Hello Fooloso4,

You cannot understand an engine if you do not understand the parts. That is the reductive part. But you can't understand an engine at that point. The parts have to fit and operate together. You have to look at the functional whole. That is the non-reductive part of the process.

I think you are forgetting or misunderstanding that the parts themselves don’t completely constitute the reductive explanation. When one explains an engine, they do so by reducing it to its parts and the relation between them when put together properly. Once one explains that, they have thereby reduced the engine to the specific relational constitution of its parts. I think you are more thinking of it in terms of the parts on their own and the relations between them as non-reductive, but that isn’t true. The relations between the parts that constitute the engine is weakly emergent from the parts (in that particular arrangement that produces them) and the engine itself is the weakly emergent from the relations and the parts: none of this is non-reductive. For an explanation to be non-reductive, it entails that one cannot reduce the thing to its parts and relation of those parts to one another.

With the engine, it is 100% a reductive explanation because once I explain to you the parts and how they relate to eachother there is nothing more that needs to be explained about the engine. If it were strongly emergent, then there would be something extra that is unexplained.

If the mental cannot be explained in terms of the physical then the physical cannot be explained in terms of the mental.

There is a symmetry breaker between the two accounts: one posits mind is in mind, whereas the other posits non-mind has mind. The former is a soft problem, the latter a hard problem.

In other words, the physical not being able to explain the mental doesn’t entail that the mental cannot explain the physical as mind-dependent and only in the sense of the colloquial usage of the term (i.e., an object within conscious experience with solidity, size, shape, etc…). Most idealists do not deny that there are physical things, but they mean it in the sense of tangible objects within experience. Physicalists do not mean it this way: they mean that there are actual mind-independent objects beyond the tangible objects within your conscious experience.

Bob

Hello Alkis Piskas,

Anyway, I will have to assume that by mind-(in)dependent you mean that the existence of the physical universe (matter and energy) is in/dependent of/on our mind.

I mean that it is independent of any mind, not just ours.

Then you say, "If it is the latter, then I cannot account for myself as a conscious being." Does this means that you cannot consider yourself as a conscious being?

I mean that if the world is mind-independent, then there is a hard problem of consciousness, which I take to be a ‘hard problem’ in the sense of being irreconcilable as opposed to merely a difficult problem for physicalists to solve.

In other words, physicalism cannot account for what I would consider the realist part of existence for human beings: their conscious, qualitative experience. The only other feasible option is to posit mind as fundamental to account for it.

BTW, for me, examples act as arguments, even better.

I agree, but, unfortunately, I am not that great at examples and analogies—but I can try. When you look at a green pen, your immediate experience of it is within your conscious experience. You feel and see the qualities of the pen, which make up the pen from your direct conscious experience, which your mind is representing to you as the green pen. Under physicalism, they can explain how your brain comes to understand the pen as green (e.g., the pen absorbs all the colors within the light that hits it other than green, which it reflects, and that light goes into your eyes and, in turn, your brain interprets as green). However, they cannot account for why you had a qualitative experience of a green pen—of the greeness, for example. There is no reason for you to likewise have an experience of a qualitative green pen.

I just thought ... Why don't you start by giving a definition or description of "universal mind"?

An immaterial subject in which mental processes occur and of which the entirety of reality is whithin.

Bob

Hello CreativeSoul,

It seems you're lumping thought, belief, perception, imagination, olfactory, visual, tactile, auditory, gustatory, and all sorts of things into the category of subjective experience

Fair enough, let me try to elaborate on those terms.

From an analytic idealist’s perspective, one’s organs that correspond to those senses you listed (e.g., auditory, gustatory, olfactory, etc.) are extrinsic representations of those senses of the immaterial mind within your perception (and other’s perceptions). I am not saying that your senses exist only within your subjective experience, because subjective experience is synonymous, in the case of humans, with perception and your senses are not contingent on your perception to exist (however their extrinsic, physical representations do depend on perceptions).

By ‘experience’, mean it in the most general and primitive sense: knowledge of something as a subject. In terms of analytic idealism, ‘experience’ is a spectrum of grades. I mean the same thing by ‘subjective experience’ and ‘consciousness’.

