could
claim that physicalistic accounts share with the experience of color a dependence on subjective process. One could then conclude that the personalistic is more
fundamental than the physicalistic, that physicalism is just a derivative abstraction that we convince ourselves is primary. This trick we play on ourselves makes subjective experiences like color seem to be either an illusion or an ineffable product of a realm outside the physical. We then may start babbling about God or panpsychism.

Quoting TheMadFool

This is where you slip up I'm afraid.

Nonsense.
Quoting TheMadFool

This is exactly what's up for debate.

I want to pause here and take note of something very specific. The claim under scrutiny is whether physicalism is challenged by this or not.
Quoting TheMadFool

Is experiencing red completely physical or not? That, my friend, is the question.

Not in my mind it isn't. This is about whether Mary's room challenges physicalism; not whether physicalism is true or not.
Quoting TheMadFool

You can't assume what needs to be proven unless you want to run around in circles.

Ah, but you can do exactly that... if your goal is to answer the question of whether Mary's room challenges physicalism. If a presumption of physicalism is not challenged by Mary's room, then Mary's room does not challenge physicalism.

Even so, I quite honestly do not see it as controversial that it's physically different for Mary to look at something red versus say reading about it. In fact, the whole Mary's room scenario is explicitly set up around Mary not being physically exposed to red until after she has learned about vision. Are you claiming it's actually controversial that there's a physical difference here?

Reply to InPitzotl

Keep your eyes on the object of knowledge in the thought experiment.

It's going to hinge on your theory of knowledge more than reducibility. I think.

Could you learn to ride a bike just by reading about it? No. Experience is required. Same for seeing (in general and regarding specific colors). People blind at birth don't know what seeing is like. They don't know what it's like if they learn 1% of the physical facts involved or 10% of 100%. Their understanding of what it's like to see red doesn't increase with respect to their knowledge of the physical facts involved. A neuroscientist born blind at birth has the same understanding of the experience of seeing as a caveman born blind at birth: zero. Neither has any idea what the experience is actually like.

Does Mary gain new knowledge from seeing red or a new ability?

Quoting RogueAI

Does Mary gain new knowledge from seeing red or a new ability?

We would assume she already had the ability to see red, there was just none in the environment.

It should be a no-brainer that she learned something new. The question is: what does this imply?

If knowledge is JTB or some other internalist interpretation, then it looks like we'd have to say she learned about something non-physical.

I'm just explaining the experiment here.

Quoting khaled

I wouldn't say she learns anything new, so much as has a new experience. No implications for physicalism.

How would you fit color experience into physicalism?

Quoting frank

We would assume she already had the ability to see red, there was just none in the environment.

With a little more precision, let's assume indeed Mary had the ability to see red. By that I mean that if Mary sees a 750nm LED glowing, then Mary has "experience x". Suppose Mary can also see green: if Mary sees a 550nm LED glowing, then Mary has "experience q".

Mary has a peer, Jane, with an inverted spectrum wrt her. If Jane sees a 750nm LED, Jane has experience q; if Jane sees a 550nm LED, Jane has experience x. There's another peer, Joe, who is a protanope. If Joe sees a 750nm LED, Joe has experience y. If Joe sees a 550nm LED, Joe has experience y (we'll just be fuzzy enough to say these are the same).

So now Mary walks out of the room and sees a 750nm LED. To be very precise here, Mary does not know what type of LED this is.

Now let's add in the other presumption that we're already presuming:
Quoting frank

It should be a no-brainer that she learned something new.

Mary learned something new. Okay, but what? Mary can't use what she learned to imply anything other than that she had a novel experience.
Quoting frank

If knowledge is JTB or some other internalist interpretation, then it looks like we'd have to say she learned about something non-physical.

What forces us to say she learned about something non-physical? If we're physicalists, Mary is physical. Mary learned something about something physical. Mary didn't even learn anything about red... not yet.

Quoting InPitzotl

she had a novel experience.

Right. That's all you need. Having had a novel experience, she knows something new.

If there are scrutability issues, it has no bearing on the argument.

Quoting frank

Right. That's all you need.

Non-physical means not physical; it does not mean novel. It appears you're using "novel" to establish that this is not physical. That does not seem sufficient to establish that very thing.

ETA: There's a state Mary gets into when being exposed to a 750nm LED. Suppose that state cannot be induced by telling Mary all about 750nm LED's. Show that this state must therefore be non-physical.

Reply to InPitzotl

You have to understand the argument before you try to refute it. You're doing neither.

Physicalism means whatever people who use that term intend it to mean. But there isn't one agreed upon opinion about the term.

Some people, like Rosenberg, take it to mean essentially physicSalism, implying that everything can be reduced to the level of particles. Yeah, ok. Others use the term in a somewhat slippery manner, trying to get rid of, or minimize consciousness by calling it epiphenomenal or "bad theorizing" or stimulus-reacting illusions. But they can't get rid of it.

The one I think is sensible is Strawson's definition of the term, which is that everything that exists is physical, including consciousness as the fact of which we are best acquainted out of everything.

On this last view, one is simply stressing that physical stuff is much stranger than what we initially take it to be. But it's mostly terminological, not too substantive, in my opinion. What's of substance in this debate is monism vs pluralism.

What Mary learns, assuming her sight and brain are fine, is one important aspect of experience, namely visual experience. But physicalism or idealism per se, are not relevant here.

Reply to frank I think if she learns something new, physicalism is in trouble. I think she learns something new. I would like to see someone defend the ability argument.

Quoting Manuel

But physicalism or idealism per se, are not relevant here.

The argument is specifically meant as an attack on physicalism, so I think there might be a little relevance.

Quoting frank

She has knowledge of something that isn't physical.

...as opposed to knowledge of something physical. If it's physical, it would likely be a set of states Mary has.
Quoting frank

If knowledge is JTB or some other internalist interpretation, then it looks like we'd have to say she learned about something non-physical.

...or some set of physical states of Mary.
Quoting frank

You have to understand the argument before you try to refute it. You're doing neither.

You're defaulting on the question before you. You've said twice that this should be something non-physical. How do you rule out that this is physical?

