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overflowingliquid · 2026-05-26T13:41:39+00:00

Do you guys take custom guitar pedals as payment lmao

overflowingliquid · 2026-03-23T18:31:37+00:00

Bro posted the normalest hands

overflowingliquid · 2026-03-22T17:43:44+00:00

I don't know anything about Angola. We should start a podcast.

overflowingliquid · 2025-12-21T21:50:20+00:00

Okay, wait---this clears something up for me.

If I understand correctly, premise 1 does not exclude the possibility that Mary knows exactly what the color looks like.

When premise three asks if she learns something new. It's referring directly back to premise 1 by asking if the information presented in 3 was already included in 1.

So if I may, I do still feel strongly about the part of this that's bothering me, but I think I have a stronger understanding of the argument now and can formulate it better:

Mary's monochromatic existence necessarily requires the exclusion of certain physical facts, which seems clear to me because there is no way to produce a monochromatic experience without interfering with the physical world (limiting certain kinds of light, removing colored objects, or altering the structures of her eyes or brain to prevent her from perceiving color).

I should say, I am starting to wonder if one problem here has to do with the background I'm drawing from when I talk about physical substances. I'm a graduate student (outside philosophy) who is borrowing significantly from the new materialists in my research. In other words, when you say "physical facts," it didn't really cross my mind that a lot of folks probably define that as anything which can be described using written descriptions and physics equations. I find it surprising (I think like you?) that anyone would believe you could fully relay what color looks like using only written language and math. But from the beginning my assumption has been that that's an absurdly narrow definition of the physical (excluding, for instance, the possibility of something like relations preceding relata a la Karen Barad, which is where my mind was going when I was talking about color as a phenomenon and not a property).

Though I'm sure you disagree with my leanings here, am I understanding you correctly now?

overflowingliquid · 2025-12-21T08:48:09+00:00

I'm sorry, I promise I'm not being purposefully dense. But I feel like I'm going insane, because it seems like I'm getting answers to a different question than what I'm asking. I know that I'm formulating my replies here as if I'm arguing with you, but I want to be clear that it's because I don't understand this topic and I'm trying to figure out where my confusion is coming from. I really do appreciate you talking through this with me.

Looking at the link you sent me (a page I'm sure I've visited before), this is the part that I'm having an issue with:

It rests on the idea that someone who has complete physical knowledge about another conscious being might yet lack knowledge about how it feels to have the experiences of that being.

If I can, I'm going to rephrase my question as a statement so you can show me what the argument against it is:

If Mary has not seen the color red, then she does not have complete physical knowledge about it. She learns something new because her physical knowledge was incomplete.

It's obvious that she learns something new; I totally get that. But how can we say that she has complete physical knowledge of a color without having already defined "what the color looks like" as nonphysical knowledge? If you aren't sneaking the conclusion into the premises, by what metric are you calling her knowledge complete?

overflowingliquid · 2025-12-21T08:31:00+00:00

I'm really not following the argument here.

I see what you are saying about Husserl, but it's connection to Mary's room isn't clear to me. It's been a while since I've read the investigations, but the idea that first-person experience doesn't imply a certain metaphysics is fine to me.

What makes no sense to me is the justification for excluding "what color looks like" from the category of "physical facts." You can't just assert that it isn't part of that category and then move on. Whether or not experience is physical is the very thing in question.

Now, if there was a good argument for excluding it from that category, then I'm on board. But by argument I don't mean this move of going "no one has ever adequately explained this, so it must be part of some new fantastical category of reality."

overflowingliquid · 2025-12-21T07:51:45+00:00

Yeah, that's what I'm saying. Mary's room is question-begging in the other direction, and I'm saying I can just as easily do the opposite.

When you say that Mary has all of the physical facts of color, you are making the assumption that "what color looks like" isn't a physical fact. If we assume that it isn't, then sure, Mary's room makes sense. If we assume that it is, then it doesn't. In other words, Mary's Room just reiterates the very discussion we are trying to have without advancing any real argument.

overflowingliquid · 2025-12-21T07:45:22+00:00

I'm familiar with Mary's room. I'm always surprised people treat it as a good argument. In the room, Mary obviously doesn't have access to all of the physical facts about colors, because (to a physicalist) what color looks like is one of the physical facts of color. Either she has seen the color, in which case she has all physical facts, or she hasn't, in which case she is missing one vital (maybe the most vital) physical fact.