By ‘your or my subjective experience’, I mean the perceptions you have (which are qualitative and represent the external world around you), as we are higher experiential life forms.

By ‘meta-consciousness’ or ‘meta-subjective experience’, I mean the ability of a mind to have self- knowledge (i.e., knowledge of itself: experience specifically in relation to its experience and identity).

‘beliefs’ are ‘behavioral attitudes towards a proposition’.
‘imagination’ is the mind’s ability to conjure up images which are not direct representations of the world around it (e.g., picturing a unicorn in my head right now).
‘thoughts’ are the mind’s ability to utilize its faculty called ‘reason’ to generate concepts and derive conclusions about the world around it and its own imagination. Arguably, I would count this faculty as also a sense since it inputs the perceptions and creates concepts of them, which is the same general form of all other senses (i.e., input → representation).

Hmmm... but you explicitly forbid physicalist accounts from appealing to obscurity???

I understand that prima facie it seems hypocritical, but let me clarify. I am fine with soft problems having obscurities in their explanations but not hard problems. That is the difference.

Bob

Hello Mww,

The problem is that attempting to understanding Kantian idealism may very well negate your promotion.

I am not afraid of being wrong. I would rather understand everyone’s perspectives even if it negates my own.

We get into this deep enough, you may find your idealism was Kantian all along, or, if it most certainly was not,

Analytic idealism is neo-schopenhaurian, so it should be somewhat neo-Kantian. I don’t think diving into Kantianism is going to necessarily negate the view; although it certainly might.

And even if questions regarding Kantian idealism are merely a matter of your own personal interest, satisfying that interest isn’t necessarily to support your thesis.

The goal of this discussion board is not to just convince everyone of analytic idealism but rather to share thoughts and test the theory. If Kantianism is going to test it, then let’s do it.

In short, it’s possible you’re wasting your own time.

Learning is never a waste of time.

In short, I would much appreciate it if we kept discussing it, as I am interested in your take from a Kantian perspective. If you would like, I can DM you instead? I don’t mind it being in this thread, but I will leave it up to what you are most comfortable with.

Bob

Fair enough, let me try to elaborate on those terms.

From an analytic idealist’s perspective, one’s organs that correspond to those senses you listed (e.g., auditory, gustatory, olfactory, etc.) are extrinsic representations of those senses of the immaterial mind within your perception (and other’s perceptions). I am not saying that your senses exist only within your subjective experience, because subjective experience is synonymous, in the case of humans, with perception and your senses are not contingent on your perception to exist (however their extrinsic, physical representations do depend on perceptions). — Bob Ross

So, according to the position you're putting forth...

Organs are extrinsic representations of senses within one's perception. Senses are not existentially contingent on perception. However, the organs are existentially contingent upon one's perception.

Yeah...

I'm sorry, but that just looks like a word salad, to put it mildly.

As if one's organs do not exist without subjective qualitative experience. Seems to me to be the wrong way around. The experience, particularly the depth and breadth of human experience, is existentially dependent upon the biological machinery.

Hmmm... but you explicitly forbid physicalist accounts from appealing to obscurity???

I understand that prima facie it seems hypocritical, but let me clarify. I am fine with soft problems having obscurities in their explanations but not hard problems. That is the difference. — Bob Ross

Is that the acceptable standard for all accounting practices, or just some of them?

Are you claiming that the position you're arguing in favor of successfully accounts for the hard problem without obscurities?

Oh... and you're equivocating terms to an extent I've not witnessed in quite some time. Particularly the term "perception(s)". In addition, it seems there's a fair amount of anthropomorphism going on as well.

I'm afraid I simply do not have the time to make all this explicit. So, I'll just have to leave it all as bare assertion, but not for the lack of empirical evidence throughout the thread. Rather, due to the lack of time and personal priorities...

:meh:

The reductive physicalist can identify and thoroughly explain how all sorts of 'the parts' commonly associated with conscious subjective experience work physically(See Dennett's Quining Qualia). The opponent will simply state that the hard problem hasn't been solved, or say "that's the easy(soft) problems"... Yada, yada, yada.