Presumably the argument rules this out. But the argument basically compares a Mary that has never been exposed to a particular kind of stimulus, to a Mary that has been. But if Mary is learning something abstract about states of Mary that are only induced when exposed to that particular kind of stimulus, it could easily be physical. So how do you rule this out?

It's a question that very directly follows from the claim you made twice already.

Quoting RogueAI

think if she learns something new, physicalism is in trouble. I think she learns something new. I would like to see someone defend the ability argument.

Ok, but I want someone to take the pro so I can take the con. It sounds like you understand the argument. Would you want to take the pro side?

Reply to InPitzotl

I'm not following you, sorry.

Reply to frank

I don't think the topic hinges on this despite the title, it's a misleading way to think about the problem. It's essentially asking if Mary knows the scientific facts concerning vision, will she learn something new when she experiences colour for the first time?

The problem from my perspective, is that by calling this "physicalism", it excludes visual experience. But why isn't visual experience physical? Eyes are physical, brains are physical, mental phenomena is physical. These things are made of physical stuff.

The difference is between scientific knowledge and physical stuff. The latter is much broader than the former, in my view.

Quoting frank

This is the Mary's room thought experiment:
[ ... ]
What's your answer? And what does it imply for physicalism?

The thought-experiment does not imply anything about physicalism per se but does imply that before she ventured "outside", Mary's "knowledge" was, in fact, incomplete as a physical description (and explanation) of color.
Quoting frank

The argument is that Mary's experience is new knowledge.

She has knowledge of something that isn't physical.

That does not follow. Mary experiences "new knowledge" (i.e. a more complete, more data-rich, description of the physical system of (human) color-perception) which now includes her own particular physical sensorium: Mary's eyes are (visual cortex is) receptive of stimuli that trigger subtly differentiated neural-systemic affects which are strongly correlated to (i.e. adaptively selected for) specific, or discrete, light frequencies. Mary experiencing 'seeing color' is simply a particular instantiation (deducible experimental prediction) of her generic model (knowledge) of color itself.

Corollary: if "qualia" were only / mostly "non-physical" – wholly subjective, then e.g. auto traffic wouldn't stop at Red and color psychology wouldn't work for e.g. mood therapies, interior design / decorating, product marketing, fashion or cinema.

Quoting frank

I'm not following you, sorry.

Try this... Mary is not really learning anything about "red" (the Jane/Joe/LED thing); she is learning something about her experiencing.

Now let's wear the physicalist hat and explain this. When Mary experiences the LED, Mary gets into a specific set of physical states.

So this in my estimation is what you're presuming to be refuting with Mary's room argument, and that is where I think the problem comes in. MR doesn't genuinely refute this. Instead, all it winds up doing is confusing Mary knowing about states with Mary being in states.

Quoting Manuel

I don't think the topic hinges on this despite the title

Jackson created the argument as an attack on physicalism. Are you saying it fails so spectacularly that we need not even address Jackson's point?

Quoting Manuel

The problem from my perspective, is that by calling this "physicalism", it excludes visual experience. But why isn't visual experience physical? Eyes are physical, brains are physical, mental phenomena is physical. These things are made of physical stuff.

Her new knowledge isn't about brains or eyes.

As I said before, follow the object of knowledge in the experiment.

I'd just like to establish some understanding of the argument before we present challenges to it.

Quoting frank

What will happen when Mary is released from her black and white room or is given a color television monitor? Will she learn anything or not?"

We are tempted to say that she 'learns' what color is (in some, questionable sense.) But this presupposes a common experience of color, or, similarly, a common interpretation of 'black and white.'

As far as I can make out, if we presuppose private experience, then we create a situation where we can never be 'philosophically sure' that we ourselves are outside of Mary's room. How do you prove that you experience color? Puke up the right noises in the right order, etc.

Quoting 180 Proof

Mary experiences "new knowledge" (i.e. a more complete, more data-rich, description of the physical system of (human) color-perception

She experienced color. Is an orgasm a more complete, more data rich, description if the physical system of human reproduction? Not for me.

Quoting 180 Proof

Corollary: if "qualia" were only / mostly "non-physical" – wholly subjective, then e.g. auto traffic wouldn't stop at Red and color psychology wouldn't work for e.g. mood therapies, interior design / decorating, product marketing, fashion or cinema.

I think Jackson actually was an epiphenomenalist, so he'd be ok with that.

Anyway, I'm looking to attack the argument from knowledge externalism.

Quoting frank

Her new knowledge isn't about brains or eyes.

Insofar as it's new knowledge, it's necessarily knowledge about particular kinds of mental states. The question is, why can't those be brain states. Being a brain state does not entail being about brains, or about anything in particular for that matter.

Quoting hanaH

As far as I can make out, if we presuppose private experience, then we create a situation where we can never be 'philosophically sure' that we ourselves are outside of Mary's room. How do you prove that you experience color? Puke up the right noises in the right order, etc.

Yes. This is just standard skepticism. How do you know the words you just said to me don't translate as "Fire at will" to me?

You don't. Yet you scribble away as if we're able to communicate.

Private language issues are philosophy kindergarten. No offense intended. I'm just being Frank.

Quoting InPitzotl

Insofar as it's new knowledge, it's necessarily knowledge about particular kinds of mental states.

It's knowledge of color.

Quoting frank

It's knowledge of color.

Not until it gets associated with color.

Quoting InPitzotl

Not until it gets associated with color.

Color is the object of her new knowledge.

Quoting frank

Jackson created the argument as an attack on physicalism. Are you saying it fails so spectacularly that we need not even address Jackson's point?

I'm saying that the term "physicalism" as generally used is misleading. Chomsky discusses it quite well, I think:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zsLOVYTLt90

Jackson's argument is dualist: it's saying that science and experience aren't compatible. But you can't do science without experience. What you're lacking in this experiment is colour experience.

I'm saying that experience is physical, like magnetism or gravity is physical.

The new aspect experienced belongs to the way we experience the world. There's only one world, with various aspects. Science attempts to study mind independent entities revealed by experience, otherwise we couldn't do science. Unless someone thinks we literally are computers.

Quoting frank

Color is the object of her new knowledge.

Mary cannot tell she's seeing red without first learning that what she is seeing is red.

Quoting frank

Yes. This is just standard skepticism. How do you know the words you just said to me don't translate as "Fire at will" to me?

