I'm guessing someone smarter than me has already thought of this, but imagine another alien scientist observing Mary through this entire experiment, with the ab

I'm guessing someone smarter than me has already thought of this, but imagine another alien scientist observing Mary through this entire experiment, with the ability to inspect at the neuronal level the state of her brain at any instant. When Mary steps out of the room, we (humans considering this problem) would intuitively expect her to say "Wow, this sensation is like nothing I could ever have predicted based on my previous knowledge. I understand this in a way I couldn't have before!" How would the alien interpreter analyze the situation? The alien may say that these sensations activate a different part of Mary's brain and alter the structure to create memories. If she were put back into the room, she could recall what it was like to perceive color. These memories could be defined as knowledge, but the alien might not consider that knowledge important. It might just say that is an artifact of the operation of her primitive brain that these sorts of neuronal patterns can only be created by perception with her eyes. From it's perspective, the entire interaction is still entirely physical. The alien could have predicted her reaction just prior to her stepping out of the room by looking at the structure and state of her brain. The alien may add prior to her stepping out "By the way, she's going to say that experiencing color is different than knowing of it (qualia). This is a curious artifact the way her brain works." I think it would be impossible for me (a human) to prove the alien wrong. From the aliens perspective, this wouldn't be fundamentally different than me writing a program 'printf("I feel hungry");'. It would be difficult to convince me that the computer is actually hungry. It is programmed to say that. The reason I added the alien is because we tend to empathize with Mary when we imagine the experiment. But, if consciousness is an illusion that our brain is programmed to tell, it's difficult for us to consider this problem objectively.