It's akin to the physicalist pouring hundreds of thousands of grains of sand onto the floor and pointing at the result, while the opponent says... that's not enough to count as a pile of sand. — creativesoul

This was my first reply here. The reader can read through the thread and judge for themselves how true it rings...

When one explains an engine, they do so by reducing it to its parts and the relation between them when put together properly. — Bob Ross

An engine is not an assemblage of found parts. The parts are designed and manufactured as parts of a whole. Even something as simple as a bolt cannot be understood in isolation, without it being a part of a whole.

A biological entity is not put together out of parts. It can be separated into parts but unlike the engine those parts did not exist prior to the living being.

The relations between the parts that constitute the engine is weakly emergent from the parts — Bob Ross

They are not emergent. Once again, parts are parts of some whole. The relation of parts is inherent in the design of the parts. They are designed with their function and purpose in mind.

With the engine, it is 100% a reductive explanation because once I explain to you the parts and how they relate to each other there is nothing more that needs to be explained about the engine. — Bob Ross

Of course there is more that needs to be explained! What is it for? What does it do? What is its purpose? The engine itself is a part of some larger whole. Not only must the parts of the engine function but the engine itself must function. There must be an energy source that is not part of the engine. The engine must convert this energy into a useful form to be used by the larger whole of which the engine is a part.

Most idealists do not deny that there are physical things, but they mean it in the sense of tangible objects within experience. — Bob Ross

Either a)there are physical things that we are aware of within experience or b) there are no physical things without experience. Either a) you are a substance dualist or b) you are a monist. If b) then you cannot sidestep an explanation of how mental stuff gives rise to physical things.

Physicalists do not mean it this way: they mean that there are actual mind-independent objects beyond the tangible objects within your conscious experience. — Bob Ross

Idealists mean there are physically-independent minds. Given the central importance of conscious experience in your account, what do you make of the fact that we have no conscious experience of disembodied minds?

Feathers and all...

If rattlesnake tastes like chicken, then you may know what one tastes like. The experience of eating the rattlesnake is more than just the gustatory aspect... is it not? — creativesoul

There will be some differences, but it's still just putting chunks of meat in your mouth and chewing. Is it your contention that the experience will be similar to Mary seeing color for the first time?

There will be some differences, but it's still just putting chunks of meat in your mouth and chewing. — RogueAI

Eating venison is like eating escargo... by that standard of "what it's like"...

Is it your contention that the experience will be similar to Mary seeing color for the first time? — RogueAI

Mary's room is based upon the all too common inadequate academic notions of thought, belief, knowledge, and perception. It presupposes that it is possible to know everything there is to know about seeing color without ever having seen it. That is a false presupposition.

Eating venison is like eating escargo... by that standard of "what it's like"... — creativesoul

Do venison and escargo taste anything like each other?

They're both putting meat in your mouth and chewing...

That is a false presupposition. — creativesoul

It seems remarkable to me that this is not more readily understood.

My analogy assumed that rattlesnake does indeed taste like chicken. If that is the case, I know quite a bit of what eating rattlesnake will be like: like eating chicken. Escargo tastes nothing like venison. Furthermore, one is a mollusk, the other is a deer.

I think it targets certain positions that share that presupposition...

My analogy assumed that rattlesnake does indeed taste like chicken. If that is the case, I know quite a bit of what eating rattlesnake will be like: like eating chicken. Escargo tastes nothing like venison. Furthermore, one is a mollusk, the other is a deer. — RogueAI

If the experience of eating rattlesnake only includes the taste, then sure, you'll know quite a bit of what eating a rattlesnake will be like, if you already know what chicken tastes like.

I'm pointing out that the experience of eating a rattlesnake includes so much more than just the taste, and that all those other elements are not like eating chicken. Furthermore, there are all sorts of completely different experiences, all of which include eating chicken. Those are not like one another either, despite the fact that they could all be labeled as "eating chicken".

I mean that it is independent of any mind, not just ours. — Bob Ross

Which includes our mind, doesn't, it? I didn't say only our mind. So what I said is correct.
BTW, what other mind do you have ... in mind, besides ours, that is more advanced and more complex and on which the p.u. could can be dependent on?

