One of the most important concepts for understanding consciousness is qualia, or the subjective character of experience. No one can possibly know what it's like for you to experience anything. A classic thought experiment illustrates this point: Imagine that you meet an alien, without a visual system, who learns to speak English. Their sensory system is insensitive to electromagnetic radiation, and so they experience no analogue of sight. Describe the color "red" to your alien friend. Remember - they've never experienced a color of any kind, so comparing the experience to fire, love, anger, strawberries, etc, won't work - a point will be deducted for solutions that rely on analogy with color experience. Now imagine that you meet a human scientist who is an expert on color perception - she knows everything about electromagnetic radiation and the human perceptual system. However, this scientist was raised in a black and white room, so like the alien, she hasn't ever experienced color first hand. Would she be able to explain the experience of 'red' to our alien friend than us? Why or why not? Does she understand the experience of red any better than the alien? Does she understand it as well