Mary's room
Encyclopedia
Mary's room is a philosophical thought experiment
Thought experiment
A thought experiment or Gedankenexperiment considers some hypothesis, theory, or principle for the purpose of thinking through its consequences...

 proposed by Frank Jackson
Frank Cameron Jackson
Frank Cameron Jackson is an Australian philosopher, currently Distinguished Professor and former Director of the Research School of Social Sciences at Australian National University. In 2007-2008, he also became a regular visiting professor of philosophy at Princeton University...

 in his article "Epiphenomenal Qualia
Qualia
Qualia , singular "quale" , from a Latin word meaning for "what sort" or "what kind," is a term used in philosophy to refer to subjective conscious experiences as 'raw feels'. Examples of qualia are the pain of a headache, the taste of wine, the experience of taking a recreational drug, or the...

" (1982) and extended in "What Mary Didn't Know" (1986). The argument
Argument
In philosophy and logic, an argument is an attempt to persuade someone of something, or give evidence or reasons for accepting a particular conclusion.Argument may also refer to:-Mathematics and computer science:...

 is intended to motivate what is often called the "Knowledge Argument" against physicalism
Physicalism
Physicalism is a philosophical position holding that everything which exists is no more extensive than its physical properties; that is, that there are no kinds of things other than physical things...

 — the view that the universe, including all that is mental, is entirely physical. The debate that emerged following its publication became the subject of an edited volume — There's Something About Mary (2004) — which includes replies from such philosophers as Daniel Dennett
Daniel Dennett
Daniel Clement Dennett is an American philosopher, writer and cognitive scientist whose research centers on the philosophy of mind, philosophy of science and philosophy of biology, particularly as those fields relate to evolutionary biology and cognitive science. He is currently the Co-director of...

, David Lewis, and Paul Churchland
Paul Churchland
Paul Churchland is a philosopher noted for his studies in neurophilosophy and the philosophy of mind. He is currently a Professor at the University of California, San Diego, where he holds the Valtz Chair of Philosophy. Churchland holds a joint appointment with the Cognitive Science Faculty and...

.

Background

Mary's Room is a proposed thought experiment that attempts to establish that there are non-physical properties and attainable knowledge that can be discovered only through conscious experience. It attempts to refute the theory that all knowledge is physical knowledge. C. D. Broad, Herbert Feigl
Herbert Feigl
Herbert Feigl was an Austrian philosopher and a member of the Vienna Circle.-Biography:The son of a weaver, Feigl was born in Reichenberg , Bohemia, and matriculated at the University of Vienna in 1922...

, and Thomas Nagel
Thomas Nagel
Thomas Nagel is an American philosopher, currently University Professor of Philosophy and Law at New York University, where he has taught since 1980. His main areas of philosophical interest are philosophy of mind, political philosophy and ethics...

, over a fifty-year span, presented insight to the subject, which led to Jackson's proposed thought experiment. Broad makes the following remarks:
Roughly thirty years later, Feigl expresses a similar notion. He concerns himself with a Martian, studying human behavior, but lacking human sentiments. Feigl says:
Nagel takes a slightly different approach. In an effort to make his argument more adaptable and relatable, he takes the stand of humans attempting to understand the sonar capabilities of bats. Even with the entire physical database at one's fingertips, humans would not be able to fully perceive or understand a bat's sonar system, namely what it's like to perceive something with a bat's sonar.

Thought experiment

The thought experiment was originally proposed by Frank Jackson as follows:
In other words, Jackson's Mary is a scientist who knows everything there is to know about the science of color, but has never experienced color. The question that Jackson raises is: once she experiences color, does she learn anything new?

Ontologically, the following argument is contained in the thought experiment:

(P1) Any and every piece of physical knowledge in regards to human color vision has been obtained (by the test subject, Mary) prior to her release from the black-and-white room. She has all the physical knowledge on the subject.

(P2) Upon leaving the room and witnessing colour first-hand, she obtains new knowledge.

