
The knowledge argument - Hooke
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knowledge_argument
======
jordonwii
To everyone insisting that the argument is silly: while in this particular
case I do disagree with the conclusion, I'd encourage you to pause for a
moment before dismissing it. I often find that when I approach philosophical
theories with too critical a mindset, I dismiss it too quickly, and, if I
spend the time afterwrd, find the issue more complicated than it appeared at
first. It's something like being posed a coding problem, going "Oh, that's
simple!", and then discovering later that the problem, is, in fact, quite
complex.

On the topic of philosophy, in general, though, Bertrand Russell says it
better than I can: "Two things are to be remembered: that a man whose opinions
and theories are worth studying may be presumed to have had some intelligence,
but that no man is likely to have arrived at complete and final truth on any
subject whatever. When an intelligent man expresses a view which seems to us
obviously absurd, we should not attempt to prove that it is somehow true, but
we should try to understand how it ever came to seem true. This exercise of
historical and psychological imagination at once enlarges the scope of our
thinking, and helps us to realize how foolish many of our own cherished
prejudices will seem to an age which has a different temper of mind."

~~~
mannykannot
The use of outlandish thought experiments is fraught with problems, not the
least of which is philosophers' predilection to accept intuition and common
sense in supposing what the outcome would be. This is particularly clearly
demonstrated in Searle's Chinese Room argument, which is really just an
attempt to disguise a personal opinion as a rational conclusion.

The fundamental problem here is that, unlike in science, philosophical thought
experiments are not constrained by reality, so they tend to ultimately become
self-referential arguments over which axioms to accept, but with no objective
basis for deciding between them.

------
detcader
The argument seems to assume that "knowledge" is some sort of indivisible base
class. "Knowledge" is shorthand for memories, compressed sensory input videos
(plus smell, touch, and taste) of finite length in the brain. You can remember
facts (beliefs, really) about wavelengths, and also the experience (believed
experience, really) of sight. Not sure what there is to write a book about.

These philosophers seem to think that humans matter a lot more than those who
"subscribe" to physicalism (if you can call believing in the least
extraordinary option "subscribing") do. I don't care about all of those "the
book is red" koans; "red" is just a word, and words are invented, primarily
for convenience.

The only thing I find a bit hard to get from physicalism is why one's locus of
consciousness happens to be in the brain that it is in. If the time I come
into the world as a baby is "random", what "makes" it random?

------
zvrba
I think the problem overloads the term knowledge.

First, there's knowledge about the external world, the kind which enables you
to predict the conseqeuences of your actions and to manipulate the world to
achieve desired results. Concretely, Mary will be able to use a, say, hex
editor on a BW terminal to "paint" a picutre which a "normal" will recognize
as a, say, red poppy flower. She manipulated another person into having the
experience of seeing a RED poppy flower.

Second, there's knowledge about your internal world, how you experience
things. If Mary is shown the poppy flower picture on a color monitor, she will
gain new, experiential, knowledge about how her own body reacts to that
particular stimulus. It's a knowledge, but it's not a knowledge that gives her
abilities to manipulate the external world in new ways.

The premise of the experiment doesn't account for the fact that each
individual is a sum of their past experiences, _encoded physically_ in their
brains in some way. One person upon hearing "red" will think about tomatoes,
another about blood, yet another about poppy flowers. (I grew up at a place
where they were common and we as kids even ate the seeds :))

Thus the premise is false, the fallcy is in the formulation "what goes on when
_we_ see ripe tomatoes"; emphasis on we. There is no collective "we" in this
case; she doesn't know _all physical information_ shee needs to know in order
to manipulate the external world (e.g., knowing whether to draw a poppy flower
or a tomato in order to evoke a particular emotional response from a
particular individual).

------
anaolykarpov
One friend of mine told me once that no matter how much you read about sex,
you have to practice it in order to understand it. We, as men, will never
actually understand female orgasms and women will never know how ours are
felt, no matter how accurate one tries to describe it.

I don't know what the above means in the context of "the knowledge argument"
but these are easier to understand examples than "not experimenting the red
color" in the article

~~~
glomph
:( don't talk as if your whole audience is men.

~~~
MachineElf
I am not exactly sure in what way his discourse seems as though it were
addressed to an audience of men only. My political correctness meter is
tingling.

