Perception
Does the color red exist outside of the subjective mind that conceptually designates the concept of red?
If there is no mind to experience and conceptually designate red does red ever aquire an inherent existence independent of a third party mind?
In my personal opinion all phenomena occur as experience, and experience is merely a mental form of consciousness. Awareness/consciousness is as vital to the existence of all phenomena as a canvas is to the existence of a painting.
If there is no mind to experience and conceptually designate red does red ever aquire an inherent existence independent of a third party mind?
In my personal opinion all phenomena occur as experience, and experience is merely a mental form of consciousness. Awareness/consciousness is as vital to the existence of all phenomena as a canvas is to the existence of a painting.
Comments (1455)
You would answer: Colour vision deficiency (CVD), right?
But why does this happen? Can I see something red without realising it is red? How can I experience the reddish?
If you can be assured there is radiation, why can't you be sure there's red?
I'm sure there's red. Do you know of a good reason to doubt colour realism?
The concept of red and the property of redness belong to the whole community. You can speak of them either subjectively or objectively. When you say you've had the experience of seeing red, that terminology is subjective. If I say you need to stop at the red sign, now I'm speaking in objective terms.
We don't really know how consciousness works. Does it only exist on this one little planet? Or is it an aspect of everything? Who knows?
Quoting jkop
You describe environment X that interacts with perceiver Y and the perceiver has the subjective state of seeing red.
Without Y, what can be said of X? How do you know it exists and what are its properties?
I would pay for experiencing that experience. How would it be? Like the sweetness of a candy or the sharp odour of non-drinking water?
We naturally see the world in colors. just naming something red is a social convention. that this shade is red. basically it's physics. All colors are reflected, and only one color is moved by the object - red. optical phenomenon. wavelength. and the retina in the eye sends the message to the brain, which processes and evaluates it. I have a color vision disorder, so when there are several colors together, I have trouble distinguishing them from each other.. ? ?
Red is Arizona, driving toward Phoenix. It smells like burning Juniper.
But could we experience the red colour itself?
Sort of. I could ask an artist if she's familiar with true Prussian blue, and if she is, ask her to create it with paint. In this case, Prussian blue isn't the property of any particular object, although the name is attached to a unique synthetic chemical. The artist and I are talking about the color itself.
So the experience of seeing the color itself involves ignoring the medium. I'm not saying everyone can do that. I don't know.
Or do you mean that you remove all perceivers so that the biological phenomenon no longer exists, yet ask how does one know that it exists? Your question makes no sense.
For example, a colour blind person who doesn't see red can still know that there exists such a phenomenon by studying those who can see red, study colour tables, spectrometers etc and find out which of them one is unable to perceive. Being colour blind does not mean that there is a problem in colour science.
What is more fascinating is that anyone understands what one is referring to with regards to a supposedly private object that no one has access to but we feel the idea about shared judgments on a common public property of an object is somehow found wanting.
Pigments and light, however, exist, and they are disposed to cause colour perceptions systematically enough to warrant the public labels that they have.
One might add that what exists subjectively (i.e. only for the one who sees the colour) is the seeing, but the object that one sees is the pigment or the reflected bundle of light rays.The seeing is private but the object that is seen is public.
Just as a data point, colour perception is much more complicated. See colour constancy for a start. What we "see" is the world as we imagine it in a good strong "white" light.
And then what we "see" as red is more about what we have determined to be the contrast of being "not green". See opponent channel processing.
So the step from the physical reality to the cognitive modelling is a slippery one, most especially with colour experience.
That being of course why colour perception becomes the paradigmatic example of folk wanting to argue for an idealist position on phenomenal experience. The science becomes too twisty for the average physicalist to chase them all the way up to that redoubt. The ineffable redness of red seems so detached from the reality that it is meant to represent that cognitive representationalism must be wrong.
Which it is. But cognitive science has moved away from representationalism itself in recent times, thankfully. A more suitably enactive or embodied approach is being taken again.
If "red" is just in your mind, when you ask for a red pen, how is it that the person you are asking hands you what you want?
Is there an article in Nature about the that?
Sometimes, they don't. Or, they are wrong.
You mean like this? - https://www.nature.com/articles/nrn2787
"Surprise rests on predictions about sensations, which depend on an internal generative model
of the world."
"Perception optimizes predictions by minimizing free energy with respect to synaptic activity (perceptual inference), efficacy (learning and memory) and gain (attention and salience). This furnishes Bayes-optimal (probabilistic) representations of what caused sensations (providing a link to the Bayesian brain hypothesis)."
BBH is a representational hypothesis. I think we must be talking about two different embodied approaches. The one I'm familiar with is a descendant of Heidegger. It's not something a scientist would know what to do with.
Where is yours defined? What theory are you talking about?
It's in the SEP article on embodied cognition. Look at the paragraph on phenomenology. I guess it's an extreme version of the idea?
So when you call Friston more representationalism, I would say no, it is different. It has the triadic structure of a semiotic modelling relation.
Sure the mind is a model. But representationalism treats that as meaning a mechanics of mental display. To say the mind is instead a modelling relation leads us to the opposite of that. It becomes instead a tale of accumulating unconscious habits of action.
You dont want the nervous system flooding the brain with all this news about the world. Bayesianism is about instead making that news so boringly already predicted that the whole business of displaying it can be avoided. The world can be forgotten as quickly as it happens as you have already moved on.
Of course, there must still be the higher level process of attention to mop up the information that couldnt be automatically assimilated. But that becomes more of the same - still embodied, just over a longer timescale.
We might have to turn our heads, prod with our fingers, shift to one side. We might have to explore to unravel what was unfamiliar or otherwise a momentary source of uncertainty in our world.
But even in half a second, a way to compress the uncertainty and turn it into another forgettable certitude can be achieved by a Bayesian Brain.
So the flip from Cartesian display to the Pragmatic modelling relation is this one. First rule is dont even display to the degree you can habituate. Then when forced to briefly poke around and figure it out, add that learning to your stock of embodied automaticisms and get back to functioning as unconsciously as you can.
What use is awareness after the fact? That is too late. Minds need to be always ahead of the game by doing the Bayesian thing of minimising surprisal.
I think we just have a terminology issue. For you, the word "representation" means Descartes. That's confusing to me because most theories about cognition are representational, but not Cartesian.
The telephone system is an example of that. When you speak into a phone, an electric signal is generated by the microphone. That signal is sampled to create a digital stream. That stream is transmitted and then used to generate an audio signal that's sent to a speaker. This is a representational system, in fact it involves three different representations, but there's nothing Cartesian about it. See what I mean?
Descartes argued for a separation of hardware and software - a dyadic separation of that kind. And computer science claimed that separability as what technology could then implement and so create AI.
This is a tradition of thought we are talking about. And it led to global workspace type models of brain function. There was always this thought the data must be displayed somewhere, and thus also always the homuncular regress this implied. Tactics like eliminativism or supervenience were employed to shut the critics up.
Quoting frank
Surely you can see what a bad example that is. When is information actually information in any normal sense? When it is in the post or when it is being written and read?
? The telephone system is run by a computer. What I described is the way representation is understood in the computational theory of mind.
And to the degree that CTM was a stab at a theory of mind, its signal failure was being able to show how symbol manipulation syntax ever connected with semantics. The place where messages get understood or at least acted upon in some mindful way.
So it is not that Cartesianism duality works. It is that computationalism steered cognitive science in that extreme direction for a while. A perhaps useful information technology metaphor was turned into the first AI revolution crushing the more biologically-realistic neural network community for a while.
Do you want a schematic?
You want a serious answer about how the telephone system is run by a computer? What's your background in electronic engineering?
Well I wanted a serious answer in terms of the beliefs that led to a stampede into symbolic processing as the way to crack consciousness in the 1970s and 1980s. Before your time perhaps?
Quoting frank
As in most things, surprisingly good.
Yes (e.g. a community more than any "subjective mind" that uses the public conventions of "stop signs" & "traffic lights"; see below).
Yes (e.g. thermal EM radiation from stars, etc). The "experience" may be "subjective", though "red" is acquired publicly, but (except for those who are colorblind) what "red" corresponds to in every instance (e.g. EM frequencies) is not "subjective".
Exactly Banno! BUT what if the concept of a red pen exists within the realm of every subjective minds ideas?
I am considering this: perhaps these ideas are visions in the brain, independent of the individuals subjective experience. The subjective mind possesses ideas, but not in the same way the brain perceived/s them. Ideas are interpreted differently by the brain in its visions, and these interpretations may or may not align with how a subjective being perceives these visions as ideas in their mind or in their interactions with the environment.
What if thinking thoughts* is just the brain existing/being, rather than the subjective body/minds doing?
Imagine if two sets of ideas are formed from two different visions - one grounded in reality and first-hand experience in daily life, and the other in the brains second-hand experience, experienced for the first time in this life. What if the brain had a first-hand experience before the subject had to live through it? Could it be that the brain was here first and is controlling our intentions?
*the act of thinking-that thinking might be an emergent property of the brains activity, rather than an action performed by the subjective mind
This is interesting because this issue generalizes. It may be that there is no such thing as agreement in anything. Yes, we assume that there is, but what if we're wrong? What if the thing we're calling agreement is really just a matter of behavior and speech?
On the one hand, this lays the whole issue of abstract objects to rest, because that idea emerges from a foundation of supposed agreement between thinkers. We're thinking of the same number, or the same proposition. That's where the idea of abstract objects comes from. But what if there's nothing but utterances programmed by biology? Like birds in a yard, if you hear a certain tonal sequence, you respond with another to address the problem, whatever that may be.
At first glance, it looks like the intellect itself becomes an odd sort of... illusion. You can't even agree with yourself from one moment to the next. There's no continuity that would allow for concepts or universals. Food for pondering would be: is that even possible?
The reason a quality like color doesn't extend beyond the object is because it is a quality of the object, not the mind. The changes in color within objects and the differences between them are due to changes in the objects themselves, like when a banana turns green to yellow as the chlorophyll breaks down.
Quoting Mp202020
Any experience is subjective in the sense that it exists only for the one who is having it. But there is ambiguity in talk of 'subjective' and 'experience of redness'.
First, the experience cannot solely be an experience of redness unless it is the seeing of something red, say a patch of red paint. Or else it would be an hallucination.
The quality of the paint and the conditions under which it is seen fix its visible appearance..That's what there is to see for any observer, and to see its redness, hue, saturation etc. is an epistemically objective experience. The redness of the paint is measurable even with a colour meter.
So, although the experience of redness is ontologically subjective (as it exists only for the one who is having it) it is also epistemically objective as the redness of the paint is open to view!
Observers may have different abilities, habits, interests, backgrounds etc. that influence their experiences of the paint. These are epistemically subjective features of experience that might result in disagreements. Yet there is seldom disagreement about what there is to see when it's open to see and investigate, e.g. whether the paint is red, whether one patch is darker or lighter or more saturated than another etc.
Quoting Kizzy
Is a red pen not enough?
I wonder how we see yellow when the retina has three kinds of photoreceptor cone and none are tuned to yellow as their frequency?
Howard Pattee would be my usual go to. Not the simple argument but the exact argument...
I recall you saying when the color is unseen, the question whether it exists isn't referring to the color perceptions but its considering the conditions in the environment it as a color can emerge from/in/with. Does that mean the brain cant allow colors to emerge from it because no light is there? What if the conditions of the mind could be trained to use ideas or visions from past memories or brain activity patterns? Maybe i'm missing a fundamental understanding and my loosely thrown ideas aren't even realistically possible. Thank you. I think... :smirk:
EDIT: Quoting jkop I got ya now and see where I went off the rails.
EDIT 2: 119AM 7/30/24
What if we watch the brain activity looking at a painting of a red pen? The painting itself is not a real pen, but it still conveys the idea of redness and pen to anyone who views it.
Okay, wow, this is fascinating - thanks. I know a little bit about semiotics but I didn't realize these ideas had already progressed so far. I originally come from a computer science background, and the inanity of the AI folk made me think that everyone was on the wrong path. But this article and your own points demonstrate that some are on the right path, actively developing it. A pleasant surprise.
You would know it when that person handed you the 'red pen. If that person mistakenly hands you a blue one, you should ask for a red one instead. Another example of how colours are social conventions. At the very least, the person is obeying by handing over the pen.
Quoting javi2541997
Not when marking papers. Another lost skill.
By stipulating that you are speaking specifically of the subjective experience of red (as opposed to the ability of objects to reflect certain wavelengths of light), then redness cannot exist without an observer to interpret visual images as "red".
Our ability to remember and imagine and dream is astonishing. It's fairly easy to imagine what a red pen might look like, or a floroucent pen that glows red in the dark etc. Past memories might help, but with basic language skills one can compose infinitely many descriptions of what a red pen looks like, or might look like, in real or fictional worlds etc.
However, I don't know how to imagine what it might be like to see something invisible, or a pen that is red yet green in the same respect. It's easy to write or say, but not so easy to imagine.
Quoting Kizzy
Empathy is the ability to experience what someone else is experiencing. Since someone elses experience is not open to view, we must access it indirectly via languages, verbal, pictorial, interpretation of gestures etc
That's basically how a painting conveys experiences. In the late 1800s and early 1900s empathy theory was used for explaining works of art and architecture.
I mean, the name is a social convention and being able to pick it out might be a matter of cultural norms, but the color itself probably has to do with our biology, right?
Did you know the eye has evolved independently about 50 times on earth? Crazy.
Quoting frankI had only heard of human and octopus, and thought that was amazing!!
It depends on what you mean by "the colour itself". Our sensitivity to certain wavelengths of light, and the fact that some of our retinal cells are more sensitive to some wavelengths than other ones, is certainly a matter of biology. How we actually experience that colour, perhaps not. I mean, I still think it's biological, but not necessarily entirely biology we're born with - biology that is developed in the brain by use and adaptation.
Colour vision and the use of colours evolved millions of years before dogs, humans, and socially biased conventions. Colours are used as natural signs for fresh food, nutrients, fertility, health, camouflage etc.
It is astonishing, I do agree! I could go on and on and on and on about all the potential and power in/of/from our abilities to do many things BUT no.