(C) There was some knowledge about human colour vision she did not have prior to her release. Therefore, not all knowledge is physical knowledge.

Most authors who discuss the knowledge argument cite the case of Mary, but Frank Jackson used a further example in his seminal article: the case of a person, Fred, who sees a color unknown to normal human perceivers. We might want to know what color Fred experiences when looking at things that appear to him in that particular way. It seems clear that no amount of knowledge about what happens in his brain and about how color information is processed in his visual system will help us to find an answer to that question. In both cases cited by Jackson, an epistemic subject A appears to have no access to particular items of knowledge about a subject B: A cannot know that B has an experience of a particular quality Q on certain occasions. This particular item of knowledge about B is inaccessible to A because A never had experiences of Q herself.

Objections

Objections have been raised that have required the argument to be refined. Doubters cite various holes in the thought experiment that have arisen through critical examination. Thompson questioned the premise that Mary, simply by being confined to a monochromatic environment, would not have any color experiences. Furthermore, would it not be a possible case that Mary, upon release, still would not be able to see colors? Jackson would have to refine his thought experiment to account for these doubts.

One possible adjustment to the experiment would be to have Mary monochromatic from birth. She has a condition, and can only see in black-and-white from birth. At some point, a medical discovery is made and Mary's monochromatic condition is alleviated. Still, are we sure that monochromatics cannot have mental color experiences? The objection raises strong doubt to the thoroughness of Jackson's experiment.

Nemirow and Lewis present the Ability Hypothesis, and Conee argues for the Acquaintance Hypothesis. These are the two most notable objections to Jackson's thought experiment, and the claim it sets out to make. Both approaches attempt to demonstrate that Mary gains no new knowledge-that, but instead gains something else. If she in fact gains no new propositional knowledge, they contend, then what she does gain may be accounted for within the physicalist framework.

Ability hypothesis

Nemirow claims that "knowing what an experience is like is the same as knowing how to imagine having the experience". He argues that Mary only obtained the ability to do something, not the knowledge of something new. Lewis put forth a similar argument, claiming that Mary gained an ability to "remember, imagine and recognize." There have been arguments against the ability hypothesis as well, namely that being able to imagine having a particular experience is neither necessary nor sufficient for having the knowledge of exactly what it is like to have that kind of experience.

Earl Conee (1994) and Alter (1998) cite the example of someone without the capacity to imagine having color experiences in an effort to show that imaginative abilities are not necessary for knowing what it is like to have a certain kind of experience. Their claim is that despite having a defect of this nature, she would still know what it is like to have an experience of e.g. red while staring at something that looks red to her.

In order to show precisely that imaginative abilities are not sufficient for knowing what it is like, Conee introduces the following example: Martha, “who is highly skilled at visualizing an intermediate shade that she has not experienced between pairs of shades that she has experienced...happens not to have any familiarity with the shade known as cherry red.” Martha has been told that cherry red is exactly midway between burgundy red and fire red (she has experienced these two shades of red, but not cherry). With this, Martha has the ability to imagine cherry red if she so chooses, but as long as she does not exercise this ability, to imagine cherry red, she does not know what it is like to see cherry red.

Acquaintance hypothesis

Earl Conee (1994) presents another variant. Conee's acquaintance hypothesis identifies a third category of knowledge: knowledge that is not reducible to factual knowledge nor to knowing-how. He argues that the knowledge Mary actually acquires post-release is only acquaintance knowledge. Knowing something by acquaintance “requires the person to be familiar with the known entity in the most direct way that it is possible for a person to be aware of that thing”. Since “experiencing a quality is the most direct way to apprehend a quality”, Mary gains acquaintance with color qualia after release.

