Mary's Room is a narrative for the Knowledge Argument for a mental state's difference from a physical state.
Essentially, Mary is a lifetime studier of colour vision, but she's also only lived in a monochrome world. She is knowledgeable of all facts relating to colour from wavelength to colour theory. Upon stepping out of the monochrome room, she sees a red object (some sources say flower, some say apple). The question becomes: does she learn something through this experience that she didn't previously know through her lifetime study of colour?
There are people who refute this argument. Some say no, that her knowledge was so extensive that what she saw on the screen shouldn't surprise her. Others say that her knowledge wasn't complete in the first place.
Personally, I am for this argument. I believe there is a sort of mental state that causes learning beyond words. I learn very well through written word alone. Though, I am a better learner when there is an experience component attached to what I'm learning about. For example, I'm knowledgeable of nearly all rules in the English language, though it's through the experience of reading and writing that I have a more keen sense of awareness. While someone may learn common pitfalls people make about something, I think there's a muscle memory & bodily sort of learning that is achieved through stimuli. For viewing something, did the eye and brain know what it was looking at before it running a series of tests to ensure it had a wavelength of x? That wasn't specified.
The example that truly makes me believe that Mary's Room is a convincing argument for mental state is when asking a friend about the weather. Most people have a general sense of weather: hot, cold, rainy, snowy, dry, humid, etc. But even though I know a place is hot, I don't understand how it feels to be in a specific temperature until I am actually in it. I can guess, but guessing is only derived from knowledge. I wouldn't call guessing knowledge itself. Asking a friend adds another layer of complexity. Someone who has lived their whole life in an equatorial area and someone who has lived in a boreal area will have very different knowledge and experience of a place even if they have a full description of the value of heat.
This individualised knowledge is called qualia, which is subjective knowledge unique to the person experiencing stimuli. Because of this, I am curious if it is truly impossible to know everything because it's not possible to experience what another person is experiencing.
To reply you need to sign in.