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Certain types of knowledge cannot be encoded effectively. What I mean by an encoding that's effective is one that translates my subjective experience of the id
by hasenj 12y ago
Certain types of knowledge cannot be encoded effectively.
What I mean by an encoding that's effective is one that translates my subjective experience of the idea or the thing so that you can "imagine" or "visualize" the thing by the mere act of decoding my encoding.
Experiencing the thing directly does not count as an encoding in this case.
Defining the precise meaning of "encoding" is left as an exercise to the reader.
So if you've never experienced seeing red, you can't "imagine it" by just reading or hearing about it.
If you've never experienced reading a Chinese sentence and "understanding it" effortlessly, you won't really know what it feels like exactly; you can only approximate the feeling by comparing with your own native language.
- est 12y agoI often summarize it in programming: a mock class, or a very deeply copied instance, can not have the original `this` pointer and never will.
- hasenj 12y agoI don't think that's a good analogy. In your example, we still end up with a perfect "copy" of all the data and behavior. When it comes to subjective perception, there's simply no way of even "copying" the information by simply writing it down. * (caveat follows below) So, in the Mary example, no matter how much she "reads" about the color red, she really would not "know all there is to know" about it. * Now it might be possible to encode a neural state on paper, and if you have a machine that can "apply" that state to your brain, then you can read that paper, enter codes in the machine, and let the machine "fix" some neural state in your brain so you can experience the same "thing". At least it seems like this should be possible in principle. Although it might not be practical .. depending on how perception is "implemented" in the brain.