~~~
DanBC
> We, as men, will never actually understand female orgasms and women will
> never know how ours are felt, no matter how accurate one tries to describe
> it.

~~~
MachineElf
My position is almost the same as btilly's. When he says "We, as men, will
never actually understand female orgasms and women will never know how ours
are felt... " anaolykarpov is merely including himself in the more general set
of men, and thus communicating an opinion as an element representative of that
set, regardless of the audience. The disjunction with the set of women is
necessary to underline the fact that there might be a fundamental
qualitative/quantitative difference in the way orgasm is felt by the two.

In fact, the statement wouldn't have been any less correct had the audience
been only women.

The same applies if a woman were to say "We, as women, will never ..."

------
btilly
This kind of silliness is why I ignore philosophers whenever I can.

It is clear that the subject of how we personally experience X is not,
strictly speaking, part of the body of knowledge about X. But the reverse is
also true. Learning more about how we personally experience X does not
increase our understanding of X. It is a different topic.

There is an important asterisk on this. And that is that we actually learn
about things through our subjective experience. And therefore understanding
our subjective experience can be necessary to get clear understanding of that
thing.

This is true in a very literal way. "How long did that take?" If you give
three people a stopwatch and have them record a common event, you will get 3
answers. And the answers will be consistently different in similar ways. In
astronomy this phenomena is well-known as your personal equation. See
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_equation](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_equation)
for verfication.

But now I return you to philosophers arguing that something obvious is
something deep that has consequences that it really does not...

~~~
coldtea
> _This kind of silliness is why I ignore philosophers whenever I can._

And avoiding this type of hasty comments are why it pays to study
philogophical problems.

> _It is clear that the subject of how we personally experience X is not,
> strictly speaking, part of the body of knowledge about X. But the reverse is
> also true. Learning more about how we personally experience X does not
> increase our understanding of X. It is a different topic._

That "it's a different topic" is a definitive statement that is not derrived
from anywhere.

If anything, it is itself of philosophical nature, albeit a dogmatic one.

Who said that the actual experience of X doesn't increase "our understanding
of X"? Even if it might be so, it remains to be argued.

Whereas the opposite, that experience, as an extra informational element
regarding X, and as the main component of X as it concerns us, adds to our
understand of X, is the obvious (correct or not) conclusion.

>* This is true in a very literal way. "How long did that take?" If you give
three people a stopwatch and have them record a common event, you will get 3
answers. And the answers will be consistently different in similar ways.*