Yes, if one accepts private experience, one seemingly opens the door for standard skepticism. To try to answer your question, I speculate that I gain confidence in the use of words by getting the desired reactions, most of the time, from other English speakers. I vote for the primacy of the practical. (For the recognition of its dominance.)

I understand why behaviorism wanted to get away from consciousness. No need to deny it, but arguably a reason to downplay it.

Quoting Manuel

I'm saying that the term "physicalism" as generally used is misleading. Chomsky discusses it quite well, I think:

I'm familiar. It's not too hard to pinpoint Jackson's target.

Quoting Manuel

Jackson's argument is dualist: it's saying that science and experience can't be compatible.

It's an attack on physicalism. Why are we debating that?

Quoting hanaH

To try to answer your question, I speculate that I gain confidence in the use of words by getting the desired reactions, most of the time, from other English speakers.

Skepticism always wins. It can't be killed. We just tend to move on from it (or ride past it unmolested as Schopenhauer put it).

Quoting frank

It's an attack on physicalism. Why are we debating that?

Because it states experience isn't physical. But nevermind.

To get to the learning something new part: Mary has colour experience which she lacked. So it is new, compared to the knowledge she had previously, which was colourless.

Reply to frank I would do a bad job. I don't really understand it much.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qualia-knowledge/#NoPropKnow1AbilHypo

Quoting Manuel

Because it states experience isn't physical. But nevermind.

The idea is that if you know everything about the physical aspects of sight, there's something extra you learn from actually seeing.

I think you're saying that we can stretch the concept of physicality to include the experience.

If the argument leads to concept stretching, it succeeded, right?

Quoting RogueAI

I would do a bad job

I disagree, but ok. :nerd:

Reply to frank

Good terminology now.

If she knew "everything about the physical aspects of sight", that would have to include colour experience.

But she is not having colour experience, so she does not know all the physical aspects of sight.

I think the argument is better thought as as an argument against scientism more than against physicalism, but I'm in the minority here. It is an interesting argument though.

Quoting Manuel

If she knew "everything about the physical aspects of sight", that would have to include colour experience

Would it? I don't think science offers any assurances of that. Why are you so confident?

Quoting Manuel

If she knew "everything about the physical aspects of sight", that would have to include colour experience.

You're assuming physicalism is true. If dualism is true, then Mary could know everything about the physical aspects of sight and still not know what the experience of colour is.

Reply to frank

I'm using Strawson's definition of the term, "(real) materialism", which says that everything that exists is physical. Though I've been debating if it merits replacing by "naturalism", but these terms tend to have this scientistic implications. But I don't like the term idealism either as is used today. It's a monist claim, in any case.

The differences concern epistemology, not ontology.

I think my claim is modest, what I'm saying is that science so far, says nothing about colour experience, or if does say something about it, it's dubious sounding to me, as when its claimed that "red" is association with love and that "blue" is associated with depression, etc.

Science has scope and limits. I think some things might be outside its purview. Otherwise, why bother with literature, philosophy or the arts? Science will eventually tell you all about it. I'm skeptical.

But I could be wrong.

Quoting RogueAI

You're assuming physicalism is true. If dualism is true, then Mary could know everything about the physical aspects of sight and not know what the experience of colour is.

Yes. I only stress that I think consciousness is what we are best acquainted with out of everything we know. I'm saying it's physical.

But it's an assumption, your absolutely correct.

If dualism is true then we can have the argument your presenting, which is more clear to me.

Quoting InPitzotl

Mary cannot tell she's seeing red without first learning that what she is seeing is red.

:up:

Quoting frank

Is an orgasm a more complete, more data rich, description if the physical system of human reproduction? Not for me.

One has nothing to do with the other, so of course not for me either.

Quoting frank

The idea is that if you know everything about the physical aspects of sight, there's something extra you learn from actually seeing.

And there's the fly in the ointment: the knowledge of color was not complete without (before) seeing color. Jackson's thought-experiment fails because of this incoherent premise and therefore implies nothing about physicalism.

Reply to Manuel :100:

Quoting Manuel

Yes. I only stress that I think consciousness is what we are best acquainted with out of everything we know. I'm saying it's physical.

But it's an assumption, your absolutely correct.

If dualism is true then we can have the argument your presenting, which is more clear to me.

We should consider Mary's room without making any ontological assumptions.

Reply to RogueAI

:wink:

Quoting Manuel

The differences concern epistemology, not ontology.

Quoting Manuel

he problem from my perspective, is that by calling this "physicalism", it excludes visual experience. But why isn't visual experience physical? Eyes are physical, brains are physical, mental phenomena is physical. These things are made of physical stuff.

That all depends on whether you think colors are physical. If colors are out there in the world on the surface of objects or light sources, then you can mount a defense. But it's tricky to defend color primitivism, because the scientific facts do not straight forwardly match on to color. For one thing, you will likely have to allow for an object or lighted source to have multiple colors at the same time. For another, how do the colors "get into" the brain? Do they ride on photons and then hop onto electrons all the way into the visual cortex? Or does the brain recreate them in response to the stimulus? Which isn't color itself, but a result of wavelength and frequency interacting with cells in the eyes.

At any rate, Mary hasn't seen red until she leaves the room. How do we categorize "seeing red"? Mary knew all the scientific facts, but presumably this never resulted in seeing red. I should mention that another issue for colors being out there in the world is that they are an additional supervenient fact to the scientific facts. Wavelength and frequency properties are not colors, unless you think the entire EM spectrum is colored, from gamma-rays to radio waves. If not, what makes visible light special?

Quoting Marchesk

because the scientific facts do not straight forwardly match on to color.

Yes, there is a massive gap between out scientific knowledge of colours and colour experience.

Quoting Marchesk

For another, how do the colors "get into" the brain?

No idea. Unless the colour experience is already in the brain and experience triggers that qualia. Still doesn't explain it though.

Quoting Marchesk

If not, what makes visible light special?

It's a good question. A bit similar to asking how do sounds arranged in a certain way sound like music to us?

I don't know how much science can say about these things.

Quoting 180 Proof

the knowledge of color was not complete without (before) seeing color. Jackson's thought-experiment fails because of this incoherent premise and therefore implies nothing about physicalism.

:clap:

Absolutely.

