Do colors exist?
[s]Do colors exist? How do you interpret that question, in what case you would say colors do exist, and what are the possible cases where you would say colors don't really exist? In other words, how do you draw the line and describe what is it exactly we are differentiating between? What is your answer?[/s]
a. we actually see colors (colors exist)
b. we only think we see colors (colors do not exist)
a. we actually see colors (colors exist)
b. we only think we see colors (colors do not exist)
Comments (236)
One or the other.
Wherever it makes sense to parse them as objects, e.g. objects of a semantic verb like denotes/describes/points-at/refers-to/applies-to. [edit: or is-true-of, as remarked above.]
Quoting Zelebg
Wherever it makes more sense to parse them as labels, i.e. subjects of the semantic verb.
That is how I understand the question, and my answer is no. Colors do not really exist in the brain where light waves are encoded from sensory input into a signal or whatever electrochemical type of abstract information. So color signals to become real or to exist per se as colors, an agent or “self” is necessary to decode, understand or perceive those signals as colors, while in reality colors might as well look like a monochrome waterfall of Matrix symbols.
One more thing. If you say colors do actually exist, then I think you in fact must be proposing a separate realm of existence for their being, some kind of parallel dimension, otherwise I don’t see how color properties can be justified as ‘actual’ rather than ‘virtual/abstract’.
Yay
Quoting Zelebg
A pre neural-network (pre 80's) computational picture of the brain? Wherein you doubt neural colours but assume correlative neural symbols? Like pixel information in a computer chip, awaiting (arguably)
Quoting Zelebg
?
Quoting Zelebg
True, so, if you are desperate to give your psychology a pure physical ontology then why not treat colours as labels/adjectives?
Is there any other picture of the brain where sensory visual input is not first encored into serial electric signal in the eye before it even reaches the brain?
You are asking me questions without answering my questions and explaining your position so I can guess what point you are trying to make and what is it really you are talking about.
Its a spectrum. As in any classification in order for something to be red it must fall between two lines (or fall within a specific area on a spectrum. Have you heard of the visible spectrum. There is visible and invisible light. Some animals can see light below red (infrared). Some animals can see above purple (ultraviolet). Some animals might be able to see gamma rays or even light coming from a wifi router.
This is physicalist nonsense. Why not just ask if consciousness really exists?
Are you not able to explain your assertion and describe your position?
Everything we experience is equally a self-generation. Our body doesn't produce just the appearance of colours, but anything we encounter with our senses, including the shape, mass, etc. of.objects. If this self generation was a problem for the reality of colours, it is equally a problem for the reality of anything we experience.
Something exists that we interpret as colour. If you want to deny intersubjectivity, it's impossible to do in a sensible way really, all you can say is that the evidence is insufficient for you and then make up your own fantastical answer.
Well said.
Let me rephrase. Electromagnetic waves are not colors. These waves are converted to electrical impulses in the eye before going into the brain. But electrical impulses are also not colors, and yet we report to see colors. Therefore, the question is why, and the answer is either:
a. we actually see colors (colors exist)
b. we only think we see colors (colors do not exist)
Yes, we are talking about colors as objects of cognition. The question is whether a). we actually see colors (colors exist), or b). we only think we see colors (colors do not exist). Ok?
Yes qualia, how things appear. The question is where does the brain shop for colors to paint our mental picture. To be clear I consider objects of the mental picture to exist, virtually. That is not my problem.
But virtual representation can be direct or indirect. A physical square shape in the real world can be represented by drawing, or words, for example. Shape representation can be mapped directly by drawing with only arbitrary size scaling, but representation with symbols or words is completely arbitrary.
So imagine yellow square with blue borders on black background. I do not question that in your mind’s eye you see the lines and the shape, brain could copy those concepts directly projecting from nature, but where could it get the colors from?
So I am questioning whether you really see any colors, and if not, then perhaps you do not see any shapes either, and really see just a bunch of arbitrary symbols that only appear to you as colors and shapes. I hope this explains what I’m actually talking about.
Dumb is wasting everyones time to share your purposeles opinion. Go away, shooo!
Maybe if you understood my and others’ responses, then you would see what the the waste of time is.
Not true. Our eyes interpret these frequency (our eyes and brains are radios and antennas at the same time) as colors. Your argument is silly, superfluous and you are parsing words.
:up: :up: :up:
Nearly there.
Does the physical world project color?
It's a common notion that our eyes interpret a frequency. Is the frequency, without mind, formless color?
Seems to me this boils down to 3 main factors:
1. The frequencies of light that (most) humans are pre-wired to call red, do indeed exist in the physical world. So, the verbal linguistic 'red' does exist as an analog symbol of that.
2. The 'red' category of color that (most) humans are pre-wired to have the qualia sense of red color may exist in the person's cognitive world as a visual object. There are color blind people who see no red. There are also synesthesia people who experience other senses as (e.g., red) color. So, I figure if we had research evidence of color blind people who later gained color vision, saying they experience the qualia of 'red' color prior to gaining color vision, then that might evidence that the cognitive 'red' category does exist at birth. Or if a color blind synesthete 'saw' qualia colors that would also be strong evidence. I've never come across of such experiments or lines of investigations, but if anyone knows anything about that, please post it here b/c it should be quite instructive metaphysically as well.
3. The internal qualia projection of 'red' color is what we intuitively consider 'red' and that almost certainly exists only in our qualia projected internal reality, which is likely commonly shared b/c of common visual/mental systems genetic coding.
hope this helps further the discussion...
I think I’m going to change my mind on this. It’s true that the frequencies of light that our eyes receive determine the colour, or be more accurate, the receptors in our eyes determine the colours.
The question really is asking if there is colour independent of us.
But there could be colours out there that our receptors are incapable of receiving. And, if objects exist then they must have a colour, their surface must be some kind of colour, they can’t be pure light if they’re to exist.
I apologize I didn't read through all of the responses because I'm sure there are some good ones... .
I don't think the question is whether colors exist or not. I think the question is what kind of existence do colors have or possess.
In other words, it's the philosophical question of existence over essence. For example if one tries to approach its existence by way of understanding, say, metaphysical abstracts, one could possibly draw similarities to music or math.
You can listen to music to experience it. Likewise you can see a color to experience it. And in describing both experiences, how do we prove its experience? Are both experiences metaphysical ones? (For example, describe why an individual prefers yellow over red. Or describe why a person likes one song over another song. )
Yellow does not exist (as you said, it is EM waves); but the idea that the word "yellow" represents does exist (the nerve impulses that EM waves produce exist). What I think troubles us is not understanding what connects the idea to the cause, "making us see yellow".
see my #2 above for my proposed experimental ways to get closer to the qualia truth wrt color.
Sure it's kind of like saying do other metaphysical languages exist in all or other possible world's. The emotive phenomenon of color choice, may or may not be logically necessary.
I'm starting to build a coherent hypothesis that qualia and emotive phenomenon are logically needed to optimally create and convey wisdom, but not at all needed to create data, info, or knowledge.
So, under my above hypothesis, experiencing a qualia and emotive phenomenon for the color 'red' might be needed to create and convey wisdom concerning the data value of red.
Anyone have arguments/evidence for or against my above hypothesis?
The existential mystery of who, what, where, how and why one chooses a particular color over another is yet another example of the existence over essence ethos, axiom or phenomenon. For example we are consciously/subconsciously aware of our likes and dislikes but we don't know the true nature of why this is so... .
We are left with yet another metaphysical theory over the essence of that existence, in human consciousness. The question becomes what is the essence of that conscious existence (?)
My one line hypothesis is that we filter information a priori from an external energy source. Much like Schopenhauer's theory of Metaphysical Will in nature... .
This innate or intrinsic feature of human existence confers no Darwinion survival advantages. And if that is accurate , it must be an external consciousness of sorts... ?
We can't take this phenomenon lightly. And that's because of how important colors are to us .
that is too supernatural for me. I'm finding a path towards qualia that is something that I can model and see a plausible utility/mechanics; that is, we are genetically coded to attribute arbitrary, yet largely consistent, value/experience/emotions to various data value phenomenon as a way to create an experience that enables a personal empathy/emotives to data values to make them real (to us as emotive/social creatures) and to share a common experience. So, for the color red, we might be genetically coded to have energetic, aggressive feelings with the data value of red, which may have come (like that for Bulls) about by evolution selecting for such defensive responses to the sight of red blood. Blue feels like a cool/cold color like ice, and peaceful like the sky. etc. To the extent data values in our perceived sensory/motor have been (genetically, by personality, or by nurture) been associated with certain emotive states then they become part of our qualia experience for it, making it feel much more real to us. I find it particularly interesting that synesthetes not only love the cross sensory invocation of emotives and colors on, say numbers, that it actually helps them greatly to process the value data (e.g., out of a vast field of random numbers, they might see all '7s as red and instantly can spot one # 7 out of 1000s of other #s). So, attaching an arbitrary qualia can even have practical utility, beyond my other point of enabling/enhancing the formation of wisdom.
Sure but keep in mind we're not talkin anything extraordinarily prevalent there. For instance architects an interior designers look to the theoretical color wheel, for the emotive connection associated with colors.
So sure red will convey excitement on a subconscious level, but unfortunately that tells us nothing about the nature of its existence.
the color wheel is just a reflection of the existence of a collectively consistent human qualia/emotive experience of the colors. So, please clarify what you mean by "nature of it's existence". We all already know that photo vibration frequency don't exist as colors any more than sound pressure waves do. Obviously, the existence is in the person's personal qualia reconstruction of "reality" which is, of course, a useful illusion as to modeling/abstracting upon the true physics of matter. So, what is your point?
When we ask about the nature of a thing, we're not asking about our mental reconstruction of that thing, but the thing in itself.
Our knowledge/consciousness creates our perception, of physical things outside the mind, and definitions of abstract concepts that only exist in the mind. When we discuss “existence” itself, we are discussing a concept that only exists in the mind of the person who knows its definition. In other words, we can have knowledge of physical things and conditions that only exist outside our mind and abstract concepts that only exist in our mind as definitions about those things.
Existence is not a condition or a state of being, it is the phenomenon of being, itself. Something must exist in order to have a state of being, and if being is necessary in order for change to occur, then cause and effect is derived from and thus subordinate to the more fundamental phenomenon of existence.
Consider that before something can change, before something can act or be acted upon, it must exist.
well put as to external, physical 'existence'. However, is it not so obvious that colors as we perceive cannot 'exist' in the mater itself? I mean, if nothing else, our eyes only receive all the light wavelengths (color) that was rejected by the object's surface, so by physics and definition that object cannot be said to have a color for which it rejects. Hence, obviously, no objects have the phenomenon of being/having the colors our eyes see. So, in your terms, the OP was asking an easy, obvious, trivial non-question... right?
The more interesting, and non-trivial, question to me was how does our qualia of color (mentally) exist.
Projection of what onto what (perceived by what)?
Eyes convert light into signals. That’s the only fact here. So the question is whether that signal is ever converted into something else, something like a symbol or something like a color.
Now, if that signal is not converted into anything else, or if it is converted into some set of symbols, or say, some molecular structure, then the conclusion is colors do not actually exist, but we only perceive something else as if it is a color. Ok?
But, if you want to claim colors do exist, then you have to explain that convertesion of signals into colors, where and how do those colors exist in space, and what are they made of. Yes? So what claim do you want to make?
The whole meaning of your statement hinges on the word “wisdom”, which is terribly undefined, if not undefinable, but surely it has something to do with data and knowledge. No? What exactly do you mean by “wisdom”?
Ontological questions aren't about how to use language, they're asking what is and what isn't.
Is the moon made of cheese?
That's not a question of how to use the words cheese or made. It's a question of what makes up the moon. Of course that's a silly question, but it illustrates the point.
Is the world made up of the four elements?
Again, it's not a question of whether someone knows how to use the words in the sentence. It's an ontological one. And as it turns out, the answer was more than four once we had a periodical table, as far as chemistry is concerned.
So do colors exist?
This is asking whether colors are mind-independent, objective properties of objects, like shape, extension or mass are. And the answer is probably not, unless one wants to go the idealistic or skeptical route. It's similar to our experience of solidity or temperature. Objects aren't solid or cold/hot in the way we experience them. That's just how our perceptual systems work.
c. We actually see colors, but they are properties of our visual system, not the objects or environment itself, although they are related to the reflectivity of electromagnetic radiation in the visible range.
I don't think that the experience of seeing color being an illusion makes sense. We are conscious of colors just like pains and smells. But those aren't real, meaning independent of an animal's perception.
how would you say the colors we 'see' are ontologically "related to the reflectivity of electromagnetic radiation in the visible range"?
Properties of our visual system. What kind of property, measured in what units, described in terms of what: charge, magnetism, force, attraction, distance, geometry, chemistry, computation, quantum mechanics...?
Does it make sense near the end of the first Matrix movie that Neo sees reality as a waterfall of symbols instead of colors and textures?
