Just watched a great TED-ED talk about Mary’s Room, a thought experiment posited in the 1970s about a fictional researcher, Mary, who is an expert on color but lives in a world of only black-and-white. One day, something malfunctions (in her perception?) and she sees a red apple.
The question, can Mary learn anything new from the actual experience of red, as opposed to the theoretical understanding of the brain functions for seeing color?
I think what is provocative is the question of whether “red” is a qualia, an experience in the mind (and different according to subjective experience), or if the experience of seeing it, as opposed to “knowing” about the mechanics of it, produces something measurable in the brain and is therefore quantifiable (a thing, not just an experience).
And if its a qualia only, can we really “know” things in and about the universe that we don’t have an actual experience of?
Would love to hear Deepak and Menas address these questions from their respective points-of-view.
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Deepak Chopra 5 years ago.