No, you wont, except within the margin of acceptable error (e.g. time to press
the stopwatch button for each, etc).

~~~
btilly
First on the personal equation, the actual measurement difference from person
to person could range up to 0.7 seconds. See
[http://www.jstor.org/stable/1627157?seq=1#page_scan_tab_cont...](http://www.jstor.org/stable/1627157?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents)
for verification. This was far above acceptable error for measuring the
positions of the stars, and is far longer than most could believe possible.

As for "it's a different topic", well, it is. The one topic is the objective
reality of how something works. The other topic is the subjective reality of
how we experience that same thing.

Take the example that was given. Suppose that I tell you about
electromagnetism. I tell you about the absorption spectrum of various colors.
I tell you about the fact that when we process color we subtract red from
green and yellow from blue so that we can never perceive a mix of those. I
tell you about various forms of color-blindness, and the rare forms of
tetrachromacy. I can tell you everything there is to know about how the
process works, and what colors will be perceived, when. And how that differs
for different people. You still know nothing about what it is like to
experience it for yourself.

And conversely, learning to experience it for yourself tells you very little
about everything that I just told you. For example you've been seeing in color
for your whole life and likely are not color-blind. If so, were you aware that
it is impossible for you to see a mix of red and green as a mix of red and
green? Probably not!

Which returns me to my point. Subjective experience is a necessary filter
through which we perceive the objective world around us. That experience is
neither necessary nor sufficient to gain objective knowledge. And conversely
objective knowledge is neither necessary nor sufficient to gain subjective
knowledge. They are different kinds of things.

------
wkowalsky
While this link is pretty good (as far as wikipedia philosophy entries are
concerned), as always you should consult the SEP for a more in-depth
discussion.

[http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qualia-
knowledge/](http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qualia-knowledge/)

And if you prefer your philosophical thought experiments to be accompanied by
a pop-rock sound track, you're in luck:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Y37cAqdq0g](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Y37cAqdq0g)

------
upofadown
Obviously in any system that does perception there will have to be different
classes of knowledge. Talking about the different mechanics of acquiring such
knowledge seems like an odd way to attempt to disprove something called
"physicality".

The question seems to be a mere quibble about the meaning of the word
"knowledge". It presumes that there is something special about one of the ways
people learn things. Does a recording video camera gain "knowledge" about the
colour red when it records a scene with a red object in it? What, if anything,
does the camera learn about the shape of a cube it sees? It can learn colour
but it can't learn shapes. Should we conclude from this that shape is some
sort of special knowledge outside of mere physicality?

------
upquark
"Knowing everything" implies far more than our intuitions may initially tell
us, and can lead to "a set of all sets" type of paradoxical problems (i.e. the
premise of the argument is absurd). This and other philosophical thought
experiments like the Chinese room abuse our intuitions about being human,
learning things, performing tasks, etc.

In this particular experiment, if Mary's omniscience allows her to invoke the
specific pattern of neural activation that is triggered by observing a blue
sky, then she won't learn anything new, otherwise she will. It all depends how
far we take the absurd claim of her omniscience.

------
jeffbush
I'm guessing someone smarter than me has already thought of this, but imagine
another alien scientist observing Mary through this entire experiment, with
the ability to inspect at the neuronal level the state of her brain at any
instant.

When Mary steps out of the room, we (humans considering this problem) would
intuitively expect her to say "Wow, this sensation is like nothing I could
ever have predicted based on my previous knowledge. I understand this in a way
I couldn't have before!" How would the alien interpreter analyze the
situation?

The alien may say that these sensations activate a different part of Mary's
brain and alter the structure to create memories. If she were put back into
the room, she could recall what it was like to perceive color. These memories
could be defined as knowledge, but the alien might not consider that knowledge
important. It might just say that is an artifact of the operation of her
primitive brain that these sorts of neuronal patterns can only be created by
perception with her eyes. From it's perspective, the entire interaction is
still entirely physical. The alien could have predicted her reaction just
prior to her stepping out of the room by looking at the structure and state of
her brain.

The alien may add prior to her stepping out "By the way, she's going to say
that experiencing color is different than knowing of it (qualia). This is a
curious artifact the way her brain works." I think it would be impossible for
me (a human) to prove the alien wrong. From the aliens perspective, this
wouldn't be fundamentally different than me writing a program 'printf("I feel
hungry");'. It would be difficult to convince me that the computer is actually
hungry. It is programmed to say that.

The reason I added the alien is because we tend to empathize with Mary when we
imagine the experiment. But, if consciousness is an illusion that our brain is
programmed to tell, it's difficult for us to consider this problem
objectively.

------
mannykannot
If a mind is what brains do, then Mary cannot know every physical fact about
even her own neural system - that is too much information for her neural
system to hold. This argument, therefore, implicitly presupposes that there is
something more to a mind, and so is begging the question.

------
hasenj
Certain types of knowledge cannot be encoded effectively.

What I mean by an encoding that's effective is one that translates my
subjective experience of the idea or the thing so that you can "imagine" or
"visualize" the thing by the mere act of decoding my encoding.

Experiencing the thing directly does not count as an encoding in this case.

Defining the precise meaning of "encoding" is left as an exercise to the
reader.

So if you've never experienced seeing red, you can't "imagine it" by just
reading or hearing about it.

If you've never experienced reading a Chinese sentence and "understanding it"
effortlessly, you won't really know what it feels like exactly; you can only
approximate the feeling by comparing with your own native language.