Do you not think if you want to claim that we see actual colors as colors, instead of something else that we only interpret as colors, requires this thing “color” to actually physically exist in space as some new unknown substance rather than property or side effect of something else?
I agree, I think both are intriguing questions no doubt. One question is, in a sense, logically necessary, while the other seems to be an ancillary feature of conscious existence, which confers no real biological survival advantages. The latter is the one that is most intriguing to me.
Thus, one question of why should colors matter to us emerges. In the study of say, Aesthetics, we have aesthetic objects, aesthetic experience, and aesthetic judgments. To find (yet another) emotive thing associated with consciousness that is universally subjective, which also has little to no survival value, should be no less intriguing than the phenomenon of the existing thing itself. So I suppose both are mystery's.
Another question that is mysterious, would be why can we see in color, where apparently other species only see in black/white/grey(?).
Quoting 3017amen
Darwin would answer that Humans do not need to perceive color for the Aesthetics, but do for the optimal survival. It is well known that primates effectively use color to ID a wide variety of foods (incl. fruits and other edibles). Color is used by many hyper poisonous creatures to warn others (who can see color) don't mess w/ me, or you die. That said, Aesthetics may well be a secondary driver in things like sexual attraction.
I made it in a reply to @3017...
which is along the lines of:
Quoting Zelebg
I might add that, of course, all our mental representations of 'reality' operate this way, so as I mentioned to @3017..., your question seems to be stating the obvious. Or am I missing something deeper that you are getting at in your original question?
The sound of a bass woofer could just same have been assigned and experienced as the color 'red' and the mind would (or at least could learn to) be just as happy with that 'hearing' of the bass sound.
that is for another thread. I have been debating that with @Possibility on another thread, but we are currently stuck at "information". Once we clear that hurdle, we'll debate knowledge then get to le piece de resistance, 'wisdom'.
Here is a pertinent (redacted) copy from that thread, towards answering you good enough for the purposes of this colors related discussion:
However, many in this thread seem to throwing around various definitions of info/data/knowledge/wisdom, apparently thinking that just 'relating' data/info is enough to do the transforms. Yet, that seems way too vague for a concrete discussion of ...
For me, the below definitions are a good starting place.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data
Knowledge is the understanding based on extensive experience dealing with information on a subject. For example, the height of Mount Everest is generally considered data. The height can be measured precisely with an altimeter and entered into a database. This data may be included in a book along with other data on Mount Everest to describe the mountain in a manner useful for those who wish to make a decision about the best method to climb it. An understanding based on experience climbing mountains that could advise persons on the way to reach Mount Everest's peak may be seen as "knowledge". The practical climbing of Mount Everest's peak based on this knowledge may be seen as "wisdom". In other words, wisdom refers to the practical application of a person's knowledge in those circumstances where good may result. Thus wisdom complements and completes the series "data", "information" and "knowledge" of increasingly abstract concepts.
Data is often assumed to be the least abstract concept, information the next least, and knowledge the most abstract.[9] In this view, data becomes information by interpretation; e.g., the height of Mount Everest is generally considered "data", a book on Mount Everest geological characteristics may be considered "information", and a climber's guidebook containing practical information on the best way to reach Mount Everest's peak may be considered "knowledge". "Information" bears a diversity of meanings that ranges from everyday usage to technical use. This view, however, has also been argued to reverse the way in which data emerges from information, and information from knowledge.[10] Generally speaking, the concept of information is closely related to notions of constraint, communication, control, data, form, instruction, knowledge, meaning, mental stimulus, pattern, perception, and representation. Beynon-Davies uses the concept of a sign to differentiate between data and information; data is a series of symbols, while information occurs when the symbols are used to refer to something.[11][12]
It looks like we understand each other, and even agree, but then I do not get why would you describe my question as "stating the obvious" when I think I am asking exactly the same thing what you earlier stated is "more interesting and non-trivial". I actually do not see there are two distinct interpretations on the question of the existence of colors.
People do not understand information is anything and everything because information has no inherent meaning. Meaning is always given to information by some agent interpreting that information / signal / pattern, against some background context or grounding, so the same word can have different meanings in different languages or in different sentences, for example.
Understanding information means to put it in some context, to ground it, decode it, or to unzip it, if you will, so the same information can be understood differently by different people. Knowledge then should simply be ‘stored understanding’.
Wisdom I'd say has to do with intuition and prediction, but in any case, taking your definition, I still do not see how it could apply to qualia. Where is the contact point?
I need to study a little more of Darwin I think. Not to sound too rhetorical, any thoughts on what Darwin might say about the following:
1. How do emergent properties result in self-awareness ( of colors)?
2. What kind of survival value is essential in choosing colors for cars; guitars, houses, clothing hair color, makeup, et al.?
3. Do human's exclusively rely on colors in the successful search for their food ?
4. Was prehistoric man concerned about the color of their prey before they chose to kill it?
5. What do you think Darwin would say about the metaphysical features of red evoking or conveying excitement from the color wheel?
Bonus question: I prefer dark haired women over blondes, why is that? (I can have sex with either hair color but prefer dark-haired women.)
When you say Darwin thinks that colors are optimal for survival, those are just a few intriguing questions that I thought of, off the top of my head. I'm trying to understand the full spectrum of survival value viz the reason we like and/or choose this color over that color.
Colors do covey temperature and mostly increase contrast between four general categories: ground, water, plants and animals, so they are useful.
I would say we see color for the evolutionary reason that reflectivity of that small band of the electromagnetic radiation is really useful for navigating the environment. But in a Matrix scenario, it would be possible to generate color experiences by exciting the visual cortex.
Welcome to the hard problem.
Quoting Zelebg
For the plot of the movie, yes. And the symbols are green.
Quoting Zelebg
I don't think our experience of color exists as anything other than the experience and whatever underlying physical mechanism is responsible, or however consciousness works.
I may be totally off the mark here but I couldn't write this post if I didn't see colors. I wish we could post in color. Hey moderators, feature request: color option for posts!
Hi Zelebg!
Could you give me the pragmatic's of that? (Or if you care to, maybe succinctly try to answer one of my questions if it all possible... .)
If pragmatics of better visual discrimination is not self-evident, then I think you need to explain where is the disagreement first.
Can you answer any of those questions?
Colours are five-dimensional conceptual structures of chemical and energy relations. They exist potentially as values - any reference to the ‘actuality’ of a colour is a reduction of information using particular value structures: light wave frequencies, chemical ‘signatures’, computer ‘code’, etc.
So in the above metaphor, I would say that the colour yellow exists potentially in the program, not actually in the computer.
I already answered your question 4. What in the world is not clear about better vision being better than worse vision?
Oh, okay. I'm not sure exactly what you mean. Are you saying that prehistoric man only decides to kill a buffalo to eat because of its brown color? What if it's black, green, blue, yellow? Would he still want to kill a red one in order to satisfy his survival needs, or would he overlook a brown one in favor of a red one?
Sounds true enough. Why five dimensions?
I can’t disagree, and you definitely said something, but it feels kind of empty. Can you elaborate on ‘reduction of information’ thing with some examples if possible?
Is that different than how colors exist in the brain / mind?
that is not an ontology between colors and electromagnetic radiation. You instead seem to be stating a utility.
recall:
Quoting Sir Philo Sophia
if better vision has more (e.g., energy) cost than its survival benefits then Darwin would say that better performing vision is even worse than worse vision.
Yes, and I have no clue what are we talking about now.
Quoting Marchesk
That's just asking if the word "cheese" is suitable for describing the stuff the moon is made of.
IF the task at hand is answering a petulant three-year-old's questions, it might be suitable. Less so if your name is Neil Armstrong.
It's not too hard to set up a possible Kripke to argue that cheese is a kind, that the moon could never be made of cheese because in every possible world cheese is a coagulant of mammals milk, and the moon could never be such a thing.
Quoting Marchesk
Quoting Marchesk
Notice the differing logical structure of these two sentences. The first asks if a simple first-order predication is true: is F(a)?. The second asks about the domain of a predicate, are there things that are coloured? ?(x)f(x)?
This difference in structure shows why it is so much easier to see the second as asking 'bout word use.
Darwin's theories do not apply to #1 or #5. I already hinted at #2 in my above reply to you. See:
Quoting Sir Philo Sophia
re #3, certainly not. re #4, color and vision genes are highly preserved from our primate cousins, so Darwin (et. al.) would say your #4 is pretty irrelevant b/c they already had color vision/qualia inherited from their primates, whether it helped them to kill prey is not so material as to Darwin's theories. I personally would think, for example, that if there was a light brown animal hiding within green bushes it would be much more effective it have color vision.
I think you are right that your question was non-trivial, but only b/c of your "b" part. This part I was saying was trivial:
"a. we actually see colors (colors exist)"
for which I said:
"is it not so obvious that colors as we perceive cannot 'exist' in the mater itself? I mean, if nothing else, our eyes only receive all the light wavelengths (color) that was rejected by the object's surface, so by physics and definition that object cannot be said to have a color for which it rejects. Hence, obviously, no objects have the phenomenon of being/having the colors our eyes see."
‘Colour value’ refers to differences in frequency (hue) and amplitude (intensity/brightness) of quantum wave functions (photons) moving at the speed of light on a particular trajectory between a fixed point and a fixed observer or measuring apparatus.
When we experience colour, however, we’re continually making adjustments to the relative four-dimensional information between the observer and the point of observation - so this value is always relative to 4D relativity.
Quoting Zelebg
The ‘reduction of information’ just refers to the zeroing of variables as described above. We can calculate these colour values only in relation to fixed 4D relations between two points.
Quoting Zelebg
In the computer program, the information for colour value is relative to fixed relations between the screen and viewer, and has been reduced to a set of numerical values and then reduced again to binary relations.
Colour exists potentially in the brain as conceptual or five-dimensional relations, developed through prediction error to be relatively accurate in relation to our experiences so far. The information we refer to as ‘colour’ is irreducible in this sense.
Sounds good, but I don't know what to do with it. It's too general, can you narrow down "development" thing - developed via what elements, what value / property is that preduction error relative to?
What is it you were expecting to be able do with it?
Quoting Zelebg
All of them. We have the capacity to distinguish between relative colour values by comparing instances of certain chemical, spatial and temporal relations of sensory input in relation to chemical changes in light cone receptors. But we’re motivated to learn through interaction with other humans to associate those patterns with certain sounds/words and other conceptual relations, and then refine these distinctions in how we predict interactions with the world.
A toddler who points to a rose and says ‘red’ will experience prediction error when his mother’s response is ‘no, that’s pink’. His brain, at this stage relatively flexible, will include this instance of perceived colour value (including other relative sensory input) in his developing conceptualisation of ‘pink’, and exclude it from his conceptualisation of ‘red’, while also relating ‘pink’ to his conceptualisation of ‘rose’. An adult who encounters the same situation is less likely to respond to this prediction error by changing his prediction, and will filter or ignore the new information so his experience is consistent with his prediction. Of course, he could also realise his own error when he removes his sunglasses (and perhaps even confirm or test this new prediction by replacing and removing his sunglasses several times, just to be sure). In this way, we learn to more accurately recognise colours in dim or unusual lighting, at different times of the day, underwater, from a distance, etc.
I was hoping you to say something about why those differences / changes / relations, whatever they physically are, why they feel like they feel, where do “warm / cold”, “sweet / sour”, “bright / dark” come from, are they arbitrary, why “bright / dark“ instead of “abc / xyz”, something along those lines.
When it comes to digital and printer ink there are 4 colors that makeup all the colors we see on screens and when we print images. These colors are Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and black. How light reflects off of things and into our eyes is very important too. All I can say is I love seeing color and I'm thankful for my color cones.
When you say ‘physically’, do you mean in relation to what is observable/measurable or in relation to physics/chemistry/biology?
What you’re referring to is how we conceptualise each interoception of affect in the body: ‘sweet/sour’ refers to a relative distinction in patterns of chemical relations between the different types of ‘taste’ receptors on the tongue. The words are how we have come to signify these distinctions within the linguistic value system we share, in relation to the instances of relative sensory input (including internal affect) that share each distinction. So the sight of a fruit that is ‘green’ in colour is most likely understood to produce a ‘sour’ taste and possibly relates to predictions of negative affect from the digestive system - so we understand that eating it would likely be ‘bad’. But we also understand that not all green fruit is ‘sour’ or ‘bad’ to eat, so other distinctions such as skin texture, shape and size contribute to the value system by which we understand the relation of ‘colour’ to ‘fruit’ to the distinction of ‘sweet/sour’, before taste receptors are even required.
Words that signify the distinction between a ‘melon’, ‘kiwifruit’ or ‘mango’ that is ‘green’, for instance, enable us to share far more complex information with present sensory input than one taste-receptor’s chemical response to a ‘sweet/sour’ taste. But conversely, describing a ‘fruit’ as ‘sour’ offers little information unless one is aware of the relative sensory information: if it’s ‘round/oblong’, ‘small/large’, the colour and texture of its skin and flesh, etc. All of these are also linguistic values that relate to relative distinctions in the chemical and/or spatio-temporal relations of visual and tactile sensory systems.