The ability to recall memory, IMPRESSIONS, dreams, daydreams is yes astonishing, like you said. I think its equally impressive that ability we have (consciously or not) to block or "black-out" memories as well. I find myself throwing out this question from time to time when relevant to the discussion being had: If I am daydreaming while I am driving or lets say daydreaming during a group conference call or daydreaming during a Zoom meeting, could it be considered, multitasking?
Ha! You say, "It's easy to write or say, but not so easy to imagine" I wish it was easier for me write, say, and communicate the words that race through my mind. I cant even catch up or comprehend it for myself half the time... Forget discuss. The fire in the imagination is "communicated" to me in the privacy of my mind. The fire burns and I think getting out what I can is important. If I am wrong, it matters even less. The fire seems to be controlled though in a way. It just stops and its gone. No smoke, no ash. Like it never happened. Just me and my next move to worry about....
I want to continue with my inquiry a bit more if you don't mind,
Are impressions causes to remember? What is relevance, if any, to the speed one is recalling a memory? How much are you actively trying to "think" about a memory you may or may not recall completely...
- "I would've never guessed that?"
- "C'mon! Give me a hint, I will remember!"
- "Do I know it?"
- "Wait, what was that lovely ladies name we met at the mall?
- "Oh no, I forgot her name!
- "Hold on, its on the tip of my tongue."
- "Give me a minute..." *she stops moving and shuts eyes*
- "Let me THINK", *brain is directed and in FOCUS*
- TIME PASSES [choose your own pace]
- "ALICE! It was ALICE!"
- "Damn, I'm good"
Do we use our "words" and basic language OR our "thoughts" and basic language skills to communicate the message to self. How can talking to our self out loud differ from talking to ourselves privately in the our mind? Is the last "Let me THINK" above, the/a trigger that the body needs to feel to start focusing intentionally? Its almost like we are hyping the body up to find the will [1]* to focus for one moment. Or forever? How long it matters for you only, then...
I wonder if we are actually navigating while recalling a memory (that we are SURE we know and will remember)[2]* Also, how fixed are the memories and how strong/how deep are/can the impressions be or vise versa - how weak and how shallow controlling the search for memories. If recalling something learned is it relevant to consider when the knowledge WAS shared (entered the brain via communicated in some form)[3]* and if that has anything to do with how information is retained completely...hearing? perceptions? interests? location? circumstance? complexity of understanding? Is time constraining at all this process of recollection?
Lastly, Is it reasonable to forget after certain amount of time or strain? What about just plain ole bad memory - short or long term, it doesn't matter at the moment. I also tend to mention the term "Forgetfulness". Forgetfulness VS Memory. Is memory a skill? Is forgetting a skill? What was the cause to forget? Is that natural to try and actively forget something?[4]*
I appreciate the thoughtful responses, guidance and patience you expressed in replying even if you didn't mean to be or do that...It's worth saying even if I am wrong. I am glad you were encouraging and welcoming for further discussion on some ideas a bit deeper. It's important I think because for me I can understand how it can be intimidating to contribute in a thread you may not be an expert in or fully up to speed. Its okay to slow it down and set the pace for yourself although I don't blame people for hesitating to contribute...BUT to those people I'd only say this: Doubt your self but not for too long!
Thanks
Are you referring to the light that reflects those colours right? because the amount of cone cells in the electromagnetic spectrum and the colour wheel differs. As a result, although humans and animals sense colour in different ways, we are both simultaneously stimulated by light.
The "natural sign" is the light not the colours.
We can even perceive the colours in different shadows and reflectances! Our eyes are tricky. Let's play the following classic illusion game:
A regularity between a cause and the perception it creates between two different people. It is at least the case with colour-blind people, who will often still give you the right pen, even though we know they don't see the same as we do, as the shade of brown of red is a bit different than the shade of brown of green.
Quoting Hanover
Mary's room?
I'm referring to the biological evolution of colour vision.
Quoting javi2541997
Huh?
Quoting javi2541997
Why would you want to get rid of the colours?
Objects and materials reflect, scatter, or absorb light in different ways depending on their physical and chemical properties. Several hundred million years ago organisms adapted and began to use the behaviour of light for seeing objects, materials, nutrients etc.
What matters for an animal is what it sees, e.g. a flower, not the light nor the mechanism that together enable the seeing.
Quoting javi2541997
The eyes of a mantis shrimp are way trickier.
Quoting javi2541997
Why? Arguments from illusion suck.
:up:
Quoting jkop
How does an animal know that it is seeing a colour? These are part of the human vocabulary and language. A dog expresses himself using the sound word and a cat meow etc. I can agree with you that the cone cells and perception of colours in animals have been evolving, but colours are still something related to vocabulary and social conventions. I dont know if my dog sees that the ball is red, or, more specifically, if she is aware that the ball is red or not.
Quoting jkop
Yep. But is the mantis shrimp 100% aware of its beautiful colour scale?
Quoting jkop
That game demonstrates how colour is arbitrary. In my opinion, it effectively illustrated the significance of light, shade, and shadows in our discussion. There are many more, but if you consider them to be useless, I will not disclose them.
You didn't respond to this, so I'll fill in the argument a bit.
If you ask for a red pen and are indeed usually handed a red pen, then red is not just in your mind; at the least it is also in the mind of the other person.
But also, the red pen satisfies both you and your helper. We agree that the pen is red, so "red" belongs to pens as well as to minds.
So there is something odd about claiming red is no more than a perception.
Yeah.
It would be interesting to think about the eventual scenario where you have to teach the helper what the red pen is. When I attended kindergarten, teachers taught us the colour wheel without questioning it by ourselves. We just accepted that red is red and orange is orange. Otherwise, if a child ever dared to colour a sun purple instead of yellow, he would be called a weirdo.
So, it deserves a lot of recognition for how silently those social conventions enter our knowledge. We think they have always been there, but they havent.
By seeing it or knowing its conditions of satisfaction.
Quoting javi2541997
No, it demonstrates colour vision under selective conditions of observation. Not the same under ordinary conditions in which colour vision evolved.
So not like dawn or dusk? Hmm.
From a neuroscience view, the point of colour vision is not because the world is coloured. Or even because it makes vision aesthetically pleasing. It just evolved to make the shape of objects pop out of the visual clutter. We can instantly compute that an object is an object because it is all "one thing" as betrayed by its light scattering surface.
A ripe fruit pops out of the clutter that is green bush. Mammals had given up and downgraded to two cone vision as that was enough. Primates added back a third cone precisely where it would create a sharp bivalent contrast between red and green in terms of the light frequency being scattered.
Likewise the colour vision "module" in the primate brain is right where you would expect. Part of the shape decoding and object recognition brain pathway.
So we evolved not to see red but to see fruit in a world otherwise many shades of tan and khaki. Trees likewise evolved red fruit to call in the seed dispersal brigade.
That red "looks like something" ineffable redness is not nature's point. The point is what red emphatically does not look like. And that is green.
You can see this counterfactuality baked into the circuitry of the opponent channel process of the retina.
We both agree the pen is red, but because weve been conditioned to agree it is red. But what we actually perceive may be different and wed be non the wiser.
Id have you go a step further by considering how you use red.. its more than the subjective mind that conceptually designates the concept of red.
So how could that conditioning work were there not already red things in the world?
And how could someone hand you the red pen unless they understood much the same thing as you about the world?
But, who is to say that we are actually perceiving the same subjective experience of color? If weve all been conditioned to say something giving off the same wavelength is red, then we would all be able to agree on what red is.
However, it is plausible that the subjective experience of red may differ, and we would never know.
Some folk say red is a particular wavelength of light as if that answered your question. Folk managed to make use of the word well before we understood what wave length is.
But it seems we agree there are red things around in the world.
So if what you see as red were different to what I see, how would that make itself apparent? What would that mean for the notion of red? Which pen would you hand me?
Okay. Let's say the mantis shrimp sees red pigment. When it sees it, what does the mantis shrimp call it? "Red", "rojo", "rosso" etc. This is the point I am trying to make. When the light does the reflexion on 'red', it could be that the mantis shrimp sees it, but I don't know to what extent the animal is aware that the reflected colour is called 'red'.
Quoting jkop
Hmm... I think the drawing shows the importance of light and shade in colours. It is not only a matter of observation which is also important but how the colours are projected and, therefore, how we perceive them. I don't think we could be able to perceive a colour without light and shade getting involved.
Imagine you ask a colour blindness for a 'red' pen, and he gets it right handing you the red pen. Why did this happen? Your colour-blindness classmate gave up his biological condition to accept the agreement of the concept of red.
Id rather not fall into semantic rabbit holes
So red does not seem to be something only in the mind.
I really do appreciate the time youve taken to discuss with me Banno.
But if red refers to the experience, then when you say red it refers to your experience, but when I say it it refers to my experience. If we are going to be talking about the same thing then we need something that we both have access to.
From a materialistic perspective, red is a specific light wavelength. This is universal.
But the subjective experience of red may be the same, or perhaps different, and we wouldnt ever know because weve grown up and been conditioned to point to the same wavelength and call it red.
So how do we demarcate the objectivity of red from our experience of red other than it being merely a word?
Quoting Lionino
If thing J causes experience X in person A and experience Y in person B, everytime person A uses the word that to him makes him think of X, we will think of Y instead. We assume our experience X and his experience Y are the same because there is no reason to suppose otherwise. We suppose otherwise when there are known physiological facts about him:
Quoting Lionino
Bang. What reason is there to think that red is more than a word we use for certain purposes?
Quoting Mp202020
Even if this is so, "red" can't mean "Light with a frequency of around 430 terahertz"...
After all, folk who do not know this use the word quite adequately. And we don't see light, we see with light. It's the pen that is red, not the light. (Some folk have quite a bit of trouble with this simple observation.)
Under the umbrella of realism- red must represent some state of external reality that when manifesting visually becomes red. Perhaps this means photon wavelength, or perhaps some other external means weve yet to understand. Then red simply exists as a verbal pointer to that specific external state (whatever it may be) that is experienced as red.
Under the umbrella of idealism- this entire question loses its significance. Perhaps reality is solipsistic? Perhaps red is frequency of mind-thought experiencing itself as red and we dont have to worry about subjective discrepancies of whatever red is because theres only one objective/subjective reality? Could go a billion ways with that umbrella. In that sense, red is only an experience whichever direction you want to take it. Asking what the true nature of red is loses all meaning
Well, that's not right, either, it seems. The red of a sunset is very different to the red of a sports car, or the red of a sore eye.
Indeed, the presumption is that there is something that all red things have in common - but why should that be so? We seem to use the word "red" for a range of different things. And why shouldn't a word be used in this way?
So red need not be "a verbal pointer to that specific external state (whatever it may be) that is experienced as red"...
And we've already agreed that red cannot be only an experience...
Quoting Banno
I can ask someone to recommend a funny movie, and they can deliver, but I don't think it makes much sense to treat being funny as some mind-independent property of movies.
So the reasoning behind your question appears to be a non sequitur.
At a certain point on the spectrum, red starts to become orange looking. It becomes more and more orange, eventually becoming a shade of orange rather than a shade of red. What draws that line?
Interesting question, but it doesnt necessarily address my direct point. Any color, not matter the shade, how can we know its experience is as shared as the cause of its experience?
This question is a little confusing. It's like asking "if you can be assured there is heat, why can't you be sure there's pain?"
I can be sure that there's red and that there's pain, but given our scientific understanding of physics and biology and psychology, it seems to be that red and pain are properties of minds, not properties of pens and fire.
The issue isn't over whether or not these properties exist, but over where in the world these properties exist. At least when it comes to colour, some appear to be locating them in the wrong place.
When the structure of some object changes the wavelength of the light it reflects changes, and when the wavelength of the light changes the colour we see changes, because the colour we see is determined (at least in part) by the wavelength of the light that stimulates the eyes.
It doesn't then follow from this that colours are properties of these objects.
But doesn't this just raise the age old problem associated with Locke's primary and secondary properties distintiction? You've identified pain and color as secondary qualities not inherent in the object itself and have suggested there are primary properties independent of the observer that exist in the object.
If we know that the blueness of the chair is only in my head, what is an example of a property of the chair that is in the chair itself even if my head (or nobody's head) never existed?
The existence of its atoms and their propensity to reflect light at certain wavelengths.
The sorts of things described by the Standard Model are mind-independent. Other things like smells and tastes and colours and pain are mental phenomena, produced by brain activity in response to bodily stimulation.
Wavelengths travel beyond the objects but the color never does. If the color is determined in part by the wavelength, how is it that if light bounces off an object at a certain wave length, we do not see the color anywhere outside of the object?
Your question is misguided. Light stimulates our eyes, signals are sent to our brain, and the brain produces a visual percept with such qualities as shape and colour and depth. Our minds and conscious experiences don't literally extend beyond the body to encompass distal objects.
We do, don't we? I agree with you that it's ok that "red" refers to a range of frequencies (that might vary per setting.). But when it starts changing to reddish orange, or purple (bluish red) or burnt sienna (reddish brown), these terms come from shared human experience, right?
Then how come the color of the percept isnt outside the object if the light is outside the object?
Your question makes no sense. Colour is a property of visual percepts and visual percepts exist inside my head. So what does "the colour of the percept isn't outside the object" even mean?
No such thing exists in your head. I can take a picture of any object and it will undoubtedly show that it is outside your head, and this includes all colored objects except your brain.
It does.
Quoting NOS4A2
I don't know what this means. But digital cameras work by measuring the energy of the light that strikes its sensors, using this to determine which of the pixels to turn on and at what intensity. Our brains probably work in the same sort of way, but with neurons in the visual cortex in lieu of phosphors on a screen.
Weve examined many brains and discovered no such thing.
It means that if you see a banana, youre not seeing one in your head. I can record you looking at a banana, the location of both your head and the banana, and discern that nothing about the banana is in your head.
I'm not saying that the banana is in my head. I'm saying that colours are in my head. They are a property of the visual percepts that are produced by activity in the visual cortex.
Quoting NOS4A2
Sure we have. It's how we make sense of synesthesia, dreams, hallucinations, variations in colour perception, and so on. Visual phenomenology is distinct from distal objects and proximal stimuli. The second and third are often the causal explanation for the first, but that's all there is to it. Yours is the mistaken, naive view that projects the properties of the first onto the second.