~~~
est
I often summarize it in programming: a mock class, or a very deeply copied
instance, can not have the original `this` pointer and never will.

~~~
hasenj
I don't think that's a good analogy. In your example, we still end up with a
perfect "copy" of all the data and behavior.

When it comes to subjective perception, there's simply no way of even
"copying" the information by simply writing it down. * (caveat follows below)

So, in the Mary example, no matter how much she "reads" about the color red,
she really would not "know all there is to know" about it.

* Now it might be possible to encode a neural state on paper, and if you have a machine that can "apply" that state to your brain, then you can read that paper, enter codes in the machine, and let the machine "fix" some neural state in your brain so you can experience the same "thing".

At least it seems like this should be possible in principle. Although it might
not be practical .. depending on how perception is "implemented" in the brain.

------
gosub

        Nagel takes a slightly different approach.
        In an effort to make his argument more adaptable and relatable, he takes the stand of humans attempting to understand the sonar capabilities of bats.
        Even with the entire physical database at one's fingertips, humans would not be able to fully perceive or understand a bat's sonar system, namely what it is like to perceive something with a bat's sonar.
    

My car emits a sound while parking in reverse. As the car behind gets closer,
the sound is emitted more frequently, and becomes constant under a certain
distance. When I'm parking a different car, I'm unable to 'feel' the distance
from the next car. It's like being blind.

~~~
mannykannot
See also human echolocation (e.g.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_echolocation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_echolocation)).
The experience, however, will not be like a bat's, not only because of the
latter's greater acuity but also because humans are conscious, self-aware and
have language to reason about their experiences.

------
ArekDymalski
I don't understand why this is a valid argument against physicalism. Maybe I
can't get it because the definition of "physicalism" seems muddy and
unintuitive to me.

Or maybe because there's an actual difference between knowing how something
will work (light -> retina -> neurons etc.) and experiencing it while it
works. But all of this is physical: both the knowledge, as well as the memory
of experience.

That's the problem with many philosophers: they create some concepts, define
them in arbitral (not necessarily adequate, often misleading) way and then
other philosophers discuss with these concepts. IMHO most of the time it
doesn't bring useful conclusions and doesn't advance human knowledge.

------
mekkkkkk
To assign complete knowledge to someone in a thought experiment like this is
to open a can of worms that leads to counter-intuitive conclusions. The
subjective experience of color vision is based on physical truths that extend
beyond theory. If Mary truely possessed the knowledge of the receptor layout
in her eyes, her exact neural layout, the composition of her specific signal
substance soup, how a given input by extension would affect her emotional
state etc. etc., she would be able to accurately foresee the impact of
stepping out of that room. So, as the problem is phrased, she would not learn
anything new.

She would also be a god.

------
raincom
On one hand, reductionists say that qualia (qualitative propeties of
experience) is reducible to physical states. On the other hand, some (anti-
reductionists) say, qualia is irreducible. How to settle this dispute?

Only theories from the object level domain (say, neurophysiology, vision,
human experience) can settle this. When theories from the object level domain
do not exist or when we have not understood enough about the phenomena, people
engage is all philosophical disputes. Which philsophical theory one should
choose? Pick your thought experiment:)

The same thing you see in moral philosophy: tons of thought experiments.

------
rplst8
This is slightly off topic but it reminds me of a question I've pondered for
years. Does every person see red as the same color in their mind? Obviously it
applies to all colors. Furthermore - do I see color as the same "concept" as
everyone else. I.e. to some color is more of a feeling, while to others it's
no more than a property of an object (like the surface being smooth or rough).

I've also often wondered if this is why some people like some colors better
than others - and why some people are said to have good taste when putting
some colors together.

------
fenomas
I don't understand how the thought experiment isn't simply begging the
question. It states in its premises that (A) Mary already has all physical
knowledge and (B) she later gains new knowledge. If the conclusion (that not
all knowledge is physical) wasn't true, the premises could not be consistent.