These complex 5D value relations, as irreducible relational structures of the mind, enable us to make predictions about potential interactions in the world, and also to make predictions about the probability of those potential interactions beyond the value of present sensory input. This enables us to determine and initiate actions that not only anticipate these predictions, but can also interact with their potential or probability of occurring. In this way, we have the capacity to patiently value a green fruit for its potential to develop into a sweet, reddened mango with time, or to sprinkle sugar on a lime to benefit from its nutrients without being deterred by the sour taste - understanding that time will not improve the colour or taste values of the green ‘lime’, nor will a sprinkling of sugar improve the nutritional value of a green ‘mango’. We learn these value systems and structures by developing relations with other experiencing subjects with whom our past interactions enable a prediction of value to the system (we don’t care how much you know until we know how much you care).
Physical is what is observable / measurable in principle, in a sense that if ghost or souls can be observed / measured they too would automatically then fall into physical category. Existing and being physical / material is one and same thing, i.e. there is no such thing as immaterial existence by definition. I consider chemistry / biology to be physical / material assuming we can at least in principle or even just indirectly measure or observe everything about it.
Can you say is color a property of something, is it a substance of some kind, maybe entity or object, or whatever the most general category colors belong to?
This is where you and I differ, because I consider potential and possible existence as two types of ‘immaterial’ existence, and what is observable/measurable as a reduction of these aspects of reality. The uncertainty or relativity with which we must consider this ‘immaterial’ existence, and its irreducibility to the apparent certainty or ‘objectivity’ of the physical/material does not preclude its existence. I’m not saying that ghosts or souls are real as such, but that the subjective experiences expressed as ‘ghost’ or ‘soul’ have a potential or at least possible existence that matters to a comprehensive understanding of reality.
Quoting Zelebg
I get that you like to still think of the world as consisting of ‘things’, objects, entities or substances, but in my opinion this is a limited - and limiting - perspective of reality. I’m under the impression that most physicists now can at least appreciate the world as consisting of interrelated events, rather than ‘objects in time’ (which is necessarily relative).
Colour can be considered a property of a certain event, in which a moving ‘object’ in spacetime (event) is observed/measured by a moving ‘object’ in spacetime (event). It is neither a property of the observed object nor of the observer - rather a property of the immaterial or potential relation between them, relative to the changing properties of the two relating ‘events’.
I don’t see any difference between possible and potential, but in any case unknown event or entity from the future holds no explanation about objects and their properties in the past and present time.
Even possible future events have to have their potential embedded in the physical state of matter of the past. You can not define anything, not even a potential, with absolutely nothing. Future possibility has to lie in something, and there is no other something but physical and material something, because everything else is nothing by definition.
To the extent that the event or entity is unknown, of course it doesn’t. But we aren’t entirely ignorant of potential or possible events in the future, just as we aren’t ignorant of events in the past. I have sufficient information, for instance, to confidently say that my front door ‘is green’, even though right now it’s dark outside and difficult to see, and I’m not looking at it. I’m not referring to an actual property of the door, but to my perception of the potential for this particular ‘object’ to be observed as ‘green’ under most relevant conditions. It’s the information from past and present events that hold an explanation about the uncertain potential or possibility of future or past events, not the other way around.
Quoting Zelebg
The apparent ‘embedding’ of potential is just how you conceptualise it. The potential of any future event is a subjective relation of the information you have about events in the past and present to the uncertainty of that event occurring in the future. You cannot define a potential because that would necessarily reduce this potential information to only what is observable/measurable, which would be an inaccurate representation of that potential, in much the same way as a photograph is an inaccurate representation of life.
I would also argue that potential can exist with nothing more than the possibility of existence, and that the entire physical and material universe manifests ultimately from the relation of differentiated potential. But that may be another discussion.
Quoting Noah Te Stroete
The agents don't have to be consciousness for colors to exist. Colors are properties of objects in the external world. Our minds can cognitively pick out objects that have the property of being of red or [insert your favorite color here].
We might also build non-conscious robots, or even just smart cameras that can accurately identify these same properties. Hence colors exist as properties of objects in the world, regardless of our conscious minds. They will exist when we are long dead and all that are left are the cameras we built to detect these properties. And these properties will still exist when those cameras have long been burned to ashes after our sun becomes a red giant.
|>ouglas
I don’t disagree with what you’re saying. Different wavelengths of electromagnetism exist without consciousness. But is this really what we think of as color?
Quoting Noah Te Stroete
Colors are far more complex than simple wavelengths of light. Most colors do not correspond to any wavelength. Rather they are a mixture of different wavelengths. But different mixtures will be perceived as the same color. And the same mixture of wavelengths will be perceived as different colors in different environments.
I understand that it is extremely difficult to define what our eyes and brains pick out as certain colors, because the properties that are being picked out are being done so by very complex systems. So maybe the goal of building robots or cameras that can pick out colors the same way that we do is somewhat farfetched practically speaking. But in theory it could be done.
Yes, this is what I think of as color.
If, on the other hand, we are talking about the phenomenal qualia of color perception, then, yes, they exist too. Even more surely. I'm not a physicalist and so I think that how this works is deeply mysterious. But since I can never be you and you can never be me, I can never know that what that what you feel when you see a ripe tomato is the same thing that I feel when I see a ripe tomato. Our qualia of seeing a ripe tomato may not be the same, and hence may not exist as something that can be accurately covered by a single term.
On the other hand, modulo issues of color blindness and everyone having somewhat different eyes and cognitive functioning, the physical property of redness is something that can be identified by most humans, and most certainly exists physically as a property of physical things.
|>ouglas
Okay. Well, to me the qualia of red is what the color of red is to me. Likewise, what you perceive as red is red to you. It doesn’t matter if they are the same experience. It takes an experiencer for red to exist. That is where I differ.
That said, I don’t think this discussion has any practical weight in my life, so I’m not that interested in it. I could be persuaded, but really in the end, who cares?
Quoting Noah Te Stroete
Well, I guess I care because I've gotten drawn into a debate again on Max Tegmark's MUH, and so it's on my mind lately what it means for something to be "real".
But YMMV!
|>ouglas
It's asking whether the world is colored in as we perceive it to be.
Let's take an example. "Is the sky blue on a clear, sunny day?"
On an ordinary language usage, it is obviously is. That's because the ordinary language usage assumes normally sighted human vision. Or at least for languages that make usage of blue hues.
But what if the question is asking whether the sky is actually blue on a clear, sunny day? Then it's no longer about normally sighted human vision for language speakers that utilize blue hues.
It turns into a question about the nature of the world. And since we know that visible light is but a small part of the EM spectrum, and that other animals can see in wavelengths and primary colors that we cannot, then it's not so obvious what the answer is.
It lends itself to questioning whether the world is colored in at all. Maybe color isn't a property of the environment and things themselves, but rather animal perceptual systems. If that's true, then the sky isn't actually blue at all. It's not any color.
That's the difference between a philosophical question concerning what we perceive, and one making use of ordinary language. The first can also be a scientific one.
The problem with ordinary language in this case is that it hides an assumption of naive realism when it comes to color. And a lot of other things, for that matter.
Ordinarily, if I assert "I am seeing a red apple" the meaning of the sentence cannot be decomposed into two independent assertions, namely one of a subject and another of an object, as is in situation where I assert that someone else seeing a red apple. As far as I'm concerned, red, i.e. my red, exists independently of other people's perceptions of my red, and they cannot possibly know this fact, for whenever they talk about red they are referring to their red. And the situation isn't improved by talking only about "objective" optical properties.
Therefore consider the irrealist alternative; namely that ontological disagreements are partly the result of our collectively inconsistent use of language.
So what? Aren't they ready to gloss it (if pressed, and with cheerful inconsistency as you say) as: their red and/or your red and/or the type of stimulus? Don't they probably agree with Ramachandran that a simple sci-fi brain bridge would settle the curious question whether they are using the same type of internal colour quality as you are using to identify the same type of external stimulus? (As opposed to using a different type of internal colour quality to identify the same type of external stimulus, as in Locke's colour inversion scenario?)
If so, the inconsistency hardly seems basic or conceptual, but merely a reasonable way to skirt an issue that only a sci-fi device could settle.
Quoting sime
Delighted to hear more about this alternative... even though I would be hoping for it to unweave the internal qualia rainbow rather than indulge it as you and Locke and Ramachandran and most people seem inclined to.
It doesn't hide the assumption of naive realism - it displays it and shows that it underpins language use.
What is the sky? Would you have us think of it as a blue shell? But of course, it isn't. Would you say that it isn't really anything - but that's not true. Is it just the same as the air around us? Of course. Then how is it distinct form that last breath of yours? What is to count as a breath, what is to count as sky?
But if the sky is blue we might plan a picnic together, and if it is overcast we might plan a trip to the cinema.
So we agree that the sky is indeed blue, and yet you ask me if it is really blue, and talk of electromagnetic spectra and absorption and so on.
As if any of that could change the colour of the sky.
As if talk of electromagnetic spectra were more real than talk of blue sky.
As if there were only one correct way to talk.
Do colours exist? Yep.
But it doesn't show that naive realism is true.
Yes. And Philosophy began (at least in part) by challenging that foundation.
Would you agree with this?
The table is made of atoms which are mostly space. Therefore there is not table, only space.
The sky is the selective absorption of certain wavelengths of light. Therefore there is no sky.
Colours are differing electromagnetic frequencies. Therefore there are no colours.
Colours are just the result of differential firing of the rods and cones in your eye. Therefore there are not really any colours.
Edit:
The first example is obviously false. The other examples have the same structure, and hence are also false.
So, to explain my joke, there are colours.
^-- this!
Physicists often use the word "color" and associate it with frequency of light. Some of these poor saps are confused; among those not confused, this can be read as technical jargon, but just as some physicists have tended to move away from using two terms "mass" and "rest mass", they should stop calling such a thing "color" and use the other perfectly good word for it; "frequency", because it has nothing to do with that thing that we humans give color labels to.
The thing we humans give color labels to are categories whose core physical basis is not the frequency of light per se; but rather, is the definitive biophysical process that can form said categories. And that basis is the photoisomerization of erythrolabe, chlorolabe, and cyanolabe. In lay terms, there are three kinds of proteins, one per cone cell, that can absorb photons and fold (and we're talking just cones, because color vision is a particular mode, dubbed "photopic vision", where there's sufficient light to drive it; in photopic vision, rods are basically just saturated, and therefore useless). The manner of such folding happens with a probability that depends on the protein kind (the photopsin) and the frequency of the light, but the thing we sense is this folding, not the frequency. If an erythrolabe molecule folds (isomerizes), it begins the chain reaction that (may) eventually lead to signals, no matter which frequency of light it absorbed to fold. There are many cases of spectra that have equivalent probabilities of folding these photopsins; because of this, a lot of colors are "metamers", which is to say that have distinct physical representations for the same "base" color category. Beyond this level of color categorization, our brains cannot tell the difference, so this is the right level to think of the physics of color. Saying that color is "supposed to be" about frequency is a bit baseless; color just is what it is.
There is a science of measuring colors; it's called colorimetry... one of the go-to popular standards of color measurement is the CIE 1931 model. This is simply a two dimensional measure of a color space; there is the third dimension, but this is the type of thing we're really talking about when we mention color.
Lay philosophers love to talk about qualia, but I think that's the wrong point of analysis. Just jumping in the water, let's ignore all controversies and presume fully that we experience qualia as typically described. Here's the problem... qualia are ineffable, but colors are effable. Your red-quale is just a thing you yourself have; you have no way of comparing it to Joe's red-quale. Your red-quale is useful in terms of color because it's available to you, and because it's presumably the same quale for the same color... so you can measure the thing we agree is red, but it's the thing we agree is red that is the color, not the quale (in any meaningful sense, by which I mean "meaningful" in a semantic sense... namely, the ability to assign extensionality to terms).
OTOH, colorimetric color is only the beginning; our perceptual apparatus adjusts colors automatically; several optical illusions prove this dramatically. If we want to talk about "the color of an object", that is a brain computed thing. But I think it's meaningless to say that things specific to working humans aren't real, but things non-specific to working humans are, because, call me crazy, it's my humble and honest opinion, and I have no idea how someone would argue against such a thing, that working humans exist. Running down this line as an existence metric, as far as convincing me something meaningful has been said, one may as well tell me that rabbits don't exist, with the reasoning that if there weren't any rabbits around, there would be no rabbits.
So the way the ball bounces for me is quite simply as follows. Ten humans can independently measure something called "the color of this banana", and agree far more often than random chance. OTOH, the actual spectra that banana reflects changes dramatically based on where it is and time of day; and really, it's not the spectra per se that even matters, it's the colorimetric categories... but even these are quite distinct. So I've no problems with someone saying color isn't measuring spectra; and whether you focus on colorimetric colors or "the color of bananas" to me is simply a matter of definitions, but these are distinct things. But nominal human vision is part of extant brains that are performing physical measurements, so despite this stuff being specific to humans, humans do exist, so... why not just say colors do?
