"What Did Mary Know?
Imagine a girl called Mary. She is a brilliant neuroscientist and a world expert on colour vision. But because she grew up entirely in a black and white room, she has never actually seen any colours. Many black and white books and TV programmes have taught her all there is to know about colour vision. Mary knows facts like the structure of our eyes and the exact wavelengths of light that stimulate our retinas when we look at a light blue sky.
One day, Mary escapes her monochrome room, and as she walks through the grey city streets, she sees a red apple for the first time.
What changes upon Mary's encounter with the red apple? Has Mary learnt anything new about the colour red upon seeing the colour for the first time? Since Mary already knew everything about the physics and biology of colour perception, she must surely have known all there is to know about the colour red beforehand. Or is it possible that some facts escape physical explanations? ('Physical' in this sense refers to all the realms of physical science, including chemistry, biology, neuroscience, etc.). If Mary has learnt something new, then we can conclude that scientific explanations cannot capture all there is to know, argues Professor Frank Jackson, who thought up this scenario in 'Epiphenomenal Qualia', in The Philosophical Quarterly (1982). The story of Mary is known as the 'knowledge argument' and it has become one of the most prominent thought experiments in the philosophy of mind.
The most common responses philosophers of the physicalist persuasion give to the knowledge argument are based on the 'new knowledge, old fact argument'. For instance, contemporary physicalists such as David Papineau have formulated something called the 'phenomenal concept strategy' to counter anti-physicalist arguments. Papineau denies Jackson's distinction between physical and phenomenal facts or properties. Instead, he asserts that the knowledge argument itself provides "an excellent way of establishing the existence of distinctive phenomenal concepts" (Thinking About Consciousness, 2002). Papineau claims that the difference between phenomenal and material concepts is a difference at the level of sense, not reference. In other words, phenomenal and material concepts refer to the same thing through different means. So proponents of the phenomenal concept strategy argue that while our intuition for somesort of dualism is correct, this intuition is due not to the nature of phenomenal states, but rather to the concepts we use to refer to them, in contrast to the concepts we use to refer to our brain states.
What exactly is a 'phenomenal concept'? Well, it is somewhat akin to a picture. Think of mental representations of the sort that can occur in thought. We do not have to think of concepts in linguistic terms – which means concepts do not have to be expressible in scientific language.
Papineau argues that we hold phenomenal concepts about phenomenal states we have experienced. For instance, we hold a phenomenal concept of the taste of chocolate or of the sound of a drum. When Mary sees a red apple, argues Papineau, it activates the relevant neural region in her brain. This activation can be compared to a reusable stamp. Following her original experience of red, Mary's brain has acquired an 'original' stamp from which to make future 'moulds', and after its original activation this stamp can only be re-activated by the relevant experience. So Mary can consequently imagine and introspectively classify experiences of red.
Papineau holds that while humans require original external experiences of phenomena, one could conceive of creatures born with introspective imaginative abilities, who do not need any specific experiences to set up those stamps. In those creatures the moulds necessary for seeing colours, and the dispositions to use them, would be hard-wired. A creature like this would be able to imagine seeing something red without ever having seen something red. However, humans are not like this. Papineau gives the example that although we might be capable of imagining seeing a red circle even though we have never actually seen one before, purely by combining our previous experience of seeing red with our previous experience of seeing a circle, we cannot imagine the colour red without having first actually seen something red."
You might say, "Hang on a minute, how was it possible that Mary grew up in a black and white room in the first place?" Never mind the first place. Some philosophers have put forth that she wore special goggles. But this issue need not concern us, because philosophical thought experiments depend on logical coherence rather than practical feasibility. Philosophers devise such narratives to think through an imagined situation, so as to learn something about the way we understand things. Thought experiments require no Bunsen burners or test tubes; they are laboratories of the mind. In thought experiments, time travel is logically possible, but no philosophy professor is expected to travel back in time to prove their point."
Gerner, M. (2013). What Did Mary Know? Retrieved April 26, 2018, from /issues/99/What_Did_Mary_Know
There was a room at the end of the hallway that everyone dreaded being assigned to. They said it was disgusting work, besides the pay which, to be fair was rather good…except for the wackos, they were the only ones unbothered by the work there. The ones that liked to see others pain and who everyone else knew were sadistic bastards, they never hated going there…but everyone else did.