Am I missing something obvious? Why should we accept that the conclusion is
true, rather than discarding one of the premises?

~~~
tjradcliffe
Philosophers typically assume certain "fixed points" in arguments that they
then refuse to budge from under any circumstances. It is a mental dysfunction,
a kind of inbuilt rigidity of mind, that is peculiar to the breed.

For example, there is an actual argument in the philosophy of science that is
based on the supposition that there is a substance that is "identical to water
in every respect" but "is not H2O but rather XYZ".

Philosophers take this "argument" quite seriously, and get rather testy when
you point out that the premise is a contradiction: if something has "all the
properties of water", then that must include properties under electrolysis,
and under electrolysis water decomposes to 2H and O, not X, Y and Z (whatever
those might be). If you say this to a philosopher they will reply, "Yes, but
what if it doesn't?" as if that was a coherent statement.

So the answer to your question is, "Because if we allowed ourselves to discard
one of the premises we'd have a much harder time motivating this whole
ridiculous discussion, and since our livelihood depends on such ridiculous
discussions, we're not about to let that happen!"

~~~
Rangi42
Without disputing your main point about how philosophers typically behave, I
want to clarify the is-water-H2O argument. As I understand it, it's making a
point about how we use language: people have been using the word "water" to
refer to various puddles, lakes, oceans, beverages, etc for a long time before
electrolysis was discovered. We know now that all those instances have
being-H2O in common, but it's not a necessary property for the word "water" to
apply: if some other chemical fulfilled the everyday requirements for water
(being clear, wet, thirst-quenching, etc) without being H2O, it would be
"water," and if a particular variation of H2O doesn't fulfill those
requirements (^2H2O, heavy water, is poisonous) then it's not water. See
"Water is Not H2O" (Michael Weisberg, 2003).
[http://www.phil.upenn.edu/~weisberg/papers/waterfinal.pdf](http://www.phil.upenn.edu/~weisberg/papers/waterfinal.pdf)

~~~
mannykannot
I have a suspicion that many philosophical arguments, probably including the
knowledge argument, are ultimately about language use - in this case, words
and phrases like 'knowledge', 'physical' and 'physical knowledge'. Is this
what Wittgenstein was going on about?

------
ArkyBeagle
Can someone explain why the whole thing isn't simply the abuse of the
universal quantifier? It _SOUNDS_ like there are two "alls" here - ALL[0] is a
proper subset of ALL[1].

If set theory is an obscene tool for this subject, I promise to rend my
garment and heap ashes on my head. But only in an aphysical manner...

------
jwatte
I think Daniel Dennett nailed it.

------
jeffbush
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X8aWBcPVPMo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X8aWBcPVPMo)

~~~
coldtea
That's a joke. Not exactly a dismisal of the argumentation any more that a
creationism making a joke is a dismissal of evolution.

------
baddox
Was OP by any chance at the recent San Francisco premiere of Ex Machina, a
film which briefly mentions this thought experiment?

------
Xcelerate
Odd -- contrary to other users' comments, I don't find this topic silly at
all. As I see it, "science" is the ability to predict the future†. That's all.
And thus a better prediction corresponds to better science. For instance,
quantum electrodynamics has been used to calculate the gyromagnetic ratio of
an isolated electron to 10 digits of experimental accuracy. That's incredible.
In terms of predictive capability, the order goes: physics > chemistry >
biology > psychology. That's not to say that any field is less valuable than
any other; it's just that the higher level fields are more complex, and thus
it is harder to formulate predictive models for them.

So if the value of science is its predictive capacity, then how does one
verify that capacity? Through reproducibility. This property is essential to
modern research; all scientific results must be able to be reproduced by
anyone (assuming they have the appropriate equipment and the ability to adhere
strictly to a specific procedure). For if reproducibility were not a
requirement, then science would be of little value.

For some reason, a lot of scientists (or maybe just people on the internet who
like the idea of science) pigeonhole themselves into the philosophies of
positivism, physicalism, and materialism. I don't know why. I do research in
quantum chemistry, and even as I learn more about the subject (and quantum
field theory), no increase in knowledge has ever changed my philosophical
stance. The only thoughts that run through my mind as I learn more are "Cool,
now I can make better predictions" or "Hey, that's kind of elegant that nature
works that way".

