Mary's Octagon

The Mary’s Room thought experiment meant to disprove physicalism, but it rests on a flawed understanding of the distinction between information about physical stimuli and the physical stimuli themselves. To illustrate the flaw, let’s look at a similar change the thought experiment that a little bit, which I’ll call Mary’s Octagon:

What this thought experiment illustrates is that the information being communicated to Mary is different from the physical stimuli she is studying, and this isn’t at all surprising. It’s not a problem for physicalism that the description of a physical stimulus is different from the stimulus itself.

In the original formulation of the experiment, the correct interpretation is that different stimuli produce different brain states. Black-and-white stimuli are not red stimuli, even if the black-and-white stimuli contain a thorough description of what’s happening when a person is exposed to red stimuli. There is no contradiction, and this is not a problem for physicalism.

EDIT: changed to make clear that the thought experiment is a changed version of the Mary’s Room thought experiment. Strikes are removed text, underlines are new text.

Is this thread a joke?

Are people supposed to pretend that the idea of getting kicked in the head is the same as physically being kicked in the head? Maybe, if you were so inclined, you could simulate physical injury in a non injured brain, but that’s not the way evolution and nature work. Nature instills a survival instinct in every organism. That’s what genes are. That’s what genes “do”. Pain, injury, and threats of death are the most immediate and obvious means to wake people up from their autistic, subjective, bubble-realities.

While the new thought experiment does seem ludicrous, the original Mary’s Room thought experiment is absolutely taken seriously. The idea in the original is that learning about color doesn’t teach you about the experience of color, and that that poses a problem for the idea that subjective experience can be a fully physical phenomenon.

The new thought experiment is intended to be ludicrous, to show what’s happening in the original experiment, and why it’s expected and not a problem for physicalism. Just like a kick in the head is different in kind from a complete knowledge of the effects of a kick in the head, a red photon is different in kind from a complete knowledge of the effects of a red photon.

Acute, traumatizing, enduring pain has a way of sharpening mental focus, and most people don’t care about the difference between subjectivity and objectivity while they’re experiencing it. Thought experiments and dabbling in theory, cushioned arm-chair philosophy, is almost done always from pleasurable and comfortable environments.

And what sad fact does that tell you? #-o

In this example Mary’s understanding of what goes on during physical pain is not the same as having to experience pain. Mary would learn that pain has a varied nature, one that involves achingness and fullness. Is it physical???

Is the pulsating nature of pain physical???