On Mary's room
The title given by Philosophy Now "Does Mary see colours differently outside her room?" is a strange formula. We can see something differently if e.g we were angry at someone, but now appreciate their motivation. Or perhaps if we saw something through a telescope, or even in a mirror, these might be experiencing what we see differently. Or perhaps if you were in love all the colours might seem more vibrant. Or dreaming a colour might count as a different way of experiencing it. But the question posed by Mary's room is not whether Mary sees colours differently in and out of her room in some such ways as this, but, given there are colours she hasn't seen in her room can she anticipate the qualities they will have when she does experience them after leaving her room? She is allowed to see back & white inside her room. But it is not claimed that black and white are seen differently inside her room from the way they are seen outside it, but that different colours than black and white are seen outside her room. Even if black and white were seen, e.g. privately inside but not outside her room the quality of the experience in either case would be the same. Otherwise, since we could tell the difference between the two experiences, we would be able to directly name them differently. "whiteinside", and "whiteoutside", by mere inspection of 'the' white.
Let's start again;
Mary lives entirely in a black and white environment where she never experiences any other colours. Nevertheless she becomes an expert on the scientific theory of light and colours. The question is will she learn anything new when she has a colour experience other than black & white, instead of only being expert on the theory of colour experiences.
"Learning anything new" in this context could refer to learning about an essentially different type of thing. As for example if we experience a colour, as opposed to a tickle. Or it may refer within the same classification of thing, where two experiences are recognised without controversy under the same classification but where, apparently, the experience of one of that type of thing does not give a bridge to the experience of a different example of that type of thing. As for example the taste of roast beef, does not help you with what the taste of a (nice) orange may be like, although they are both recognised as tastes.
Mr Hems says that what Mary perceives does not refer to a self. This, it seems, is because if what Mary experiences before she 'left her room' was essentially private to a self, then there might be an essential difference between those experiences and the ones she may have outside her room, which may be supposed to be essentially public. (I think this is not in question with the thought experiment, mainly because there is no such difference).
Mr Hems maintains that what Mary perceives once she has left her room, is not fundamentally a different sort of thing from what she perceives in her room. [But 'being a fundamentally different type of thing' depends on your mode of classification. All things are things, all stuff is stuff, does this mean we don't experience anything fundamentally new when we experience different stuff because, after all, its still just stuff?] But the Mary's room thought experiment is supposed to be about the relationship between scientific knowledge and the nature of experiences it deals with. If what is experienced in Mary's room is indeed not fundamentally different from what is experienced out of it, then this will be true even of a prehistoric or even a Neanderthal Mary's experiences, although she has never heard of science. And the case will not be about what scientific truth teaches in comparison to experience. But because Mr Hems is concentrating on whether there is a different classification of thing involved with Mary's experiences in and outside her room, science is only mentioned in passing, and he does not mention which scientific theory he supposes Mary to be knowledgeable about. Nor does he mention how such a scientific theory might help (or not help) Mary with knowledge of colour experiences yet to be had outside her room.
Mr Hems thinks that the colour experiences in and out of Mary's room are no more different from each other than that of a scientist who knows what animals are and has discovered a new one. It is true that all colours are colours, just as all animals are animals, (and all stuff is stuff) so in neither case do we need to pass to a new classification on finding a new colour, or animal. And this is what Mr Hems seems to have in mind as challenging what he supposes his antagonist maintains; that what Mary experiences in her room is "not a species of real colour experience", as he puts it.
But the question is not whether they can both be classified as proper (real) colour experiences, and if they are or are not classified as essentially different or the same in that respect, but how to get from the idea of one colour (or animal) to the idea of another that has not been experienced, and the help science might give . The difficulty of explaining this in the case of colours is supposed to illustrate a difference in the colour case that could be called essential, which is not present in the transition between animals being identified, imagined or discovered. And the question is whether scientific knowledge of colour theory would overcome the difficulty.
It seems easy to point out, in the animals case, different parts, each of which can be varied and put together in different ways so forming an endless number of new possible animals. To make the comparison with colours apt Mr Hems should point out that part of the experience of white that makes for an experience of red. Or point out which are the parts of the perception of red and green that can be put together to form yellow; (remembering that red and green paint will not form yellow, but brown, it is only red and green light that can be added to produce yellow).
But take as an example the case of music, where you can place together different notes from different instruments to produce all sorts of different tunes. All classified as music. In the sense of all being classified as music none of them are new. None of them are "not really music" (except perhaps gangster rap).