Reply to frank Quoting frank

She already knew about those changes.

But she didn’t have them happen to her and was surprised when they did. What’s the problem?

Reply to Marchesk Quoting Marchesk

How would you fit color experience into physicalism?

Color experience is what your brain is doing when you see color

Reply to khaled :up:

Quoting khaled

Color experience is what your brain is doing when you see color

So the brain is creating an experience that is not part of any scientific description of the world, including the neuroscientific one of the brain activity while seeing color.

I do not see how this helps physicalism. It sounds like brain activity is creating something additional to the physical, which would be color experience in this case.

Reply to Marchesk Quoting Marchesk

So the brain is creating an experience that is not part of any scientific description of the world

No. The experience is what the brain is doing. The referent of "experience" is the neuronal activity.

Saying that there is an "experience" that is created by the neuronal activity, separate from said activity, is something you added, not something I said.

Quoting Marchesk

I do not see how this helps physicalism.

When you propose the existence of a non physical experience created by physical processes, you're not challenging physicalism, you're assuming it is false from the get-go.

Quoting 180 Proof

And there's the fly in the ointment: the knowledge of color was not complete without (before) seeing color. Jackson's thought-experiment fails because of this incoherent premise and therefore implies nothing about physicalism.

I tend to agree. If mary had complete physical knowledge of red, it should include the very physical act of seeing red. Yet, in the thought experiment, she never actually saw red.

That said, we have to concede that a purely mental expereience of red is impossible and so the gedanken experiment couldn't have been constructed in a way that aspect of redness, perception in general, could have been satisfactorily isolated.

What does knowledge of everything that is physical actually mean if Frank Jackson, a reputable professional philosopher, no less, thought that it doesn't include the physical act of perceiving red with our eyes?

Off the top of my head, perceiving red involves the mind too and since the physicality of the mind's not as of yet cut-and-dried, Jackson probably assumed he could consider seeing red as a mind-cum-body process and hence a point of interest for nonphysicalism.

Reply to TheMadFool How is it even possible for mind to be "nonphysical" and yet causally interact with physical systems (i.e. brain-body-environment)? It's not, therefore what you call "nonphysicalism" is ruled out (vide Spinoza re: the 'dual-aspect monism / property dualism' dissolution of the MBP (i.e. substance dualism) ... for a start).

Quoting 180 Proof

How is it even possible for mind to be "nonphysical" and yet causally interact with physical systems (i.e. brain-body-environment)? It's not, therefore what you call "nonphysicalism" is ruled out (vide Spinoza re: the 'dual-aspect monism / property dualism' dissolution of the MBP (i.e. substance dualism) ... for a start).

For starters, thoughts don't seem to be physical e.g how much does the thought of Descartes weigh, how much space does it occupy? Of course one could say that thoughts are pure energy e.g. the electrical energy in our neurons and their synapses but then thoughts don't seem to be energy per se but patterns in energy and patterns, last I checked, aren't physical, are they?

Just as there must be, there usually is, something drug-ish about a man who deals in drugs, there probably is something nonphysical about our minds whose stock-in-trade is nonphysical thoughts.

Quoting khaled

Saying that there is an "experience" that is created by the neuronal activity, separate from said activity, is something you added, not something I said.

Because the neuroscience does not include the identity you are asserting. The red experience is not part of the explanation. It's only a correlation.

Quoting khaled

When you propose the existence of a non physical experience created by physical processes, you're not challenging physicalism, you're assuming it is false from the get-go.

The physical processes, in terms of physical explanation, do not include the experience as part of the explanation. Ergo, the physical processes qua physical explanation, are not identical to the experience.

You might wish to nevertheless assert such an identity. Which is fine, but understand it's not part of physicalism. Rather it's something additional. The key being that physicalism is a metaphysics. The world is whatever it is, whether that's fully described by physics. Which I think in the case of experience, it's clearly not.

Reply to Marchesk Quoting Marchesk

The red experience is not part of the explanation. It's only a correlation.

That's one interpretation. One which presumes physicalism is false.

Quoting Marchesk

The physical processes, in terms of physical explanation, do not include the experience as part of the explanation. Ergo, the physical processes qua physical explanation, are not identical to the experience.

The neuroscience doesn't attempt to explain what the experience is. It explains what's happening in your brain when you experience something. This does not confirm or deny the identity that what's happening in your brain is the experience.

One interpretation is that the experience is fundamentally different. Another is that the experience is the physical process. And many more. The neuroscience doesn't take a side here. It just tells you what's happening in your brain at the same time as the experience.

Reply to TheMadFool Quoting TheMadFool

For starters, thoughts don't seem to be physical e.g how much does the thought of Descartes weigh

There are plenty of physical things that don't weigh anything. Like an electric field.

Quoting TheMadFool

then thoughts don't seem to be energy per se but patterns in energy and patterns, last I checked, aren't physical, are they?

We say sounds are physical even though they're no more than patterns of air movement.

Quoting khaled

There are plenty of physical things that don't weigh anything. Like an electric field.

Just curious, an electric field has no mass?

Quoting khaled

One interpretation is that the experience is fundamentally different. Another is that the experience is the physical process. And many more. The neuroscience doesn't take a side here. It just tells you what's happening in your brain at the same time as the experience.

Right, but the problem for physicalism is that experience is not part of the explanation. If we say that we live in a physical world, but some aspect of it is not part of the physical description, then physicalism is incomplete. The world might be something more.

Reply to Marchesk Quoting Marchesk

Right, but the problem for physicalism is that experience is not part of the explanation.

You don't think so because you begin by assuming that the experience is different from the explanation since it's non-physical, aka, you beg the question by assuming physicalism is false.

If you assume that the experience is the physical process, it's not a challenge.

It's not that physicalism cannot account for experience, it's that you define experience in a way that physicalism cannot possibly account for. In other words, if someone tells you "the experience of anger is the physical process of anger" (as I am doing) you wouldn't be convinced because by definition, to you, the experience of anger is non-physical. But that identity does allow physicalism to account for experience.

Quoting Marchesk

Just curious, an electric field has no mass?

No resting mass as far as I know.

