Daniel Dennett argues against the intuition that Mary gains new knowledge when she leaves her black-and-white room and sees color for the first time, a position he first presented in his 1991 book, Consciousness Explained. He contends that this intuition arises from failing to fully appreciate what it means to know all the physical facts. Dennett criticizes defenses of the intuition, devises variations of the Mary case to show how one might deduce what it is like to see in color from physical information, and defends his arguments against objections. He concludes that a proper understanding of phenomenal concepts and knowledge demonstrates there is no epistemic gap.
The so-called hard problem of consciousness is a distraction from the more important question: once content reaches consciousness, what happens next? This question is rarely asked, but pursuing it could dissolve the hard problem and lead to a scientifically sound theory of how the brain produces the convictions that sometimes mislead us. The article argues that focusing on the consequences of conscious content opens new research avenues.