According to Mary's room in philosophy, Mary will gain new information if she saw the apple coloured. But what about the Charles Bonnet syndrome? Doesnt it prove that she gains no new information ?
Answers
Explanation:
Imagine a girl called Mary. She is a brilliant neuroscientist and a world expert on colour vision. But because she grew up entirely in a black and white room, she has never actually seen any colours. Many black and white books and TV programmes have taught her all there is to know about colour vision. Mary knows facts like the structure of our eyes and the exact wavelengths of light that stimulate our retinas when we look at a light blue sky.
One day, Mary escapes her monochrome room, and as she walks through the grey city streets, she sees a red apple for the first time.changes upon Mary’s encounter with the red apple? Has Mary learnt anything new about the colour red upon seeing the colour for the first time? Since Mary already knew everything about the physics and biology of colour perception, she must surely have known all there is to know about the colour red beforehand. Or is it possible that some facts escape physical explanations? (‘Physical’ in this sense refers to all the realms of physical science, including chemistry, biology, neuroscience, etc.). If Mary has learnt something new, then we can conclude that scientific explanations cannot capture all there is to know, argues Professor Frank Jackson, who thought up this scenario in ‘Epiphenomenal Qualia’, in The Philosophical Quarterly (1982). The story of Mary is known as the ‘knowledge argument’ and it has become one of the most prominent thought experiments in the philosophy of mind.
You might say, “Hang on a minute, how was it possible that Mary grew up in a black and white room in the first place?” Never mind the first place. Some philosophers have put forth that she wore special goggles. But this issue need not concern us, because philosophical thought experiments depend on logical coherence rather than practical feasibility. Philosophers devise such narratives to think through an imagined situation, so as to learn something about the way we understand things. Thought experiments require no Bunsen burners or test tubes; they are laboratories of the mind. In thought experiments, time travel is logically possible, but no philosophy professor is expected to travel back in time to prove their point.