Philosophyspeaking topic
Mary's room: a scientist who knows everything about color but has never seen it finally sees red. Does she learn something new? Is experience a separate thing added on top of factual knowledge?
— Frank Jackson, Mary's room (knowledge argument)
practice with this topic
Set the timer (5-30 min), take 20 seconds of prep if you like, start talking. Jot your thoughts onto the sticky-note board.
similar topics
- If a hot dog is a sandwich then cereal is soup. Are categories about structure or about use, and does it matter which one we pick?
- No one does wrong willingly.
- The beginning is the most important part of the work.
- Hume's guillotine: can you build a bridge from 'is' to 'ought'? Can we derive how things should be from how they are in nature?
- Science can describe what happens in your brain when you see red, but nobody can measure the redness you actually experience. Maybe my red is your green, and we have used the same word all our lives without ever seeing the same thing. How would you prove otherwise?