Imagine a brilliant neuroscientist named Mary.
Mary lives in a black and white room,
she only reads black and white books,
and her screens only display black and white.
But even though she has never seen color, Mary is an expert in color vision
and knows everything ever discovered about its physics and biology.
She knows how different wavelengths of light
stimulate three types of cone cells in the retina,
and she knows how electrical signals
travel down the optic nerve into the brain.
There, they create patterns of neural activity
that correspond to the millions of colors most humans can distinguish.
Now image that one day,
Mary's black and white screen malfunctions
and an apple appears in color.
For the first time,
she can experience something that she's known about for years.
Does she learn anything new?
Is there anything about perceiving color that wasn't captured in all her knowledge?
Philosopher Frank Jackson proposed this thought experiment,
called Mary's room, in 1982.
He argued that if Mary already knew all the physical facts about color vision,
and experiencing color still teaches her something new,
then mental states, like color perception,
can't be completely described by physical facts.
The Mary's room thought experiment
describes what philosophers call the knowledge argument,
that there are non-physical properties and knowledge
which can only be discovered through conscious experience.
The knowledge argument contradicts the theory of physicalism,
which says that everything, including mental states,
has a physical explanation.
To most people hearing Mary's story,
it seems intuitively obvious that actually seeing color
will be totally different than learning about it.
Therefore, there most be some quality of color vision
that transcends its physical description.
The knowledge argument isn't just about color vision.
Mary's room uses color vision to represent conscious experience.
If physical science can't entirely explain color vision,
then maybe it can't entirely explain other conscious experiences, either.
For instance, we could know every physical detail
about the structure and function of someone else's brain,
but still not understand what it feels like to be that person.
These ineffable experiences have properties called qualia,
subjective qualities that you can't accurately describe or measure.
Qualia are unique to the person experiencing them,
like having an itch,
being in love,
or feeling bored.
Physical facts can't completely explain mental states like this.
Philosophers interested in artificial intelligence
have used the knowledge argument
to theorize that recreating a physical state
won't necessarily recreate a corresponding mental state.
In other words,
building a computer which mimicked the function of every single neuron
of the human brain
won't necessarily create a conscious computerized brain.
Not all philosophers agree that the Mary's room experiment is useful.
Some argue that her extensive knowledge of color vision
would have allowed her to create the same mental state
produced by actually seeing the color.
The screen malfunction wouldn't show her anything new.
Others say that her knowledge was never complete in the first place
because it was based only on those physical facts
that can be conveyed in words.
Years after he proposed it,
Jackson actually reversed his own stance on his thought experiment.
He decided that even Mary's experience of seeing red
still does correspond to a measurable physical event in the brain,
not unknowable qualia beyond physical explanation.
But there still isn't a definitive answer
to the question of whether Mary would learn anything new
when she sees the apple.
Could it be that there are fundamental limits to what we can know
about something we can't experience?
And would this mean there are certain aspects of the Universe
that lie permanently beyond our comprehension?
Or will science and philosophy allow us to overcome our mind's limitations?