Weve never found any of those, either. Rather, it appears to be a property of the object.
I do accept the naive view. But no, we havent found any percepts or phenomenon as you describe them in the head, and weve looked. Therefor, phenomenology doesnt deal with reality.
A colour is a quality of the object, not a property.
Some people describe the colour of the dress in this photo as black and blue, others as white and gold. They can be looking at the exact same photo on the exact same screen, their eyes reacting to the exact same wavelength of light. And yet they see different colours. This is explained by differences in the way their visual cortex behaves in response to optical stimulation.
And then manual stimulation of the appropriate areas of the visual cortex can cause people to see (coloured) things.
What more are you looking for?
No doubt the image of dress appears different to different people. It first appeared to me black and blue when I first looked at it, now it is a light blue and goldy-brown. This indeed suggests a difference in the workings of the body.
But we know the medium also has something to do with it, as we know the actual dress is blue and black. As reported, everyone who saw a difference in color on the screen saw no such difference upon seeing it in real life. For example, were not actually looking at a dress, but a digital image as it appears on a backlit screen. If you place the image in a program, choose a spot, and get the color value, that never changes.
So while I cant explain it in terms of naive realism, if it is strictly limited to artificial conditions, I dont think it suggests phenomenology.
But it's the same distal object and same proximal stimulus, yet a different colour experience. So how does that not suggest phenomenology? Any differences in colour experience must be explained by differences in the body or brain.
See also neuronal basis of perception:
It seems to me that the science is incredibly clear. Conscious experience is in the head. It is usually caused by and covariant with some external stimulus, but they are nonetheless distinct. There really is no place to deny it.
Even if you want to say that colours are also properties of mind-independent things, you simply cannot deny that they are (also) properties of mental phenomena. It is the only way to make sense of dreams, hallucinations, synesthesia, and variations in colour perception all of which are real.
The distal object is a backlit screen, capable of shooting light in all sorts of different directions, or stopping light, sometimes through liquid crystal, etc. it seems to me such conditions can illicit different experiences. The dress itself did not illicit a different experience, as everyone saw it was blue and black upon viewing off the screen. This seems to me to suggest the conditions had much to do with it.
I can deny that they are properties of mental phenomena because mental phenomena do not exist. Again, nothing of the sort has ever been found, and until they have, it needs to be explained in terms of things that are actually there.
Subjective accounts of states of affairs are limited by the fact that one cannot be aware of what is actually occurring behind his own eyes, or in the brain, at any given moment, so treating them as accurate assessments of the biology seems to me absurd.
And those conditions are the same for everyone; yet we have different colour experiences. So the point stands, and your comments here are irrelevant.
Quoting NOS4A2
We have evidence of neural correlates of consciousness. We have evidence of visual perception caused by direct neural stimulation.
None of what I am saying requires substance or property dualism. I am not saying that mental phenomena is non-physical. I am only saying that colour is a property of conscious experience and that conscious experience does not extend beyond the brain. This is perfectly consistent with conscious experience being reducible to neural activity.
Again, this is the only way to make sense of dreams, hallucinations, synesthesia, and differences in colour perception all of which are real.
And it doesnt happen under different conditions. That something novel occurs in one set of conditions doesnt mean it applies to all. So using this one example while dismissing the rest is tantamount to pseudoscience.
We hallucinate and dream, sure, but these are biological acts, not things worthy of their own noun phrase upon which we can ascribe properties. Properties are properties of things, not actions. The body is real, while what the body does is merely an account of what the body is doing from this time and that.
In order to reduce mental phenomena to neural activity, one has to describe the neural activity, the objects involved in it, and then one can list their properties, and I suspect well find no property called color among them unless its the color of those objects. White and gold or blue and black, for example, is unlikely to be the measurable properties of these objects in the brain.
Do you really believe that the only way to make sense of dreams, hallucinations, etc is to posit mental phenomena. Definitely science does not need to posit such things, they can go on investigating "real" things like brains, neurons, cells, etc. Some people do not report out dreams, most people do not have hallucinations, have synesthesia, or problems judging and reporting out colors. Would you actually commit your self to say that if a human being did not experience dreams, hallucinations, synesthesia, or problems with color discernment they have no mental phenomena, or this is evidence they have no mental phenomena, or I do not need to posit mental phenol phenomena for this type of human being (or are you willing to change the definition of such a being as a "zombie"). I am interested in see how you carry out the implications of "the only way to make sense" comment.
If the same distal object and proximal stimulus is responsible for different colour experiences then the colours experienced in this case are not properties of the distal object or proximal stimulus.
The fact that in other scenarios we have the same colour experiences neither a) refutes the above nor b) entails that the colours experienced in these other scenarios are properties of the distal object or proximal stimulus.
And as for less artificial scenarios, there is empirical evidence of sex differences in colour perception.
Quoting NOS4A2
I dream and hallucinate in colour. The colours I dream and hallucinate are properties of my dreams and hallucinations. Waking experiences are of the exact same kind - neural activity in the visual cortex - differing only in their cause and intensity.
Quoting NOS4A2
There are neural correlates of self-reported colour percepts. This is how neuroscientists are able to intentionally stimulate particular colour experiences in test subjects - they know which areas of the brain to excite to have the subject see red.
Yes. We dont explain them by positing the direct acquaintance of some distal object. I dont dream about dragons because my eyes are open and Im looking at a dragon in my bedroom; I dream about dragons because my visual cortex is active when I sleep.
To put it another way, if I imagine a world full of beings who do not dream, hallucinate, etc, I do not need to posit mental phenomena for these being.
Like a world of inorganic matter? Sure. Whats the relevance?
The relevance is that many human beings do not report dreams, hallucinate, etc, so are we compelled to say they have no mental phenomena. Mental phenomena seems to be contingent on whether a human being reports experiences that do not occur (dreams/hallucinations), or problem with discernment of colors compared to normal performance. But, I have the impression that you believe that all human beings have mental phenomena, regardless if they have dreams or not, hallucinations or not, etc
Yes. Mental phenomena are either reducible to brain activity or are caused by brain activity. We dream/hallucinate/see (in colour) when the visual cortex is active. I see no reason to believe that dreaming and hallucinating involve mental phenomena but that ordinary waking experiences do not - that would seem like special pleading. Their only relevant difference is their cause.
Even if one wants to claim that colours are also a property of distal objects one cannot deny that colours are a property of mental phenomena, else one cannot make sense of dreaming and hallucinating in colour.
But then I deny that colours are properties of distal objects on the grounds that a) such things are unnecessary, given that colours as mental phenomena is sufficient, and that b) things like the Standard Model do not describe colours; they only describe various arrangements of atoms with a surface layer of electrons that reflect light at certain wavelengths.
And then the same principle for things like smells and tastes.
People can disagree about size and motion as well, and they can also experience these due to simulation of the brain. Are extension in space, motion, speed, etc. all also not properties of distal objects?
Likewise, the "mind independent" existence of any discrete objects seems like it can be called into question based on the same sort of reasoning employed to demote the reality of color. But if discrete objects "don't really exist" "out there" then it's hard to see how one can say anything true about anything. Or at the very least, anything true about anything other than "mere experience" (as opposed to that lofty goal of knowledge of "things-in-themselves.")
IMO, this is just abstraction run amok. Nothing we are aware of exists mind independently. No one can point to anything that is actually mind independent, on pain of such an entity losing its mind independence. I see no good reason to see thing's relationships with minds as somehow "less real," than any of their other relations. "Looking red to people," is a real relationship things have.
Rather, the move to positing all sorts of thing as somehow illusory seems to me to just be an elaborate coping mechanism for dealing with the fact that minds don't sit well in mechanistic accounts of nature hence the demotion to "less real."
I haven't said anything about illusions or being "less real". I'm just saying that it's wrong to claim that colours are mind-independent properties of distal objects, just as it would be wrong to claim that smells and tastes and pain and being funny are mind-independent properties of distal objects.
All these things are real; it's just that they're not located where conscious experience isn't and conscious experience does not extend beyond the brain.
Does claiming that pain only exists in the head entail that distal objects "don't really exist"? If not, then why would claiming that colour only exists in the head entail this?
Do you at the very least accept that colour percepts exist (e.g. when dreaming and hallucinating), and that these percepts are at least correlated to certain neural activity in the visual cortex?
But are extension in space and motion likewise not [I]in[/I] external objects? Seems like you could make the same sort of case there.
Same for anything "being a tree" or "being a rock." I don't see how the examples that are supposed to show that color is only "in brains" doesn't equally apply to anything being any sort of discrete object at all. That is, things are only cats, rocks, planets, etc. "inside brains."
Nor does it make sene to say that red is mind- independent. But it also makes no sense, for the reasons given, to say that red is no more than my-perception-of red.
The Standard Model certainly says so, so I accept that.
But what evidence is there of colours as something other than mental phenomena? We have empirical evidence of an object's surface layer of electrons reflecting certain wavelengths of light, but what of colour?
I don't think anyone is suggesting that. The second and third paragraphs of the OP make it clear that he isn't saying that colours are just his personal experiences; he's only saying that colours like smells and tastes and pain are types of mental phenomena.
But the Standard Model says absolutely nothing about trees, cats, bacteria, etc.
English words like "tree" and "cat" and "bacteria" refer to distal objects. English words like "position" and "momentum" refer to a distal object's properties. English words like "red" and "funny" and "sour" do not refer to distal objects or their properties but to the properties of conscious experience.
This is just begging the question lol.
I mean, I could just as well say color words refer to "the colors of objects." And surely my blue car is not located inside my skull.
Not "what", but "who", surely?
Quoting Mp202020
The experience of your companion doesn't matter, so long as they hand you the red pen. That's why we know about colour blindness - there is a difference that can be examined and explained.
Yet you can ask for the red pen and e happy with the result.
Red is therefore not a private experience.
Different token doesn't mean different type. Pain is a mental phenomenon, but presumably the pain I feel when I stub my toe isn't "quite different" to the pain you feel when you stub your toe.
Quoting Banno
As mentioned before, this is a non sequitur.
Quoting Michael
How could you know that?
Quoting Michael
yet
Quoting Banno
That overwhelmingly folk agree on some things being red and others being not-red shows that red is not a private phenomena. Indeed, the controversy surrounding that dress shows that colour is not private.
"presume" doesn't mean "know".
Quoting Banno
No it doesn't.
No. it doesn't. Well done.
Quoting Michael
Ok. one can lead a donkey to water but not make them drink. I don't know what you must mean by "private', then, but you are not using it the way other folk do. The fact that we distinguish red pens from black pens shows pen colour not to be private.
That overwhelmingly folk agree that stubbing one's toe is painful does not show that pain is not a mental phenomenon.
Pain is a mental phenomenon, despite the overwhelming agreement on which things are painful.
There is simply no connection between your premise and your conclusion.
So what.
Can you pass me your pain?
Quoting Michael
It appears that you have not understood the argument. Again, the claim is not that there is no mental component in a thing being red, but that there is more to red than mere experience.
But why should this be so? Minds are embedded in the world.
So the overwhelming agreement that some X is Y is not proof that Y is not a mental phenomenon.
Whether Y is "red" or "painful", there can be an overwhelming agreement that X is Y even if Y is a mental phenomenon.
I have to say something about that term. A phenomena is something observed. "Mental phenomena" is oxymoronic. One does not usually observe that one is in pain, one just is in pain. Being in pain is not making an observation. One does not observe a pain in one's toe, one has a pain in one's toe. There is a metaphysical slight of hand happening in your language use.
Quoting Michael
Sure, in your somewhat illicit terms this might be so. What is shown is that being red is not private. That is, that there are red things is a part of our shared world.
Now how do you explain that sharing?
I didn't say it was.
Quoting Banno
There's ambiguity here with the English grammar.
The words "coloured" and "painful" are adjectives, the words "colour" and "pain" are nouns, and the word "red" is both an adjective and a noun.
As a noun, the words "colour", "pain", and "red" refer to mental percepts. As an adjective the words "coloured", "painful" and "red" can refer to distal objects, if by such use we mean that the distal objects are causally responsible for these mental percepts.
The existence of mental percepts caused by neural activity in the visual cortex in response to optical stimulation by light is a sufficient and well-supported account of colour (and other visual) experience.
The naive view that either denies the existence of mental percepts or mistakes mental percepts for some mind-independent property is wrong.
Sour is used to refer to lemons, etc. all the time.
There's that verbal sleight of hand again. "Red" is not a mental property, whatever that might be. It's a colour.
You are enabled by the choice of colour in the OP. What if had chosen touch - would you be arguing that being smooth was a mental phenomena?
And for the third or fourth time, I am not denying that there is an aspect of being red that is mind dependent - again using your language. I am pointing out that it is not only mental.
yep.
Colours, like smells and tastes and pain, are mental percepts. They are what occur/exist when we dream and hallucinate and also when having an ordinary waking experience.
Quoting Banno
I address this in my distinction between adjectives and nouns in my post above.
Quoting Banno
And I am pointing out that it is, just like pain.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
I address this in my distinction between adjectives and nouns in my post above.
The berry is red. The berry is rough. The berry is sour.
These involve the berry. They are not purely mental.
Again, if folk agree that the berry is smooth, red and sour, then presumably they agree that there is a berry, and not only a perception-of-berry.
And again, I addressed this in my distinction between adjectives and nouns above.
If by "the lemon is sour" you just mean "[tasting] the lemon will cause a sour-type mental percept" then I agree.
But if by "the lemon is sour" you mean "a sour taste is a mind-independent property of the lemon" then I disagree. This is the naive view that is inconsistent with the science of perception.
And if I say "A sour taste is not only a 'mind-dependent' property of a lemon"?
Then you're wrong. Because a sour taste is a mental percept, caused by activity in the gustatory cortex in response to stimulation of the tongue by acidic chemicals.
And being sour is a property of lemons...
We don't generally have the "mental percept" of "sour" in the absence of lemons or some other such food. But you talk as if there were nothing going on here that was not "mental". And indeed, that's perhaps what you are thinking. But it's muddled. Lemons are not "mental phenomena".
So rather than us having to guess what you think is going on, set it out for us all. Are there lemons? Or are there only the oxymoronic "mental phenomena"?