They had devised a device that looked into other worlds before, many years ago. A knife so sharp it could cut between the worlds. Through this, they had seen worlds where what they did was not allowed. In one world for instance, there had been incidents….the Tuskegee experiment…HeLa cells…the malnutrition experiments done by the Canadian government on First Nation children. And those incidents had led to a list of codes and rules, that they simply did not have. Most going into their line of profession didn't question it, until they came up against something they objected to. Unfortunately, due to their employer, quite a many of those working at their institute had come up against this wall.
Take the experiment at the end of the hall. It had been said to make three of the people working at this place lose their stomachs for their work. One even quit.
In this room is a boy, who looked to be about the age of 19, though of course everyone here knew he was much much older than that. He was one of a group of people like him, people that didn't seem to age and who never died no matter what kind of injuries they gave them or whatever illnesses they were exposed to. They were one of their best lines for their human experimentations. Right along with the genetically modified people…though those tended to die much easier. After all, they had to be so much more specific for what they could be immune to and what could or couldn't work against them.
Anyways, this boy's code name was Mathew Williams, though most of course preferred to call him by his number 8675309…to get rid of the human nature of it, of course. They didn't know what his real name was, even when they first got him and those who'd cared enough had tried to find out. He'd just kept saying that his name was Canada. Weirdo. Obviously he hadn't been right in the head. Him, or the others they'd found like him. They'd figured it was part of whatever they had that made them the way they were that made them think silly things, like that they were all personifications of the land. Maybe they just all gravitated towards new age type thinking and got in contact with each other before the institute had found them and all decided on this silly lie? Who knows?
All this anonymous person writing this will say is to describe the newest experiment. After all, dear diary, I believe I may soon make number 4 who asks to be put on a new assignment.
The boy. About the boy. This time it was a mental experiment. An experiment building on an experimental psychological theory to put it straight.
When I first started, and really the entire reason why I started the project was because I was reminded of a psychological thought from that other world I talked about before. I fear this may give more information about who I am, should this diary ever fall into anyone else's hands…but I was the one who went into that other world to study it. It was my assignment before this.
Maybe it's because I came from an orphanage, that I object so to what happened to the boy. After all, I would love to know about my life before I went into the social service system. I want to know so badly about my past, who loved me, if I have family…it makes me sad to see this boy reduced to knowing nothing and at my hands. I find myself asking why I ever looked forward to deliberately giving someone amnesia, just to see how they would react to the world around them without prior memories.
To tell the full truth, it had even been my idea. When I'd come back from that one world and brought back their ideas of philosophical and psychological theories…I'd proposed a new brand of experiments to actually test them out so that the institute could claim the research and use the thoughts from the other world for a bit of side business. We hadn't had their exact ideas after all, so by carrying out experiments, then the institute could claim that its professors had thought of each of the ideas for things to test, and then we could publish it.
I ended up caving in to something too. The boy seems deep in thought sometimes, and I swear he sometimes gets a hint of recognition or past thoughts in between treatments…it may just be my imagination…or my hope, but I gave him the genetically modified bear he always looks into the room of on the way to his treatments.
It was my bear after all. I had been the one to successfully incorporate the parrot DNA into its genome to get it to speak, and with the money I made from the line of talking pets we could then sell, well it was easy enough for me to gain possession of my first prototype.
I claimed to want to watch the boy's interaction with it. And, truth to tell, it can be interesting and I am grateful for the distraction their talking together gives whenever I have my sessions with the boy.
For some reason, the boy taught the polar bear to say "who are you" all the time. Despite my calling the boy Mathew, he told the animal his name was Alice and, to quote, he then said to the beast: "because I don't quite know who I am. I was sure I knew who I was when I got up this morning, but I'm sure I've changed several times since then."
Strange kid.
Anyway, talking about all this is making me tired. Finally.
Good night, diary.
Is the top part weird to include? Lol, anywho.
Raise your hand if you see the reference to His Dark Materials series...the Alice in Wonderland references are rather obvious besides lol.
This is literally just a short one-shot drabble to prove I'm not dead...*is awkward* *sweats* I am still working on my other stories! eek Anywho...
Have a great day, lovelies~
North of the North