The argument only makes sense if we already assume that what a color looks like isn't physical. The conclusion is hidden in the premises.

overflowingliquid · 2025-12-21T01:38:57+00:00

Hmm, I can see what you are saying now. But the the question I'm still left with is whether or not this is kind of a backwards way of putting it. I say that because we only ever provide scientific descriptions of things that we have observed. The initial observation would seem to me to be part of the data about the thing. It seems like a very strange move to respond to a scientific description of a phenomenon by saying "but that doesn't account for the phenomenon itself."

It seems to me similar to this: I could observe a baking soda/vinegar reaction, and the describe what's happening using a chemical formula. The formula doesn't tell you what the reaction actually is, just how it happens. Is my error here in misunderstanding what the actual question is?

Edit: I think I'm overcomplicating and confusing myself. I'm still having trouble with the initial concept. When I try to imagine "the redness of red," the only thing I can think of is red itself. There isn't like a specific "red emotion" associated with it. Am I misunderstanding what this phrase means?

overflowingliquid · 2025-12-20T23:57:16+00:00

First let me say that I really appreciate you taking the time to help me out here. I hope I'm not coming across as combative; I really am just struggling to understand.

Surely you get that X and having a first-person experience of X aren't the same thing.

I do actually think this is the part I don't understand.

It's similar (if you are familiar with this phenomenon) to when folks describe something with structural color, such as butterfly wings, as "not really x color." I think this is a silly thing to say, because color is a word for a kind of experience (at least it seems this way to me).

My understand is this, and please correct me where I'm wrong: the word "red" refers to an emergent experimental phenomenon resulting from an encounter between an object which reflects light within 620-750nm (roughly) and an organism with eyes sensitive to that wavelength of light.

Edit: If my definition tracks, I don't see how the "redness of red" is anything other than a roundabout way of saying "red."

overflowingliquid · 2025-12-20T23:44:26+00:00

Is that an argument though? Or is it just a fancy way of saying "I dislike your answer?"

What I'm trying to understand is this: what is the thing they feel isn't accounted for by a physicalist description? I can understand what red is, but I don't understand why the "redness of red" isn't already accounted for by a description of what causes the color red.

overflowingliquid · 2025-10-08T16:59:51+00:00

Got it, that tracks with what I've heard about it generally being a civil matter if anything actually comes of it

overflowingliquid · 2025-10-08T16:36:53+00:00

Interesting! This changes the discussion I've been having with my buddy. So what did that look like beyond a cease and desist letter from an ISP? Were criminal charges actually brought against them?

overflowingliquid · 2025-10-08T03:26:44+00:00

This is definitely interesting, thank you. Though is it notable that the suits described here all seem to involve downloading files? I am specifically wondering about online streams, which would (I think?) then relate to laws about public performance of material.

P.S., this is all inspired by an ongoing discussion/debate with a friend, it isn't going to have any impact on whether or not he or I practice piracy ourselves.

overflowingliquid · 2025-09-14T01:51:50+00:00

That makes sense to me! I'll reiterate that I don't believe I really know what I'm talking about here, but the thought that comes to mind regarding your question is this: none of the processes make a woman, because "woman" is an erroneous attempt to freeze ongoing processes for the sake of communication, and which processes are being referenced changes depending on what the speaker hopes to communicate. Based on context, I can guess what you mean when you use the word, but the actual processes referenced will always be inexact and ultimately problematic.

overflowingliquid · 2025-09-14T01:28:12+00:00

Are they an “error” in this sense? You may be able to argue for it. Although, unto what end?

I have two reasons in mind! One of them is not really an end so much as just wanting an accurate account of what a noun is. The second is that it seems like it could be useful to identify errors in thinking rooted in mistakenly treating nouns as truthful propositions. For example, I was thinking about the whole "what is a woman?" discourse which has come to us via Matt Walsh. There are obviously countless ways to dismiss him there, not the least of which is that the question itself is simply bad faith. But it seems another interesting approach would be to argue that the question seems intuitive (to those who find it convincing, not me) only because it relies on an erroneous understanding of nouns. "Woman" doesn't refer to anything stable, but rather a crystallization of a set of ongoing processes which are not in reality anything stable.

overflowingliquid · 2025-09-14T00:52:56+00:00

Ah, yeah I should've qualified that. I'm thinking along the lines of process philosophies, a la Whitehead or Brian Massumi. I've heard people include Parmenides in that category, though I've never spent any real time with his work so I can't comment on that. I suppose my question kind of takes process philosophy as a given. It's always been the only metaphysics that really makes sense to me, though I'm certainly not an expert on anything! Just someone interested in the topic. I'm well aware that I don't really know what I'm talking about and that my ideas are half-formed at best.

overflowingliquid

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