I couldn't have said it better myself!
|>ouglas
Can you phrase the question so it is clear it is about the second answer?
Sounds like you might know such information like what is the size of perceived pixels or their molecular representations and how many of them are there. In other words, what is the resolution of the human inner display?
Well... it's a little more complex than this... a digital camera is "pretty", so we can talk about such things in very few terms and have a good idea of its structure... but the eye is quite messy.
The easiest answer for resolution appeals to the astronomy type metrics; we can resolve details at about under 1 arc second. But cones aren't equidistant; they're more packed in the center, and vary as you move out. Our fovea covers about 5.5 degrees of visual field; the foveola (the sharpest part of our vision) about 1.5 degrees. There are about 5 million cones in the eye; and about 90 million rods (keep in mind, we do have a "scotopic vision" (night vision) mode as well). But of the 5 million cones that we have, a large number of them just feed inputs into ganglia that combine signals from multiple cones; many of these are responsible for the "opponent color" process; for example, there's a "red/green" channel that "calculates" the difference between L and M cone stimuli (loosely, L-M). There are also ganglia combining inputs from the same cone types, again, in our retina... these play a very early role in edge detection. The foveola is a strange exception; "optimized" for resolution, it has no blood vessels, and no rods; only L and M cones (no S even)... and the ganglia in this region map one to one to each cone. So a lot of those 5 million cones in our retina aren't directly giving signals to the brain; in fact, the optic nerve is somewhere between 0.7 and 1.7 million fibers thick, if that give you an idea.
Believe it or not, this is the short version!
I would tend to say the table is a collection of molecules arranged table-wise. Ordinary objects don't exist quite as we think they do (yes, I'm hedging a little bit here).
Quoting Banno
There's an atmosphere, or collection of gas molecules several miles thick around the Earth.
Quoting Banno
Colors, in terms of our experience of color, are correlated with visual brain states, somehow. The rest is a causal story of how visual perception works.
But honey, there are no brown puppies.
It's just ridiculous. If 'science' can't square with simple everyday facts... then 'science' is using the wrong linguistic framework.
So take this to the final step... is your conclusion that colours do not exist?
But humans are the only ones that see "red", "green", "yellow", "blue", "brown", and other colors humans talk about. Humans are the only ones matching paint colors; selecting paints for art, building traffic lights, and so on. Restriction to human colors isn't a flaw of lexicons; it's a choice of lexicons.
CIE 1931, for example, makes no pretense that it's about how cows see color.
That's not true.
Of course it is. "Red" is a trichromatic color category; it's roughly an equivalence class of spectral distributions defined by the differential stimulation of erythrolabe and chlorolabe, which are uniquely human proteins. Humans have a distinct gene pool with alleles for creating these proteins; any other animal, even if it were trichromatic, is highly likely to produce different proteins. Different trichromatic photopsins imply different groupings of spectra into metamer groups, which means different colors.
ETA: The way these photopsins work, there's a general overall shape and a coding for it on the genome. Slight changes in the production of these photopsins change the shape and makeup; which changes its photosensitivity spectra.
Animals can be trained to select red things.
Are they not?
That's just straight up dichromacy versus trichromacy in humans. I would guess a trichromatic animal might have a better chance than your protanope friend at matching these balls, but again, it's still not guaranteed, because such an animal would be seeing different colors.
Curious. Are you saying that colors do not exist?
Ok.
Then what's at stake between your position and my own is a matter of degree and not kind, so to speak.
Some animals are red/green color blind. Dogs... I think?
Others are not. Some can sense/detect infrared, others ultraviolet.
What makes you so confident that no other animals can see red?
Quoting creativesoul
...because the odds are incredibly against it. Red is a human color category; it requires human trichromaticity to define. To get that, you essentially need human alleles in your gene pool, which I doubt other animals have.
Trichromatic animals by all odds, as I explained, are likely to have different color gamuts that don't match up with human color categories. Maybe they distinguish certain spectra better than we do; maybe we distinguish certain other spectra better. There may be matching colors to them that we can distinguish, and vice versa. "Red" is a human word, so it refers to a human group.
Quoting creativesoul
That only makes things worse! Suppose protanopes were the norm, and suddenly humans started evolving trichromacy. Maybe, 5% of humans can see three colors. But all the words we have for colors are things like "gold", "blue", and such. For us 5%, there are drastically different kinds of "gold"... "red", "orange", "yellow green", and so on. But there's no word for it.
Now let's assume the impossible happens... there's an animal with three photoreceptors who have the exact same sensitivities as our human L, M, and S cones, but it has a fourth. So now, you're going to say that it can see red? Which red? To this animal, there may be drastically different kinds of red, all different colors. We don't have names for those colors; we just have deficient names like "red". Assuming we can name the colors they see, we have to invent all new names for these colors.
It's even worse if they are tetrachromats and they (as is more likely) do not have matching photoreceptors. Not only do we invent all new names for their colors, but their names don't really align well with our names.
Colors exist because different light frequencies exist. Your cell phone interprets different frequencies as different signals. Even time modulation and frequency hopping spread spectrum does use FM to some extent.
So our eye balls interpret different frequencies as different colors. Colors exist.
Thats fucking funny. You are correct Sir.
Spectra and colors...
What's the difference?
They don't exist as objective properties. But they do exist in the same way anything subjective or mind-dependent exists. I take the question to be an ontological one, and therefore colors don't have a mind-independent, real existence, anymore than hallucinations, thoughts or dreams do.
It's like asking whether pain exists. Yes, as a sensation it certainly does. But no, it doesn't exist independent of organisms that experience pain.
Or common sense is just plain wrong, as it has often been shown to be the case. After all, if science disagrees with the obvious fact that the sun moves across the sky, the Earth is stationary, and the table is completely solid, then obviously it's using the wrong language when it says the earth is a sphere in motion and tables are mostly empty space, right?
Or the sky is water held up by the firmaments. Why else would it look blue?
"The sky is blue."
Obviously true, right? Well hold on there
We know there's a lot more eletromagnetic radiation in the atmosphere than what we can see. If we could see it, what color would the sky look like? Most likely not the clear blue we see.
So it can't be simply true in the objective sense. It can only be true for animals with vision similar to ours.
Spectra is shorthand for "spectral distributions", and refers to the distributions of intensities of light as a function of frequency across a band of frequencies. Color refers to a component of vision. Colors are distinct from spectra in that vision is not capable of measuring spectra in any animal's vision; for any animal capable of color vision, there will always be "metamers"... distinct spectra that map to the same color.
Rather, I'm wondering - still - how you've arrived at the notion that no other animals can distinguish the spectra that we call "red" regardless of the vagueness and/or lack of precision that that term carries along with it. The term does have a corresponding range of frequencies that it picks out. In order for no other animal to be able to see red would require that no other animals were capable of perceiving that particular range.
It seems to me that you're wanting to say that no other animals have the same sensitivity to the exact same range(spectra?) and thus they would not see the same range that we've named "red". They would see either a narrower or broader range depending upon their own photoreceptors, which are different than ours. What they see would not correspond to what we call "red".
Is this close to being in line with what you're saying?
Then why tell me?
Sorry, but no.
No, the term does not have a "range of frequencies" that it picks out; it has a "set of spectra" (an "equivalence class of spectra" if you will). Suppose your monitor's RGB components were monochromatic... and R emitted at 700nm, G at 545nm, and B at 435nm. Suppose also that you have a 570nm LED; when lit, that LED would emit light that you would see as yellow. You could also produce that same color (close enough) using your RGB monitor. But when you look at at your RGB monitor, you are not seeing 570nm light; you are seeing light composed of 700nm photons and 545nm photons. Photon frequencies never blend; a photon at a frequency is a photon at that frequency from the time it's emitted to the time it's absorbed, regardless of what other photons are present (for the same reason, you don't get an AM radio station at 570 kHz by putting up a tower at 545kHz and another at 700kHz).
So the combination of light coming from your monitor... that mix of 545nm photons and 700nm photons... is one spectral distribution (call this RG light). The light coming from the 570nm LED is another spectral distribution (call this Y light). From the physics of photons, there's nothing about RG light that "makes" it the same color as Y light. What makes RG light and Y light the same color is how your human eyes react to these two spectra. RG light and Y light are metamers for the color we call "yellow".
Ok. No need for apologies. I appreciate your patience.
So the term "red" has a set(or sets?) of spectra(metamers?) that it picks out. Are you saying that no other animal perceives any of the metamers that we call "red"?
It may become relevant. I want to make sure that I understand what you're saying. That is primary.
This bit above I'm having trouble squaring with your position/argument in general.
You're explicitly being evasive; okay.
No. I'm saying that no other animal perceives the set spectra that we call "red" as the same color.
Can they perceive the class of spectra that we call "red"?
No. I'm not at all being evasive. As I said, it may become relevant. It also may not. Prior to even being sure of either possibility, I must first understand what you're doing with these new words(new to me).
I have no clue what you're asking here. The class of spectra that I can see is the same class of spectra that a deuteranope can see. I suspect you're trying to ask some question but don't know how, but I honestly can't figure out what you're trying to ask.
The above is your (edited)reply. I'm wondering if it makes any sense to drop off the "as the same color" portion. So, I asked if any other animal perceives the set spectra that we call "red".
It's fascinating, although I expected a story about visual cortex area V1.
Why would it? Aren't we supposed to be talking about what colors are? If RG and Y are both yellow, they're both yellow.
I'm not as well versed in the visual cortex, but I am aware that certain areas of the visual cortex analyze images at different resolutions, making this even messier.
Can other animals perceive the class of spectra that we call "red"?
The above makes perfect sense if it makes sense to say that they cannot perceive it as the same color.
Can they perceive it at all?
You need not go to other animals; deuteranopes (that mode of red/green colorblind) can see the class of spectra that we call red. They can't distinguish that color from the color we call green, but they can see the same class of spectra.
The question of whether an animal can see the same class of spectra that we can is simply a question of whether the animal's visual bandwidth (by which I mean the range of light frequencies that is visible to it) is the same or broader than ours.
You mentioned other animals in the bit I was responding to.
I asked, and I think you've just answered.
Yes. Right?
Other animals can perceive the class of spectra that we call "red". <------Is that statement true?
Yes, but, this is getting ridiculous. You're treating this like a chat forum. Why don't you just go think about things, and come back in a bit? Or suggest an actual chat forum to talk on?
I'm beginning to be inclined to agree.
Other animals can perceive the kinds of plants that we've named "trees". "Trees" is the name we've bestowed upon certain kinds of plants. The name of a thing is not the thing. "Trees" are not trees. Trees are certain kinds of plants. Other animals can perceive those certain kinds of plants. Other animals can perceive trees.
Other animals can perceive the class of spectra that we've named "red". "Red" is the name we've bestowed upon a certain class of spectra. The name of a thing is not the thing. "Red" is not red. Red is a certain class of spectra. Other animals can perceive that certain class of spectra. Other animals can perceive red.
There's a box of 96 crayons here. I can not only see every crayon in this box; I see every crayon in this box as a color. A deuteranope (red/green colorblind person) can also see every crayon in this box; not only that, he sees every crayon in this box as a color. By your argument, a red/green colorblind person should be seeing red and green. Is that what you want to say, or do you want to rethink that?
That is not by my argument. That is not what I want to say, nor do I want or need to rethink what I've said or what I want to say. The fallacies are becoming more and more numerous.
Seeing a spectra "as a color" is to have already named that spectra, and to have already categorized that name as a color. One can see a class of spectra without ever having given it a name. So, seeing a spectra and seeing a spectra as a color are not equivalent processes. You're conflating the two. I suspect you know this, and you also realized where I was heading earlier with my questioning regarding the phrasing. Hence, the sudden increase in fallacious argument.
You're equivocating the terms "seeing" and "perceiving" in exactly the way I just explained.
One can see red and green without using the names "red" and "green". One cannot see red or green as colors however, unless one has used the names "red" and "green" as a means for distinguishing between the two spectra bearing the namesakes. One who cannot distinguish between the spectra we've named "red" and "green" can still see the spectra. Seeing the spectra we've named "red" and "green" does not require being able to distinguish between them. Seeing the spectra as red and as green does.
Seeing red does not require seeing red "as red". Seeing green does not require seeing green "as green". Seeing a tree does not require seeing a tree "as a tree".
That is what follows from my argument.
...okay, then you need to learn what these words mean, so that when when you read what I write you're interpreting it correctly, and so that when you write something using those words it means what you say... so that when you write something, I know what you mean.
Quoting creativesoul
"Spectra" is plural, first off. We're talking about particular spectral distributions; since we're using "spectra" as a shorthand for the plural, you can call each of these a "spectrum". So take this box of 96 crayons here. There is a red crayon; it reflects a spectral distribution, which means that there's light from wavelengths (say) 360nm to 830nm being reflected with particular intensities at particular wavelengths.
