believes that the reaction a person has when seeing red for the first time can be explained purely using physical information. Therefore Mary, knowing all physical information, would learn nothing new. However he agrees that Mary could learn something in a new way. A good example of learning something in a new way is the example of the Morning/Evening star. When a person finds out that the Morning star is the same as the Evening star, this person does not learn any new physical information that the star might encompass. He only finds out that they are the same. Another example of learning something in a new way is the Clark Kent/Superman analogy. Lois Lane, who is in love with Superman, is also in love with Clark Kent because they are the same person. When she finds out that they are the same person, she does not suddenly learn some new physical data that she didn’t know before. A physicalist would use this argument to show that no new information was learned, thereby enforcing their theory that all information is physical. There seems to be a problem with the second premis of the knowledge argument. The second premis, which states that “Mary knows all physical information”, uses the term “knows”. The problem with using words like “knows” is that it seems as if for one to “know red” it would entail actually seeing it. In other words, the problem with Mary is the fact that she is “hooked up” to her environment in a different way. The same argument can be said about being a bat. Researchers may be able to know the entire neurological sequencing of events that a bat’s brain might go through when navigating through the dark, and still would never truly know the feeling of flying by radar. In order for a researcher to say that he “knows” what its like to navigate by radar, he would have to actually be an organism with a radar in his head. Without havi...