Quoting khaled

It's not that physicalism cannot account for experience, it's that you define experience in a way that physicalism cannot possibly account for. In other words, if someone tells you "the experience of anger is the physical process of anger" (as I am doing) you wouldn't be convinced because by definition, to you, the experience of anger is non-physical. But that identity does allow physicalism to account for experience.

Since color and feeling angry are not properties in the explanation, I feel justified in saying that physical descriptions are incomplete. It's basically Locke's primary and secondary quality distinction.

Reply to Marchesk Quoting Marchesk

Since color and feeling angry are not properties in the explanation

They are. Anger is: *insert the physical explanation of what's happening when you're angry here*

Quoting khaled

There are plenty of physical things that don't weigh anything. Like an electric field.

Well, here's the deal. What's common between a lump of clay (physical) and a field (you claim it too is physical). Wittgenstein? @Banno, see anything interesting?

Too, electric fields, to my reckoning, are mathematical objects - mental constructs.

Quoting khaled

We say sounds are physical even though they're no more than patterns of air movement.

In what sense is sound physical? Is it matter or is it energy? It's energy of course but then see what I wrote above.

Reply to TheMadFool Quoting TheMadFool

What's common between a lump of clay (physical) and a field (you claim it too is physical).

They can affect physical stuff. Also that knowledge of how they work falls under the field "physics".

Quoting TheMadFool

Too, electric fields, to my reckoning, are mathematical objects - mental constructs.

They're not just that. Mental constructs can't push around charges. Electric fields can.

Quoting TheMadFool

In what sense is sound physical?

In that sense that it can affect physical stuff.

Quoting khaled

They can affect physical stuff. Also that knowledge of how they work falls under the field "physics".

So anything that affects physical stuff is itself physical? Isn't that begging the question?, whether the nonphysical can/can't affect the physical as of yet an open question? Take the idea of God, a nonphysical entity that allegedly can act on the physical.

Quoting khaled

They're not just that. Mental constructs can't push around charges. Electric fields can.

Why not? You're begging the question again.

Reply to TheMadFool Quoting TheMadFool

So anything that affects physical stuff is itself physical?

Yes. That's how we've defined the word. At first "physical" meant things with a mass like rocks and water. Then it expanded to things with no mass like electromagnetic fields. And now, we have things with no mass and no specified location/velocity in quantum mechanics. What do they share in common? That they can affect physical things.

If you have another definition for physical things that can account for all of the above I'll be happy to hear it. If your definition makes it so that electromagnetic waves are non-physical, have fun with that. It doesn't coincide with how people use the word you're defining at all. I'm sure everyone can agree that electromagnetic waves are physical.

Quoting TheMadFool

Isn't that begging the question?

No, there can still be nonphysical minds, they just wouldn't be able to do anything.

Quoting TheMadFool

whether the nonphysical can/can't affect the physical as of yet an open question?

No because if something "nonphysical" pushed something physical that "nonphysical" thing will be studied by physicists and included in the list of things that are physical.

The question at hand is whether or not minds are nonphysical. My definition of physical does not imply minds being physical or non physical. So it's not begging the question.

Quoting TheMadFool

Take the idea of God, a nonphysical entity that allegedly can act on the physical.

What is this meant to prove? You need to prove God exists to say anything by this.

Quoting TheMadFool

Why not? You're begging the question again.

I'm just speaking from experience. No matter how many times I wished to fly as a kid, I didn't fly.

And again, me saying that non-physical things cannot interact with physical things does not imply that the mind is physical or non-physical, so it's not begging the question.

Quoting Manuel

Science has scope and limits. I think some things might be outside its purview. Otherwise, why bother with literature, philosophy or the arts? Science will eventually tell you all about it. I'm skeptical.

So that leaves the question, though, why Strawson's physicalism? Is it just an expression of monism? Is it more politically expedient?

Quoting 180 Proof

And there's the fly in the ointment: the knowledge of color was not complete without (before) seeing color. Jackson's thought-experiment fails because of this incoherent premise and therefore implies nothing about physicalism.

Remember, you don't need the experience of sight to have the functioning elements of sight.

Quoting frank

Remember, you don't need the experience of sight to have the functioning elements of sight.

This would imply that the experience of sight is a non-functioning element of sight. But surely the experience of sight is at a minimum functionally necessary to describe the experience of sight; otherwise, how are we having this conversation? If epiphenomenally we are experiencing things, and it just so happens that physically our fingers are getting pressed in such a way as to say we're experiencing things, that would be quite a weird coincidence.

Quoting InPitzotl

This would imply that the experience of sight is a non-functioning element of sight.

There's a large chunk of philosophy of mind that explores this from various angles, from functionalism to p-zombies.

It would be difficult to make the case that functional sight entails the experience of sight.

Quoting 180 Proof

the knowledge of color was not complete without (before) seeing color. Jackson's thought-experiment fails because of this incoherent premise ....

Yes. One could say that Mary's knowledge of red was purely theoretical and second-hand, not pre-theoretical, ie not 'experiencial' or practical or first hand.

So the point would be that theoretical knowledge of something cannot replace or account fully for the first-hand experience of something. Theoretical knowledge is based on experience but it cannot exhaust it.

Reply to frank

It's an expression of monism, yes. It's implying that everything is a configuration of physical stuff. I say "physical" and not "ideal" because I don't think the external world is completely mind-depedent, I want to say there's something "out there", independent of us.

If we want to say something "non physical" exists, or that there is "physical-mental" problem, as highlighted by Jackson, then you're going to have to articulate why there isn't a "physical-gravity" problem or a "physical-liquidity" problem or even a "sound-mind" problem, or anything else.

It would be problematic to create a separate ontology for all our senses, one ontology for hearing, one for vision, etc. It's makes more sense to say that we are studying different aspects of the same thing.

But "physical" here could be replaced by almost any word: "neutral", "natural", "insubstantial", "substantial", etc.

It's more convenient to use "physical", I think, but what matters is that the whole world is encapsulated by the use of the word.

That is, unless someone can give a good argument why experience (or gravity and other phenomena) cannot be compatible with physical stuff (natural stuff, neutral stuff, and so on.).

Quoting khaled

Yes. That's how we've defined the word.

:rofl:

Quoting frank

It would be difficult to make the case that functional sight entails the experience of sight.

