I think you raise some pretty good points/questions. My response is pretty much my response to Paul here:

http://www.petemandik.com/blog/2006/11/17/hyperbolic-mary/#comment-4681

There are lots of surprises and lots of ways of being surprised. What matters for the tale of Hyperbolic Mary and Larry is surprise over whether there is such a thing as visual experiences of pitch dark yellow. Larry incorrectly thinks that there is no such thing and even before having such an experience Hyperbolic Mary correctly believes that there is. Larry’s mistaken belief is grounded in what he thinks he has access to through introspection and intuition. Hyperbolic Mary’s correct belief is grounded in what she has access to through cognitive neuroscience.

Interestingly, if Larry also knew all the theory of chimerical colours that Hyperbolic Mary knew, he would still be more surprised. Just becasue I’ve read your post doesn’t mean I wouldn’t be surprised to see pitch black yellow … and this surprise is precisely because of my prior experience of colour.

So more knowledge/experience does not necessaruly mean less surprise and in this example Larry’s surprise is precisely an argument for the knowledge of experience being different from knowledge about exeprience.

.. of course a really clever Hyperblic Mary could know she should be surprised .. is knowing you should be surprised the same as being surprised??

Why wouldn’t it suffice that the theory so excellently accounted for non-chimerical qualia?

I don’t know. I guess that connects to the problematical issue of what suffices for accepting of scientific theory.

BTW, it doesn’t give account for gray bananas looking yellow.

Would you say that it was clear to Churchland that his theory is good, and maybe somehow a priori true,so much that he didn’t have to actually check the theory, that he actually knew that his predictions will be right? I can’t see how he could have known that his predictions would turn out to be good.

Why wouldn’t it suffice that the theory so excellently accounted for non-chimerical qualia?

I wouldn’t say that. It seems to me that as long as the theory should be some kind of knowledge, it would need to cover some relation between universals which would transcend the particularity in time, space; and in general particularity of things which appear in this or that situation, but which can be subsumed under universals in the theory.
What I don’t see is how the step from mere hypothesis to some kind of knowledge about phenomenal experience can be made, without the predictions being confirmed by appeal to the phenomenal experience itself, which seems to me makes the knowledge about possibility of chimerical colors impossible without confirming that possibility in the phenomenal experience.

Would you say that it was clear to Churchland that his theory is good, and maybe somehow a priori true,so much that he didn’t have to actually check the theory, that he actually knew that his predictions will be right? I can’t see how he could have known that his predictions would turn out to be good.

On other side, take an example of Joey that has underwent the experience and “discovered” the colors by sheer chance. We have here a person that has knowledge that such things as “color which is both yellow and black” are possible, without actually having any theory of color vision.

Admittedly, this is pretty confused comment, as I don’t go deep into the analysis of notions of knowledge, facts, etc.. Sorry about that, but just thought I might bring those issues for consideration.

Would you say that, in general, there cannot be theoretical knowledge about future events? If so, that’s a pretty strong claim. If not, I don’t see why it should be true of phenomenal experience.

So, let’s return to Hyp.Mary, and ask what makes her knowledge to be knowledge?

There are two situations I can imagine. One is that based on her knowledge of how brain works, she puts forward hypothesis of possible phenomenal experience (part of which would be chimerical colors). But lacking the ways to test her predictions, she can’t know that her theories are right, so as long they are mere theories about phenomenal experience, they can’t be considered knowledge about phenomenal experience (maybe you would disagree on this?).

The other situation is where Hyp.Mary has contacted some people to test her hypothesis for her, and in this case it may become knowledge, but again, we have situation in which the change from mere theory to knowledge isn’t possible without somebody actually testing the hypothesis and having the experience of that particular kind.
I would in this case say that Hyp.Mary has knowledge that Larry lacks, but Hyp.Mary doesn’t have to be scientist in order to have this kind of better knowledge that Larry. She might be an economist to which couple of friends reported having a chimerical colors experiences.

I really did. Also, it looks like these people did too:

http://adamhadthem.blogspot.com/2005/01/im-amazed.html

http://www.firepile.com/robin/archives/000562.html