The missing knowledge in Marry's room

Here I will first compare Marry to a computer and the color of red to a program source code, then apply the idea of computational irreducibility to make an argument. 


computational irreducibility: Computations that cannot be sped up by means of any shortcut are called computationally irreducible. The principle of computational irreducibility says that the only way to determine the answer to a computationally irreducible question is to perform, or simulate, the computation.


Main question: What is the missing knowledge of Marry if she has complete knowledge of the color red and also herself?

Short answer: The missing knowledge is the computationally irreducible execution of the program red on the system of Marry. Any execution of the program on the original Marry or any simulated Marry inevitably causes an experience of the color for the real or simulated model Marry. Without any version of Marry necessarily experiencing it, the knowledge is inaccessible, therefore the information of the execution itself, her neural response, her physical response, and so on is the missing and irreducible/unpredictable knowledge. Marry has access to all knowledge she wants but to gain complete knowledge of the experience some version of Marry must experience it. The argument is that it's not possible for Marry to have access to all knowledge because the knowledge of the execution and experience is computationally irreducible and gated by the necessary experience of Marry herself. There is a fallacy here in assuming complete knowledge of all aspects of red.


The difference between knowing everything about the color red and experiencing it is equal to the difference between the knowledge of the source code of a program and its execution on a computer.  

There is new information created in the execution/experience of the color/program on the computer/body. The impact of the code on her body, her hormones, her neurons, and so on just like a program in execution creates new information like how it changes the memory, the processing of it in the CPU and GPU so on.  

 

The argument of new information being generated becomes questionable if Marry also has complete information about her body, like knowing everything about the computer which will deterministically run the program.  

Then the new information Marry can gain is equal to the information she can't predict without running the experience. 

So the question is whether there can be information she can't predict if she has complete knowledge about the program and the computer running it. 

 

The answer is yes in the context of computation irreducibility.

This means that there is no other way to predict what the impact of red will have on Marry without actually running the program, at which point she inevitable experiences it. 

So Marry has in this case no way to know what the experience of red is without experiencing it. 

 

Therefore, even if Marry has complete knowledge about the color of red and her own physiology, she gains previously inaccessible computational irreducible knowledge by running/experiencing the color red. 

 
 

Sources: 

Computation irreducibility: https://www.wolframscience.com/nks/p737--computational-irreducibility/ 
https://mathworld.wolfram.com/ComputationalIrreducibility.html

Mary's room: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knowledge_argument 

Philip Goff - Mind Chat Podcast: youtube

 

Comments pointing out important aspects:

Question: She can observe the outcome of the simulation of her body and of the irreducible computer program. In the case of her body, she has no more knowledge about red. In the case of the computer, she has full knowledge of the outcome. The point I would focus on is that simulation of a material cause is not the same as the material cause. Aristotle has this figured out with the distinction between efficient causes and material causes. Simulation maps material causes to efficient causes i.e. this mapping means they are not equal.


Answer: In that case, the simulated Marry experiences it and not the original Marry. So there is still a version of Marry that has to experience it, without her the original Marry would not have access to the irreducible computer program result. 

The point is that without any version of Marry experiencing it, it's not possible to gain access to the computationally irreducible information and the irreducibility of the program execution holds.  

So the knowledge Marry gains when she first experiences red is exactly the irreducible execution on her own hardware. Whether the original Marry can observe the results or not doesn't change the fact that some version of Marry had to necessarily experience it to access that knowledge, simulated or not.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The missing knowledge in Mary's room

Single source of computation fallacy  There is computation in the body on which the conscious mind doesn't have insight into and plays only an observer role.  E.g.: sympathetic nervous system, sensory signals triggering reflexes, nervous system triggering goosebumps, ...  The fallacy lies in the assumption that all processing is done by the conscious mind, which is caused by the mixture of our mind processing the actual signal plus the feedback signal of computation done in other systems in the body. This leads to mistaking both signals as the conscious processing of the mind. We are therefore being tricked and are unable to locate the computation of the parts we interpret as feelings or experience, which isn't the actual signal but the result of other systems' computations in the body. We simply have no conscious insight into other systems' processing. This leads to the conclusion that something other than computation is happening by seeing color...
Read more

coherent objections to fine-tuning arguments

Here I will present an objection to the fine-tuning argument by putting it on a direct collision course with the Fermi Paradox. Objections to the fine-tuning argument: It is unclear how many different forms of life are possible given the known and unknown constants of Nature. The fine-tuning argument implicates that terrestrial life is the only one possible in the entire universe. We can't know how many different forms of life exists / existed in the universe. We don't know whether our own terrestrial form of life also exists / existed on a different planet. For the fine-tuning argument to be valid we have to prove the non-existence of life in the entire history of the universe other than on our planet. This turns a solution to the Fermi Paradox into a prerequisite to any fine-tuning argument. Sources: Definition of the fine-tuning argument: If the known constants of Nature were too different from what they are, "life as we know it" could not exist. Definition of the ...
Read more