But it would be trivial, and tautological in a meaningless sense, to say that functional sight excludes the experience of sight. Words are boxes, and boxes are flexible. All you have to do is erase any consequence of experiencing from your box of "sight". We could build functional mimics... robots with cameras... and have them perform tasks that require sight but not experience. We can draw our "sight" box this way; it's what that robot would do. Since we can do this, and since boxes are arbitrary, I can easily upgrade your "difficult" to "impossible".

But by contrast, there's the part of my post you didn't comment on... you're describing on this forum something you call "experience of sight". In describing it, you're typing a word: "E" followed by "X", followed by "P", followed by another "E", and so on. If the thing you're talking about exists, given you're talking about it, then it must have the functional consequence that in talking about it you typed "E" followed by "X" followed by "P" followed by another "E", and so on.

So it would be trivial to say that functional sight excludes what you're referring to by the phrase "experience of sight". But what would be difficult is to claim that you're talking about something real when you say "experience of sight", but that thing has no functional consequence.

Quoting Manuel

But "physical" here could be replaced by almost any word: "neutral", "natural", "insubstantial", "substantial", etc.

The word "physicalism" often, I would say usually, implies rejection, ontologically speaking, of about half of Descartes' dualism.

The way you're defining it is going past accepting the Hard Problem, to launching the changes in science that Chalmers advocates.

You're taking up residence in a future that we're probably all headed toward, but some of us haven't made it there yet, I think mostly for emotional reasons.

But as long as I understand what you mean, we're good. :grin:

Quoting InPitzotl

But what would be difficult is to claim that you're talking about something real when you say "experience of sight", but that thing has no functional consequence.

It's just not part of the function of sight.

Quoting frank

Will she learn anything or not?

We can distinguish readily, at the person level, between 'knowledge that' and 'knowledge how':

Quoting I like sushi

WE can read about riding a bike, watch people ride bikes and maybe even dream of riding bikes ... but that isn't riding a bike.

Quoting RogueAI

Could you learn to ride a bike just by reading about it? No. Experience is required.

We could say something similar, distinguishing 'knowledge by acquaintance' --- there doesn't seem to be an obvious way to do that with just a preposition, again simply at level of a person's experience:

Quoting InPitzotl

Surely you can picture the dramatic difference between sitting in your chair and pondering a 480,000 mile trip, and actually going 480,000 miles.

We might think of this as the difference between physically interacting with something and interacting with it 'mentally', only thinking about it or imagining it. And we will want to say that the acquisition of knowledge how, say, how to ride a bike, requires that physical interaction, that it's no use just thinking about it. Of course we recognize there are causes all the way through in either version: if I read accounts of someone riding a bike, they are causally connected to the physical event of someone riding a bike, but we're connected as readers to that event differently than the person participating in it, and that's all we need for 'mental' here.

The question is whether all instances of an agent knowing how or being acquainted with can be reduced, without remainder, to something someone could know that. That is, can we pinpoint a difference in the structure or functioning of the brain of a person who knows how to ride a bike from the brain of a person who doesn't? Can we pinpoint a difference in the structure or functioning of the brain of a person who has been to the moon from the brain of a person who hasn't? Is it conceivable that those differences could be written down and read about? Is there any sort of ability or acquaintance not describable as a physical fact about the person?

I think that's the idea. At first it looks like just a sort of 'dualism of the gaps' --- just because neuroscience can't yet achieve these sorts of explanations, then it will never be able to. What we want is to isolate something that it looks like neuroscience couldn't explain in principle, something that would categorically escape it. I don't know why people think color vision fits the bill, but apparently they do.

Reply to frank :roll:

Reply to TheMadFool :down:

Learning about colours causes changes in the parietal-temporal-occipital region, the hippocampus, the frontal cortex... Seeing colours causes changes in the V4 and VO1 regions.

I can't for the life of me work out what this has to do with challenging physicalism.

Quoting frank

It's just not part of the function of sight.

Let me phrase it this way. Imagine we make a robot driver that will stop at a red light; we need not add experience to the robot. By comparison, I'm a human, and being a good driver, if I see a red light, I'll stop at the light.

Assuming we buy this, it's clear that experience is not necessary for sight, if by sight we mean to include what the robot is doing. But what's not so clear is that if I stop at a red light that I'm not stopping because I experienced red; that were it not for that experience, I would not have stopped.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner

That is, can we pinpoint a difference in the structure or functioning of the brain of a person who knows how to ride a bike from the brain of a person who doesn't?

I get that... but Mary's Room doesn't really address this very point. We could say that physicalism predicts there would be a physical difference in the brain. But it's a physical difference resulting from a physically different scenario... so physicalism would be viable if "knowing-that" mechanisms are insufficient to establish arbitrary states of the brain that "actual going" establishes.

MR simply posits that knowing-that's are all of physical knowledge, then notices that being-able isn't a know-that, and concludes that the know-that cannot be of the type "all physical knowledge", but that's not convincing... the above presents precisely the scenario that allows physicalism's viability but betrays this argument. Under this scenario, the MR argument fails at the premise that all physical knowledge is acquired by know-that's, because "actual going"'s can be physically manifest, and "know-that"'s need not be physically exhaustive. If that makes sense.

She only learns what it is to apply what she knows, like she was part of a training program.

In essence, she knows nothing about the experience of red but is alerted to its nature. What/where/how/when/why red, are all answered.

Mary is an expert fisherman per se, she is well prepared to catch red, but has never caught red before.

What does it say about physicalism? It's more spiritual than first thought.

[I]Mary is on edge, her heart pumping, her breath upstream with the line. Suddenly a pull. Mary tugs and then pulls up the rod...[/I]

Quoting InPitzotl

it's clear that experience is not necessary for sight, if by sight we mean to include what the robot is doing. But what's not so clear is that if I stop at a red light that I'm not stopping because I experienced red; that were it not for that experience, I would not have stopped.

Experience of sight would likely be a factor in decision making for a human. It's just not a necessary component of the function of sight.

Quoting Isaac

I can't for the life of me work out what this has to do with challenging physicalism.

Well, I'm not surprised. :razz:

Quoting khaled

They are. Anger is: *insert the physical explanation of what's happening when you're angry here*

If you were trying to explain what anger is to an alien, would you consider that a complete description? I think it fails because it doesn't capture the essence about anger, pain, happiness, etc.: emotions are feelings. They are things we experience.