But that phrase doesn't mean anything useful. The term class refers to just a grouping; taking spectral distributions and putting it into a box (label not needed; just boxing). This isn't just a nit pick; we need to be able to talk about classes like this if we want to talk about whether other entities see the same colors we do, because the thing we are talking about has to allow us to transport one "class" to what another entity sees.
There is a spectral distribution that the crayon with "red" written on it reflects. There's another that the crayon with "green" written on it reflects; another that the crayon with "yellow" on it reflects; and still another that this banana on a shelf reflects. There's a class of spectra that has all four spectral distributions in it; one that has just the banana in it. Yellow is an equivalence class of spectra we can distinguish. We cannot distinguish the spectral distribution the banana reflects from the one that the crayon labeled "yellow" reflects; therefore, they are in the same equivalence class.
But when you talk about a different entity; say, some creature called a "snapper", seeing "a class of spectra", then it doesn't really mean anything useful. That means snappers can see things in the class, which means snappers can see crayons with "yellow" written on them, and they can also see bananas. Well, okay then; but in that sense, deuteranopes can see all 96 crayons... so when you tell me snappers can see the class, I'm not sure you're telling me anything about colors.
Of course they aren't. That's the point. Talking about "seeing spectra" underspecifies what it means to say they are seeing colors. The colors the snapper sees is defined not by what spectra it can see, but by what spectra the snapper can distinguish versus what it cannot distinguish. Non-distinguishability is same-coloredness; distinguishability is different-coloredness. The banana and the crayon are to us the same color because they are in the same equivalence class of spectra based on what colors we distinguish.
No, if it were about assigning words to the spectra, we can't talk about snappers seeing color, because snappers don't use words. And they don't use words to distinguish spectra either... they use their snapper eyes. Furthermore, they don't use their snapper eyes "to distinguish spectra", because that's not the "purpose" of what they're doing. They're just using their snapper eyes to see what things look like... snappers couldn't care less about spectra, they just care that things look the same or different. It's just that their snapper eyes in and of themselves distinguish or not spectra of particular types.
The words are just labels; "yellow" literally is just a thing we use to label the color. The color per se is an equivalence class... that we have labeled with the word "yellow". That equivalence class consists of spectra such as that that the crayon with "yellow" written on it reflects, and that that the banana on the shelf reflects.
Colors are this pain at a sustainable level, converted through matter to pleasure.
Glad you can overlook my grammatical errors with this foreign jargon. I'll simplify in the hopes of making this as simple as possible...
Seeing red is the exact same thing as seeing the spectra we've named "red". Seeing green is the exact same thing as seeing the spectra we've named "green". Distinguishing between the two spectra is not necessary for seeing both. It is necessary for seeing them as distinct to each other. Seeing them as distinct to each other is not equal to seeing them "as the colors we've named 'red' and 'green'". Seeing them as the colors we've named "red" and "green" requires seeing them as distinct to each other, having similar biological structures as us, and having already used the terms "red" and "green" to pick them out to the exclusion of all else. Seeing them as distinct is not equal to seeing them as colors.
I'm pointing out the equivocation problems with seeing/perceiving and seeing/perceiving "as a color", "as red", "as green", etc. They are not the same thing/process. Thus, using the terms "seeing" and "perceiving" to represent both cases is an equivocation of the terms "seeing" and "perceiving".
Seeing a tree is not the same thing as seeing a tree "as a tree".
That's like saying that if I take a black and white photo of this box of crayons, then it's a color photo, because "taking a color photo is the exact same thing as taking a photo of things we call colored".
Seeing red requires seeing the color red, because red is a color. Seeing a thing we've named red only requires seeing a thing that we have named red, not seeing its color.
Quoting creativesoul
What do you mean "the two spectra"? There are many spectra that are red, and many spectra that are green.
Quoting creativesoul
Yes to (a). Not really to (b); that helps, but it's unnecessary. No to (c); it doesn't matter if you call the color "red", "rojo", "vermelho", or "aka"; what matters is that whatever label you're applying to it, it is the particular equivalence class of spectra that we have labeled red.
But you're missing a key requirement: (d) the ability to identify things that are the same color as the same color. In other words, if that crayon with "yellow" written on it is the same color as that banana on the shelf, then to "see yellow", you need to be able to see that that crayon is the same color as that banana.
Quoting creativesoul
Correct; (d) is also a key requirement.
Quoting creativesoul
Actually, that's what I'm doing. You're confusing seeing a color with seeing a thing that has a color. Just because I call something red, and Joe sees it, doesn't mean Joe is seeing the color red. It just means Joe is seeing something and I see that it's red. We can't say that Joe sees the color until he sees the color, not just the thing that has the color.
Only to people who do not understand that spectra exist in their entirety prior to our naming and describing them.
:brow:
We're not naming spectra; we're naming equivalence classes of spectra. We're "color blind" to spectra; we can't even tell RG light from Y light.
Maybe that's your confusion. Dichromats, like red/green colorblind people, are "colorblind" because there are "colors" they cannot distinguish. We are trichromats, but physically speaking, that's just slightly more capable than dichromats. If we wanted to see spectra to approximately the same resolution as say the CIE 1931 spectral data... which has values from the wavelengths 360nm to 830nm in 5nm intervals... then we would need a hypothetical creature with 95 different photoreceptors.
Mantis shrimp have the most impressive visual gamut I'm aware of; with up to about 16 photoreceptor types.
"Spectra"(capitalized for grammatical reasons only) IS a name.
:meh:
It is used to pick out "the distributions of intensities of light as a function of frequency across a band of frequencies". You said so yourself. That is your definition. Verbatim. Those distributions of intensities of light existed in their entirety prior to our naming and describing them. Those distributions are discovered. Distributions of light do not require being perceived, attended to, and subsequently named and talked about by us in order to be a distribution of light.
But... "spectra" is a human word, and according to you... as a result it picks out a human group.
If all of the stuff that you've been saying about spectra is true, then spectra must exist in their entirety prior to our naming and describing them. All such things are existentially independent of us. If we ever acquire knowledge of these existentially independent things, then they are discovered. We can get such things(that which exists in it's entirety prior to naming and descriptive practices wrong, both by definition and subsequent description... ...if and when we get the elemental constituency wrong.
Colors are distinct from spectra. Spectra map to the same color. Metamers are the name given to distinct spectra that map to the same color. So, metamers are specific spectra that map to the same color. That's not about our language use. It's about color vision capability, which does not require our reporting upon it. It exists in it's entirety regardless of whether or not we ever acquire knowledge of what it always takes in order to happen. It most certainly does not require our account of it. It requires colors and spectra that map to them because it requires metamers. It does not require any of the language used by us as a means to account for color vision capability.
Color vision capabilities include distinct spectra that map to the same color. That is to say that there is a direct correlation between spectra and colors, in that certain spectra in certain conditions, are perceived as the same color. Because an animal's color vision capability does not require our naming and talking about it, but it does require spectra mapping to the same color... then color, spectra, and metamers do not require our naming and talking about them.
"Spectra" is a name. Spectra does not require being named. In this case, and all others like it, any name will do. What's being named doesn't change one iota by what we say about it... if we have it right, that is. The same is true with colors.
Quoting InPitzotl
It seems you're having a bit of trouble following along. I've not talked about seeing a thing we've named red, as though that is the same as seing it's color as red. You have. The earlier bits about seeing the crayons with the name on them and all that...
Keep up. I'm not going to point out each and every time you misattribute meaning to my words and then put it on display with such non sequiturs. Not being nit picky or anything. I just want to focus more upon what you've been claiming, and the consequences thereof, especially when holding different statements next to one another for meaningful comparison.
Analysis.
Seeing red things is seeing things that are reflecting at least one of the distributions of intensities of light as a function of frequency across a band of frequencies(spectra and/or metamers) that we've since named "red".
Quoting InPitzotl
Surely you are not asserting this. What are you doing with the word "so" here? So because "red" is a human word, it refers to a human group???
:brow:
Sorry, but I have to call "bullshit" here...
Using the term "red" in normal parlance is to pick out all things we've given the namesake to... including, but not limited to, certain spectra that map to the same color in certain animals with color vision capability. Spectra are not a human grouping. Color vision capability is not a human group. "Spectra" is a human word. "Color" is a human word. "Mt. Everest" is a human word. None of the referents of those words - which act as names - are human groupings. Human groupings are existentially dependent upon human language use. Spectra, colors, and Mt. Everest are most certainly... not.
All human groups are existentially dependent upon humans. Colors are not.
"Red" is a human word referring to that which existed in it's entirety prior to our naming and descriptive practices involving the term.
But, but, but...
If many spectra are green then spectra are green...
Some spectra are green.
Some spectra are green.
But, but, but...
You said spectra are not colors, and also that green is a color...
So...
I've had enough fun for now.
:roll:
Quoting InPitzotl
Yeah...
:roll:
I've certainly had enough discourse with you...
Yes. Switching form, I'll quote you with quotation marks.
"It is used to pick out..." Yes."You said so yourself." I did. "Those distributions of intensities of light existed" Tense problem: "exist" is better. Other than that, spot on! "Those distributions are discovered." ...well, technically, yes. Because we have spectroscopes, prisms, rainbows, and brains, we discover the distributions. But as colors, we're seeing "equivalence classes of spectra". "Distributions of light do not require" ...yes.
"Colors are distinct from spectra." Yes; color is an equivalence class of spectra; spectra are the members. "Spectra map to the same color." Not necessarily; spectra that map to the same color map to the same color. "Metamers are the name given to distinct spectra..." yes. "That's not about our language use." Correct. "It's about color vision capability," ...correct; for example, for humans, it's about the human color vision capability. "It exists in it's entirety regardless ..." I'm interpreting this to mean that we don't have to know about spectra to see color; in that case, yes. "It most certainly" ...to me it sounds like you said the same thing twice, rephrasing it. "It requires colors" Yes, but, "colors require colors" is a tautology. "and spectra that map to them because it requires metamers" ...that works, but those aren't different things. "It does not require any of the language" correct.
"Color vision capabilities include" ...whole paragraph correct; but, it sounds like a repetition.
""Spectra" is a name." ...sure.
"It seems you're having a bit of trouble following along." ...no, you are having the trouble. "I've not talked about seeing a thing we've named red, as though that is the same as seing it's color as red." Well... you definitely said this:
"You have. The earlier bits about seeing the crayons with the name on them and all that..."
...why does this confuse you so much? If I look at a box of crayons, I see colors. If a deuteranope looks at the same box, he also sees colors. But when I look at the crayon labeled red, I see red; when the deuteranope looks at it, he does not see red.
Neither I, nor the deuteranope, see spectral distributions; we're both incapable of doing so. I just see a crayon's membership in an equivalence class of spectra; that's red. Analogously, the deuteranope does not see "red"; he is incapable. He just sees a crayon's membership in a different equivalence class.
"Seeing red things is seeing things" ...yes.
Again, what's confusing you? Humans created English. "Red" is a human word. So, human word? Check. Humans have human eyes; human color vision. Human color vision has particular properties. We made that word to talk about some equivalence class humans can see.
"Sorry, but I have to ..." ...okay, but it looks like the problem is that you're confused.
Huh? Which is it? Is it normal parlance or all things we've given the namesake to?
Ah, you're choking on human grouping. Well, yes, humans invent language; and they make up stuff. That's not a bad thing; it's part of the human project. But, humans not only invent language and make up stuff; they are also animals of a particular type. We're primates, and we're mammals. We also have human eyes; human eyes tend to be equipped with trichromatic vision of a particular type. The particular kind of trichromatic vision humans have begins with the three cone types humans as a species have; the human species' L, M, and S cones. Those cones respond to spectra in particular ways; they are incapable of measuring spectra per se... rather, they measure equivalence classes of spectra. So there are equivalence classes of spectra that humans can see based on human physical properties. The equivalence classes are groupings. The properties are human. Therefore, these are human groupings, which means that, no, "human groupings" are not necessarily existentially dependent on human language use. This human grouping is "existentially" dependent on human cone sensitivities.
"All human groups are existentially dependent upon humans. Colors are not."
But human colors are; they are "existentially" dependent on human... cone sensitivities.
""Red" is a human word referring to that which existed in it's entirety prior to our naming and descriptive practices involving the term."
Red refers to equivalence classes of spectra that human cones resolve.
Quoting creativesoul
"Even" is an equivalence class of integers. "Odd" is an equivalence class of integers. But "odd" is not an integer.
I think you're full of shit and you know it. Hence, you're all over the place, and now you've shown a pattern of feigning ignorance when I point out any of the problems with what you've been arguing here.
No longer interested in what you have to say here. Shame too, because it seems that you may be using current convention. If you're using it correctly... it's wrong.
This is still [b]the[b] problem.
I can't believe that anyone is still arguing with you, when you are clearly completely correct.
