Re: A troubling paradox...

"Daryl McCullough" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Jim Balter says...
>
> >I now recall that Dennett has been working with this theme lately,
> >posing thought experiments about RoboMary to his students --
> >he sent me an email about it in response to a query,
> >but I think it's on a disk in a bag in a box on a shelf somewhere.
> >Let's try google ... okay!
> >http://ase.tufts.edu/cogstud/papers/robomaryfin6.htm
>
> Okay, I read Dennett's article, and it seems to me that he
> may have missed a possibility. He says (talking about Mary Mary,
> daughter of Mary, upon first experiencing color):
>
>    "...In short, Tye should join me in predicting that Mary Mary,
>    like her mother Mary, would not be surprised or delighted at all.
>    She's been there, done that, in her vast imagination already,
>    and has nothing left to learn."
>
> It seems to me that surprise and delight are *emotional* reactions,
> and there is no reason to think that any amount of knowledge can
> take the place of an emotional experience.

Emotions and knowledge can be coupled, however. It may be knowledge
independent of the context in which emotions are generated, or in your
scenario, specific knowledge (e.g., a memory of seeing blue before).

Studies have shown that learning (knowledge) within a strong emotional
context (e.g., mediated via HPTA-generated hormonal milieu) serves to
"record" that knowledge in a much more detailed and re-callable manner.



> This doesn't have to be
> understood as an attack on materialism; we can imagine a completely
> materialistic model that would predict that Mary Mary would be
> surprised and delighted upon seeing the color blue for the first
> time. Let's assume that there are two variables in Mary Mary's
> brain, B1 and B2. B1 is set to 0 or 1 depending on whether Mary
> Mary is currently seeing the color blue. B2 is initially set to
> 0, but is set to 1 exactly one hour after B1 becomes 1. Once
> set to 1, B2 is never reset to 0.
>
> Now, Mary Mary's brain is programmed so that if B1 is 1 but
> B2 is 0, then she will jump up and down and squeal with delight,
> and say things like "Oh, so *this* is what it's like to see the
> color blue! I never could have guessed!"
>
> It seems to me that, with such a program for her brain, it is
> possible for Mary Mary to be both surprised and delighted (in
> an emotional sense) and yet unsurprised (in a scientific sense)
> by her first experience of the color blue. She won't be
> intellectually surprised, since her reaction to the color
> would be perfectly predictable to her (given her complete
> knowledge of physics and physiology), but she would have
> the emotional and physical response that (typically) indicates
> surprise and delight.
>
> --
> Daryl McCullough
> Ithaca, NY
>