As an adjective, yes, where this means that eating a lemon will elicit a sour-type mental percept.
Quoting Banno
Well I do. My dreams and hallucinations aren't only visual and auditory; I smell and taste and feel.
Quoting Banno
I have done. Colours, smells, tastes, etc. are types of mental percepts, caused by neural activity in the appropriate cortexes in the brain. When this activity occurs when I'm asleep I'm dreaming. When this activity occurs when I'm awake, but in response to LSD, I'm hallucinating. When this activity occurs when I'm awake, and in response to ordinary external stimulation such as 700nm light reaching my eyes, I'm having a non-hallucinatory waking experience.
The naive view that then projects these mental percepts out into the wider world as mind-independent properties of things is mistaken.
Quoting Michael
For the - I think seventh or eighth time - the claim is not that being red or sour or smooth is in no part mental, but that it is not exclusively in your mind alone. Hence the answer to
Quoting Mp202020
is "yes".
And, yet again, I accept that the apple is red, where "red" is an adjective and "the apple is red" means something like "the apple is causally responsible for a red visual percept".
But as a noun, colours are only mental percepts, because when I use the word "colour" I am referring to a mental percept and a mental percept is only a mental percept.
... if red is only a mental percept, then when you say red it refers to your mental percept, but when I say "red" it refers to my a mental percept. If we are going to be talking about the same thing then we need something that we both have access to. Hence there is more to being red than being a a mental percept.
That involves red things, in a world we have in common.
How do you infer that? Pain is a mental percept, but when I use the word "pain" I am not referring only to my pain, just as when I use the words "thoughts" and "beliefs" I am not referring only to my thoughts and beliefs. I can refer to someone else's red just as easily as I can refer to someone else's pain and thoughts and beliefs.
It's true that I can't see their red or feel their pain or think their thoughts or believe their beliefs, but I can talk about them just fine.
1. Colour percepts exist. They are what constitute (coloured) dreams and hallucinations.
2. These colour percepts also exist when awake and not hallucinating, e.g. when there is neural activity in the visual cortex in response to optical simulation by light.
3. When we ordinarily talk about colours we are, knowingly or not, referring to these colour percepts.
SO are you saying you can have my "mental percepts"?
No, I'm saying that I can talk about them, just as I can talk about your thoughts even though I can't think them.
There are mind-independent properties that are causally responsible for colour percepts in the ordinary waking case, e.g. having a surface layer of atoms that reflects light with a wavelength of 700nm, but the colour percept and this surface layer of atoms are distinct, dissimilar, things. And as nouns, the words "red" and "colour" ordinarily refer to these percepts. This is what allows variations in colour perception to be a coherent concept.
As adjectives, the words "red" and "coloured" can describe distal objects, but this just means that they are causally responsible for the related colour percepts in the ordinary waking case.
This view contrasts with the naive colour realist who believes that as nouns the words "red" and "colour" refer to some mind-independent property that resembles the colour percept, and who often denies the existence of the colour percept entirely. This naive colour realism is inconsistent with physics and the neuroscience of perception.
for hallucinations, imaginary/dream worlds, whatever, the perception and the perceived are the same
when the perception and the perceived aren't the same, the perceived can be objects
perceptions are events/processes, temporal, come and go, occur, are interruptible
objects are spatial, left to right, front to back, movable, locatable, breakable under conservation
by interaction one can perceive something without becoming the perceived in part or whole
... and take it from there.
(maybe I'm using the verbiage in a non-standard way)
I'm seeing some openings for category mistakes, perhaps depending on verbiage.
Red could be called one format of perception, typically related to objects we hence call red.
Or something like that.
Has synesthesia come up? Phantom pain? Mary's room? :)
Reminds me of the opening of Lewis's Abolition of Man.
But of course the larger point is about the "bloated subject," to which all the contents of the world are displaced.
I think you're misunderstanding my position. Here and here set it out clearly.
No, I think I get it. You said that movies cannot be funny, the lemons are not sour, and that apples cannot be red. Presumably waterfalls cannot be sublime, sunsets beautiful, noises shrill, voices deep, etc. This is precisely what Lewis is talking about.
I just don't think this separation makes any sense. Nor does it make sense to talk of such things as sourness or beauty existing exclusively [I]in[/I] brains. Pace your appeal to "science," the science of perception does not exclude lemons from an explanation of why lemons taste sour or apples from the experience of seeing a red apple. These objects are involved in these perceptions; the perceptions would not exist without the objects.
Brains do not generate experiences on their own. If you move a brain into the vast majority of environments that exist in the universe, onto the surface of a star, the bottom of the ocean, the void of space, or anywhere outside a body, it will produce no experiences. Experience only emerges from brains in properly functioning bodies in a narrow range of environments and abstracting the environment away so as to locate these physical processes solely "in" brains or "brain states," is simply bad reasoning.
Science has nothing to do with it. It's projecting the foibles of modern philosophy onto science.
Sorry for late reply, I'm travelling.
At dawn or dusk, a red coin may appear unsaturated, perhaps blended with other colours from the sky etc. That's what its red colour looks like under weak, blended light conditions. Moreover, its circular shape appears oval, or rectangular even, depending on the angle of view.
From these variations it doesn't follow that the red and the circular are figments of the mind, neurological processes, or conventions of language.
Quoting apokrisis
Colours might seem insignificant in neuroscience, or conventions in fashion, but that's not a failure to be real in biology.
Colour vision is an adaption to way the physical world is.
Sorry to butt in, but I think if you're approaching this from ordinary language, you should keep in mind that languages vary in how they express the relationship between objects and their properties. In English it's pretty common to apparently directly equate them, as when we say the tea is cold. But in other languages, it would be that the tea has coldness, or that the coldness is upon the tea. It's native to English to treat properties as transient and objects as permanent, but that just doesn't show up as overtly as, say, in Spanish.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
What about the experiences of people on say, ketamine? Their experiences are in some way "in the language" of earthly life, but they're definitely not reflecting anything in the person's environment. Those experiences appear to be created by the brain alone.
I am not t sure how these are supposed to be counter examples. They still ascribe the property to the thing. Is there a language that does not ascribe color, heat, tone, or taste to things but only to subjects? I am not aware of one.
These experiences simply aren't created by the "brain alone."
What experiences will someone on ketamine have if they are instantly teleported to the bottom of the sea, the void of space, or the surface of a star? Little to none, their body and brain will be destroyed virtually instantly in the first and last case. The enviornment always matters.
Less extreme, imagine if we suck all that air out of the room. Will the person's experience remain the same? Obviously not, having access to air is part of their experience. Or suppose the building they are in collapses and a support beam runs through their chest but their brain is left pretty much unharmed? Same thing. Without the body and the enviornment the brain cannot produce experiences.
The brain doesn't produce experience "on its own," or "alone." Producing experience requires a constant flow of information, causation, matter, and energy across the boundaries of the brain and body. It only seems to act "alone" when we abstract away an environment that we have held constant within a precise ranges of values. A human body dies very quickly in the overwhelming majority of environments that prevail in our universe, there are very few where it continues to produce experience for even a few minutes (and this still requires the whole body, not just the brain).
[Img]https://www.businessballs.com/images/shadow-illusion.jpg[/IMG]
The "big reveal" is that both labeled squares are "the same shade of gray." I have had students refuse to believe this until I snip out one square and put it next to the other.
Of course, this is generally presented as the squares themselves being "the same color." You can confirm this by looking at the hex codes of the pixels that make them up.However, on an account where grayness, shade, hue, brightness, etc. are all purely internal and "exist only as we experience them," it seems hard to explain the illusion. If the shades of gray appear different, and color just is "how things appear to us," in what sense are the two squares the "same color gray?" It seems that their color should rather change with their context.
I clarified what I meant in that aforementioned post.
The nouns "sour" and "red" refer to mental percepts those things that also exist when we dream, hallucinate, have synesthesia, and so on, and which explain differences in perception.
The adjectives "sour" and "red" when predicated of lemons and apples describe the fact that they are causally responsible for the associated mental percept in ordinary waking situations.
So apples are red and lemons are sour.
But this doesn't mean that redness and sourness are mind-independent properties of apples and lemons as the naive realist believes.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Their involvement is causal, nothing more. The window wouldn't have broken if the football had not been kicked through it, but the broken window is not a property of the football. And the sour-taste mental percept would not be present if I had not eaten the lemon, but the sour-taste mental percept is not a property of the lemon (and nor does it resemble any of the lemon's properties).
How exactly does your account even allow for the coherence of dreams, hallucinations, synesthesia, and difference in colour perception, let alone their facticity?
They describe a relationship between the property and the thing. That allows us talk about a property like redness as something separate from an object. When we notice that the red apple is black under a red light, we realize that this property belongs to the whole setting that includes the object. And it turns out that the story of redness also includes functions of consciousness and experience. I think you were touching on that with the Perl quote, that it appears that experience is a holistic symphony that we subsequently analyze, dissect, placing the pieces on a table like a dismantled clock.
The danger here is to take pieces of the dismantled clock and imagine that we're grasping a firm foundation from which to philosophize. As long as we remember that, we can divide the symphony up however we like. It's legit to concentrate on experience itself. That's what a large chunk of phenomenology is doing. Experience is what we know directly. All else is dubious. It's one way to approach the issue, right?
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Right. If John is dead, John won't be experiencing anything. Does this mean we can't talk about the experiences John's brain creates while he's still with us?
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
We'll rush John to the hospital and put him on ECMO. He actually doesn't need a heart, lungs, or kidneys now. We'll provide a kind of IV feed so he doesn't need a digestive system. We'll just float his nervous system in a gel. We don't do this because it would just be a short term horror movie, but we could. And the brain would create experiences because that's just what it does. It doesn't need anything from the outside.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
That's not true. You don't need a body, as previously described.
They emit the same wavelength of light, but produce different colour percepts. It's the same principle involved with the photo of the dress.
Colour terms like "grey", "black", "blue", "white", and "gold" are then used in at least two different ways, either referring to the fact that they emit the same frequency of light ("the squares are the same shade of grey") or to the fact that they produce different colour percepts ("I see white and gold; she sees black and blue").
The use of such terms to refer to the fact that they emit the same frequency of light is something of a fiction, premised on the misguided naive realist view that treats colour percepts as being mind-independent properties (or, at the very least, the misguided view that colour percepts "resemble" in some sense mind-independent properties).
No, it means we can't talk about the "brain alone," creating experience.
You'll note that in all your counter examples, e.g. the beam falling on John, you have concocted wild changes to the [I] enviornment[/I], not the brain, in order to sustain the possibility of conciousness, which gives lie to the "brain alone" explanation.
So I'll ask again, show me a brain alone producing conciousness. No enviornment. Your examples all involve radically altering the enviornment so as to have it preform the functions of the body, which is not a counter example.
The point was that you don't need a biological body. In the case of the supporting apparatus, it would be right to say it's necessary for the life of the brain. It's providing the brain's power source. It's not part of what the brain is doing, though. If you think it is, how? How is it part of consciousness?
It's perhaps possible to have experiences while replacing a large part of the body with some sort of system that does functionally the same things as the body. But presumably you could also replace parts of the brain with synthetic components in a similar manner. Shall we abstract that away as well?
None of your examples prove that brains can generate experiences "all by themselves." All you do in your examples is substitute parts of the enviornment for functional equivalents. This is not the same thing as the enviornment being irrelevant to or uninvolved in the generation of experience. Indeed, the fact that you have to posit very specific environmental changes in order to preserve the possibility of there being any conciousness at all gives lie to the idea of the "brain alone" producing experience in a vacuum.
Not to mention that it seems uncontroversial that, in actuality, no brain outside a body has ever maintained conciousness. If one is to invoke "the science of perception," in any sort of a realist sense then it seems obvious that lemons are involved in lemons' tasting sour, apples are involved in apples' appearing red, etc. We can speculate all we want about sci-fi technology approaching sorcery (which is what "the Matrix" or a "brain in a vat" is), but this is to follow modern philosophy's pernicious elevation of potency over act in all of its analysis.
It would be more accurate to say that "physical systems give rise to experience" and that these physical systems always and necessarily involve both body and the environment. Truly isolated systems don't exist in nature and the brain couldn't maintain conciousness even if it was magically sequestered in its own universe.
At any rate, when something looks rectangular or big, this is because of interactions between the object, ambient light, and the body; it's the same with color. Color is susceptible to optical illusions, sure, but so to is size, motion, and shape. I have yet to see a good argument why color is "mental precept" all the way down, but presumably shape and size are not.
I am not sure what motivates Michael's response that shape, motion, and size should be seen as "properties of objects themselves," because this is suggested by "the Standard Model." I would assume the assumptions here are reductionist and smallist, since this is normally why people come to the old "primary versus secondary qualities," style distinctions and end up involving particle physics to make a case vis-á-vis perception. I don't think there is good evidence for assuming that reductionism is true until proven otherwise. 100+ years on and even the basics of chemistry like molecular structure have not be successfully reduced to physics.
Magically sequestered! Ha, I like that! I picture a more vibrant experience for IT...maybe one not so alone, perhaps? What do I know?
I guess it would help me to go back to what your point was. Were you saying that body and environment are logically necessary to experience? If by that you mean that a brain needs a power source in order to function, then that's fairly uncontroversial. If your point was that experience can't take place without bodily interaction with the environment, that doesn't appear to be true. It happens every time you dream, it's happening to people who have received chemical paralytic drugs, it's happening to people who are locked in. The burden would be on you to show that bodily interaction is necessary to consciousness.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
It's got the weight of science behind it. The brain generates experience out of a flood of diverse data. Do you have an opposing version of that story?
Quoting frank
:up: :point:
@Count Timothy von Icarus :eyes:
"The signal exchange between consciousness and body, especially in terms of focus and information flow, is a critical area of study. For instance, while watching a movie, we're immersed in an experience that's both part of our external reality and our internal narrative. This duality of experience and "insperience" raises questions about the potential effects of screen exposure on our emotions. It's clear that sensation influences our emotional state, but the nature of this influence when mediated by screens is complex.