Quoting 180 Proof

And there's the fly in the ointment: the knowledge of color was not complete without (before) seeing color. Jackson's thought-experiment fails because of this incoherent premise and therefore implies nothing about physicalism.

The argument doesn't require "complete knowledge" to illustrate the problem with physicalism. If Mary learns 90% of the physical facts involved in seeing (or any percentage), her knowledge of the experience of seeing red should increase by the same amount. But of course it doesn't. No matter how many facts she knows about the physical process of seeing red, she remains totally ignorant about the experience of seeing red until she sees red for the first time.

Quoting Srap Tasmaner

Can we pinpoint a difference in the structure or functioning of the brain of a person who has been to the moon from the brain of a person who hasn't? Is it conceivable that those differences could be written down and read about? Is there any sort of ability or acquaintance not describable as a physical fact about the person?

Knowing all the physical facts about the brain states of people having experience x (e.g., seeing red) won't lead to knowing what experience x is like (e.g., what it's like to see red).

Quoting Isaac

Learning about colours causes changes in the parietal-temporal-occipital region, the hippocampus, the frontal cortex... Seeing colours causes changes in the V4 and VO1 regions.

I can't for the life of me work out what this has to do with challenging physicalism.

If you were blind from birth, and you studied all the changes happening in the brain when someone is seeing something, do you think you would learn what it's like to see? I think the answer is obviously no.

Quoting RogueAI

Knowing all the physical facts about the brain states of people having experience x (e.g., seeing red) won't lead to knowing what experience x is like (e.g., what it's like to see red).

Reply to RogueAI

No, of course not. Because

Quoting Isaac

Learning about colours causes changes in the parietal-temporal-occipital region, the hippocampus, the frontal cortex... Seeing colours causes changes in the V4 and VO1 regions.

So still

Quoting Isaac

I can't for the life of me work out what this has to do with challenging physicalism.

Reply to RogueAI I don't think emotions are feelings, but rather are felt.

Reply to RogueAI :point: Reply to 180 Proof

Quoting Varde

I don't think emotions are feelings, but rather are felt.

Sure, but a complete definition of pain has to include it feels bad, wouldn't you agree? Isn't that the salient fact about pain? That it hurts?

Reply to RogueAI yeah I agree with your point.

Reply to Varde That would seem to be a problem for physicalists. How on Earth can you convey to someone the experiential nature of pain and anger with just a physical description?

Reply to RogueAI you cannot. You can at most prepare yourself for it's occurrence.

Quoting frank

You're taking up residence in a future that we're probably all headed toward, but some of us haven't made it there yet, I think mostly for emotional reasons.

But as long as I understand what you mean, we're good

Sure, no problem. :up:

Quoting InPitzotl

but Mary's Room doesn't really address this very point

Maybe not. It's clearly trying to, and a lot of people have taken it as having done so.

If we were to talk about Mary's room "as psychologists", the first thing we'd note is that her developmental environment was impoverished, abnormal, so psychologically all bets are off.

That's clearly not the intention behind the thought experiment, but it does raise a question: is there a coherent way to frame this thought experiment, so that it makes the point it's trying to make, the one that you believe it doesn't? If not, maybe that tells you something, but then maybe that's just an argument from poverty of imagination.

Quoting RogueAI

Knowing all the physical facts about the brain states of people having experience x (e.g., seeing red) won't lead to knowing what experience x is like (e.g., what it's like to see red).

But even if we grant that, is it an argument against some sort of naturalism or physicalism? Is there no difference between the brains of people who have read about swimming and people who have done it and know how to swim? That seems crazy, doesn't it? And only people who have done it know what it's like to swim. Knowing what it's like is a function of memory, isn't it?

Quoting Srap Tasmaner

But even if we grant that, is it an argument against some sort of naturalism or physicalism? Is there no difference between the brains of people who have read about swimming and people who have done it and know how to swim? That seems crazy, doesn't it? And only people who have done it know what it's like to swim. Knowing what it's like is a function of memory, isn't it?

It's an argument against the kind of physicalism that claims that everything is physical. If everything is physical, then a complete physical description of something should be necessary and sufficient to define it. Would a purely physical definition of pain work? Or would it be incomplete by virtue of the fact it doesn't mention how pain feels? I think purely physical descriptions of experiences are lacking in a obvious way: the salient aspect of pain isn't that it involves nerves and brain states x,y,z, it's that pain hurts. It feels bad. If purely physical descriptions of phenomena are not complete descriptions of said phenomena, that's a big problem for physicalism.

Quoting RogueAI

the salient aspect of pain isn't that it involves nerves and brain states x,y,z, it's that pain hurts. It feels bad.

That sounds to me like you're saying it's painful to be in pain. Were you hoping to say something more than that?

As Manuel pointed out, the experiment supports property dualism, with or without some sort of unspecified monism underneath.

I don't see why science couldn't proceed from there: a methodological property dualism?

Quoting RogueAI

If everything is physical, then a complete physical description of something should be necessary and sufficient to define it.

Why? It doesn't seem to follow at all. Why would it be the case that if everything is physical we can describe it? What is it about being physical which makes something describable?

Quoting Isaac

Why? It doesn't seem to follow at all. Why would it be the case that if everything is physical we can describe it? What is it about being physical which makes something describable?

Physical is a description of the world. It's saying the world is fundamentally made up of X and nothing else. So if the physical can't describe something, then that something is being left out of the picture, which means the justification for saying the world is physical is flawed.

It's important to distinguish our map of the world from the world itself.

Quoting Marchesk

It's saying the world is fundamentally made up of X and nothing else.

Right.

Quoting Marchesk

if the physical can't describe something, then that something is being left out of the picture

OK. So what's wrong with the entirely physical description I gave?

Quoting Isaac

Learning about colours causes changes in the parietal-temporal-occipital region, the hippocampus, the frontal cortex... Seeing colours causes changes in the V4 and VO1 regions.

Reply to Isaac Obviously because those changes are not color sensations.

Quoting Marchesk

Obviously because those changes are not color sensations.

Why not?

Quoting Isaac

Why not?

Because the description does not include them. I'm talking about physical descriptions. The reality is whatever it is such that brain activity can be conscious.