The physicalist can defend himself against the knowledge argument like this: (1) Qualia are physical properties of experiences (and experiences are physical processes). Let Q be such a property. (2) Mary can know all about Q and she can know that a given experience has Q before release, although — before release — she is not acquainted with Q. (3) After release Mary gets acquainted with Q, but she does not acquire any new item of propositional knowledge by getting acquainted with Q (in particular she already knew under what conditions normal perceivers have experiences with the property Q).

Implications

Whether Mary learns something new upon experiencing color has two major implications: the existence of qualia
Qualia
Qualia , singular "quale" , from a Latin word meaning for "what sort" or "what kind," is a term used in philosophy to refer to subjective conscious experiences as 'raw feels'. Examples of qualia are the pain of a headache, the taste of wine, the experience of taking a recreational drug, or the...

 and the knowledge argument against physicalism.

Qualia

First, if Mary does learn something new, it shows that qualia
Qualia
Qualia , singular "quale" , from a Latin word meaning for "what sort" or "what kind," is a term used in philosophy to refer to subjective conscious experiences as 'raw feels'. Examples of qualia are the pain of a headache, the taste of wine, the experience of taking a recreational drug, or the...

 (the subjective, qualitative properties of experiences, conceived as wholly independent of behavior and disposition) exist. If Mary gains something after she leaves the room — if she acquires knowledge of a particular thing that she did not possess before — then that knowledge, Jackson argues, is knowledge of the qualia of seeing red. Therefore, it must be conceded that qualia are real properties, since there is a difference between a person who has access to a particular quale and one who does not.

The knowledge argument

Second, if Mary does learn something new upon experiencing color, physicalism
Physicalism
Physicalism is a philosophical position holding that everything which exists is no more extensive than its physical properties; that is, that there are no kinds of things other than physical things...

 is false. Specifically, the Knowledge Argument is an attack on the physicalist claim about the completeness of physical explanations of mental states. Mary may know everything about the science of color perception, but can she know what the experience of red is like if she has never seen red? Jackson contends that, yes, she has learned something new, via experience, and hence, physicalism
Physicalism
Physicalism is a philosophical position holding that everything which exists is no more extensive than its physical properties; that is, that there are no kinds of things other than physical things...

 is false. Jackson states:
It is important to note that in Jackson's article, physicalism refers to the epistemological doctrine that all knowledge is knowledge of physical facts, and not the metaphysical doctrine that all things are physical things.

Daniel Dennett

Daniel Dennett argues that Mary would not, in fact, learn something new if she stepped out of her black and white room to see the colour red. Dennett asserts that if she already truly knew "everything about colour", that knowledge would necessarily include a deep understanding of why and how human neurology causes us to sense the "qualia" of color. Moreover, that knowledge would include the ability to functionally differentiate between red and other colors. Mary would therefore already know exactly what to expect of seeing red, before ever leaving the room. Dennett argues that functional knowledge is identical to the experience, with no ineffable 'qualia' left over. As a consequence, Dennett concludes that this is not a sound argument for the existence of qualia.

Frank Jackson

Frank Jackson initially supported the anti-physicalist implications of the Mary's room thought experiment. Jackson believed in the explanatory completeness of physiology
Physiology
Physiology is the science of the function of living systems. This includes how organisms, organ systems, organs, cells, and bio-molecules carry out the chemical or physical functions that exist in a living system. The highest honor awarded in physiology is the Nobel Prize in Physiology or...

, that all behaviour is caused by physical forces of some kind. And the thought experiment seems to prove the existence of qualia, a non-physical part of the mind. Jackson argued that if both of these theses are true, then epiphenomenalism
Epiphenomenalism
In philosophy of mind, epiphenomenalism, also known as Type-E Dualism, is a view that "mental" states do not have any influence on "physical" states.-Background:...

 is true — the view that mental states are caused by physical states, but have no causal effects on the physical world.
  Explanatory completeness
of physiology
 + qualia
(Mary's room)
= epiphenomenalism


Thus, at the conception of the thought experiment, Jackson was an epiphenomenalist. Later, however, he rejected epiphenomenalism. This, he argues, is because when Mary first sees red, she says "wow", so it must be Mary's qualia that causes her to say "wow". This contradicts epiphenomenalism. Since the Mary's room thought experiment seems to create this contradiction, there must be something wrong with it. This is often referred to as the "there must be a reply, reply".