I mean that if the world is mind-independent, then there is a hard problem of consciousness — Bob Ross

But "I cannot account for myself as" is the same as "I cannot consider myself as" that I said. So I corectely interpreted that too, didn't I?
What I mean, in these two cases, is that you seem to try to reject my interpretation of your statemnts as incorrect, with no real reason. This only creates unnecessary "traffic" in our discussion and prolongs it without reason to maybe lead to an impass.

You are now attributing our inablily to "account for ourselves as conscious beings" to the hard problem of consciousness. But HPC does not say of imply that we should doubt about our consciousness or that we are conscious beings. It is a problem of "mechanics", a problem of scientific explanation, proof, etc. Not of its existence!
For godssake, doubting about the existence of our consciousness and consciousness in general, would put at stake if not invalidate the whole evolution of philosophy! It would also invalidate us as human beings as well as all life!

Bob, I asked for a simpler description or argumentation if possible, not more complicated!

Do you not think things exist when not being observed? — Janus

Is it a matter of opinion?

Hume agonizes over this; he can find no good reason to think objects persist, and yet he finds that he does believe so. It's a sort of prejudice; nature, he suggests, has taken the decision out of his hands, as a matter too important to leave to stumbling human reason.

that is the common, you might even say default, attitude to things. — Janus

Just so.

If this is all true, what are we to make of it? What do we do with this, as philosophers?

You could say belief in objects is a sort of quirk of human psychology, unsupported by reason, and that the only intellectually honest, and rational, position to hold is some sort of idealism.

That was an option for Hume, who had the example of Berkeley before him, and of course we have our choice of idealisms.

I think there may be an alternative, and thought we might begin to see the shape of it if we looked closely at the interplay of thought, object, existence, and absence in one of the things people typically say in these discussions, namely

I can imagine a rock existing without there being any conscious observer of it. — Janus

I admit, I was ignoring the chitchat about Kant you followed that with, because I find just this simple innocent claim terribly interesting.

But you're right, the discussion's gone nowhere.

Hello creativesoul,

Organs are extrinsic representations of senses within one's perception. Senses are not existentially contingent on perception. However, the organs are existentially contingent upon one's perception.

Yeah...

I'm sorry, but that just looks like a word salad, to put it mildly.

How is any of that word salad? Can you give an example?

By ‘organ’, I am referring to the physical, biological, functional part of the body. The physical, under analytic idealism, is a representation within perceptions: spatiality isn’t an attribute of things-in-themselves. So, yes, the organs are perceptive-dependent because they are, by definition, something physical pertaining to your physical body. Likewise, yes, the senses can be viewed two different ways due to the duality of representation and mentality: the senses in terms of the physical representation of them, and the sense in the immaterial faculties of the mind. I would like to remind you that under analytic idealism the world can be known two different and equal ways—i.e., epistemic dualism.

As if one's organs do not exist without subjective qualitative experience. Seems to me to be the wrong way around. The experience, particularly the depth and breadth of human experience, is existentially dependent upon the biological machinery.

It isn’t that the senses can persist when the biological organs are clearly not working...no no no: the dysfunctional or completely dead organ is an extrinsic representation of the dead sense. You as an organism is the extrinsic representation, within your dashboard of experience and within our dashboards of experience, of your mind. So it isn’t that I am saying there are two completely separable parts (e.g., the organ and sense) but, rather, that the organ is the representation within our perception of the sense. They are interlinked so to speak.

Is that the acceptable standard for all accounting practices, or just some of them?

I don’t follow.

Are you claiming that the position you're arguing in favor of successfully accounts for the hard problem without obscurities?

There is no hard problem of consciousness under analytic idealism: that only happens of one is a physicalist. Positing mind comes from mind is not a hard problem, but positing mind comes from the brain is.

Oh... and you're equivocating terms to an extent I've not witnessed in quite some time. Particularly the term "perception(s)"

I am equivocating “perception” with what?

In addition, it seems there's a fair amount of anthropomorphism going on as well.

This just sounds like the classic counter-argument of “the world doesn’t have to be like our minds” but, again, that isn’t what I am arguing.

