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“QUALIA”
A few comments
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JOSEPH HOLBROOK
Qualia (pronounced /ˈkwɑːliə/  or ˈkweɪliə), singular "quale", from a Latin word meaning for "what sort" or "what kind," is a term used in philosophy to describe the subjective quality of conscious experience. Examples of qualia are the pain of a headache, the taste of wine, or the redness of an evening sky. Daniel Dennett writes that qualia is "an unfamiliar term for something that could not be more familiar to each of us: the ways things seem to us."
INTRODUCTION
I ran across this word Qualia which lead backward to the following mental experiment.  I disagreed with portions of Mr. Dennett’s commentary about the word and just had to write my own thoughts.  Just for fun.  (Much of this intro and staging is from the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary%27s_room#Thought_experiment

         You should read over this web page, particularly the response of Philosopher Daniel Dennetthttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary%27s_room#Thought_experimentshapeimage_7_link_0
                                     MARY the color scientist
Mary is a brilliant scientist who is, for whatever reason, forced to investigate the world from a black and white room via a black and white television monitor. She specializes in the neurophysiology of vision and acquires, let us suppose, all the physical information there is to obtain about what goes on when we see ripe tomatoes, or the sky, and use terms like ‘red’, ‘blue’, and so on. She discovers, for example, just which wavelength combinations from the sky stimulate the retina, and exactly how this produces via the central nervous the contraction of the vocal cords and expulsion of air from the lungs that results in the uttering of the sentence ‘The sky is blue’. [...] What will happen when Mary is released from her black and white room or is given a color television monitor? Will she learn anything or not? The importance of qualia in  philosophy of mind comes largely from the fact that they are often seen as posing a fundamental problem for materialist explanations of the mind-body problem. Much of the debate over their existence hinges on the definition of the term that is used, as various philosophers emphasize or deny the existence of certain properties. Daniel Dennett coined the terms qualophiles for philosophers who believe in qualia; and qualophobes for those who don't.
M. Dennett argues that Mary would Not, in fact, learn something new if she stepped out of her black and white room to see the colors red, blue etc.   Dennett asserts that if she already truly knew "everything about color," that knowledge would include a deep understanding of why and how human neurology causes us to sense the "quale" of color (singular of qualia).   Mary would therefore already know exactly what to expect of seeing red, before ever leaving the room.  Dennett argues that the misleading aspect of the story is that Mary is supposed to not merely be knowledgeable about color but to actually know all the physical facts about it, which would be a knowledge so deep that it exceeds what can be imagined, and twists our intuitions.
If Mary really does know everything physical there is to know about the experience of color, then this effectively grants her almost omniscient powers of knowledge. Using this, she will be able to deduce her own reaction, and figure out exactly what the experience of seeing red will feel like.
Mr. Dennett uses a simpler version of the Mary thought experiment to show how this might work:  What if Mary was in a room without triangles and was prevented from seeing or making any triangles?  An English-language description of just a few words would be sufficient for her to imagine what it is like to see a triangle—she can simply and directly visualize a triangle in her mind.  Similarly, Dennett proposes, it is perfectly, logically possible that the quale of what it is like to see red could eventually be described in an English-language description of millions or billions of words.
                DANIEL DENNETT
     AMERICAN PHILOSOPHER
Outside Mary's Room
My comments
 
To know exactly what to expect of seeing colors (no matter how deep the knowledge), and to actually "see colors", are two distinctly different perspectives and informational avenues.   Each reveals adjunct information and responses.  
 
If in-depth knowledge were fully interchangeable with experience, then a perfect explanation of coitus could be substituted for the act without any differences at all in results or responses.  No difference in experiences.  And no matter what sort of room Mary was used to living in, I’m pretty sure she wouldn't enjoy it nearly as much.  Experience will always, at the very least, enhance information, even if the only enhancement (or addition) is the individual’s human experience itself.   
 
Changing the experiment to triangles rather than colors, Mr. Daniel Dennett alters the premise.   He indicates that the triangle experiment is simpler.  Well, it is simpler.  Because it’s a different experiment, with the accent on different faculties and results.   
 
In Mr. Dennett's experiment, Mary already comes from a world of lines, shapes and masses.  There is no similar stimulation of Mary's mind when the object of the experiment is simply to expose her to an unknown shape (a triangle rather than a color).   Though Mary may be totally inexperienced with the triangle shape, it's a small leap to combine three lines in such a way as to imagine it.   Mary already has experience with the foundation from which the object arises.  Mary's initial state contains all the fundamentals for and elements of a triangle. 
 
But imagining a colored world and its subtleties based exclusively on a life-time of black and white information is quantitatively and qualitatively a different experiment.   Mary's initial state is inconsistent with color.   She is without any visual experiences for color at all and experiencing it for the first time, no matter what information is at her disposal, will most surely cause her to scream. . . "QUALIA !!". . . . regardless of what she has concluded, surmised or imagined it would be like.  Or so I've experienced.  (Joseph Holbrook)(An apparent qualophile)        (To be continued)
TRIANGLES and ROBOTS
QUALIA, Joseph Holbrook Journal
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