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    Mary the super color scientist lacks understanding of wha... — Carmelics
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    Home/Consciousness & Mind
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    Mary the super color scientist lacks understanding of what it is like to experience red despite her complete physical knowledge of color

    Consciousness & Mind
    ?Rate how convincing each reason is below to see the overall strength.
    1 reason for
    2 reasons against

    Reasons For

    1 perspective
    Reason for
    ?
    • 1.Mary has an impoverished history of achromatic visual experience and has never seen red
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    • 2.Understanding the what-it's-likeness of experiencing red requires having had or undergone relevantly similar visual experiences
      ?

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    • 3.Third-person theoretical knowledge of color, however complete, cannot substitute for first-person experiential knowledge
      ?

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    Reasons Against

    2 perspectives
    Reason against 1 of 2
    ?
    • 1.Mary's new knowledge upon release is best explained as gaining a new ability—to recognize, remember, and imagine red—rather than acquiring a new propositional fact.
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    • 2.Ability knowledge (knowing-how) does not constitute a distinct ontological category of fact beyond physical facts, so no non-physical fact is revealed.
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    • 3.The knowledge argument therefore establishes only a difference in modes of access to physical information, not a gap in the physical information itself.
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    Reason against 2 of 2
    ?
    • 1.Phenomenal concepts are distinct modes of presentation that refer to physical brain states under an intrinsic, non-relational guise unavailable from third-person description.
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    • 2.Mary acquires a new phenomenal concept of red-experience upon release, but this concept and the physical state it denotes are identical—no new non-physical property is instantiated.
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    • 3.The appearance of an explanatory gap between Mary's old and new knowledge is a cognitive illusion produced by the special first-person character of phenomenal concepts, not evidence of qualia as non-physical entities.
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    Topics

    Consciousness & Mind

    Key Terms

    knowledge(Distinguished from mere true belief, which may be the product of indoctrination and need not exercise deliberative capacities.)
    Justified true belief — true belief that has been arrived at through the exercise of deliberative capacities, including comparison of and deliberation among alternatives.

    Related

    Ability knowledge (knowing-how) does not constitute a distinct ontological categ...Mary acquires a new phenomenal concept of red-experience upon release, but this ...Mary has an impoverished history of achromatic visual experience and has never s...Mary's new knowledge upon release is best explained as gaining a new ability—to ...
    +5 moreShow less
    Phenomenal concepts are distinct modes of presentation that refer to physical br...The appearance of an explanatory gap between Mary's old and new knowledge is a c...The knowledge argument therefore establishes only a difference in modes of acces...Third-person theoretical knowledge of color, however complete, cannot substitute...Understanding the what-it's-likeness of experiencing red requires having had or ...

    Similar

    Mary knew all physical facts about color before seeing red.79%Third-person theoretical knowledge of color, however complete, cannot ...78%Mary comes to know new qualities upon experiencing red for the first t...77%Mary acquires new knowledge upon seeing red for the first time, and th...76%

    Source

    AI-extracted1/3 agreementValid
    SEP: consciousness
    View source passageHide passage
    On Thomas Nagel's (1974) account, facts about what it is like to be a bat are subjective in the relevant sense because they can be fully understood only from the bat-type point of view. Only creatures capable of having or undergoing similar such experiences can understand their what-it's-likeness in the requisite empathetic sense. Facts about conscious experience can be at best incompletely understood from an outside third person point of view, such as those associated with objective physical sc
    Extraction notes

    Validity: Extracted via Max plan + API grounding/validity checks

    Details

    Type
    claim
    Perspectives
    3 (1 for, 2 against)
    Edits
    1 edit