You can get new music by putting together old sounds in different orders. But still, it would be nice to hear the finished tune, even for the composer (even, I presume, for Beethoven). Are we really confident in asserting even in this perfectly possible case, that when, even the composer, actually has the experience of hearing the tune, he or we 'don't learn anything new'? If we experience something new even in this case, how can it be said we wouldn't experience anything new on first experiencing any new colour, no matter how much colour theory we might know?
It may be said; "Knowledge of the science of colour, if it was complete and completely understood, would mean we wouldn't experience anything fundamentally new on experiencing a colour for the first time." This is also not specific about the nature to the science involved, except that it hypothetically requires the scientific theory to be complete; But whether that is indeed a plausible possibility, making it so complete as to effectively deliver the nature of a new colour experience prior to having the experience, is what is at issue.
Is it plausible to suppose that any amount of theory, no matter how complete, can deliver the quality of an experience not previously experienced? If this isn't plausible, and if such theorising involves reducing what is explained to something that can be grasped independently of having the experience, this would seem to show the experience cant be completely reduced after all. If the theory doesn't reduce the experience to some other states then it would just predict what will happen, but since we wouldn't have the experience how could it predict the quality of the experience? But if it doesn't predict the actual experience then its also not complete. it doesn't give complete colour knowledge.
One thing this view seems to assume is that science helps us to know what the experience of the subject of that science is like. But, as is well known, Arthur Eddington thought our experience of solid objects is in some way basically wrong, because any solid object “is nearly all empty space” the implication being it is not actually solid at all. (quoted from A Physicist’s Defense of Reality, Despite Quantum Physics | Mind Matters
https://mindmatters.ai/2021/06/a-physic ... m-physics/.) Similarly we have Wilfred Sellers contrasting the manifest & scientific image, struggling with the fact the two images are not at all the same or necessarily like each other (not that I know much about this). And then the quantum theory of light with wave/particle duality, which some people claim can't be understood, or really imagined.--So, if it can't be imagined, it wouldn't seem to help us imagine how different colours of light are experienced.
One might imagine that the view science reduces some phenomena to others aught to mean that what has been reduced can be re-constructed from what it has been reduced to, because otherwise how can it have been fairly reduced.? For example how can we fairly claim "this is really just that" when there are bits of "this" that can't be re-constructed from "just that"? How can those bits be "just that" if "just that" wont construct them? So, the ideas of things something is reduced into should be able to give an adequate idea of the thing that has been reduced. But the previous views suggest that science doesn't tell us what a thing is going to be like in our experience. Going by the mostly empty space view of solidity we would never suppose the experience of something being solid, from the scientific theory. And the more fundamental the theory gets the further it seems to get from what is actually experienced. This seems true although (in the case of solidity at least) once we've had solid experiences perhaps we can appreciate how that could be mostly empty space after all; that is when taken at our gross perceptual resolution (as the link suggests).
Atoms are forced to stay apart in mostly empty space, by their properties of attraction and repulsion, These properties in turn result from the properties of attraction and repulsion of their parts. These properties have the result that light is reflected, and other objects can't enter the space, resulting in the apparent day to day properties we see solid objects have. And if those properties atoms are supposed to have did not result in the day to day properties solid objects they compose are supposed to have, that wouldn't be a very good theory at explaining the nature of everyday solid objects. Nevertheless this has apparently produced complete confusion and puzzlement at what 'the real' nature of solid objects can be, just because we can describe the situation in terms that seem contrary, while at the same time leaving out how one set of properties constitute and in that way explain the other, and in that way are not contradictory at all.
"But is it really solid, or really mostly empty space? It can't be both!" But, the way it is atoms in mostly empty space is what makes it solid.
Scientific theories may be thought as simply ways of producing predictions. In that case they need not claim to reduce one state to another. But if they do not claim one state is the other they should not be claiming 'solid objects are really atoms in mostly empty space.' because that is a claim that solid objects are constructed from atoms in mostly empty space.
At any rate, it seems even the relatively simple case of of solidity can cause confusion.
It may be objected that making the solid behaviour of an object depend on the forces of its atomic constituents keeping the atoms apart does not explain or give the ultimate nature of those forces, and so nor the solidity they construct. This is correct; we hope to empirically investigate the situation further, and hope that this will eventually resolve our problem. We don't presume or expect to find the solution to this problem straight away or via some logical or metaphysical analysis. In the meanwhile, though, "atoms having those properties in that situation" is itself supposed to be a sufficient reason for the solid behaviour of the larger situation. There is a view that our reasoning in such matters does not amount to something objectively sufficient to connect what is explained with what does the explaining. This is not so according to the above where we compare the constructing to the constructed, either vary roughly or as exactly as possible, to see if they match.
