Despite the fact that it’s ostensibly a thought experiment about kinds of knowledge, the Mary’s Room argument itself isn’t truly an epistemological one. It’s really an ontological one, and that’s where your disconnect is, Richard.

If you accept the argument that Mary must leave her room in order to truly understand redness, despite knowing all physical facts about the experience of seeing redness, then you’re effectively postulating the existence of non-physical (or mental) knowledge, which is typically called qualia. While there are clearly epistemological implications, the key takaway is ontological: you’re now living in a universe where simple physicalism is false. And according to this argument, these “mental facts” if you will are only obtainable by Mary through the lens of experience.

Now, hold onto that thought, because I’m going to return to it in a moment.

Let’s compare this with physical knowledge. Right now on the table in front of me sits a bottle of honey (I’m feeling a little under the weather and have had several cups of nice tea today). Presumably, God is not physically inside my head or on my shoulder, and so is not literally seeing what I am seeing. Yet according to traditional ideas of omniscience, which you’ve assumed in your post, God knows very well what this bottle of honey looks like from my physical point in space: what its relative orientation in physical space is, how full it is, what the nutritional facts on the back say, and so on. (Note that here I’m distinguishing between what the bottle looks like from my point in space from what it feels like to see it from my point in space: one is a physical observation, the second is experiential.)

Now, how God knows what this bottle of honey looks like isn’t entirely clear: presumably he doesn’t have invisible God Eyes at every single point of physical space. Rather, I think the traditional theist view would be closer God having some sort of direct cognition of all physical facts. That God knows all physical facts, despite not being physically present to observe them, is a typical theist view and I think should be part of the assumed premises to your argument which you’re implicitly arguing against.

To compare God’s knowledge with our own, consider: if I described it in sufficient detail, or we set up a camera or something, you might be able to get detail sufficient that we could say that you too know what it looks like from my angle. But there’s no way for you to know this directly. In other words, we have physical knowledge, but we must as humans obtain through physical observation: in this case, with sensory input from our eyes or ears.

Now, let’s return to Mary.

Mary has, by stepping out of her black and white room, obtained mental (experiential) knowledge of redness. This is knowledge she can only gain experientially, or in other words, personal cognition is the means by which she has obtained this knowledge: a mental process to obtain mental knowledge, which is analogous to obtaining physical knowledge through the use of a physical observation process.

But if God can gain physical knowledge through means unrecognizable to us – say, direct cognition of physical facts as opposed to physical observation – then why cannot God gain mental knowledge through means unrecognizable to us, in the same way? Not whether you think this is so, because obviously you don’t, but what makes that position logically impossible?

I’m guessing your counterpoint would likely be that these mental facts are defined by being experiential, so by definition God cannot understand them using alternate means. But that’s not a definition that’s necessary based on the provided scenario, and that’s what I meant by taking an epistemological understanding of the thought experiment rather than an ontological one. You’re using this argument to make a logical statement about the nature of knowledge, when in reality the thought experiment is structured to make a logical statement about the nature of reality.

All Mary’s Room requires of us is that Mary can only gains this knowledge through experience rather than physical observation. But Mary is explicitly a human being, subject to human limits on epistemological matters: just like she needs physical observation to learn physical facts, she needs mental experience to comprehend mental facts such as experience. The thought experiment doesn’t say anything at all about beings who don’t have to rely on human avenues for gaining knowledge. If we’re already assuming, for the sake of argument, the existence of a being that can know all physical facts directly and without utilizing the methods we require (physical observation), what is so impossible about assuming, for the sake of argument, the existence of a being that can know all mental facts directly and without utilizing the methods we require (personal experience)? I don’t see why that’s a leap too far.

In summary, I don’t think the Mary’s Room argument gets you where you need to go in order to prove your point. I’ll grant that what you’ve described is consistent in its fashion (although problematic in many other areas, in particular its restatement of Judeo-Christian sexual ethics). But it’s only one possible explanation of the Mary’s Room argument; an equally valid interpretation, which I’ve outlined above, exists. And since it’s possible for the traditional view of omniscience to survive despite your argument, it fails.

Because God must be omni to be maximally great, and God must be maximally great to necessarily exist, and God must necessarily exist because that’s the only way to prove something exists when you have no evidence it exists (via the ontological argument). That’s why. Theology. It’s dumb. But it’s all they got.

As a hypothesis, God needs to have far more attributes than you state. He can’t just be any mind, but a mind with super-powers (a mind floating around without a body can’t do anything…indeed, arguably, it can’t even exist, since where does it store memories and distinguish sensations if not materially? …so super-powers upon super-powers), that is extremely intelligent (smart enough to design and start a universe), with a litany of specific (and unusual) desires and motivations (in order to explain why the evidence looks the way it does, why it created anything at all, why it bothered to create a life-bearing universe instead of, say, a maximally colorful one, and so on).

That’s why it looks bad as a hypothesis.

Maybe here, but not in the context of a review of his book.

Oh, yes. Certainly.

…you can waste weeks of time trying to get the details just right…

Because theology itself is a convoluted and silly enterprise. Theists need the impossible to exist. It can be tortuous to explain why they can’t have that.

Sorry, Yahveh’s way ahead of ya there. See, e.g., Exodus 32:27. (Okay, technically there he ordered mass murder of Hebrews, but the basic thrill must’ve been quite similar.)

Besides, if God feels all the suffering in the world, it follows he is imperfect, because it is essential to suffering the need to avoid it and the incapacity to do so. If God feels all the suffering in the world, either he is unable to avoid it, or he enjoys it. The same argument from evil.

Fair enough.

I was a little intoxicated at the time of writing it, so apologies for any offence.