Our research assumes that any sensation created within our consciousness has an impact on our emotional state. However, the structure of sensations experienced through screens differs from those without. Screens induce a partial stimulation, leading to a "defocused" state in other sensory domains, which in turn triggers a subconscious responsean "insperience" that augments the low-dimensional sensation. Conversely, when we're exposed to complete external stimulation, such as being in nature, we receive a multitude of direct signals through our sensory organs, leading to high-dimensional sensations."
I brought this up 2 months ago in TreatId's thread, "Solipsism is a weak interpretation of the underlying observation" @Treatid
The terms "Defocus" and "Insperience" are new to me and my research. They were learned by me from the creator of this video in real time a few years back as I have made connections with them personally and developed a relationship over time because of a mutual interest in philosophy. I immediately was drawn to his work based on how interested and intrigued he was by the work he was putting in at the time into studying and modeling shapes from the works of Stan Tenen*[1], specifically "The Alphabet That Changed the World: How Genesis Preserves a Science of Consciousness in Geometry and Gesture, see here for more on that: Stan Tenen - Hebrew Alphabet - Geometry of Light .
Amongst other projects, one is involving devices with screens using A.I. technology, and Augmented Reality. I found the findings in the video below to be relevant to my work, which is involving 3D modeling and design. BUT THAT is why and where I got these terms. They were used and typed out in quotes above in the proper context but can be seen defined and explained by a German speaking person translating to English here in video on Youtube: A simplified Model for Augmented Sensation: Defocus, Experience and Insperience
*[1] - "STAN TENEN is the Director of Research for the Meru Foundation of Sharon, Mass. With a B.S. in Physics (1963) from Polytechnic Institute of New York University, Mr. Tenen has designed and produced optical and electronic equipment for doctors and surgeons, and holds several patents.
In 1968, while examining the Hebrew text of Genesis, Mr. Tenen noticed what appeared to be a pattern in the arrangement of the letters. This observation, which prompted thirty years of research into the history and tradition of the text, has led to a meaningful understanding of traditional teachings in a modern context. Mr. Tenen has presented his works to scientific and religious scholars throughout the United States and Israel." - from https://www.meru.org/info/TenenShortBio.html
Unless it is happening when these people have stopped breathing, it should be evident that they are interacting with the environment in an important way.
Data from inside the brain?
Emergence of experience requires more than just a brain. Persistence of experience does as well. Brains are not enough. It takes more than just a brain to smell the cake in the neighbor's oven. It takes more than just a brain to remember that smell. It takes more than just a brain to hallucinate that experience.
What about just the/a "brain" with thinking thoughts?
Part of my initial comment says, "I am considering this: perhaps these ideas are visions in the brain, independent of the individuals subjective experience. The subjective mind possesses ideas, but not in the same way the brain perceived/s them. Ideas are interpreted differently by the brain in its visions, and these interpretations may or may not align with how a subjective being perceives these visions as ideas in their mind or in their interactions with the environment.
What if thinking thoughts* is just the brain existing/being, rather than the subjective body/minds doing?
*the act of thinking-that thinking might be an emergent property of the brains activity, rather than an action performed by the subjective mind"
So on your account, when we agree that the pen is red, we are talking about quite different things - the percept-in-my-mind and the percept-in-your-mind.
And so on your account we have not agreed that the pen is red.
Quoting Michael
Which is no more than a play on "mental".
Quoting Lionino WE?
Hm, lion...nino...What is that, little lion boy? Just that HE recognizes some thing? Bravo!
Lionino, takes one to know one...kinda :strong: :rofl:
Imagine we discover an unknown tribe of humans from some remote island. After several months of studying their ways, we discover that they are particular skilled at gathering local fruit at night in a very dense tropical forest. When we go along with the tribe it is near impossible for us to find this fruit, but for the local tribe, no problem. After several more months of study, we learn that this tribe of humans has a unique layer of cells in their eyes that is not seen in other humans. We begin to suspect that this may be a reason for their skill at night in locating local fruit. After great effort, we are able to create a synthetic version of these cell in the form of a contact lenses. We put the lenses on, and go out at night to gather fruit. To our surprise, the colors of the fruit are now vibrant neon colors.
In this example, are the contact lenses causing new mental phenomena? Or, are they just allowing us to see the colors the fruit had all the time. The mental phenomena is not the cause of us seeing the colors of the fruit, the cause is the addition of the contact lenses. You mention that you need mental phenomena to make sense of hallucination. But I don't see that from a scientific point of view. For example, a person took a hallucinogen which put the brain in a particular physical state, and thus caused the hallucination. Is this not enough to explain what is happening without appeal to mental phenomena?
No, because we're using "red" as an adjective to describe the mind-independent pen.
We all agree that this pen is red (causes red mental percepts), just as we all agree that stubbing one's toe is painful (causes pain mental percepts).
But "red" and "pain" as nouns refer to mental percepts, not to some mind-independent property of pens.
No, because on your account we are talking not about the red pen but each of our own solipsistic percept-of-red-pens. One your account there is no red pen.
No I'm not.
Me, I talk about red pens, and don't much fuss as to percepts.
Yes.
Quoting Richard B
The fruit just reflects light at various wavelengths and various intensities; that's it. Our eyes and brain then respond in deterministic ways to this electromagnetic energy, activating the visual cortex and producing visual percepts (including colour percepts).
Quoting Richard B
I haven't said that mental phenomena aren't just particular brain states. I'm not necessarily arguing for any kind of dualism. I'm leaving that open. Maybe pain just is the firing of C-fibers, as Churchland argues. Maybe colours just are the firing of V4 neurons.
Regardless of what mental phenomena are, pain and colours are mental phenomena; they are not mind-independent properties of fire.
The noun "pen" refers to a mind-independent object. The adjective "red" describes this mind-independent object's causal role in eliciting a particular type of mental percept. The noun "red" refers to this type of mental percept.
I think I've been really clear on this.
Because some words pick out mental phenomena and some words don't? Even the naive realist must accept this; words like "mind", "consciousness", "pain", "pleasure", "beliefs", "disgust", and so on pick out mental phenomena.
I am simply explaining that colours are also a type of mental phenomena, not a type of mind-independent property of pens. As I said to Richard B above, the pen just reflects light at various wavelengths and various intensities and then our eyes and brain respond in deterministic ways to this electromagnetic energy, activating the visual cortex and producing visual percepts (including colour percepts).
The naive view that projects these colour percepts onto mind-independent objects, or that thinks that some mind-independent property "resembles" these colour percepts, is mistaken.
But why?
Quoting Michael
In addition to what? An individuals percept and and what? A pen, perhaps? Quoting Michael
The naive view that denies colour to objects is mistaken. Why shouldn't a red pen simply be a pen that reflects light at various wavelengths and various intensities?
We talk about various things in the world. Some of those things are mental phenomena, some aren't. Some of those things are trees, some aren't. I don't understand the difficulty you're having.
Your question is like asking why the noun dog picks out an animal and not a planet.
Quoting Banno
As in, among the various types of mental phenomena, colour is one such type.
Quoting Banno
You can use the adjective "red" to mean "reflects light with a wavelength of 700nm" if you like, but when we ordinarily talk about colours (note that I'm now using a noun) particularly when we ask if colours are mind-independent and discuss the fact that some see white and gold and others black and blue we are talking about colour percepts, knowingly or not.
And theres certainly no resemblance between a red colour percept and a surface layer of atoms that reflects light with a wavelength of 700nm. The relationship between the two is merely causal, and that the latter causes the former is a contingent fact about human biology. Different organisms with different eyes and brains can have different colour percepts in response to 700nm light. The photo of the dress is proof of that even within humans.
No it doesn't. The idea that the brain can generate experiences without any access to a very specific sort of enviornment is not "supported by science," in the least. I have already explained why. The enviornment is not simply a "power source," either, this is a comic simplification.
Does a brain generate any experience on the ocean floor? On the surface of a star? In the void of space? In a room filled with helium gas? Torn out of the skull? All your counter examples still involve brains inside bodies and bodies that are inside environments that are in the very narrow range that allow for the production of experience.
Take someone with locked in syndrome. Replace the atmosphere in the room with most other gasses: helium, argon, hydrogen, etc. They will stop experiencing. Turn the temperature down low enough and they will stop experiencing. Turn it up enough and they will instantly stop experiencing. You are abstracting away relevant details and then claiming that the brain can operate in a vacuum. The claim that "science says this is true," is particularly ridiculous. Science says there are no truly isolated systems and science also days that putting a human body in all sorts of only relatively isolated systemseven simply zipping someone into an airtight bagwill cause then to cease having experiences extremely rapidly.
Brain function requires a constant exchange of matter, information, energy, and causation across the boundaries of the brain. Dreaming and locked in syndrome are not remotely counterexamples of this.
You should read up on Boltzmann brains.
I am quite aware of the Boltzmann Brain. What do you think the relevance is?
Looks like an equivocation to me. Proudly so even.
Also...
Weird that a chameleon would change my mental phenomena(the color of the chameleon) and result in blending into its surroundings which are not my mental phenomena.
You asked if brains can generate experiences in the vacuum of space. Boltzmann brains are formed in the vacuum of space, and in Boltzmann brain scenarios Boltzmann observers who have the same series of experiences as me vastly outnumber normal observers.
So, yes, apparently brains can generate experiences in the vacuum of space. All that is required is the appropriate neural activity, regardless of what causes and maintains it.
They change the way their skin reflects light. Different wavelengths of light elicit different colour percepts.
Sorry, I wasn't trying to be comical or ridiculous. I was just saying that my experience doesn't have to reflect interaction with my environment. I have long had a recurring dream about a house that opens up into another house. Though I've experienced being in this weird house multiple times, it doesn't exist. My environment at the time was my bedroom. It appears that experience was generated by my brain.
The conclusion is just that interaction with the environment isn't necessary for experience. If it was, I wouldn't be able to have that dream. I wasn't trying to argue that a brain in a void can have experiences. There was a fair amount of what you said that I could have engaged, I just didn't want to do one of those posts where I'm responding to each sentence you wrote. That kind of discussion gets complex and off topic.
Are you under the impression that Boltzmann brains actually exist? They are a thought experiment, the inferred result of a universe with an infinite duration. If the Big Bang marks the begining of our universe it is vanishingly unlikely that a Boltzmann Brain has ever existed or will come to exist at any relevant time scale. If the universe has any sort of "Big Crunch" or "Big Tear" or "Big Reset" Boltzmann brains will never exist.
You might as well be arguing that people can walk through walls or teleport because theory [I]might[/I] allow for the possibility at some incredibly small probability.
This shows a misunderstanding of the thought experiment. The Boltzmann brain is a critique of the Boltzmann universe, the idea that the observable universe could arise from chance thermodynamic fluctuations. The point of the Boltzmann brain is that it is far more likely for random fluctuations to result in a smaller system, the minimum needed to produce any given interval of conciousness. The Boltzmann brain says absolutely nothing about brains alone producing conciousness in the vacuum of space. It would be silly if it did, since this is considered a biological impossibility. If random thermodynamic fluctuations are to produce any given interval of conciousness they will clearly need to include an environment in which a brain is actually able to produce conciousness.
It in no way says that a human brain can generate conciousness at a temperature close to absolute zero, without any oxygen, etc.
No, Im saying that they are a coherent concept and consistent with current scientific understanding.
You seem to be operating under the impression that the "Boltzmann Brain" is "a brain and just a brain experiencing is space." It isn't. It is just "physical system capable of producing consciousness." It says absolutely nothing about brains floating in vacuum having experiences.
:up:
I think it would help to look at the nature of necessity. If you want to say that X is necessary to Y, you can't argue that it is because nobody has ever seen the two separately. Just because it's never happened before doesn't mean it won't happen tomorrow.
Stating that X is necessary to Y is a strong assertion that would require showing why they can't exist separately. In the case of consciousness, that would require a working theory of consciousness. That doesn't exist right now. All you can do is say that you doubt this or that about consciousness. Leave necessity to trivial issues.
I should be the one to apologize, I just meant to add some rhetorical flourish, not impune anything.
Funny enough, I've been working on a novel that involves people stuck in an infinite house.
Anyhow, I get what you are saying. I would just frame it differently. Your enviornment isn't irrelevant to your dream. Obviously if we filled the room with anesthetic or poison gas instead of air it would change the experience. Rather I would frame it like this: "our experiences don't always correlate with the enviornment the way we think they do under 'normal' conditions."
It's possible to have convincing dreams, false memories, hallucinations, etc. These still involve the environment, but they don't have the connection to the world that we think obtains when we "see an apple" or "taste a lemon."
Of course, even in such "normal" instances of perception things that don't exist are phenomenologicaly present to us. For instance, we might see smoke on the horizon as a sign of a fire that has already ceased to exist. When we read fiction the signs on the page of our book direct our awareness to things that have never existed. Dyadic mechanistic accounts of nature seem to always have a problem with this sort of thing, hence the divorce of "mental" and "natural" or subject and objective world.
You had to reduplicate the -n- there to make the joke work. But not too far anyway.
The question of whether Boltzmann Brains have ever or will ever exist seems ancillary though. Michael simply misunderstands the concept if he thinks it provides an example of "brains alone producing conciousness in space." The concept isn't even specific to "brains," it's an argument about the minimum that is needed to produce any given interval of experience and how this smaller system is more likely to emerge from random fluctuations than any larger system. It is entirely silent on "what is the minimum physical system required to produce x interval of experience," since this is simply not a question that is addressed by the concept.
However, we can certainly extrapolate from biology and neuroscience that a Boltzmann brain would need to exist in some range of ambient temperature, atmosphere, etc. in order to produce anything like say "5 seconds of human experience."
I read the last page but maybe I am still getting half-way through the chat. We had a very long conversation about Boltzmann brains here, but the fluctuations could possibly produce 5 seconds of human experience, and it would produce it infinitely many times, as the probability is non-zero in an infinite period of time. Contrary to that, there would be some upper limit[hide="Reveal"], or, more likely, an exponential probability with base<1, such that as the mass increases and the time increases, the likelihood of the fluctuation happening approaches 0 faster than whatever mechanism creates the brain,[/hide] to how much mass a quantum fluctuation can produce by how much time, but no such limit is known by our physics.
And it wouldn't necessarily need to create those 5 seconds of experience, but a consciousness with the memories of those past 5 seconds. Though of course that relies on a view of personal identity that puts a substance moving forward through each infinitesimal point of time, but that is not a weakness in my view. It is a scientific version of Last Thursdayism.