.Quoting Marchesk

Rocks don't have strongly emergent properties like color sensation.

Why would that change the fact that we don't expect the contents to be there in the description.

Quoting Isaac

A description of a rock doesn't include a rock either. What has that to do with what the rock's made of?

Rocks don't have strongly emergent properties like color sensation.

Reply to Marchesk

Weird thing happened to my reply. It's above.

Reply to Isaac Strongly emergent properties are a problem for physicalism. It means something entirely new comes into existence. Something not logically entailed by it's description.

Quoting Marchesk

Strongly emergent properties are a problem for physicalism. It means something entirely new comes into existence.

Yeah, I can see that, but claiming colour sensations are strongly emergent is still begging the question. It's the matter the thought experiment is meant to show. It's obviously going to do that if you assume it at the outset.

Quoting frank

Skepticism always wins. It can't be killed. We just tend to move on from it (or ride past it unmolested as Schopenhauer put it).

Perhaps it can't be killed, but I think it can be challenged in new ways. For instance, we can refuse to accept the lonely-experience-hole of the self as fundamental (or at least see to what degree it's constructed by training.) 'The soul is the prison of the body.' The so-called soul is singular perhaps only because the body is (grasped as) singular.

Quoting hanaH

For instance, we can refuse to accept the lonely-experience-hole of the self as fundamental

Likewise we can reject the crowded-impersonal-world as fundamental. Reject to your heart's content.

Does anyone think they can describe "what it's like to see a red patch" or "what it's like to be in pain" in non-physical terms?

Quoting Srap Tasmaner

Does anyone think they can describe "what it's like to see a red patch" or "what it's like to be in pain" in non-physical terms?

That's just a way of saying that seeing red and feeling pain are subjective, to distinguish from the behavioral meanings of detecting reflectance or acting as if a body part is potentially being harmed.

Quoting Srap Tasmaner

That sounds to me like you're saying it's painful to be in pain. Were you hoping to say something more than that?

I'm saying that a purely physical description of pain is incomplete. The mental aspect of pain (that it hurts) is far more relevant to people than the fact that nerves are involved. Wouldn't you agree?

Quoting RogueAI

I'm saying that a purely physical description of pain is incomplete.

Is a purely physical description of a photon complete?

Quoting InPitzotl

Is a purely physical description of a photon complete?

Are photons conscious?

Quoting Marchesk

Are photons conscious?

:up:

Quoting RogueAI

The mental aspect of pain (that it hurts)

You said that before. Do you mean something besides "pain is painful"?

Quoting Marchesk

That's just a way of saying that seeing red and feeling pain are subjective

Well you're demanding a physical description right? How does it go when you avail yourself of the non-physical? Should be easy as pie now, shouldn't it?

Quoting Srap Tasmaner

Well you're demanding a physical description right? How does it go when you avail yourself of the non-physical? Should be easy as pie now, shouldn't it?

We already have words for sensations, dreams, imaginations, hallucinations, etc.

Quoting Marchesk

Are photons conscious?

I'll say no. Will you answer my question now?

Reply to Marchesk

So you don't need to describe pain because we already have the word "pain"?

Quoting Srap Tasmaner

You said that before. Do you mean something besides "pain is painful"?

Pain hurts. Do you agree? If you want to say pain is painful, I'm fine with that. When you unpack that, you're going to get something like: pain feels bad. So then, any definition of pain has to mention the fact that pain hurts/feels bad/is painful, otherwise it's incomplete. Agreed?

Quoting InPitzotl

I'll say no. Will you answer my question now?

A physical description of photons would suffice if physical stuff actually exists. If idealism is true, however, describing photons as physical things that exist independent of mind(s) would be false. A physical description of photons can only work if A) idealism isn't the case and B) they're not conscious.

Quoting RogueAI

A physical description of photons can only work if A) idealism isn't the case and B) they're not conscious.

Specifically to which (whose) "idealism" are you referring?

Quoting RogueAI

pain hurts/feels bad/is painful

I just don't understand what your point is in saying this. Do you think you're describing pain by saying that it's a sensation that hurts? It hurts because that's what pain is. Are you defining pain? Explaining it? Are you saying anything at all?

Reply to RogueAI Quoting RogueAI

If you were trying to explain what anger is to an alien, would you consider that a complete description? I think it fails because it doesn't capture the essence about anger, pain, happiness, etc.: emotions are feelings. They are things we experience.

Ok then, how would you explain anger to an alien? How are you going to communicate the "essence" of anger?

And again, this is begging the question. You're implying my explanation is incomplete because feelings are nonphysical subjective things we experience. Assuming so already assumes physicalism is false, so is begging the question.

Quoting RogueAI

That would seem to be a problem for physicalists. How on Earth can you convey to someone the experiential nature of pain and anger with just a physical description?

Ah so it’s a problem when a physicalist cannot convey what pain is to someone else, but when an idealist/dualist says “Qualia are private and unknowable” it’s no longer a problem but a feature?

Reply to 180 Proof :sad:

Quoting RogueAI

A physical description of photons would suffice if physical stuff actually exists. If idealism is true, however, describing photons as physical things that exist independent of mind(s) would be false. A physical description of photons can only work if A) idealism isn't the case and B) they're not conscious.

So if a mind can give a complete description of a photon, then the photon is independent of the mind. But if the mind cannot give a complete description of a photon, then a photon must be dependent on a mind. Something like this?

Is velocity a true physical quantity?

If time is unreal what are colors and sounds, these phenomena being defined in terms of time (Hertz)? 

In a Timeless Universe, how are colors and tones defined?

Mary doesn't have a physical description of red in a timeless universe. Mary's Room Argument fails.

Reply to Srap Tasmaner Mary has never felt any severe in pain her whole life. She's lived in a nice comfortable room yet has studied everything there is to know about 'severe pain' other than experiencing it - obviously.

I walk into her room and punch full on in the face shattering her nose and fracturing her cheek bones. She falls to the ground wailing and screaming then leave.

Has she learnt anything new about pain due to my brief visit?

It all depends on what we mean by knowledge.

Clearly, the difference between before seeing red Mary and after seeing red Mary is all qualia.

Qualia are nonpropositional and so can't be known like (say) the proposition "God exists".

No, Mary doesn't learn anything new!