How Can We Better Understand Concepts?
What better way to relax on a weekend than investigate a series of thought experiments riiiight? If we have to choose between mindlessly binging on Brooklyn Nine-Nine with fresh fruit yoghurt parfaits and tearing our minds apart with exciting thought-experiments, of course we’ll choose the latter! Inserts 3 happy face emojis and 2 exclamation marks. If you don’t get the reference, it is fine. Just know that Captain America isn’t the best, Captain Holt is. HA! Without further ado, meet Mary.
Thought Experiment 1: Mary In her Black-And-White Room
Mary, a super-scientist, lives in a black-and-white room and knows everything that can be known about colours. Be it brain imaging, retinal anatomy, interview descriptions or electromagnetic spectrum, she has access to all scientific data. Through her black-and-white books and other forms of media, she is educated on neuroscience to the point where she becomes an expert on the subject. She learns everything there is to know about the perception of colour in the brain, together with the facts about how light works in order to create different colour wavelengths.
However, she has an experiential limitation. All her life, Mary has never seen colours before.
One day, she decides to step out of the black-and-white room and her limits were lifted. She sees the color red for the first time. At this point in time, did she learn anything new, specifically, to know “what it is like” to see the colour red? Imagine if we’ve never touched a piece of sand paper, would we ever know how sand paper feels like simply by studying the physicality of it? Intuitively, we want to say that we will learn something new upon the encounter of such an experience. If that is true, what does the role of scratchiness in rough texture, role of redness in red and the role of hurt in pain play in our lives?
Thought Experiment 2: Ship of Theseus
Imagine a ship that remains seaworthy for hundreds of years thanks to constant repairs and replacement parts. As soon as a plank of the ship became dysfunctional, it would be replaced with a new one. As time goes by, every single plank of the ship was replaced by a new plank.
Is the end product the same ship as before, or is it a totally new ship now?
Let’s consider a more relevant example. There will probably be a time when we can replace all our biological body parts with mechanical devices. One day, we decide to undergo a gradual process of fully transforming ourselves part by part into a cyborg. Is the end product the same us as before, or are we totally different people now? If we’re totally different now, at what point in time did the change occurred? Also, instead of undergoing a gradual process of replacing each part one by one, will our identity still be preserved if we instantly replace all of ourselves with mechanical components?
Thought Experiment 3: Brain In A Vat
If you’ve seen The Matrix, this thought-experiment will be familiar. If you’ve not seen the movie, buckle up! Because you’re 8 sentences from getting your mind blown. If we can imagine that we might be cyborgs one day, then it isn’t really that hard to imagine that with our current technological process, it is also possible to make completely realistic computer simulations in time to come. Let’s stretch that thought further.
What if the actual human race is so advanced that they’ve created us in a computer simulation?
They take our brains and place it in a vat with some kind of life sustaining fluid. Next, they connect the neurons by wires to a supercomputer which would provide our brains with electrical impulses identical to those that our brain normally receives. The computer simulate our everyday experiences. In short, we are the virtual pets in their hand-held Tamagotchis. If we cannot even tell whether we’re in a dream or not, what is stopping us in saying that we’re not in a computer simulation right now?