I usually don't like to try to win arguments by pointing out that I have an MIT degree in Cognitive Science and consequently I'm well-educated on certain issues. But I will pull it out now to say that I'm well-educated enough to know that InPitzotl is correct, and anyone here who wants to actually understand what colors are, should read everything he says carefully.
That's if they want to actually learn something. Those who wish to remain ignorant should carry on as they are, I suppose.
|>ouglas
:meh:
The more the merrier.
Thought you weren't interested?
Let's go back to this box of crayons. There are 96 crayons here; each is a distinct spectral distribution, and we see them as different colors. But that's kind of cheating, because these crayons were made for humans. Imagine our mantis shrimp has a box of crayons. There's 960 crayons in his box. When we open it up, we see one row in one compartment has crayons that all look like the same color yellow to us. Suppose one of these reflects only 700nm and 545nm light; call that crayon A; another reflects 570nm light only; call that crayon B. On the next row, however, we see orange crayons. Call one of these C.
So here's the key. Since each crayon reflects a single spectral distribution, then the two terms are pretty much analogous. So crayon=spectral distribution; crayons=spectra.
So, to the mantis shrimp, A, B, and C are different colors. To us, A and B are the same color; C is a different color. To Spot, who is a dichromat dog, A, B, and C are all the same color.
"Are you saying that no other animal perceives any of the sets of spectra we call 'red'"? Here, "are you saying that no other animal perceives any of the sets of crayons we call 'yellow'"? So let's get specific. We call crayon A and B yellow. There are two other animals; Spot, and the mantis shrimp. The mantis shrimp sees the set of crayons A and B. So does Spot. And why should this be surprising? The mantis shrimp and Spot both see; what has what they see to do with what we call things?
"No. I'm saying that no other animal perceives the set spectra that we call "red" as the same color."
Translation... no other animal perceives the crayons that we call 'yellow' as the same color. Again, we call crayons A and B yellow; and we call crayon C orange. Both the mantis shrimp and Spot see crayons A, B, and C (they see all of these spectra). But the mantis shrimp sees A and B as different colors. Spot sees A, B, and C as the same color.
Quoting creativesoul
Sounds good to me; yes, this is still the problem. If you don't get it now, I can do a "mathemagic" analog if you like next using numbers and equivalence classes as metaphors. But I can only explain this in so many ways; either you'll get it or you won't.
I'm interested in what's true. Not everything you've said is bullshit.
Let's talk about it.
Stating the case - no matter how simply it may be stated - is never cheating.
I'll take the time to actually address what you've said here.
Quoting InPitzotl
"The same color yellow to us"...
That's seems unnecessarily complex terminological use. I want to entertain the scenario of the mantis shrimp and the box of crayons, because I do believe that you know the names of all sorts of things, and as a result I've a certain amount of confidence that there's something to be gained by me individually as a result. I also entertain and still believe that there's something that others could gain as well, including but not limited to yourself.
Do you have any issue whatsoever agreeing that mantis shrimp have visual capabilities different to ours, as well as quite similar? They can distinguish between a greater number of spectral distributions than we can, and as a result, it makes perfect sense to say that they can see more colors than we can. Your earlier bit about all the different reds seems to be commensurate with all this as well. So...
I think we agree there. So... continuing on mantis shrimp, us, color vision capability and a box of crayons... Are you ok with the following, as it is stated?
We see one row in one compartment has yellow crayons. Not all of these crayons reflect the same spectra. We cannot distinguish between those spectra. And yet again... I think that we agree there. I want to see if our agreements can lead somewhere a bit more useful than our disagreements have led thus far.
Quoting InPitzotl
Counting seems off.
"Crayon", "spectral distribution", and "spectra" are the terms in use. I count three. You use three and further talk as if you'd only used two.
This needs reconciliation.
If crayons are spectral distribution and spectra, then spectra are equal to spectral distribution. That can't be right.
Spectral distributions consist of a plurality of particular frequencies or a single one.
The spectra emanating from an object consists of virtually countless possible combinations thereof(spectral distributions).
Thus... the two are not equal.
There is no such trinity of equivalency to be had here. Strict adherence leads rather quickly to meaningless nonsense and the inherent incapability to draw and maintain the actual distinctions that those terms are best utilized for.
Crayons are certainly not equal to either. Colors consist of different sets of spectral distributions that we've attributed the same namesake to. I'm granting that based upon granting the earlier bits about "yellow" being more than one spectral distribution. There are a plurality of different spectral distributions that we've named "yellow".
The light reflected by each and every crayon is not equal to the color we see when viewing them. The color we see is - in part - the result of our perceiving particular spectral distributions within the overall spectra being emitted from the crayons.
We do not see the entire spectra. We see parts of it.
The spectra emanating from an object changes along with light conditions. Along with that change comes a change in the colors we see when viewing it.
I am hoping that most or all of this is agreeable for you. I'll check back later. Sorry I could not further consider the example until this bit is at least tentatively agreed upon.
However, no color exists, and we can construct fake color schemes, or color mixing schemes, to resolve the situation. The real problem with color is that the electromagnetic spectrum is deeply involved, involving colors of wavelengths that cannot be perceived.
Each wavelength of light falls off as it travels through a material. If you take a fiberglass prism, it becomes smaller as it moves towards the blue end of the spectrum. This is because each wavelength has less color in it as it moves to the far red end.
I've can't keep track of what the disagreement here is precisely anymore. Why don't we table the discussion on whether there are colors for a moment and address an easier question: Are there chairs?
Well, of course there are chairs. I'm sitting on one right now!
But providing necessary and sufficient conditions for what is and is not a chair is no easy feat. Certainly a chair is designed to be sat on. Except there are toy chairs which are not meant to be sat on. And maybe art chairs that are also not designed to be sat on, but which everyone would recognize as a chair. There are also artistic representations of chairs, that everyone might recognize as a representation of a chair. But in the case of a Picasso representation of a chair, it might be difficult to ascertain how people who might live in this represented world might sit in the chair.
Of course, representations of chairs are not chairs, so it doesn't directly address the issue of whether chairs exists, but it does address the issue of whether representations of chairs exists (they do!) and understanding this is, I believe, important to our understanding of what chairs are.
To make matters more complicated, not everything that is meant to be sat on is a chair. There are stools, sofas, benches, etc.
So how do we know what is and isn't a chair? Well most of us can tell just by looking at something whether or not it is a chair. How do we do this? There's a simple answer to this and a complex one. The simple answer is that we have complex brains and perceptual organs with sophisticated information processing abilities that allow us to classify things into chairs and non-chairs. The complex answer is a very detailed model of how this particular information processing works.
There are of course some complications. For some physical objects, we might not be able to decide whether something is a chair or not. For other objects, we might be sure that something is a chair, but we might be surprised to learn that other people completely disagree on the object's chairness. For such objects, there may be no fact of the matter on whether the object is a chair.
Now let us consider animals. Are there any animals that could be trained to identify chairs from non-chairs. E.g., we might try with dogs. E.g., we could train some dogs that it's okay for them to poop on chairs and only on chairs. We could then figure out what a dog's notion of a chair is from what it will and won't poop on.
I'm sure that we could successfully achieve this goal for chairs that sit squarely in the center of chairness. But I feel confident, that dogs would be thrown off of by more artsy chairs. And perhaps by things that are more like stools with arms than chairs, etc. Sure we might keep trying to train them using art chairs and chair-like stools, etc., but I feel pretty confident that they would ultimately not end up having the same conception of chairs that humans do. I believe that we would learn with enough effort that no real animal (other than the human animal) is ever going to be able to properly distinguish chairs from non-chairs, despite the fact that chairs exist.
Now let's suppose that some aliens visit the Earth, and they want to know all about us. In particular, they are really interested in our notion of chairs, because they are having a hard time fathoming that chairs really exist. To them, our classification seems completely arbitrary. Why is one thing a stool and not a chair, and another thing a chair, even though it's in a museum and is not something that any human could comfortably sit on at all? Maybe these aliens with enough effort will eventually be able to distinguish chairs from non-chairs almost as well as humans. Or maybe they won't because their senses and their brains just work too differently from ours to be able to do so.
If they are very clever aliens, they might reverse engineer our brains, figure out the software contained therein, and leave Earth happy knowing that they have solved the mystery of what a chair is and now convinced that they do exist. Even if they can't classify chairs from non-chairs themselves, they can now build machines to do this classification for them. Once they have done this, they return happily to their home planet and program their factories to churn out all sorts of different kinds of chairs so that they can give them to each other as cool novelty gifts during their celebrations of Zmas.
Now rerun this argument mutatis mutandis for colors, and you will readily see that colors exist too, even though it might be very problematic for other creatures to distinguish colors as we do.
How do colours exist to the blind? No. Does hate exist to someone who has never had problems with anything? No. Does anything exist to someone who has never existed? No. When one thing exists it allows another thing to exist. Eyes=>colour, problem=>hate, exist=>things exist. One thing creates two things and two things create three things and three things create everything. For some it exists and for others it doesn’t so colour isn’t objective. If it’s not objective but subjective does that make it fake? Who know haha. If a human was born with consciousness but not thinking or senses what would exist for them?
Spectra are the light emitted from the crayon. Different animals perceive different spectral distributions - out of the spectra - than us. Some perceive more, some less, presumably some almost the same. Some spectral distributions cannot be distinguished between, although they are perceived. A and B for us. A, B, and C for Spot.
What color is seen depends upon both, the spectra emitted by the crayon and the creature's color vision capabilities.
We agree there.
Quoting Leviosa
That makes as much sense as saying that California doesn't exist for anyone who's never been there and is never going to go.
|>ouglas
So, it seems that we're not so much in disagreement aside from the claim you made that no other animal sees the frequencies that we call "red" as red. This seems odd to me because the red spectrum is not determined by us. Thus, if some other animal has similar visual capabilities perceiving and distinguishing the red spectrum from yellow and blue spectrum, there is no reason I can think of for them to not see red when frequencies along that spectrum are perceived by them.
We agree that there are colors. Our disagreement got clouded by all the jargon. Upon re-reading, had I understood then what I think I understand now, this conversation would have went differently. Much of the confusion rightly lands upon my own shoulders... although not all of it. My interlocutor has erred several times when speaking for me and when drawing analogies. However, I still have a modicum of respect for his/her opinion on the matter...
Chairs are not the same scenario though. Not at all. We - and only we - determine what counts as a chair. The same is not true with colors.
Quoting creativesoul
You're still confused over the same point. There are three completely distinct things here: (1) frequency, (2) spectral distribution, (3) color.
Photons hit spots on our retina; but they aren't confined to having single frequencies (1's); they have distinct frequencies. But there's some distribution of them depending on what you're looking at... more at some frequencies than others. Because each photoreceptor is sensitive to a range of frequencies, then it's the entire distribution (2) that matters, not individual frequencies. But a given photoreceptor is simply more sensitive to some frequencies than others... at the photopsin level, it either folds or doesn't, but just has a probability of folding per photon based on the photon's frequency. That means you can make it fold with a given probability in multiple ways; you can fire less photons at the more sensitive frequencies, or more at the less sensitive ones. Since what matters for detection is simply the raw number of photopsin events, and there's multiple ways of reaching that number, then we're not detecting (2)'s; we're detecting "numbers of events". This is like a math function; in goes the photons, out comes some result... but it's the output (3) of that function that matters... you cannot distinguish what you cannot discern. The function isn't one to one, so it loses information.
Your "frequency=color" theory is fundamentally flawed; that's a misconception. If you really care about truth, get rid of the false things you believe. Consider for example Mary, who has only one photoreceptor type; namely, L. As it happens, L cones are actually sensitive throughout our visual band; so she's going to "see" the same frequencies (1) as us, and she's going to "see" the same spectral distributions (2) as us. But she won't see color; the whole "point" of having multiple photoreceptor types is to see color... to make the distinctions I described in the last paragraph. Mary has one photoreceptor type. So, if Mary looks at a 700nm LED in a dark room, she will see it. If you look at a 700nm LED in a dark room, you will see it. But you see its color; Mary does not. But Mary does see a 700nm LED. Therefore, color isn't "seeing a frequency we call 'red'"; it's something else. Think that through carefully... as a hint, though, I've already told you what color actually is. It's an equivalence class of spectral distributions; it's the output of that function I described in the last paragraph.
This is really where you're choking, so spend time on it. Once you grasp it, you'll realize that every photoreceptor-type combination leads to a unique color gamut. Once you reach that phase, you should realize that whether or not other animals see what we call red is a function of whether or not they see the same equivalence class of spectra, which means they have photoreceptors with the same sensitivities we do, and that is the thing that, whereas possible, is unlikely.
