Fill in the blank. White is light with a wavelength of ___ nm.Red is light with a wavelength of 750 nm. — TheMadFool
How is that minimal? You can make white by mixing two wavelengths; you're using three, a whole extra wavelength beyond the requirement! Also, didn't you just say red was 750nm light? When you mix 750nm light with something, you still have 750nm light. Is such white red then?White is a mixture of, at the very least, red, blue, and green. Each has a specific wavelength. — TheMadFool
It would be odd to say that one gained extra knowledge/information just because you used a different language. — TheMadFool
What is red? It's the eye's way of perceiving 750 (nm). It's like a way of looking at something, a perspective if you will. The ears perceive of 750 (Hz) differently. Translations, back and forth, between languages (of the senses — TheMadFool
Mary learns what it is like to experience red. — hypericin
Not really. Let's define 750nm monochromatic light as red (monochromatic is key in the definition; and what we really mean is that only 750nm light is there in the visual spectrum; it's okay if 540am is broadcasting in your area).Is it not that simple? — hypericin
Sure, probably. But another possibility would be that Mary doesn't so much "learn" what it's like for her to see red, as she "develops a way for her to see red" and learns what that developed way is... the difference being there's no "what it's like for Mary to see red" until she develops the ability to do so.But at minimum, Mary learns what it's like for her to experience red. — hypericin
Let's furthermore suppose that Jane has an inverted spectrum wrt you; and Joe is a protanope. Then by definition, you, Jane, and Joe all see red when you look at 750nm. But your experience is quite different than Jane's and Joe's; and Joe cannot see that big of a difference between 750nm and 550nm. So what exactly is "what it is like to experience red"? — InPitzotl
However, subjectively speaking, Mary does learn something new. Never having seen red and then seeing red gives Mary the sensation of redness; Mary gets to know what red looks like when seen. — TheMadFool
This would seem to suggest that there is more than objective facts about color. Which is why we can't say what a bat experiences when using sonar, but we can describe the physics of sonar just fine, and carry out investigations of bat physiology. — Marchesk
I wonder how the Mary thought experiment would have gone down if brown had been used in instead of red, since brown is a related color and only seen in the presence of lighter colors, so you you can't just associate with 600nm of wavelength. — Marchesk
I also wonder if the thought experiment is modified so that right before leaving the room, Mary's brain is stimulated to induce a hallucination of seeing something red. Does that change things at all? Or what if Mary is exposed to an optical illusion so that she sees a color that isn't there? — Marchesk
At any rate, we do end up with the uncomfortable conclusion for physicalists that there is some experience of color not captured in the physical description of color perception. — Marchesk
The jury is still out. I can neither confirm nor deny. — TheMadFool
Does Mary learn anything new when she actually sees red? — TheMadFool
. Does the ammeter too have a subjective sense of electrical current? — TheMadFool
A rhetorical question, but let's spell it out, nonetheless. The ammeter, not possessing a brain, and so without a mind, can have neither intellectual nor emotional response to the electric current running through it. — Michael Zwingli
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