I'm afraid I simply do not have the time to make all this explicit. So, I'll just have to leave it all as bare assertion, but not for the lack of empirical evidence throughout the thread. Rather, due to the lack of time and personal priorities...

Absolutely no worries my friend!

Bob

Hello Fooloso4,

An engine is not an assemblage of found parts. The parts are designed and manufactured as parts of a whole. Even something as simple as a bolt cannot be understood in isolation, without it being a part of a whole.

Correct. This doesn’t negate the fact that one can explain the whole by reduction to its parts and the relationship between those parts in their proper arrangement.

A biological entity is not put together out of parts. It can be separated into parts but unlike the engine those parts did not exist prior to the living being.

Correct. Again, this doesn’t negate my point: if one is fundamentally claiming that the mind is a part (or group of parts) of a physical body which emerges due to the specific relationship between those parts, then they are thereby claiming that the mind is reducible to the body.

They are not emergent. Once again, parts are parts of some whole. The relation of parts is inherent in the design of the parts. They are designed with their function and purpose in mind.

The purpose is irrelevant for all intents and purposes here. We can likewise take a natural example with no human purpose embedded into it: take a tornado. A tornado is explained by the reduction of it to its parts (e.g., wind, dust, etc.). Now wind, dust, etc. on their own do not completely account for a tornado: the other component is how they are arranged (e.g., cold and warm wind colliding causing spiralling rotations, etc.). The fact that the parts on their own do not completely account for the tornado does not mean that we aren’t still claiming that the tornado is weakly emergent from the parts in a specific arrangement. Same thing is true for everything else, including engines.

Of course there is more that needs to be explained!

Firstly, for all intents and purposes right now, I am strictly talking about how something works when I am talking about explanations (although I do think all explanations are reductive, but that is going to derail the conversation). Physicalism is arguing that it can explain (in terms of the how it works) a mind in terms of the physical biological brain.

What is it for?

This explanation is different, but still reductive. We reduce the ‘for’ to the purpose bestow onto it by the person utilizing it or perhaps the person who created it (depending). This isn’t irreductive.

What does it do?

When I explain the relations of the parts and the parts themselves, I am thereby explaining what it does. It may not be as clear to you what it does until you watch it work, but theoretically you can figure out what it will do just by understanding the parts and the relationship the parts have to each other when the engine would be on (even if you never witness an engine on). This is only possible because it is an reductive explanation.

What is its purpose?

This is the same question as what it is for.

Either a)there are physical things that we are aware of within experience or b) there are no physical things without experience.

That is a false dilemma. As an analytic idealist, I accept both A and B. If you want to make it a true dilemma, then it would have to be:

A) There are physical things without our experience which somewhat (or completely) correspond to the physical things within our experience; or

B) There are no physical things without experience.

Your version of #A doesn’t actually claim there are mind-independent physical things, it just asserts that we experience physical things within our conscious lives: virtually no idealist is going to disagree with that.

Either a) you are a substance dualist or b) you are a monist. If b) then you cannot sidestep an explanation of how mental stuff gives rise to physical things.

This is true, and I am a monist; and, yes, I agree that I cannot sidestep the problem of how the mental stuff gives rise to physical things within conscious experience. It is a soft problem, though, because it is reconcilable in the view; whereas the hard problem of consciousness is a hard problem because physicalism is provably unable to solve it even theoretically.

Idealists mean there are physically-independent minds. Given the central importance of conscious experience in your account, what do you make of the fact that we have no conscious experience of disembodied minds?

I am not even sure what it would mean to say that one experienced a disembodied mind: I am not claiming that we have evidence of minds existing that have no bodies except for the universal mind. With the universal mind, we do have introspective experience of this.

When you have a vivid dream, let’s say you find yourself consciously experiencing walking through a park (all within a mere vivid dream while you are asleep), you falsely associate your identity with the character (of which usually resembled yourself from reality) and consciously experience the dream world from their perspective. From their perspective, the beautiful nature they are walking through (i.e., you are walking through as the conscious experiencer of the vivid dream) appears to be distinct from themselves; however, once you wake up you realize that your mind was responsible for it all: the trees, the walking path, the fellows people you conversed with, etc. were ideas in your mind and ‘your mind’ as the character perceiving it in the dream was an illusion. Your mind, as the producer of the dream, did not have a body in it. I think an analogous situation is true of reality itself: we are within the universal mind but we perceive it from our own perspectives. However, I am not claiming that there are minds other than the universal mind that can be empirically proven to exist without bodies—I haven’t seen any evidence of that.