I would argue that it is the same with colors. Color vision is far from only in the eyes. There is a lot of cognitive processing that is unique to humans that goes into our color vision. And even if it were the case that all of human color vision were determined only by our human eyes, the eyes of all animals and potential aliens are going to work differently and classify crayons differently.
|>ouglas
Quoting Douglas Alan
I should point out for clarity that Douglas's description of color here is different than the one I've been presenting to you. They are, however, both correct... they're just focused on different things. The color concept that I'm describing could be called "colorimetric color"; that is indeed only in the eyes. Colorimetric color is about what we can possibly discern; it's the principle subject of colorimetry. What Douglas is describing we could call "perceptual color", which we can say is in the brain (though really that starts in the eyes). Since I'm just trying to explain the fundamentals to you, I'm focusing entirely on colorimetric color. I defer to Douglas for the rest, since that's what he volunteered.
Thanks for the reply.
I agree that frequency, spectral distribution, and color are not equivalent. So, that is not where my confusion lies, if I am still confused about some things.
I also agree that photons travel along the same wavelength from emission through detection(photons have distinct frequencies); that different objects emit/reflect a plurality of photons, and each one at it's own frequency; that a given photoreceptor is simply more sensitive to some frequencies than others. I agree that there are different ways to cause that event(folding) such as less photons at frequencies that it's more sensitive towards or more photons at the frequencies it's less sensitive towards. All photons detected by photoreceptors travel along wavelengths within the range of frequencies that that particular photoreceptor is sensitive towards(that it is capable of detecting).
Quoting InPitzotl
This bit leaves me a bit confused though. When you say that "we're not detecting (2)'s; we're detecting numbers of events" are you referring to us or the photoreceptors under consideration?
Colors and color vision are not equivalent. I said that what chairs are is not the same as what colors are. The former is existentially dependent upon us, the latter is not.
I've never claimed that all of human color vision is determined only by our eyes, nor would I.
But that's another matter altogether... seeing chairs and seeing colors, and not what I'm currently focusing upon.
Sort of (changed from yes); I'm referring to the number of photopsin molecules (available for detection). (2) has a particular effect on our eyes. A different (2) could also have the same effect on our eyes. So call the former (2a), and the latter (2b). The effect is (3x); (2a) would have effect (3x), and (2b) would also have effect (3x). Since we can't distinguish (2a) from (2b), it doesn't make sense to say that we detect (2a). What we detect instead is (3x). 3x is "an equivalence class of spectra". 2a is just a member of that equivalence class. 2b is another member.
I don't consider chairs to be existentially dependent on us. Chairs could exist even if we didn't. There would just be no beings that had the concept of chairs or that could pick them out.
I.e., there are possible worlds in which there were never any humans, but in which there are chairs. And if there were never any humans in the actual world, there could still be chairs in the actual world, since there would be humans in possible worlds with the concept of chairs.
|>ouglas
When and where there have never been humans, there could not ever have been chairs. That's what existential dependency amounts to on my view... and it's my notion. It's about initial existence(emergence) not subsistence(continued existence).
Metamers.
Let us assume for a moment that modal realism is true. Let us consider a possible world in which there are no humans, but chimpanzees have managed to construct what we would consider to be chairs. Do not chairs then exist in this possible world, even though there are no humans there?
Now let's agree that model realism is not true. Does this change the existential status of chairs should they have been constructed by chimpanzees and humans never existed?
I assert that rejecting modal realism does not change the existential status of chairs made by chimpanzees in an actual world that never had humans.
|>ouglas
To rephrase my original response, colors need photons. Differing frequencies of different photons produce a different "sensation" to the human eye. Perhaps a more fruitful endeavor would be to go on www.webmd.com and find out all of the different parts of the human eye and also find out how modern medicine interprets how the human mind works. The study of the human brain is still to some extent in it is infancy.
Just in case you didn't know when light hits an object, if the object is blue the yellow and green waves are absorbed by the the object, the blue waves actually bounce off the object and hit the human eye. Its a gigantic geometrical calculation done by the human brain. A blue paint on the outside of the object makes the object blue.
That is not it. I guess I failed to formulate the question properly.
The point is colors do not actually exist, and that is a fact in the sense that in the outside 3d person empirical reality there are only electric and magnetic fields, and they are transparent. There is no field of purple or substance of green. Therefore, we do not see colors, we "see" something else as colors. For example, colors could be mapped to magnetic density or electric voltage scales, or different orientation of molecules, or even symbols and numbers in some higher order representation mapping.
Yeah. I do not place much value upon logical possibility alone.
Quoting creativesoul
Quoting InPitzotl
I'm still struggling a little bit here, particularly when I perform a substitution of terms with your proposed referents/definitions for those.
You first said we're detecting the sheer number of events, and then you say we're detecting an equivalence class of spectra. Either the sheer number of photopsin events is equal to an equivalence class of spectra, or you've contradicted yourself.
Do you follow me here? I hope so, because this part is causing me to have a hard time understanding what it is that you're saying. Any help to clarify and/or reconcile this incoherence would be very much appreciated.
I guess to me, to say that something exists is merely saying that there is a predicate that when applied to everything yields some results. E.g.
The set of all chairs is the set of all x such that P(x), where P is a predicate that is true for chairs and false for non-chairs.
(Let's ignore, for the sake of argument, the x for which there is no fact of the matter about whether x is or is not a chair.)
Now the predicate P that picks out chairs is going to be something that's very complicated. But a predicate is like a number. The number three would exist, even if there were no intelligent beings to comprehend the number three. Likewise, the predicate P that picks out chairs exists, even if there were never any humans to breathe life into P.
|>ouglas
Okay, but I'm a bit confused why you're struggling:
Quoting creativesoul
The idea here is correct (though the phrasing's a bit strange; "equals" is a relation between two quantities; "equivalence classes" are things that can define an equality relation).
Think of this mathematically; here's a simplified model. Say we have 100,000 photopsin molecules around for a particular photoreceptor. About 20,000 isomerize... that is the "shere number"; 3x. That suggests there's about a 20% chance each would isomerize. 2a would cause that; so would 2b. So there's an equivalence class of spectral distributions defined in terms of this effect, and that's what we measure with this photoreceptor. That 20,000 number is all we get; that's the effect; it doesn't tell us which spectra, just which equivalence class the spectra falls into... the class of spectra that would have about a 20% chance of isomerizing each of our photopsin molecules.
With three photoreceptor types, we get three such numbers; 20,000 of these, 30,000 of those, 25,000 of the other. That gives us more information, but still, there's an equivalence class of spectra defined by what thing has a 20% of isomerizing the first, 30% of the second, and 25% of the third. (Note that percentages are artificial; they are ratios per-hundred. We've already got a t for the "per-t"; that's the number of each photopsin molecules total. The percentages just help to think of the canonical form of ratios like this). That's what color is.
Please. I've given due attention, and I expect the same in return.
Attend to the explanation thereof. Every answer you need from me, at this time, is there. In short.. you're equivocating terms. When the light is shed on this... we further surmise that you've contradicted yourself.
Neither is acceptable.
Quoting Douglas Alan
When I say that something exists, I am simply abbreviating. The long version is more like...
Some things exist in their entirety prior to our awareness of them. Some things do not. Noting the difference between these sorts of things is pivotal to understanding what it is that we're discussing.
Some things existed prior to common language use. Predicates did not. Applying a predicate requires language use. Apple trees emerged onto the world stage long before humans developed the naming and descriptive practices that facilitate our ability to talk about the world and/or ourselves.
The sort of existence you've described here requires being part of language use. Some things owe their very existence to language use. Other things... not so much.
Looks like predicate logic to me. I could be dead wrong. I do not place an excessive amount of value upon either logic(classical) or predicate logic. To be perfectly honest, I temper the confidence I have in all logic by keeping the following fact in mind...
All logical notation is existentially dependent upon something to account for, and/or take an account of. All notation is existentially dependent upon common language use. All logical notation is existentially dependent upon common language use.
Predicate logic, when used as too strict a guideline for everyday thought and belief, places a linguistic boundary around that which is not linguistic.
Human thought and belief existed in their entirety prior to the very first logical notation. That which exists in it's entirety prior to something else cannot be existentially dependent upon that something else. Rudimentary level human thought and belief is not existentially dependent upon logical notion.
Logic is the result of thinking about pre-existing thought and belief. Such thought and belief does not consist of logic. Rather, it's quite the other way 'round.
If that were true then measuring requires only detection, reception, excitation, folding, and/or perception. According to this criterion, it would make sense to say that a mantis shrimp's eyes are measuring light frequencies and distributions...
Using a photoreceptor to measure requires complex thought and belief about how one sees the world via color vision capabilities. Otherwise, photoreceptors are just doing what they do which is not using tools specifically designed to increase our physiological sensory perception capabilities. All measuring is exactly that.
Nah. That's what your account of color is.
The number three is the name we've attributed to a specified plurality of things... a quantity. Numbers are names for quantities.
Predicates are descriptive practices. There are no such things without common language.
So...
That is where we certainly disagree.
Descriptive practices are existentially dependent common language. Predicates are as well. Numbers are names for quantities. Names are used to pick individuals out of the world to the exclusion of all else. Naming practices are existentially dependent upon common language use.
Common language use is existentially dependent upon language users. Everything that is existentially dependent common language is equally dependent upon humans. All predicates, and all names are existentially dependent upon humans.
Where there have never been humans there could have never been naming and descriptive practices.
I couldn't disagree more. Logic, like math, is discovered, not invented. Though I believe that everything that is invented is actually a form of discovery.
The predicate P that picks out chairs, existed as an abstract object in the space of predicates long before people existed. It will exist long after we are gone. It would exist if we never existed. Its existence is a necessary, eternal truth.
Likewise for the number pi. Likewise for all of math. Likewise for all of logic.
|>ouglas
You too with the equivocation...
:meh:
There are no numbers in nature, aside from our accounting practices. There are pluralities. There are no predicates in nature, aside from our descriptive practices. There are rudimentary level thought and belief. The most basic of these is perhaps the attribution/recognition of causality.
Moby Dick there too?
I wasn't equivocating, I was elaborating. Invention is discovery of something in the abstract space of that which can be invented. The word "discovery", however, often has a connotation of stumbling upon something, while the word "invention" has the connotation of creativity. All invention is discovery, though not all discovery is invention.
Quoting creativesoul
No, "three" is the name we give to the number three. The number three is not a name; it is an abstract entity that represents certain properties of a certain quantity.
|>ouglas
The number three is a specific mark of our own invention. We use "3" as well as "three" to pick out a specific quantity of individual things. We discovered quantities. Actually, I think it's a bit more accurate to say that we first take note of single things(one) and pluralities(more than one), and we do this long before using different marks to pick out particular quantities.(long before knowing the referent of "two" and 2)
If one is a modal realist, then of course Moby Dick has always existed and always will.
I'm not a modal realist, but I guess a Platonist of some sort. Though most of the professional philosophers I've met seem to be realists of some kind about mathematics, possibilities, etc. For me, yes, I am a realist about Moby Dick having always existed as an abstract entity in the domain of possible novels.
|>ouglas
If and when we meet space-faring aliens, I guess it will come to you as quite a surprise to you when they have "invented" the same math that we have. What will explain that, pray tell?
|>ouglas
Quoting Douglas Alan
Yeah. I do not place excessive value upon ideas that are based upon logical possibility alone. I've a hard leaning towards methodological naturalism accompanied by the unknown and a good dash of Occam's razor....
There's nothing supernatural about necessary truth, such as that which is expressed by mathematics.
Any intelligent space-faring beings will need to have discovered much of the same natural law that we have, along with much of the same necessary truths that we have.
|>ouglas
We see distinct colors prior to naming and talking about them.
There are some interesting studies I've seen that lead us to believe that the precision with which we categorize colors can be further increased/complicated by how we talk about them early on.
I find that interesting.
I agree. 3+2=5 because we won't let it equal anything else. Numbers are rigid designators. Kripke argued - quite successfully on my view - that names are as well.
That's incorrect. As you yourself say, "photoreceptors are just doing what they do". And what they do, with respect to responding to light, is send signals proportional to some amount of isomerization of photopsin molecules that they contain. That's it; nothing else. That thing is (3). And if (3) cannot distinguish between spectral distributions (2), then (3) cannot be said to measure which (2) you have. If (3) cannot distinguish frequency components (1) in a spectral distribution, (3) cannot be said to measure frequencies in a spectral distribution. (3) can do neither of these things, so it measures neither.
To reach your conclusion from the assessment requires conflating (3) with (1) and (2). My assessment contains no such conflating; that's all on you.
Quoting creativesoul
...doesn't quite seem so to me. Ignoring your flexing and crowing posts, the only thing you've demonstrated so far was a lack of understanding of what the assessment even is.
You are not talking about what the question is supposed to be.
The point is colors do not actually exist, and that is a fact in the sense that in the outside 3d person empirical reality there are only electric and magnetic fields, and they are transparent. There is no field of purple or substance of green. Therefore, we do not see colors, we "see" something else as colors. For example, colors could be mapped to magnetic density or electric voltage scales, or different orientation of molecules, or even symbols and numbers in some higher order representation mapping.
