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)