Your eternal destination: you decide.

Now lets all just calm down, in a moment someone is going to say qualia and I'm then going to have to cry. Its Mary the colour scientist all over again.TTFN,WK

Mary the colour scientist is a thought experiment regarding qualia.Mary is born and brought up in anenvironment with no colour, only shades of black and white. Mary is a keen neuroscientist and her field of expertise is human perception of visible light, specifically the wavelengths we think of as red. Mary is very good and eventually she understands every aspect of all the physical processes involved in the perception of colour.If Mary then leaves her black and white environment and actually sees the colour red for the first time has she gained any knowledge which she did not already posess?The qualia based answer would be yes. She has gained direct knowledge of the actual experience of the perception of red, the quale for it.I believe Churchland has actually addressed this thought experiment and his response was that Mary would not have the ability to perceive red since she would have been denied the neccessary environmental stimuli to develop the correct neural structures.TTFN,WK