Jackson now believes that the physicalist approach (from a perspective of indirect realism
Direct and indirect realism
The question of direct or "naïve" realism, as opposed to indirect or "representational" realism, arises in the philosophy of perception and of mind out of the debate over the nature of conscious experience; the epistemological question of whether the world we see around us is the real world itself...

) provides the better explanation. In contrast to epiphenominalism, Jackson says that the experience of red is entirely contained in the brain, and the experience immediately causes further changes in the brain (e.g. creating memories). This is more consilient
Consilience
Consilience, or the unity of knowledge , has its roots in the ancient Greek concept of an intrinsic orderliness that governs our cosmos, inherently comprehensible by logical process, a vision at odds with mystical views in many cultures that surrounded the Hellenes...

 with neuroscience's understanding of Color vision
Color vision
Color vision is the capacity of an organism or machine to distinguish objects based on the wavelengths of the light they reflect, emit, or transmit...

. Jackson suggests that Mary is simply discovering a new way for her brain to represent qualities that exist in the world. He likens her to patients suffering from Akinetopsia
Akinetopsia
Akinetopsia, also known as cerebral akinetopsia or motion blindness, is an extremely rare neuropsychological disorder in which a patient cannot perceive motion in their visual field, despite being able to see stationary objects without issue. For patients with akinetopsia, the world becomes devoid...

, the inability to perceive the motion of objects. If someone were cured of akinetopsia, they would not be be surprised to discover any new facts about the world (they do, in fact, know that objects move). Instead, their surprise would come from their brain now allowing them to see this motion.

Ramachandran and Hubbard

V.S. Ramachandran and Edward Hubbard
Edward Hubbard
Edward Horton Hubbard was an English architectural historian who worked with Nikolaus Pevsner in compiling volumes of the Buildings of England...

 of the Center for Brain and Cognition at UCSD argue that Mary might do one of three things upon seeing a red apple for the first time:
  1. Mary says she sees nothing but gray.
  2. She has the "Wow!" response from subjectively experiencing the color for the first time.
  3. She experiences a form of blindsight
    Blindsight
    Blindsight is a phenomenon in which people who are perceptually blind in a certain area of their visual field demonstrate some response to visual stimuli...

    for color, in which she reports seeing no difference between a red apple and an apple painted gray, but when asked to point to the red apple, she correctly does.


They explain further: "Which of these three possible outcomes will actually occur? We believe we've learned the answer from a colorblind synesthete
Grapheme-color synesthesia
Grapheme → color synesthesia is a form of synesthesia in which an individual's perception of numbers and letters is associated with the experience of colors. Like all forms of synesthesia, grapheme → color synesthesia is involuntary, consistent, and memorable...

 subject. Much like the theoretical Mary, our colorblind synesthete volunteer can not see certain hues, because of deficient color receptors. However, when he looks at numbers, his synesthesia
Synesthesia
Synesthesia , from the ancient Greek , "together," and , "sensation," is a neurologically based condition in which stimulation of one sensory or cognitive pathway leads to automatic, involuntary experiences in a second sensory or cognitive pathway...

 enables him to experience colors in his mind that he has never seen in the real world. He calls these "Martian colors." The fact that color cells (and corresponding colors) can activate in his brain helps us answer the philosophical question: we suggest that the same thing will happen to Mary." Ramachandran and Hubbard's contribution is in terms of exploring "the neural basis of qualia" by "using pre-existing, stable differences in the conscious experiences of people who experience synaesthesia compared with those who do not" but, they note that "this still doesn’t explain why these particular events are qualia laden and others are not (Chalmers’ ‘hard problem’) but at least it narrows the scope of the problem" (p. 25).

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