more from this thinker | more from this text
Full Idea
While there is indeed a before-after difference in Mary, this is just a matter of coming to think in new ways, and acquiring a new concept. There is no new experiential property. She could think about the property perfectly well, using material concepts.
Gist of Idea
Mary acquires new concepts; she previously thought about the same property using material concepts
Source
David Papineau (Thinking about Consciousness [2002], 2.2)
Book Ref
Papineau,David: 'Thinking about Consciousness' [OUP 2004], p.51
A Reaction
I think it is better to talk of Mary encountering a new mode of experiencing something, just as experience becomes blurred when glasses are removed. No one acquires new 'knowledge' of blurred objects when they remove their glasses.
7880 | If a blind persons suddenly sees a kestrel, that doesn't make visual and theoretical kestrels different [Papineau on Jackson] |
7378 | No one bothers to imagine what it would really be like to have ALL the physical information [Dennett on Jackson] |
7377 | Mary learns when she sees colour, so her complete physical information had missed something [Jackson] |
2327 | Knowledge and inversion make functionalism about qualia doubtful [Kim] |
7866 | Mary acquires new concepts; she previously thought about the same property using material concepts [Papineau] |
4094 | Experience teaches us propositions, because we can reason about our phenomenal experience [Crane] |
4594 | A scientist could know everything about the physiology of headaches, but never have had one [Heil] |