Thought experiment «MARY» (English) #filosofix

Colour expert Mary has never seen a coloured object in her life. One day, she breaks out of her black and white world and can hardly believe her eyes. No theory could sufficiently describe this new experience. Is there more to our mind than our brain?

What is right? What is real? And who am I, after all? Philosophy asks life's big questions. We present these questions as animated thought experiments, and thereby show how fascinating and entertaining it is to ponder life.

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Tought experiment: Frank Jackson
Animation: Nino Christen
Speaker: Blake Worrell
Music: Martin Bezzola

SRF Kultur / SRG SSR

[markdelej]

When she sees colour for the first time her brain just fires in a way it never has before, the same as a computer with a sensor for detecting different wavelengths of light would fire in a new way if it picked up red colour frequency for example if it had never detected red. However human beings are conscious, unlike the computer that can pick up colours we are not only detectors to the outside world but we can also detect ourselves. We are not just aware of the environment like a worm but we are aware of ourselves. Similar to a feedback loop like imagine a radar machine bleeping as it picks itself up on it’s own screen or when you turn a camera in a tv studio onto the tv screen it is a camera taking video of the video the camera is playing and the camera starts responding to itself in an unusual way.

So with mary you can say the colour she sees is new knowledge she has in the sense that knowledge is just brain pathways firing in a certain way. Mary can also then consciously decide to fire those pathways again and imagine the colour even when her eyes are closed. So she has experienced a new pathway in her brain, and can consciously use that pathway again and when she dreams it will also probably fire giving her colour dreams. But nothing here is magic or outside of physical reality the brain is just a really complex computer that is aware of itself and can not only detect the world but also detect the detections of the world/experience the detections it makes

[jareknowak]

Black, white and grey are also colors.

[TheHanspeter]

The existence of qualia is compatible with physicalism. The video is therefore somewhat misleading. The thought experiment intends to show something else i.e. that qualia are something different or more than their description.

[mickeylara]

This thought experiment doesn't work because Mary can experience white light which has all the color spectrum. All she has to do is rub her eyes hard enough to experience the red and other colors which happen when you excite the cones and rods in your eyes.