[Serious Phil] Rejecting the Hypothesis of Phenomenal Information

[walto]

--- In Phil-Sci-Mind at yahoogroups.com, "larry_tapper" <Philscimind at ...> wrote:
>
> Wato writes:
> 
> W> ...There is, as Lewis forcefully argues (and I agree with him), some capacity that Mary lacks. But we have to be careful to be clear what we mean if we want to say that what she lacks is the capacity to see green things (or even just to see green).
> 
> W> Certainly, a color-blind person might not be able to tell which of two painted cubes is green just by looking at them. Lewis wants to say that there isn't any information that this color-blind person lacks. But "information" is a bit weasel word, I think. Why can't we say that while one person needs additional info to correctly select a green cube in every test, another person doesn't, that this other person already has all the information he needs?
> 
> W,
> 
> I see what you mean. But in this case I would say that if the color-sighted person has more information than the color-blind person, it is because he has *done* something which the color-blind person has not done --- measure the colors of the cubes with a fully functional visual colorimeter, that is, a human eye.
> 
> So I think a misleading aspect of your example may be the temptation to say that our color-sighted and color-blind subjects, both staring at the cubes, are doing the same thing. I would say that the color-sighted person is doing a different thing, because he is using a different, better instrument. Since what he is doing is more information-conducive, it should be no mystery that he possesses information which the color-blind subject lacks. 
> 
> L      


I think that's right.  I'm not sure everything Lewis says in that article is consistent with it--but where it isn't, I agree with you.

W