Mary Had a Little Problem

If Mary is raised in a “completely black and white room,” then does she also eat black and white food? Will she live her entire life in that room without ever cutting herself accidentally, seeing the color of her eyes in a mirror, or see the color of her blood vessels? Will she never experience the mental process of smelling her own feces or seeing the color of her urine? Will she never happen upon the scientific explanations of refractive light and the color spectrum in her studies? I suppose that would be what Jackson would define as “knowledge how rather than knowledge that.” Nevertheless, it is an interesting hypothetical into the distinction between having knowledge about something and having an actual mental brain process. Of course Mary could experience the colors of her own body, but she wouldn’t know how to identify with them unless she happens to read that blood is the color of apples and fire trucks and while sunflowers are the color of urine. Mary could possess a list of things that are of a certain color, but she would only come to classify these objects under the same category. My question is, what if Mary’s definition of red is based on a black and white photo of an apple. Would she develop the wrong definition of the color red if she were to happen upon a green apple as she is released? In which case, she would finally experiences the ‘qualia’ of an object, but subsequently create the wrong definition of that color in her head. However, Jackson’s point is that she could know everything there was to know about a color, but it would be impossible to teach her the experience of seeing that color. Therefore, we can draw a distinction between understanding reality and having the experience of a mental process.