I find it odd, then, that so many people derive their entire life philosophy
from sensory input corresponding to _output_ from other _humans_. It's weird
to me. If one were to plant a microchip that affected optical nerves into the
brain of one of these people, and the microchip caused them to see an object
that wasn't there, I would hardly be surprised if they denied seeing the
object at all once they realized the object's visibility wasn't
"reproducible".

Is it really the case that so many believe that what is real is not only what
is personally experienced, but what is also _supposedly_ personally
experienced (and thus communicated) by others?

Playing devil's advocate, assume the simulation hypothesis (I don't actually
believe it, but it's useful to illustrate my point). Furthermore, suppose that
each individual human has been fed sensory input that only _they_ are capable
of experiencing, but the input is both personally predictable and
reproducible. And lastly, the program running the universe does not allow any
chain of interactions to exist that would permit the information describing
these individual experiences to be transmitted to other humans.

What's wrong with this? Nothing. It's perfectly reasonable that every person
in the simulation observes aspects of the universe that are unique to them,
and them alone. It meets the "predictive" requirement for science at an
individual level, and while it's personally reproducible, it's not
consensually reproducible. Does that really make it any less real?

At least for me, I'm confident that physicalism is false. Why? Because if I
were to rank everything I am certain about on a scale of most certain to least
certain, at the top of the list would be "I am certain that I am experiencing
my own existence". I cannot think of anything I am more sure about. Take away
my senses (or manipulate them somehow), but as long as my brain is still
functioning and I'm conscious, I'm still _experiencing_. The universe didn't
have to be this way. It could have existed almost like it does now, except
that all the people in it would have been philosophical zombies. (And perhaps
all of you are, which would make me a solipsist, but at least I'm a solipsist
that knows I'm not a p-zombie then.)

† My claim that "science is the ability to predict the future" and "better
science corresponds to better predictions" is a semantic issue, and a whole
debate could center around developing a consensus on good definitions.
Wikipedia lists other attributes of the word "science" in addition to
predictability. If you don't like my definition, make up a new word and
substitute it for "science"; the argument holds regardless.

------
Ardeof
Just to summarize the article:

People doing a "non physical" experiment, while using physical proof methods.

This is scientific comedy at its finest, people.

~~~
coldtea
Yeah, because professors of philosophy and epistemologists toil for years
about the subject, but some 2-minute comment shows it for what it is...

You even got the facts wrong. They are not doing a "non physical experiment".
They are proposing a thought experiment -- you know, the kind lots of
scientists did, Einstein and Shroedigger among them.

The "non physical" part is just that it tries to establish that there is "non
physical" knowledge (qualia). That is, nothing about the experiment as a
process (as opposed to the output) is necessary to be "non physical"...

~~~
tjradcliffe
> They are proposing a thought experiment -- you know, the kind lots of
> scientists did, Einstein and Shroedigger among them.

Neither Einstein nor Schrodinger "did" thought experiments. They _used_
thought experiments (which is a really terrible name for imaginary scenarios)
to motivate arguments and guide thinking, not to demonstrate anything.

No one who has been paying attention to the history of knowledge uses thought
experiments for anything other than illustrative, explanatory or motivational
purposes. In particular, the conceit that imaginary scenarios can teach us
anything about the way reality actually is long outdated, as no such imaginary
scenario has ever done any such thing.

Relativity was _motivated_ by thought experiments, but so too have been
numerous false ideas. Therefore thought experiments can do nothing to
distinguish false ideas from true ones, so anyone who uses them for that
purpose is doing them wrong.

------
meric
_Mary 's Room is a thought experiment that attempts to establish that there
are non-physical properties and attainable knowledge that can be discovered
only through conscious experience._

From the beginning the argument pre-supposes there is _objective knowledge_
that can learnt. As we know from relativity and quantum theory, there is no
objective truth. The location of every atom, cell or neuron is unique to every
observer.