Such as a brain:
Although this seems to be moving beyond the relevant point, which is that colour percepts are the product of neural activity in the visual cortex. This neural activity can be caused by optical stimulation by light, e.g. when awake, or by other things, e.g. when hallucinating or dreaming. We dont need to posit some additional mind-independent colour; we already have a parsimonious account of colour perception consistent with the scientific evidence.
It makes sense: a colour is the disposition of a pigment or light to systematically cause the experience of the colour.
The experience exists in the mind, but the colour that you experience exists regardless of being experienced.
Hence the world is coloured even when no-one is there to experience it.
I believe sense can be given to saying colors are brain-independent and brain-dependent. For example, I am looking at a multi-color object in front a me and report out the different colors. Next, I put on some glasses and now the object appears black. I call this part of the process of seeing colors, brain-independent. Another example, I have an operation on my brain where the doctor removes the neurons associate with color perception. I look at that multi-color object again and it is black. I call this part of the process of seeing colors, brain-dependent. I think you would agree to this.
That said, this brings up the interesting idea of whether black is a color or, from a scientific point of view, the absence of color. If it is an absence of color, like science says, are you compelled to admit that black is a mind independent property of an object? But how could you, can't I dream of black objects which is mental phenomena? Alternately, can't I order a can of paint with the color black contra science?
Language, it can be so messy.
The surface layer of atoms with a configuration of electrons that absorbs certain wavelengths of light and re-emits others exists regardless of being experienced.
But this isnt colour. Colour is the mental percept created by neural activity in the visual cortex. That is how coloured dreams, coloured hallucinations, synesthesia, and variations in colour perception are possible.
Referring to mind-independent objects as having colours is a relic of naive colour realism, the mistaken view that either confuses colour percepts for being mind-independent properties or falsely believes that, in the veridical case, colour percepts resemble mind-independent properties. Our modern scientific understanding of the world and perception has corrected us of this misunderstanding.
Things are black when they absorb all (visible) frequencies of light, and so do not re-emit any (visible) frequency of light.
As such there is no (visible) light to stimulate the rods and cones in our eyes, and so the V4 neurons are not fired, and so no colour percepts are produced.
Its certainly not the case that black is some mind-independent property of objects that is seen by the absence of (visible) light. That just makes no sense at all.
I didn't say that. I said that the pigment and the light have the disposition to systematically cause the experience of colour. This means that the colour experience arises when an animal that has the ability sees the pigment or light, while the colour is a property of the pigment or light in the form of a disposition.
See the SEP-article on color, in particular on color-dispostionalism.
If you don't distinguish between experience (i.e. event in your brain) and colour (i.e. object of the experience), then you can't distinguish between veridical experiences and hallucinations. How could any animal have survived on this planet if they were only hallucinating and never saw objects and states of affairs? Arguments from illusion or hallucination suck.
How do we perceive this propensity? Do we just assume our perceptions are externally caused?
Since all perceptions are subjective responses, you can't claim any property to exist objectively, except to just say the perceptions must be being elicited by something.
That is, an atom has no particular shape, size or color. It just makes me see what I think to be a chair.
Specifically, there is something we all have as organisms including sensory organs, nervous systems and brains that allow us to interact with the world. And then, of course, there is the world (and everything in it) that we interact with e.g., red pens and berries. This is a given, because without this commonality, we would be unable to have any kind of meaningful discourse whether we are in agreement or not.
At the very least, this inherited background (or foundation) gives us the ability to enter into a discussion about how perception happens, whether it is veridical or not, how to distinguish real perception from hallucinogenic ones, what we experience in dreams, etc. And importantly, we agree on the terms we use in our discourse otherwise, we wouldnt be able to discuss this topic intelligibly. Again, such unquestioned, inherited foundations are part of everything we talk (and argue) about.
Consider an experiment involving a beaker of liquid. The beaker is the means by which we have access to the liquid so that we may gain knowledge about it i.e., the liquids chemical composition, volume, weight, and so on. The beaker makes the liquid accessible and measurable. Otherwise, the liquid would just be random spillage on the floor, making it impossible to accurately access it for observation. However
the beaker itself is not part of the discussion. Where the beaker was manufactured, what packaging materials came with it when it was shipped, whose fingerprints are on it, etc. none of this comes into chemists discussions about the experiment. In short, the beakers existence and reliability are not drawn into question. In fact, they cant be. Otherwise, we would be plunged into an infinite regress of epistemological skepticism, where even the skeptics arguments become absurd.
Damn where was I going with all this?!
Yet, I can see black objects. I can pick out an object that is black from other objects that are colored. Why can't we say it lacks the property of color? What makes less sense is to say I pick out a black object because it has no mental percepts. I pick it out because it was black.
In the case of colour there is no such thing as veridical. Its not correct that light with a wavelength of 700nm causes red colour percepts, such that if a different organism with different eyes and brain sees a different colour in response to 700nm light then they are seeing the wrong colour.
Quoting jkop
We can use colour terms however we like, but when we ordinarily use them we are referring to colour percepts, not an objects disposition to reflect a certain wavelength of light.
When I look at the photo of the dress and describe its colours as white and gold, the words white and gold are referring to colour percepts, not the pixels on the screen emitting certain wavelengths of light, and when someone else looks at that same photo and describes its colours as black and blue, the words black and blue are referring to colour percepts, not the pixels on the screen emitting certain wavelengths of light.
If the words white, gold, black, and blue were referring to the pixels on the screen then the very claim that some see white and gold and others see black and blue (when looking at the same screen) would make no sense at all. Yet it is both coherent and factual.
I have repeatedly drawn a distinction between the adjective red and the noun red.
We can use the adjective red to describe a mind-independent pen that has properties that are the cause of red colour percepts. But the noun red refers to that colour percept, not a mind-independent property of the pen.
How do we perceive a fires propensity to cause pain? By putting our hand in the fire and being hurt. In the case of colour, we look at the pen and see red.
Quoting Hanover
I think its a little more than an assumption. Perhaps its the most rationally justified explanation.
Quoting Hanover
We can claim anything we like. Some are true, some are false, and some may be more justified than others.
I think its justified to claim that mind-independent chairs exist but that mind-independent pain doesnt, and most would agree. Clearly theres just less of a consensus regarding whether or not colours are more like chairs or more like pain. I think modern physics and the neuroscience of perception shows them to be more like pain.
Quoting Hanover
That would certainly be the Kantian view, and Im sympathetic. But Im not arguing for anything that extreme. Im only arguing that colours, like pain, are a mental percept.
So "black" is an adjective and a noun because not only does it describe the property of the object (absorbs all colors of light) but it picks out the object from other objects of color (There is no color percepts to refer to). But if "black" is adequately described in this way, it is hard to see why we could not extend this to "red", "blue", etc... as well. There is no practical reason to refer to "mental percepts" at all, or for that matter, it seems more parsimonious not to.
Yes there is; to make sense of dreams, hallucinations, synesthesia, variations in colour perception (e.g. the colours of the dress are white and gold to some and black and blue for others), and visual cortical prostheses.
And these mental percepts exist in ordinary waking experiences to. They are what we ordinarily refer to when we use colour nouns, knowingly or not. An object reflecting various wavelengths of light is just the ordinary cause, nothing more.
But we do not teach what the meaning of "hallucinations" and "dreams" are by pointing out "mental percepts", but by teaching these words to someone who reports events that are not the case in particular circumstances.
Yet another reason to not to posit them.
:smile: :up:
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Does the infinite house symbolize something? I never see all of the second house in my dreams.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
I agree with that.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
You're saying it seems reasonable to us that it would need the kind of environment we have. We can't really go further than that. We don't know exactly what's required for the existence of experience because we don't understand how it happens in the first place.
Well, you're welcome to, but you're wrong.
Well, I would say that the stick that looks bent is not, just pull it out of the water. And the same with dreams/hallucinations, what appears to have happen has not. Additionally, when a colorimeter instrument gets a color wrong, I don't posit that it is hallucinating the wrong mental percepts, I would fix it to ensure it detects the right colors.
Around 1000 and 9000 Kelvin, that same previously black body emits all frequencies of light, looking white the Sun is a non-ideal black body. I am not sure what would happen to the previously white body; if it is an ideal white body, it shouldn't emit radiation at higher temperatures, like it doesn't at room temperature, so it should look white like before, but if the higher temperature affects reflectivity sufficiently, it could change colour.
https://e-learning.gunt.de/WL420/html/en_Basic%20knowledge%20on%20heat%20transfer/0000000042.htm
Isn't it just that there are objects of knowledge and there are the means by which we know these objects? The chair is an object of knowledge, and vision (and color) are the means by which we know this object. A mosquito is an object of knowledge, and pain is a means by which we know this object. The object impresses itself upon us via some faculty we possess.
Then in knowing the means we can also objectify it. Thus we can have knowledge of vision, or color, or pain, and this knowledge is obtained by some subtler means.
Elaborating, we can understand that a red chair exists via our visual perception of the color red, but then when we go further and consider "red" in itself we arrive at ambiguities. Does 'red' mean an experience, or a wavelength, or something else? If we consider redness as a wavelength then it is an object of knowledge that will have causal effects on even those substances which are not conscious. If we consider redness as the experience of a conscious subject then obviously it will not. Of course it is in fact both, and at each successive stage of inflection upon the means of knowing this duality will emerge. QM shows that even our knowledge is not merely "mental."
I haven't really been following this thread, but presumably at the bottom of Michael's claims is the idea that there are some objects of knowledge that are only accessible to certain types of knowers (e.g. knowers that possess taste and a certain type of taste bud can know that lemons are sour). Drawing a hard mental/non-mental line is almost certainly not possible or productive.
When one has an experience, it is an experience of something. When there is no "something", it's an hallucination.
But also, that "brains can generate experiences in the vacuum of space" is a presumption, not a conclusion, of the Boltzmann brain fancy.
And finally,
Quoting Banno
Six months later, Michale is still here to argue that he is most probably a Boltzmann brain, making it vanishingly unlikely that he is correct.
Children learn how to use the word long before they learn about atoms and frequencies.
And they use the word consistently and coherently to talk about things in the world around them. Again, how could we have agreement as to which things are red and which are not if being red were nothing more than an artifice of one's mind. That we overwhelmingly agree as to which things are red is shown by the continued use of the word. That we agree is explained by there being things in the world that we agree are red.
So red is not purely in one's mind, but also in our shared world.
Claiming red is like pain is a blunder. One does not see pain in boxes and cars and sunsets. The grammar of pain differs from that of colour
Nor does it make sense to claim red is an illusion. Colour persists and is shared.
None of which is to deny the physics of colour. The scientistic view that "there is no colour in the world" is inept, failing to recognise that humans create and maintain a shared world of language and belief.
The physics is irrelevant so long as when you ask for a red pen, that is what you are given.
That's plainly false. Red paint really reflects wavelengths of 700 nm, and to experience it as red is to have a veridical experience of it (unlike experiencing 700 nm as gray (if colorblind) or as any colour, sound, smell etc. (if hallucinating).
Quoting Michael
That's also false, because the use of language is conventional, and evidently we refer to different things: you to an alleged "percept" inside the head, and I to the disposition of pigments and light. Most speakers use colour terms pragmatically or ostensively without commitment to philosophical subjectivism or dispositionalism etc.
Quoting Michael
The colours in the photograph are susceptible to blend and interfere with changing light conditions on different screens and environments where the photo is displayed. Basically we don't just see the colours of the dress, but a blend of its colours with the colours from different environments or screens, and that's why different observers tend to see different colours.
Somehow the neurobiology of perception has gone missing here. And some might think that the most salient part of the story. Curious.
A philosophical discussion of colour perception - or better yet, hue discrimination - ought to start with a better understanding of the neurobiology involved. And the ecological relevance. Why hue discrimination even matters in an organisms construction of its world, its Umwelt.
The ecological question of whether it is better to be a dichromat or trichromat is a tricky balance. It is easy to delete or add a cone. And across the primate world, there is a shuttling back and forth that appears to boil down to a tale of small comparative advantages.
Perhaps you forage for food that it helps to spot from a distance, then more cones of the same type would help with the computational acuity. Or perhaps you forage for small berries that demand close work with nimble fingers. Then the extra colour pop of the trichromat is favoured as the option which provides more calories for less effort.
So questions about perception are best first addressed in ecological terms. What is a mind even for?
If there is anything philosophical left unaddressed after that, at least the discussion will be usefully focused. And not another re-run of idealism vs realism.
Real-life example: Marie Curie might have lived longer if she could have visualized radiation with a cloud chamber or sonified radiation with a Geiger counter. Instead, it was her later radiation sickness symptoms that gave her the otherwise absent, delayed sensing of the radiation. :/
Quoting Richard B
Hmm... So, there's the experience (the perception, qualia), the perceived (the fruit), and whatever is involved in the interaction (including the contact lenses). Could "mental phenomena" and "seeing the colors" be deflated, so they're the same thing? Or, well, for the mental phenomena to occur in this case, we'd first have to see with our eyes, right?
Could we say that the rose and the car have the property of being red since they can elicit/cause that (format of) experience/perception to most onlookers under common circumstances?
The experience/perception isn't "in the" rose, it's part of the onlooker when occurring. And the rose isn't part of (or "in") the onlooker. What "red" are we talking about anyway? :)
"direction of best fit" as it goes... More than likely, something like this.
We look at the same distal object (the pixels on the screen), our eyes react to the same proximal stimulus (the light), and yet we see different colours. Therefore, the noun "colours" in the preceding sentence is not referring to some property of the distal object or some property of the proximal stimulus; it is referring to the type of mental percepts that differ between individuals.
And the way we're using the noun "colours" in that initial sentence is the ordinary use of the word.
Quoting jkop
You're putting the cart before the horse. Light with a wavelength of 700nm ordinarily causes red colour percepts in most humans, and so we use the adjective "red" to describe objects which reflect light with a wavelength of 700nm.
But as a noun, the word "red" ordinarily refers to that type of percept.
Historically, before we knew what these percepts were, we mistook them for being mind-independent properties of objects. This is the naive realist view. We know better now.