Bob

Hello Alkis Piskas,

Which includes our mind, doesn't, it? I didn't say only our mind.

You said:

Anyway, I will have to assume that by mind-(in)dependent you mean that the existence of the physical universe (matter and energy) is in/dependent of/on our mind.

Which implies (unless I am misunderstanding) that you think that my term ‘mind-independence’ refers to an existence of the physical universe that is independent of our mind. I am clarifying that that is false: I don’t count something that is independent of our minds, but yet still dependent on another non-human mind. If that was what you were saying, then I apologize as I didn’t understand that from it.

BTW, what other mind do you have ... in mind, besides ours, that is more advanced and more complex and on which the p.u. could can be dependent on?

I am not sure it can be called more advanced and complex, but the universal mind is what I was thinking of.

What I mean, in these two cases, is that you seem to try to reject my interpretation of your statemnts as incorrect, with no real reason. This only creates unnecessary "traffic" in our discussion and prolongs it without reason to maybe lead to an impass.

I am not trying to disagree with what you are saying: I am just clarifying where I think it needs to be clarified. No, ‘I cannot account for myself as’ is not the same sentence (essentially) as ‘I cannot consider myself as’. I was not saying that people should question whether they are conscious but, rather, the fact that they cannot account for it (i.e., explain it) under physicalism. I agree with you that we should be fairly incredibly certain that we are conscious.

But HPC does not say of imply that we should doubt about our consciousness or that we are conscious beings

Just a side note, some physicalist do deny that we have qualia: the subjectively unique experience part; however you are right that they do not doubt that we are conscious.

It is a problem of "mechanics", a problem of scientific explanation, proof, etc. Not of its existence!

Agreed.

Bob, I asked for a simpler description or argumentation if possible, not more complicated!

Sorry, I am not sure how to simplify it down further!

Bob

How do you feel about Kastrup's most extraordinary claim, that humans and all conscious creatures are dissociated alters of mind-at-large?

I initially thought that the need for a mind-at-large made Kastrup similar to Berkeley, for whom all consciousness exists in the mind of God. Like Berkeley, Kastrup requires some way to explain object permanence and refute solipsism. Kastrup explains the differences in his blog (August 13, 2015).

My formulation of idealism differs from Berkeley's subjective idealism in at least two points: (a) I argue for a single subject, explaining the apparent multiplicity of subjects as a top-down dissociative process. Berkeley never addressed this issue directly, implicitly assuming many subjects; and (b) I argue that the cognition of the non-dissociated aspect of mind-at-large ('God' in Berkeley's formulation) is not human-like, so it experiences the world in a manner incommensurable with human perception (details in this essay). In Berkeley's formulation, God perceives the world just as we do.

Mind-at-large is critical to Kastrup's position. I wonder how we can arrive at a reasonable belief that this entity is all there is and that we are all expressions of it?

are you saying that the raw material is like noumena - there is something there but we don't see it as it is. — Tom Storm

There is a factual difference between 'data' and 'information'. 'Data is an individual unit that contains raw materials which do not carry any specific meaning. Information is a group of data that collectively carries a logical meaning.' In regards to the question of the role of the observer, the observer interprets the data in order to derive information. (There's a lot of discussion about 'information' as kind of the raw material of being nowadays, but in my view information does not exist as any kind of raw material, as it is always the product of interpretation.)

We get into this deep enough, you may find your idealism was Kantian all along — Mww

Would that be so bad? Kastrup, who is the main advocate for analytical idealism, says of Schopenhauer 'I recognized in it [WWR] numerous echoes and prefigurations of ideas I had labored for a decade to bring into focus. The kinship between my own work and what I was now reading was remarkable, down to details and particulars. Here was a famous 19th century thinker who had already figured out and communicated, in a clear and cogent manner, much of the metaphysics I had been working on.'