Reading the RGB encoding of a photo, one number at a time, compared to seeing
the photo with your own eyes, are different experiences. Imagine if each of
our senses are different dimensions of perception, different ways of learning
knowledge (reading about color through a book vs experiencing color with eyes)
are orthogonal to each other. You can only connect those experiences and
imagine colours _after_ you've experienced it with your own eyes - your brain
can "fake" perceptions, but only after having experienced the same kind of
perception previously.

This blind man regained vision at 68:

 _When he went to the corner store with his sister, he handed the cashier a
$10 bill when he really should have handed a $5 bill...The idea of remembering
things visually is hard as well, and he still resorts to touching and feeling
the world around him to store those memories._ Of course while blind he'd been
able to differentiate between $5 and a $10, but once he's regained his vision
the touch-knowledge isn't connected to his vision-knowledge immediately.
[http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2382619/Canadian-
man...](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2382619/Canadian-man-born-
blind-sees-time-age-68.html)

Knowing how neurone in our brains work is different to having those neurons
interacting with each other.

I argue "knowledge", if exists, can be interpreted only through the filter of
_qualia_. No human knows anything without experience. Even reading a page of C
code can only be done through our eyes and our mind and compared through
previous experience in reading the same. Our minds are qualia, period.

As this was a philosophical argument I'll post a poem from a philosopher.

    
    
        Thus Something and Nothing produce each other; 
        The difficult and the easy complement each other; 
        The long and the short off-set each other; 
        The high and the low incline towards each other; 
        Note and sound harmonize with each other; 
        Before and after follow each other.
    

[http://wengu.tartarie.com/wg/wengu.php?m=NOzh&l=Daodejing&no...](http://wengu.tartarie.com/wg/wengu.php?m=NOzh&l=Daodejing&no=2)

 _With your babel fish you listen to an alien recording "A tall being and a
short being once stood here". You wonder, having never met or seen any sign of
aliens besides this audio recording, how tall and how short were those
beings?_

------
tjradcliffe
What grounds are there for excluding "how the knowing subject that is an
emergent property of the matter of the brain experiences colour" from "all
knowledge about colour"?

fenomas correctly points out the argument is begging the question based on the
I've raised here, but the argument is even more deeply flawed than that
because it assumes that "knowledge" is a thing rather than an activity of a
knowing subject.

If you take the epistemology of a knowing subject seriously then knowing is an
activity of the subject, with the ontology of an action rather than a thing.
Activities are not conserved in the way things are. It is easy to slip past
what "know everything there is to know" means when we assume (incorrectly)
that knowledge is thing-like: we can image books full of sentences that
exhaustively list laws and properties. One might say that if Mary knows
Maxwell's equations and a long list of information about matter she might
"know everything", but considered as an _action_ , to "know everything" means
"to be able to have any thought that anyone might be able to have about the
thing", or something similar.

From this, we can immediately draw an important inference: Mary is not a human
being, so this is not an argument about human beings. Not even in the wildest
philosopher's imagination could any human being be able to have every thought
about light that could be had. There are no-doubt "single thoughts" of such
enormous length and complexity that they could not be fit into a human
lifetime. And because the actions of the mind are serial (mostly) rather than
parallel, the absurdity of the proposition that we can "know everything there
is to know" is revealed. Human life is simply too finite for it.

Any expert will attest to this: no matter how much we learn, with ongoing
experience there is always more.

So like all imaginary arguments, the primary purpose of this one is to mislead
us about the subject. It isn't about human beings or human knowledge. It is
about some other kind of being, unrelated to humanity. Which I guess might be
interesting if you're in to that kind of thing, but personally I'd rather
spend my time focused on the world that exists, not the world of some
philosopher's imagination.

If the argument were honestly stated it becomes a tautology:

"Imagine a knowing subject that is capable of thinking every thought about a
given subject, which necessarily includes all the thoughts a knowing subject
might have when it physically interacts with the material reality the subject
describes (otherwise it wouldn't be able to think every thought about the
subject). Is such a knowing subject capable of knowing the thoughts a knowing
subject might have when it physically interacts with the material reality the
subject describes?"

