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by riversflow
1381 days ago
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I would argue, in the first case, stimulating your visual nerve with the identical signal as the color red would produce would be seeing red. Your argument is akin to saying that someone born profoundly deaf with a cochlear implant has never heard anything! Additionally, the phenomenon of "red" would seem to be more complex than just a single channel, any human will agree that (256,0,0) is not to the only RGB value that maps to red, but would Mary be able to identify which clouds in a sunset were orange, which red, which pink or purple? For your second thought experiment, I would argue that wearing a wet glove is not a complete representation of wetness, because of the specific interactions that wetness has on the skin; apart from the sensations of pressure and heat loss, there is also the way that water moves/interacts with the skin making it more grippy, the texture of water and it's surface tension forming drips, and the movement of those drips, and the way wet skin feels different are all part of the overall qualia of wetness, hence why we differentiate between e.g. drenched and misted. There are 6 different mechanoreceptor systems in the skin, and the complete phenomenal concept of wetness likely involves all of them. I also think this is a poor thought experiment, because it necessarily involves water, image Bob exists in a plane of reality without liquid water entirely, would it be feasible for him to experience wetness? |
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I don't really object to that. My conclusion is that you can know what red is on the level of qualia without getting in contact with approximately red wavelength light. You can know what sound is without getting in contact with pressure waves. You can know what wetness is without getting in direct contact with water.
> I also think this is a poor thought experiment, because it necessarily involves water, image Bob exists in a plane of reality without liquid water entirely, would it be feasible for him to experience wetness?
I don't know. In that plane of reality we would not have evolved a mechanism for sensing wetness.
I don't know if it's possible to experience being in a spacial 2 dimensional reality or spacial 4 dimensional reality. My guess would be yes, but it would require significant alternations to our bodies, mostly brain structures.
Our experience of reality is almost certainly very limited vs. what's possible. There exist distinct human personalities who can see trough each other eyes and communicate with their minds - I'm talking about craniopagus twins.
I'm looking forward to high-bandwidth computer-brain interfaces. Some people may actually get to experience how it is to be a computer or whether it feel like anything at all.