Quite to the contrary. All the evidence supports that much more is possible than is actual. And that math is inevitable once there are beings intelligent enough to discover it. Once we have math, we have theory of computation. Once we have that, we have the set of all possible programs. Once we have the set of all possible programs, one of the elements of that set is the program that Melville's brain instantiated. Once we have the program that Melville's brain instantiated, we have the set of all possible inputs to that program. Once we have that, we have the set of all possible outputs of that program. And contained in the set of all possible outputs is Moby Dick.
|>ouglas
I agree. That is not a correct report of what I wrote.
3+2=5 because it can't equal anything else. We have no power to let it equal anything else.
|>ouglas
Sans the labels, it's a direct quote. If you don't mean what you say, just say what you mean.
Mantis shrimp's eyes measure... what they measure. The question is what they measure. I define color in terms of what eyes measure in color vision; that's the colorimetric definition. If you're going to object to this, you need to phrase your objection in a form that actually means something, not just accuse me of equivocating by clumsily misrepresenting my assessment's implications.
Colors are properties, and properties exist.
|>ouglas
This line of reasoning leads to madness. You end up with nothing but quantum probability waves existing and nothing else.
|>ouglas
"The point is colors do not actually exist, and that is a fact in the sense that in the outside 3d person empirical reality there are only electric and magnetic fields, and they are transparent."
This is fun. You realize snakes see colors right? There are indirect ways of proving that. Perhaps we should argue that blue could be interpreted as red based on how the radio (eye is antenna and brain is the radio) (all communication devices whether passive or active have radios) wants to display the image. Perhaps the best way to look at it is, color is an enormous spectrum that can be modified with phase shift. Phase shift is taking a wave or a set of points that are plotted on a graph (not necessarily a set with a an easy to define pattern) and moving that whole set of points in either to the left or to the right. What this allows is for two different users (human and snake) to use the same colors to represent different light frequencies.
Let S = the set of all x where x is a sequence of English sentences.
Let T = the set of all s such that s is an element of S and s forms a story with a named whale in it.
I maintain that Moby Dick is an element of T, even in the counterfactual situation in which Moby Dick was never written.
Conclusion: The novel Moby Dick exists as an element of a set, even were it were never written.
|>ouglas
P.S. If you want to quibble about rigid designators, the novel that is in T in the counterfactual situation may not be the same novel as the one written by Melville, but it would have all the same words in the same order.
It's a simple logical fact. What is your objection exactly?
Sorrry, I did not know you are insane.
Aha. Forget I said anything, I'm out of here.
So, you are asserting, for instance, that people don't exist. Only quantum probability waves exist?
|>ouglas
But how do you know there are only electric and magnetic fields? Do you see them? Or you have inferred their existence? Would you have been able to infer their existence if you didn't see colors? No? So how can you say that electric and magnetic fields exist but colors do not?
Colors exist in the sense that you perceive them. If you assume they don't exist, you're assuming a great part of your perception doesn't exist. And if they don't exist, how do you know you're perceiving anything remotely close to reality? If reality is completely different from what you perceive then why would you trust anything that you infer from what you perceive?
Quoting InPitzotl
:meh:
Eyes do not measure. Anthropomorphism.
You're reaching. Eyes do this:
link
...and here's an example of you using that sense of the word measure:
Quoting creativesoul
So to dissect this more, eyes do not measure (m-w, entry 2, use 7) frequency components; and they do not measure (m-w, entry 2, use 7) spectral distributions. Instead, they measure (m-w, entry 2, use 7) equivalence classes of spectral distributions.
:meh:
An astute reader will note that it's a case of following from your use(s) and showing that it leads to a reductio ad absurdum.
So where is this reductio ad absurdum argument that I've been waiting now 7 days for you and/or some "astute reader" to present?
There are some problems with both 2) and 3).
With 2): The color that a material object appears to someone looking at it depends on the ambient light reflecting off it. (You may have been surprised after buying clothing in a store and then going outside and noticing it seems to be a different color in sunlight.) In addition, even one person's right eye and left eye can perceive color differently at the same time. As well as the Land effect, which is that color perception also depends on on the perception of colors surrounding something you are looking at. And so, the "color" of a material object depends on some things besides the object itself.
And with 3): Although physicists understand that it is the frequencies of light rays entering the eye that are the main determiners of how that light is perceived, there are actually infinitely many combinations of light rays that give rise to the same color perception. (The exceptions to this are pure spectral colors.)
At the very least, in order to speak intelligently about colors it's important to say which definition is being referred to.
Well, I'd say that an object reflects light according to its own physics and there definitely exists differences in the frequencies of light bouncing off an object into our eyes, as understood within the framework of the science of optics.
However, the color itself, as it appears to us, maybe mind-generated and thus, colors may not exist as an integral part of an object in view.
It maybe like a children's coloring book. Just like a child paints in the colors on the outlines of the figures in the book, our brains may also be doing something similar with mind-generated colors being projected onto the general outline of objects depending on what frequency of light is reflected into the eyes.
Both propositions are plausible.
Homer expresses it when Athena takes away the mist that covered her eyes (Il., V 128-129). Human beings do not see well, but perceive other things. We do not see color and we only see color (except if you suffer from achromatopsia).
The problem is another, already cited by Leibniz: that two scientific theories about the same objects in the world can be equally consistent in themselves, but inconsistent with each other.
Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)
Sorry.
I'm not sure why there is still said to be a "philosophical problem" of color. I'm sure there must be something very wrong with my way of thinking about it. How could it be so simple:
It turns out that what we characterize as similarities and differences of color in visual perception correspond to similarities and differences in the wavelength or frequency of light. Our specific color concepts, like "red" and "green", correspond to specific ranges of wavelength of light. We may say instances of light in the range of wavelength corresponding to a such a color-concept are instances of "light of that color", or instances of "light with that color"... I'm not sure it matters what particular phrases we employ for this purpose.
It seems to me we might as well say an instance of light in the range of a color-concept is an instance of that color. In other words, colors exist in the natural world: An instance of color is an instance of light. An instance of light is an instance of color. "Color" is another word for light, or another word for the "property" of light called its "wavelength" or "frequency".
Is there some reason this way of thinking about color is not generalizable to light of any wavelength? Do we need to limit the concept to the range of "visible light"? Visible to which sort of perceiver...?
Our perception of color is partial and sometimes confused, somewhat as our perception of shape is partial and sometimes confused. Should we say that problems of threshold, partiality, context, or illusion are somehow more severe or perplexing in the case of perception of color than in perception of brightness, or loudness, or pitch...?
Accordingly, we might say the light-relative features or properties of a visible thing are also color-relative features or properties. Where we say a thing emits, reflects, absorbs, or transmits light, we may say a thing emits, reflects, absorbs, or transmits color (or if you insist, ..."colored light", or ..."light of some color").
Ordinary talk about "red things" would be unpacked as loose talk about things that emit or reflect red light. I see no reason to insist a thing that looks red "under ordinary circumstances" must be said to be red, to have under all circumstances the property of "redness" or of "being red". It seems simpler to say this thing has light-relative properties which make it emit or reflect red light in some circumstances and not in others, and no more.
It all depends on how you define colors. If you define colors as indicators our eyes and brains perceive from the varying electromagnetic spectrum that hits our eyes after having bounced of an object that rejected that particular frequency (red rose rejects red light), then yes colors exist. Also the typical definition of color common (substantial subset of population) to most people, colors also exist.
Perhaps with a different definition of light, then colors in that case don't exist.
Yes: the quality of the experience itself (the qualia). This is not decomposible.
So far as I can tell, there are things in the world called dogs, and things in the world called perceptual experiences of dogs, and it's advisable not to get our thoughts about the two confused. Likewise with colors and experiences of colors.
I take it the question I've been addressing here is primarily a question about colors, not about the experience of colors.
Of course we acquire and refine our conceptions of things in the world on the basis of experience.
We acquire and refine our conception of color on the basis of experience, specifically with respect to objective features of our experience of colors, much as we acquire and refine our conception of dog on the basis of experience, specifically with respect to objective features of our experience of dogs.
We refine "empirical concepts" like these in the course of what we might call empirical investigation, or phenomenological investigation, or investigation of nature... such phrases mean about the same thing to me.
That's the sense in which I was addressing the question "do colors exist". As if it were a question about colors, not a question about experience of colors.
Of course the investigation of things doesn't stop at the boundary of our sense receptors. Each of our external senses puts us in touch with phenomena in its own special way. So the sort of objective phenomena corresponding in general to visual or auditory perception, for instance -- the things outside our heads that we call light and sound -- play a special role in our experience of the world as well as in our phenomenological investigations, our investigation of nature, of the world as it appears to us.
The experience of color and brightness is correlated with objective properties of light, as the experience of pitch and loudness is correlated with objective properties of sound. The special role of these features of our experience and of the correlated features of the world outside our heads consists in the fact that light is a factor in all our visual perception, and in the fact that sound is a factor in all our auditory perception.
So whenever I am in position to make observational judgments about a dog on the basis of visual perception, I am in position to make observational judgments about light on the basis of the same visual perception. All I need do is vary the concepts according to which and in terms of which I make observational judgments on the basis of the same perception. Likewise, when I'm in position to make observational judgments about a dog on the basis of auditory perception, I'm in position to make observational judgments about sound on the basis of the same perception.
It seems the same perceptual occasion likewise puts me in position to make observational judgments about the one who perceives the dog and the light, the perceiver, namely myself. And it seems I may follow the lead of such experiences in various ways, for instance depending on whether I aim to investigate or otherwise interact with the thing in the world called the dog, or the thing in the world called the light in virtue of which I see the dog, or the thing in the world called the perceiver of that dog and that light.
I suppose we may say the determination of an "object of perception" depends in part on the "perceptual experience" -- the perceptual "phenomena" or "appearances" -- of a given perceptual occasion, and in part on the conceptual capacities exercised on that occasion regarding those perceptual appearances.
By contrast, the "qualitative character" or "qualia" of perceptual experience are notoriously difficult to characterize, for anything we might say to describe the character of their appearance seems to correspond to some objective feature of the world, for instance in the way that our experience of brightness and color is correlated with objective properties of the light outside our heads, and in the way that our experience of anything is correlated with things and processes inside our heads.
The difficulties associated with talk of qualia have led me to brush the concept aside in my own discourse on experience. For my purposes, it's not clear what I might gain by following that difficult and dubious path. Of course I don't throw out the baby with the bathwater. I continue to speak of sentience and introspective awareness. I still find occasion to speak of "subjectivity" or the "subjective character" of experience, but in such cases I take it I'm merely characterizing the respect in which any experience involves and is relative to "a subject", the thing in the world that "has" the experience in question -- the one who "has appearances" and "is appeared to", the one who "has awareness" and "is aware". For instance, this speaking animal.
Perhaps you've made more progress than I have in sorting out the difficulties associated with talk of qualia. Does the concept of composition help in this regard? I'm not even sure I understand how that term is supposed to apply in this context:
What does it mean to call a thing composed or composable, decomposed or decomposable, in the relevant sense?
I wonder, is everything that is decomposable a thing that has been composed? And is everything that is not decomposable a thing that is not and cannot be composed?
For instance, should we say abstract objects are not composed or composable, hence are not decomposable, and that all perceptible things, and all or nearly all physical things, are composed and composable, hence decomposable?
Does it help us to understand colors, to say that our experience of colors has subjective features that are "not decomposable"? Does it help us to understand dogs, to say that our experience of dogs has subjective features that are "not decomposable"?
We can't fully understand redness without having experienced it. Suppose you'd never experience either red or blue, but you knew all the physical aspects of these colors (the physics of reflected light, wavelengths, the mechanisms of visual perception...). I present to you 2 balls: a red and a blue. Can you identify which is which?
Dogs are a bit different. You could learn enough about the characteristics of dogs that you could pick one out of a lineup. The difference is composition: dogs can be uniquely described by a set of properties you can recognize.
Some abstractions are decomposible, others are not. Squares can be decomposed; a point cannot.
This is kind of a tricky question; it's asking for an intuitive answer, but the intuitions don't necessarily hold. The real answer to this question is, possibly. A person who both has never experienced red or blue, and lacks knowledge of the physical aspects of those colors, still might nevertheless be able to distinguish red from blue; such an individual is merely qualifying for type 1 blindsight. Technically a person who has knowledge might be able to distinguish by some "trick", but persons with type 1 blindsight can distinguish by "unknown non-conscious means".
This leads to even tricker questions. (a) Does such a person experience redness non-consciously? (b) Could such a person experience redness non-consciously?
When one considers the physical mechanisms of sight, I expect it would be possible to physically intervene, and artificially produce the nerve impulses that lead to the phenomenal experience, but even so, the mental phenomenon seems irreducible. We can consider it something like a hallucination, but it is a hallucination that correlates with the world.
Quoting InPitzotl
I don't think it makes sense to say we can have non-conscious experiences. The quale "redness" IS the experience, according to the paradigm anyway.