I'm not arguing that here. I'm simply responding to the question asking if brains can generate experiences in the vacuum of space. The Boltzmann brain thought experiment shows that such a scenario is both coherent and consistent with current scientific theories.
Quoting Banno
You seem to be using "experience" to mean "veridical experience". You're welcome to, but that's not what is meant when discussing Boltzmann brains.
As an example, taken from Wikipedia:
When I talk about experience I mean any occurrence of visual or auditory or other percepts, produced by activity in the visual or auditory or other cortexes, regardless of what caused it. The experience is veridical if it is caused by the appropriate external stimulus, a dream if asleep, or an hallucination or illusion otherwise.
Quoting Michael
:brow:
Do you agree or disagree with this?
When looking at the photo of the dress, some see white and gold, some black and blue. This is a fact. What are the words "white", "gold", "black", and "blue" referring to in that sentence?
I say mental percepts.
Did for example JJ Gibson's research get rid of the metaphysical, epistemological and semantic issues? It seems fairly clear, I think, that these issues are inextricably connected. Hence the reruns of idealism vs realism etc.
Quoting Michael
No, you fail to distinguish the pixels of the image and the conditions of observation such as the pixels of different screens on which the image is displayed. Two observers looking at the same photo but on different screens see different colours (that's why screens need to be calibrated).
Also when different observers in the same room see the photo on the same screen they may discover that they identify different colours depending on whether their eyes have been exposed to the same light conditions prior seeing the photo. It can take around 20 minutes for an aircraft pilot to adjust his or her vision from bright cabin light to the weak light conditions in a cockpit during night flight.
Since it takes time for the eyes to adjust, different observers can mistake one colour for another, especially bleached, or blended colours under weak light conditions, st dusk or dawn etc that can make it difficult to identify the colour of a pigment or light source.
Notice that regardless of the colours of the dress in the famous photo, they are kind of bleached or unsaturated, hence particularity susceptible to being influenced by the various conditions under which the photo is observed. It is disingenuous to exploit these selective or manipulated conditions of observation as "arguments" for subjectivism.
Two people looking at the same photo on the same screen can see different colours. See the dress.
I see white and gold, my colleague in the same room looking at the same screen sees black and blue.
The nouns "white", "gold", "black", and "blue" in the preceding sentence are referring to percepts, not mind-independent properties of the screen or the light. This is the ordinary use of such nouns.
See also variations in colour perception.
Now you ignore my reply and explanation of those variations, how rude :sad:
Your explanation of what causes variations in colour perception is not relevant to the claim I am making.
I see white and gold when I look at the photo of the dress. The nouns "white" and "gold" in the preceding sentence do not refer to the screen's "disposition" to emit the wavelengths of light typically associated with white and gold; they refer to the types of mental percepts that I have and that those who see black and blue don't have.
When one has an experience [lets say me, when I have an experience], it is an experience of "something" [me and who/what/where/when/how?]. When there is no "something" [no me or no ground for experience building or something to get out of "it" (it being the experience?)] I hallucinate when there is nothing to experience?] What if nothing like this has happened to me before, a freak accident or chance in timing,which allowed outcomes to play out that were not expected or anticipated, and that should be able to be explained for what it is by not the one experiencing the chance happening but from someone explaining it in the future for what it was worth then...[imagine telling your grand-kids about your friend getting struck by lightening in the 90's] It can be explained using lang skills in a future time looking back on the past after its been done. Years have passed and the story is recalled again in the present time, which is ancient history by now.... If we have no expectations or visions or ideas in mind, how can use language to describe/to infer any related experience from memory or recollection of thoughts/ideas? We have to picture these ideas in motion, know how they move not just what they are...what about, what WE are?
What about day-dreaming? Why can't I speak of it?Oh yeah no one is listening. Say this subjective hallucination is explained or described or the person having the hallucinations are observed and as the words are used to talk about what happened in the "daydream" the first time, is it born into the world? Was it being nurtured in the privacy of your mind before you shared the words explaining it? Are the words said with purpose, or are they being stuttered from fear and trembling? Just the sound of the tone, or expression seen on the face, or intensity of the eyes looking towards an objective. How little do we need to express our truth in order to make a mark or lasting IMPRESSION upon others, the world, experience. Are we not making any lasting impression for the self in a separate way, internally? Is this required to reflect on our choices? How did we end up here? Did we lose sight of self and our light or path? Are we being illuminated or doing that for another? Depends.
Should I try and make any sense of this experience had like no other? How would I know it was like no other if I didnt make sense of it one way or another? I have to then ask myself and answer honestly: Are you where you should be? Does it make sense? How far have we gone and how much have we grown? Agreed upon at large, we standardize objectivity, even as it shifts with time and society. Its a reflection perhaps, not an illusion.
Quoting jorndoe This one :point: :flower: the flower and the onlooker are both a part of (or "in") the world, by "being-in-the-world" (see Heidegger, "What is Called Thinking" A Translation of Was Heisst Denken by Fred D. Wieck and J. Glenn Gray) our experience interacting with flowers in our environment through our bodies sensory organs and/or a shared use of language or gestures that was "taken in" during the experience or interaction. By using both our vision and basic language in a shared world with another, we are asserting and verifying, THAT flower over there is the most vibrant red in the whole garden of roses.
To the question, "Could "mental phenomena" and "seeing the colors" be deflated, so they're the same thing?" I say yes, but it's one sided and not the initial intention. I believe they can be MISTAKEN or confused into thinking they are seeing/experiencing "the thing" when really its an illusion that the body is distinguishing in the experience of the mental phenomenon to be the same thing without realizing...but that is not the person deciding they want to deflate the two or an observer hoping that one does deflate the two...sometimes one just does that and its linked to their abilities innate / conditioned to them. I think.
When someone tells you "You have it good," stop for a moment. Think about the deeper meaning behind their statement. Are they being silly, or are we the silly ones? It could be that we both are. And it's possible that personal opinions really come to life in the gray area where joking ends and seriousness begins. Jokes on little lion boy or me?
Quoting Lionino
Lionino thinks I am trying to make a joke on his accorded behalf. I was simply showing that I was sounding out and using my language skills/my knowing to determine the meaning. A meaning I can recognize or understand since I know what a "lion" is and that "nino" is spanish for boy. I didnt double up the n to make the joke...you are the joke. I was displaying via screen and typed words how I was breaking down your username to learn what I can and verify my understanding before going to you, the source and person that can share further verifying how FAR out I am...
So yeah, if you replied to me with an image of a retarded emoji to be funny I want to know who laughed? Does the laughing echo or is the silence deafening? I'm sure it amused a few...
It only caused this reaction because maybe I also can see myself in the way you might have...Does this truth hurt? Not really, because I have accepted already I am a crazy doof! BUT I am no fool. AND THAT is how I attempt to break down subjectivity, we can get to the bottom of things. If not the bottom, maybe that is important. How close we are to it and if we ought to be there...What colors do you see at rock bottom?Can you go there? What do you know about it? Where are you?
The relevant philosophical issue is whether percepts exist, and if there are more plausible explanations of colour. Hence my explanation, yet you show little interest in the philosophy when you repeatedly assert that colour terms refer to percepts. My reference to the SEP article (that you also ignored) is at least descriptive while the article that you refer to unsurprisingly assumes percepts. :roll:
Visual percepts evoked with an intracortical 96-channel microelectrode array inserted in human occipital cortex.
Yeah right :roll:
Perhaps. If you want a word for both experiences and hallucinations you might try "sensation" or "impression". That way we can usefully distinguish between experiencing things in the world and sensations with no such connection. I supose it suits your purpose not to do so.
Quoting Michael
Then why is it contentious?
Quoting Michael
The presumption is that "gold" is a noun, therefore there must be something for it to refer to. But there are all sorts of nouns that refer to multiple things, or do not refer at all. "Mental percept" here is quite empty - "the thing referred to by a colour word". There are colour words, and colours, because we can use them to pick out to each other different things around us. That sometimes one person sees blue where the other sees gold does not change this.
Quoting Michael
Yep.
Quoting Michael
Nah. When someone says the dress is blue, that is a statement about the dress, not about their mind.
Quoting Michael
"Visual percepts" is again hollow. It means the patient discerned shapes. "Visual percepts" is hypostatisation.
I don't think there is any disagreement here concerning the neurobiology of perception. The issue is:Quoting Mp202020
That's a question about the way the word "red" is used.
So when you get into an argument with a dichromat and start insisting that what they call green is actually beige, does your personal preference for language games trump their neurodiversity?
Seems a little unwoke and culturally oppressive for you.
Nobody here is woke, even if many purport to be. Go to the "Currently Reading" thread. Most names there by far are English. We can't be talking about diverse writers when folks don't even bother to read writers from neighbouring countries.
Speaking of writers, screw that Argentine Borges and his shameful inferiority complex.
It's not a matter of agreeing or disagreeing. It's a matter of coherency/terminological consistency. As far as I can tell, you're equivocating key terms. "Colours" is one. I was just pointing out the equivocation. The rest of the sentence shows that nicely. You know that too. That's why you corrected it when you added what's below...
Quoting Michael
It's worth noting that that dress 'photo' is a digital image. The same issue does not arise with a hard copy. The words "white and gold" and "blue and black" are referring to both, the light being emitted by the dress and perceived by the viewer. The differences between viewers are attributable to the amount of direct sunlight they(and their eyes) had been exposed to leading up to the viewing of the 'photo'. The colors emitted by surfaces and our eyes are effected/affected by environmental influences such as direct sunlight, shadow, etc. Colours and coloured pigmentation are virtually useless in the deep sea for instance. A bright yellow ball looks very different when viewed in deep water, or in very low light conditions. Everything looks different in those conditions. So, it's clearly not just about what's going on in the brain when we look at distal objects.
I say claiming that colours are "mental percepts" confines the scope to inside the brain. The dress, ball, and the light they emit/reflect are not. Technically speaking, nor are our eyes. I'm thinking that science also supports the claim that colours are light. I'm doubting that science supports what you're claiming it does.
Yep. Folk assume that colour words must refer, and that there must be a thing to which they refer, then get themselves all befuddled inventing things for them to refer to - "mental percepts" or "frequencies".
:up: [sub](no need to invoke the ol' fella' to talk about the world we're all part of, well, unless ...)[/sub]
I guess "it's red" or "it has the property of being red" means it reliably can elicit/cause that (format of) experience/perception to most onlookers under common circumstances? That's how we learn that stuff anyway.
What exactly red is, may be a different question.
Thanks for the long response, which I will take as you thinking out loud. So many good questions, I'm not going to approach them all. There's a bunch of words relating to these topics. Consider also illusion, delusion, misapprehension, dream, see, perceive, glimpse, notice, and so on. Each with a particular take on what might be happening.
"Visual percepts" is standard terminology in the neuroscience of perception.
See visual percepts evoked with an intracortical 96-channel microelectrode array inserted in human occipital cortex.
Quoting Banno
The nouns "blue" and "gold" in this sentence are referring to percepts. We see the same screen, we see the same light, but we don't see the same colours. Therefore the colours we see are not mind-independent properties of the screen or the light.
And the way the nouns "blue" and "gold" are being used in this sentence is the ordinary use of the word, and the things they refer to are what we ordinarily understand to be colours.
They aren't referring to both. When my colleague and I look at the photo of the dress we see different colours. The noun "colours" isn't referring to the light because we don't see different light; it's referring to our visual percepts, which are different.
This is the ordinary use of the noun, and what we ordinarily understand colours to be (and what the naive realist mistakes to be a mind-independent property of things). That we then might use the adjective "coloured" to describe the computer screen does not change this. Much like the noun "pain" refers to the mental percept even though the adjective "painful" describes things like stubbing one's toe.
Sometimes words refer to things and states of affairs.
Unlike talk of "mental percepts" or "frequencies", talk of "dispositions" seems compatible with both ordinary language and science.
'Red' refers to an object's disposition to cause certain colour experiences. Its disposition is both ostensively and physically different from that referred to by 'green', for instance.
The word "red" can be used to refer to an object's disposition to cause certain colour experiences, but they ordinarily refer to those certain colour experiences. Those colour experiences are what we ordinarily understand by colours, especially before we have any understanding of an object having a surface layer of atoms that reflects certain wavelengths of light.
When I think about the colour red, I think about the colour experience, not atoms reflecting light. When we describe the fact that some see a white and gold dress and others a black and blue dress, we are describing differences in colour experiences, not differences in objects reflecting light.
Our ordinary conception of colours is that colours are "simple intrinsic, non-relational, non-reducible, qualitative properties ... not micro-structural properties or reflectances".
The naive (color primitivist) realist falsely believes that these colours are mind-independent properties of objects, when in fact they are mental percepts.
This does not deny that we can use the adjective "red" to describe objects with certain micro-structural properties or reflectances; it only states that micro-structural properties or reflectances are not how we ordinarily understand colours, and not what we ordinarily refer to when we use the nouns "red" and "colour".
The OP had an interesting argument. He or she was saying that when we speak objectively about color, this is based on the assumption that we all have the same experience of the color spectrum, so that when I tell you to pick out blue light, you're able to do that because your experience of blue is the same as mine.
Then the OP points out that this assumption may be false. We may not be having similar experiences, although we've each learned to use "blue" to point to the same things. He or she is saying that since this uncertainty exists, we have to conclude that color experiences are unique to each individual.
So this is supposed to allow us to reject the argument that color is nothing beyond words used for pointing.
We certainly have evidence that colour experiences can differ between individuals; the dress is the obvious example, but also differences in color categorization manifested by males and females.
And speaking for myself, my left eye sees a slightly different colour (or hue) than my right eye.
But given that the macroscopic world is deterministic, and given that we have mostly the same kind of eyes and brains, it stands to reason that our colour experiences are broadly similar in most cases.
It stands to reason. But there's a lurking problem with saying we have different color experiences. It implies an underlying standard, right? When we talk about the dress, we say some people see blue, and others see white. <-- That very statement is using color in an objective sense, as if there's a standard blue kept in a vault in Paris or something. It may be that we can't escape talking about color in objective terms at least to some extent. Maybe this comes back to the underlying requirement of communication itself. We have to assume a common ground. If it's not actually there, that's fine, but we have to behave as if it is. Do you agree with that?