Generally speaking, I think Kantian idealism has almost no following on this forum, with yourself being a notable exception. So I wouldn't think exploration of the idea was a redundant exercise.

It (i.e. Mary's room thought experiment) presupposes that it is possible to know everything there is to know about seeing color without ever having seen it. That is a false presupposition. — creativesoul

But the whole point of the thought-experiment is that you can know about color vision in a theoretical sense - rods, cones, optical nerves, wavelengths, absorption, and so on - without having seen colours. So it is trying to differentiate 'the experience of seeing color' from 'knowing what constitutes the experience of seeing color'. That's the point.

...you can know about color vision in a theoretical sense - rods, cones, optical nerves, wavelengths, absorption, and so on - without having seen colours... — Wayfarer

I understand that that's what some believe. I do not share that belief. I do not believe that one can know about color vision without ever having seen colors. The terms that refer would have no referent for Mary. She could not know the meaning of those terms, for it would be impossible for her to draw the meaningful correlation(s) between the terms and their referents if the terms referred to a range in bandwidth of the visible spectrum that she could not pick out to the exclusion of all else.

I reject the notion that Mary could know everything there is to know about color vision without seeing color.

There is a factual difference between 'data' and 'information'. 'Data is an individual unit that contains raw materials which do not carry any specific meaning. — Wayfarer

I guess I'm getting too micro now because I struggle with the idea that raw data isn't already subjected to implicit ordering and categorisation before we then consciously set out to assimilate it further in some way. We have to recognise it as raw data to begin with, right?

I reject the notion that Mary could know everything there is to know about color vision without seeing color. — creativesoul

That is the whole point of the thought-experiment. It's an argument against reductive physicalism. Compare it to this statement:

In Consciousness Explained, I described a method, heterophenomenology, which was explicitly designed to be 'the neutral path leading from objective physical science and its insistence on the third-person point of view, to a method of phenomenological description that can (in principle) do justice to the most private and ineffable subjective experiences, while never abandoning the methodological principles of science.’ — Daniel Dennett, The Fantasy of First-Person Science

So Dennett is arguing that it is possible, presumably, to know everything there is to know about the seeing of color, without the first-person experience. That is what the Mary's Room experiment is directed against.

We have to recognise it as raw data to begin with, right? — Tom Storm

That distinction I made is from information science, not philosophy, although it has philosophical implications. Consider a probe gathering data about the atmosphere - the readings it collects are simply numerical values, represented as data-points - those data don't constitute information until they're aggregated into a data-set and arranged and displayed so as to convey information to the researcher or scientist. The data points are what is referred to as 'raw data'.

Where this originated again was the role of the observer in providing perspective, and the fact that perspective, which is fundamental in establishing duration, ratio, distance and so on, is not in itself discernable in the data. The perspective is what the observer brings to bear on the objects of analysis in order to interpret it.

I also wanted to call out this comment from a few pages back which makes an important point that I'm sure is being overlooked in this discussion:

Berkeley's subjective idealism was already "analytic" in the sense that he postulated that observation and conception is tautologically equivalent to existence. Many philosophers misunderstand this principle.

For example, they take the principle to imply that unobserved items disappear from existence. But this doesn't follow from the principle, for according to the principle it isn't false that unobserved objects exist, but nonsensical. — sime

:up:

I reject the notion that Mary could know everything there is to know about color vision without seeing color.
— creativesoul

That is the whole point of the thought-experiment. It's an argument against reductive physicalism. Compare it to this statement:

In Consciousness Explained, I described a method, heterophenomenology, which was explicitly designed to be 'the neutral path leading from objective physical science and its insistence on the third-person point of view, to a method of phenomenological description that can (in principle) do justice to the most private and ineffable subjective experiences, while never abandoning the methodological principles of science.’
— Daniel Dennett, The Fantasy of First-Person Science

So Dennett is arguing that it is possible, presumably, to know everything there is to know about the seeing of color, without the first-person experience. That is what the Mary's Room experiment is directed against. — Wayfarer

Well, I'd question whether or not Dennett holds that one can know everything there is to know about seeing color without seeing color. In fairness, I do not know whether or not he does.

For me, I reject the very idea for reasons already given.