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Channel / Source:
TEDx Talks
Published: 2017-08-25
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pKvVLO_B0qs
imagine a scientist named Mary specialize in the psychology of color she can differentiate between the electrical signals of red and blue and can explain their stimulant effects on our brains armed with the vast knowledge of the studies Mary knows everything there is to know about color she can detect its presence through simple brain activity and can explain the different properties of all the colors in the
visible spectrum it is however in this seemingly developed understanding that one aspect may been overlooked and that is that Mary has actually never seen color whole life she's lived in a black and white room she reads black and white books and her research is conducted purely on a factual level this has stagnated her studies into being purely empirical based rather than of unconscious bias and it's
because of this so we can question if her studies are truly complete if you were to come into contact with a red apple experiencing the color not through numbers biz actual experience which you learn something new if she were to stand in awe of the Northern Lights marveling at stretches of green and purple witchy drawn your conclusions these are the questions philosopher Frank Jackson asked in
the nineteen eighties he saw an answer to these and Americanism that if Mary already knew all the physical facts on color but stood to learn more through her example and seen color herself could mental states be explained through physical fact this is called the knowledge argument and it does not compute be grounded in the realm of colors every day we experience things we couldn't quite explain
quantitatively the love we may feel for a dog excitement we feel at the end of school and the boredom I'm hopeful you aren't feeling right now these are all examples of the undefinable although capable of being represented through numbers these feelings love excitement and boredom would never be done justice through spreadsheet or word document they're the here and now to give meaning to our present human
condition music is an example of the knowledge argument although fully embodied by ink on a music sheet a song is never actually brought to life into it is actually played and it is in this that it is similar to the color paradox because Mary did not possess all the necessary pieces needed to map out music or color sorry it can be argued that her lack of
experience with color in itself was a limiting factor in our study and because this is the same as when we could say the same thing about a death sounds much although capable of mapping out all the different sound waves the emotion and feeling betrayed by music would never fully be accounted for and this is why we could argue that his studies will never fully be complete
to exemplify the fact that some thing okay well let's just start again Beethoven is an example of a musician that could never hear anyone he could hear he was he lost his hearing so let's just start with that so yeah I know terrible okay no thanks okay so Beethoven he although he seems to be a musician that was death that's a very true because he already
had hearing he was able to experience music and then from that he could remember the love for comp preserving these emotions prove detrimental to his future works allowing him to create the ninth symphony without actually being able to hear a single thing this goes to prove that the essential ingredients for music are not qualitative but actually of a sensory nature and it is in this that
we can see how important feeling is although the habit of a terrible musician I pride myself on not knowing how to read a single line of music this is true because instead of focusing on the strict rhythm and pace of a song I instead allow myself to interpret sound and emotion conveyed by it by not wearing about what is written I instead allow myself to listen
and since this is the most important part of music I think it's really allowed me to understand the composers of my piece it almost becomes an intimate relationship songs not being remedies to bad days but actually does difficult discussions derived by difficult emotions it's almost impossible to explain so I think I'm just gonna have to show you so I'm gonna be playing classical gas no not
