Thought experiment — The white and black room.
the inherent beauty and limitations of language
Let’s consider a person, Mary. Mary was born in a controlled environment. All the colors in her birth room and where she lives have been made to be just two colors: white and black.
Mary has also been genetically modified to have only white and black physical parts: pale white skin, long black hair, and deep black eyes. Mary has lived her whole life, having only experienced white and black.
Throughout Mary’s upbringing, she has been educated about various aspects of the physical world, but let’s focus on color for this discussion.
Mary understands the science behind the formation of colors, the properties of each color, the variations of color formed from the mixture of one or more colors, and the use of color in humans' daily lives to identify different emotions and give depth to things.
Keep in mind that Mary still hasn’t seen any of these colors. But she’s arguably the most knowledgeable person on the planet about colors.
With all this information in mind, I want you to imagine what would happen when Mary is finally let out of her controlled environment and is exposed to color.
Do you think there is anything more for Mary to learn? If yes, what would this be? Why isn’t this contained in all the books and research papers Mary has read? Can Mary tell us more about colors now that she has experienced them? If so, why?
And if you think Mary has nothing more to learn, do you truly believe that Mary fully understands her new experience? Do you believe she has as much depth to her understanding as those who have been introduced to the plethora of unique colors since birth?
The “black and white room” is a variant of the broader philosophical concept known as the “knowledge argument,” which was proposed by philosopher Frank Jackson in his 1982 paper “Epiphenomenal Qualia.”
This thought experiment was proposed to argue against the concept of “physicalism,” which holds that everything that exists is physical. It suggests that non-physical aspects to consciousness, such as qualia, cannot be fully explained by physical facts alone.
Qualia are the subjective qualities of conscious experiences. They are the “what it is like” aspect of experiencing sensory perceptions, emotions, or mental states.
For example, the redness of an apple, the pain of a headache, or the feeling of joy are all examples of qualia, in this context, it would be the “feel” of color.
Qualia is often described as ineffable, meaning they are difficult to describe or communicate to others fully. This poses a fundamental question or rather sheds light on the great inadequacies of language.
Why do we sometimes have thoughts and feelings but feel short of words and unable to convey our opinions? More often than not, it’s because of our lacking lexicon, and an inadequacy from ourselves as we don’t possess the necessary skill to communicate effectively.
Just as you can imagine yourself doing a backflip or running a marathon, but your body may not be able to perform these activities if you’re untrained, we shouldn’t expect our linguistic cortex to keep up with our thoughts and form sentences effectively if we’re not skilled in communication.
However, at times, the fault is not ours but rather the inadequacy of language as an entity. Language needs to be improved in communicating these qualia, and we often have to fall back on a less precise way of communicating our feelings.
Is this a result of the complacency in the development of language? Or are humans just not creative and intelligent enough to create a way to convey these qualia?
Make sure to develop your vocabulary and communication skills though, as a language enthusiast, I don’t want you to start using this as an excuse not to answer every uncomfortable question or be unable to convey your emotions and feelings to people. Not everything is a qualia 😒.
As always, I asked a lot of questions in this piece. Share your thoughts and answers to the questions in the comments. And if you like contemplative and reflective pieces like this, follow and subscribe to the email list to stay in the loop.
Safe.
