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242 MERGENTHALER CANSECO
(4) That is not what it’s like to see red. (Where ’that’ refers to some experience which
the speaker is introspecting, or to some feature of such an experience.)
(5) Seeing red is a phenomenal state.
There is no obvious reason to deny that Mary could express the sentences 1, 2, 3 and 5 prior to
her release. But we still owe an account of how exactly Mary came to possess the PC (let’s say
Red phen) prior to her release that does not invalidate the ET. Arguing that in this case what
happens is that Mary possesses some other concept THRED and the false metalinguistic
belief that “’red’ expresses normally the concept RED” and that therefore what Mary
possesses prior to her release is a non-phenomenal concept is invalid. For arguing that,
because RED lacks some features that the concept Red phen has, there is no significant concept
type of which RED and Red phen are both tokens is absurd. Remember Alfred’s case. His
inaccurate possessed concept Arthritis and the real concept ARTHRITIS have different
features. However this would never allows us to infer that there is no significant concept type
of which Alfred’s arthritis and the doctor’s arthritis are both tokens, since both refer to
ARTHRITIS.
However it also seems that this is not problematic since it confirms our prediction about
sentences Mary could know via report or Kind-Inference. And we have a coherent way of
claiming that the special concept in turn is not Red or even Red phen but rather a concept which
refers demonstratively. Let’s go over the sentences to see that indeed our predictions got
confirmed. It seems that Mary could know perfectly well that the qualitative experience that
she has when she sees a number or hears a sound is not what it is like to see red. But she
would know because she has seen numbers, heard sounds and knows the experiences of red
are not properties of those experiences. 12 Notice that even Zombies, which lack phenomenal
character, could express 1-6. However, maybe we are too quick. Then it could be the case that
Mary suffers from synesthesia but does not know it. In this case she would come to realize
after her release that the proposed instantiation of 4 is false and not true as she thought.
However this argument seems to violate P1 since, if she knows all the physical facts, she
would certainly be able, via analyzing her own brain, to know for example that her graphemerecognition
area is cross-activated with V4. And that therefore she is a Grapheme-color
synesthete.
To motivate the demonstrative account of PC and the difference it bears to this one, consider
that sentences with indexicals are not acquirable via report since sentences including
demonstratives are not disquotational and they also pose a problem for Kind-Inferences as
we showed above. Notice however that the New-Knowledge sentence 1 entails such a
demonstrative. So, the question arises again: could Mary have, as the deferentialist claims,
entertained 1 prior her release? 13 I strongly belief she could not. For, what would be the
demonstrative referring to if Mary can’t demonstrate neither to the qualitative experience nor
to the physical fact identical to it? It seems rather, that Mary simple does not posses the
demonstrative in the right way before seeing colors.
To conclude however from the deferentialist case discussed that there are no such things as
concepts that necessarily require a particular experience to be possessed is wrong. What we
are allowed to conclude is that, at least in the case of red, we have solid grounds to claim that
red is deferentially acquirable. But this is something we accepted and even motivated from
the beginning. Our claim is that the special PC are in fact demonstratives. In order to show
why the critique does not work when demonstrative are involved, let us briefly sketch what a
demonstrative is.
12
She knows somehow the general kind “phenomenal experience” and the more particular kind
“accustic” experiences as well as the kind “numbers”; whose members obviously do not have colors.
13
Other sentences she could not have enteratin are “That is what I felt when I saw red the first time” or
“I never felt that before”. Where ’that’ refers to a phenomenal experience in a special way