The standard I'm talking about only shows up if we posit experiential dissonance. I ask Bill if he's having a stabbing pain. He says yes, but he's experiencing what Sally would call a dull pain.
So wait, we may not need a standard. We just evacuate all the terms of meaning and say we don't know what each person is experiencing?
That depends on what you mean by "know". If you mean certainty, then sure; we can't know what each person is experiencing. If you mean a true, justified belief, then we might know what each person is experiencing, e.g. if their experiences are in fact similar to our own. And again, given our similar biologies it stands to reason that our experiences are mostly similar.
I'm saying if we look at the consequences of these two:
1. Everybody has similar experiences of color
2. Everybody has unique experiences of color
If it's 1, then color language can refer to both subjective and objective accounts. If it's 2, then color language is valuable for pointing to things, but not useful for talking about individual experiences.
Neither one allows us to dispense with talk of experience, though.
I haven't denied this. I've only argued that our ordinary, everyday understanding of colours is an understanding of colour experiences, not an understanding of atoms absorbing and re-emitting various wavelengths of light, and that our ordinary, everyday use of colour nouns refers to these colour experiences.
The use of the nouns "white", "gold", "black", and "blue" in the sentence "some see white and gold, others black and blue" when describing the photo of the dress is the ordinary, everyday use and is referring to differences in colour experiences, not differences in the computer screen's micro-structural properties or reflectances.
We just happen to naively and unreflectingly think of these colour experiences as being mind-independent properties of distal objects rather than mental percepts. And we're welcome to think of and talk about the world in that way if we like (and we often do), but we'd be wrong.
You're saying that color language is based on shared color experience. Our common ground in experience is what allows us to use color words to point to objects, right? We could call this color internalism, that each person has access to the same common ground from which language arises.
Someone could argue that since experience is inaccessible to the public, we don't know if we have common ground in experience. The only common ground we can verify is in the way we use language to accomplish things. This would be color externalism. It says language use is primary, and people borrow from that realm when they talk about their own experiences.
How do you answer the externalist?
The word "experiences" refers to experiences, so why can't the word "colours" refer to a subset of experiences?
And again, the use of the nouns "white", "gold", "black", and "blue" in the sentence "some see white and gold, others black and blue" when describing the photo of the dress is referring to differences in colour experiences, not differences in the computer screen's micro-structural properties or light emissions.
Do you agree or disagree?
I think all we can say is that when we have the perception of X and we perceive ourselves doing Y and we then experience Z that we can say Z follows from X and Y, but I don't see where the jump comes to explaining the external world.
That is, I see my hand (X) and then I see my hand go toward a perception of fire (Y ) and then I feel pain (Z). If I've started with the assumption that all the properties I perceive are mental creations, it just seems an item of faith to suggest there is an external reality composed of definitionally unknowable substances that underwrite all my perceptions. I say they are definitionally unknowable because if we assert that all properties are mental creations, it seems necessary to admit that a propertyless substance would be unknowable because what can I know other than properties?
Quoting Michael
It's certainly a built in assumption that generally goes unchallenged, but that would seem consistent with everything else we've said, which is that reality as perceived is a mental construct. That is, no one outside of philosophical circles goes around questioning if the flower is red or if the redness of the flower is a mental construct. If you're going open the door to questioning inherent beliefs, then why arbitrarily limit it? Why is it a rationally justified explanation to say the red is just in your head but it's not a rationally justified explanation to also say the entirety of the flower is just in your head?Quoting MichaelExcept that the concept of a mind independent chair is incoherent. The only thing I know about chairs are its subjectively imposed properties, and so I have no idea what a true chair is.
Since physics studies what we perceive, it is the study of perceptions, just like all of science. It's for that reason you can't use physics as evidence of the external world.
All you're doing is assuming a dualistic universe of minds and bodies as your starting point , but I don't see how it's any more rational to assume idealism, materialism, or dualism. I defer to dualism as well, but that's either because it's a foundational construct in modern thought or it's something that we inherently accept as human beings, but if we're going to dig deeper into the question of what reality is composed of, I don't see how it survives any better than the alternatives.
This shortcut will save hours. (Y)
It's not arbitrary. I've just read up on some physics and neuroscience of perception. Atoms are mind-independent objects with mind-independent properties; their electrons absorb and re-emit various wavelengths of light, this light stimulates the rods and cones in the eyes, the eyes send signals to the brain, the neurons in the visual cortex are activated, giving rise to visual percepts, including colour percepts.
Those who see a white and gold dress have different colour percepts to those who see a black and blue dress, because different neurons in the visual cortex are activated.
I don't understand the aversion to what I am saying. Do you object to me saying that pain is a mental percept, not a mind-independent property of fire?
Nuh uh.
ParenthesYs
Did you get the internalism vs externalism thing I explained? Color internalism is where experience is primary and language use emerges from common experience. That isn't verifiable.
Color externalism doesn't dictate how we speak, it just says that speech is primary because it's the only verifiable common ground.
Quoting Michael
Ugh... the "some see white, others see black" is philosophical spaghetti. It seems to be using white and black as objective entities, but it's simultaneously talking about subjectivity. We need to bury that sentence in the desert.
No, it's a scientific fact. There's a whole bunch of studies on the matter, such as Exploring the Determinants of Color Perception Using Thedress and Its Variants: The Role of Spatio-Chromatic Context, Chromatic Illumination, and MaterialLight Interaction.
You seem to be letting some armchair philosophy (Wittgenstein?) get in the way of empirical evidence.
Look at that article's abstract. It starts by talking about what people see, then it switches to what people reported seeing. It's straddling internalism and externalism, so it can't be used to support either side.
It talks about "different individuals view[ing] the same image ... reported it to be widely different colors" and "different individuals experienc[ing] different percepts when observing the same image of the dress".
Different percepts entail different reported colours because color nouns ordinarily refer to those percepts, not the light emitted by the computer screen.
It is a fact that I see white and gold and others see black and blue because it is a fact that I experience white and gold percepts and others experience black and blue percepts.
What can you possibly know about an atom other than your perception of it?
If the redness is in my head and not the chair, why don't I say that about the shape as well? And why don't I keep going down the list until I realize that everything I know about the chair, including its atomic composition, is based upon my perceptions. Since I've already said my perceptions are mind creations, then I'm not talking about the atoms, but I'm talking about my perceptions, which is all I can ever talk about.
I get that my perceptions present to me a world where everything works together, like it appears that light bounces off chair objects that goes into my eyeballs and that makes me see chairs, but that doesn't mean that system is underwritten by an external reality of mysterious unknowable objects. That just means chairs look red when there's nothing inherently red about them and it might mean that eyes look like they receive light that gets interpreted, but that doesn't mean those perceptions of those events actually happened. If we can't say the red of the chair is in the chair, why are so sure your analysis of cones and rods isn't just mind created interpretations?
It's been 12 minutes for God's sake. How much time do you need?
Your argument seems to be that if I claim that colours are mind-dependent then to be consistent I must claim that everything is mind-dependent. This is nonsensical reasoning. You might as well argue that if I claim that pain is mind-dependent then to be consistent I must claim that everything is mind-dependent.
It is a fact that some things are mind-dependent and some things aren't. Smells, tastes, colours, and pain are mind-dependent and atoms, apples, chairs, and pens aren't.
This is what physics and neuroscience show, and I trust their findings. Unless and until the science shows otherwise, I commit to these theses.
I've already referenced actual scientific studies, so I'll now reference something a little more casual:
Your brain is lying to you colour is all in your head, and other colourful facts
I don't really care much for the philosopher who responds with "nuh uh, 'cause Wittgenstein says..."
What I'm saying is that all that you know is mediated by the mind. There is no science that suggests otherwise. What that means is that you cannot trust your perceptions to be accurate reflections of reality because you don't know what your mind did to the incoming objects.
For example, an apple might be represented by some as sweetness, others as red, others as round, and others as a bound up mass of atoms. The reason we perceive it as we do might have nothing to do with truth, but perhaps just what maximizes our chances of survival or even something else.
Fire is experienced as red and as pain, both of which you know not to be properties of the fire. At some level you stop acknowledging that the perception isn't correlated to the object, but you declare it an inherent property. That seems to occur at the atomic level as you've presented it, where you just throw down and say I know there are atomic properties and they present as X,Y, and Z and they behave in a, b, c ways.
My question is why can you say you just know the subatomic particles move at certain speeds (for example) or that photons behave in certain ways if you're relying upon your mind mediated perceptions?
If we've established an unreliability of the mind as to how it correlates with reality, I just don't see how you can call an end to that unreliability at a certain level and then feel safe to claim that what you know about your perceptions are accurate and not blurred, manipulated, altered, and corrupted by the mind.
I didn't enter this discussion to question scientific realism and argue for idealism or solipsism or nihilism. I am simply explaining what the science shows. I trust the science over armchair philosophy.
And someone who argues that colours are mind-independent properties of objects at least accepts scientific realism to some extent; they don't claim that the world is all mind-dependent.
Fair enough, but that sound less like philosophy and more just basic neuroscience and physics. I trust science as well for daily living, but I don't think it addresses the metaphysical questions except to the extent it admits to the corruption between the perception and the reality.
Yes, I mentioned that in an earlier post.
But what should be noted is that those who claim that colours are mind-independent clearly believe that there is a mind-independent world with mind-independent properties, and that sometimes experience is "veridicial", i.e. presents to us the mind-independent nature of the world. Such people should be scientific realists, and accept what physics and neuroscience tell us about the world and perception and physics and neuroscience tell us that colours are percepts like pain, not mind-independent properties of pens.
To quote Bertrand Russell "naive realism leads to physics, and physics, if true, shows that naive realism is false".
Perhaps there's a place for idealism (which can reject science), but there's just no place for naive (colour) realism given our modern scientific understanding of the world.
Russell conflates the colour (seen under ordinary conditions) and what that colour may look like (seen under other conditions). Hilary Putnam writes about that in his blog here.
He doesn't conflate. He recognises, as I have been arguing, that colours as ordinarily understood and talked about are the appearances/percepts, not an object's disposition to reflect certain wavelengths of light. When I ordinarily think and talk about the color red I am thinking and talking about the former, not the latter.
The naive realist gets it even more wrong than the dispositionalist, thinking the appearance itself to be (or in some supposed veridical case resemble) a mind-independent property of material surfaces, often denying the existence of percepts entirely. Modern science shows this view to be wrong.
Right. When "science" undermines realism it undermines itself, and those who do not notice this live in an alternate reality where their perceptions are good enough when it comes to "science" and untrustworthy otherwise.* There is never a clear answer as to where the "science" ends and the "otherwise" begins.
* At times they even seem to labor under the idea that "science" makes no use of basic perceptions at all. "Trust the 'science', not your lying eyes!," as if science has no use for vision.
Who, me? But I have been at pains to point out that colour is not mind-independent; nor is it all in the mind. The error here is in thinking things must be one or the other.
A pretty clear explanation, showing the underpinning assumption that there must be a "something" to which "red' refers. Why should this be so? Look to the use of the word, to pick out red pens and red faces. That's what counts.
He conflates (1) an "apparent distribution of colors" and (2) a "distribution of colors" that appears in various ways when he moves, or when other people see it.
That's two different senses of 'distribution of colours' of which 2 is not apparent but a distribution of colours that appears in various ways. Russell conflates these senses as if both were apparent, and concludes that none of them is better or more real than any other. That's a fallacy of ambiguity.
He makes the same mistake in his analysis of shapes. As if the recognizable physical shape of an object is not "better" than what it looks like from odd angles, or through a microscope or as a dot seen from far away etc.
Does talk about pens and faces refer to "somethings"? Does talk about circles and squares refer to "somethings"?
Can you run this argument in some way that is consistent across all examples of perceptual discriminations and object recognitions so that is sounds less like a closet idealist speaking, more like an actual pragmatist.
The language game approach fails to engage with what folk are actually interested in when it comes to perception. And so it fails to give them a better way to think about the cognitive realities of what are going on.
An enactive or ecological approach to perception speaks to what really matters. How mental experience is a modelling relation or Umwelt.
The account that works for the redness of red has to work just as well as that for the roundness of round, or the pencilness of pencils.
No one ever seems to have a problem with shape perception, yet they do with hue perception. If they can see how each ought to be equally troubling, and hence equally untroubling, then something has been achieved.
So show how your approach does that.
I've mentioned the implication that when you and I talk about something's being red, we would be talking about quite different things - you of your percept, and me of mine.
But moreover, if "red" refers to something purely mental, how could you be sure that you are using the word correctly? How could you ensure that your use of "red" now matched your use of "red" previously? How could you be sure that your memory is not deceiving you, and what you are now calling "red" is what you previously called "green"?
All the rigmarole of private languages would come in to play. And the answer here is that you can only be sure you are using "red" correctly if other folk agree with your use - if it works to pick out the right pen. Indeed, that is what "using the word correctly" consists in.
I got a robot lawnmower. If you get one, don't get the cheapest one. It gets stuck in the mulch, so I have to watch it. Other than that, it does a good job. Sort of.
If you wish to talk about something else, go right ahead. But don't presume to be talking for everybody.
Quoting Mp202020
This question is at least in part about the use of the word "red".
:up: 'Real' refers to whatever we all reliably experience in common ways via the senses. including (internal) bodily sensations. Hence colours, just as shapes and objects, are not imaginary, but real.
Whether the word 'colour' refers to experiences or to the dispositions of objects to cause more or less reliable colour experiences, is a matter of stipulation, Both usages are intelligible. And yet @Michael seems to believe that there is some determinate fact of the matter that could enable us to declare one usage "true" and the other "false".
You are seeing it wrong. Look closer, it is clearly black and blue. :shade:
But I just asked you to show how your answer on that applies consistently across the board in terms of perceptual discrimination and object recognition. Why for instance do people think redness speaks to a qualitative difference while roundness speaks to more a quantitative difference.
In their speech, people show that they find the redness of red some kind of deep puzzle a Hard Problem yet the ballness of balls is taken to be an Easy Problem. How is this accounted for in your language games approach ... or whatever your approach is meant to be.
I don't find folk being able to reliably hand you red objects or round objects a particularly enlightening fact here. It indeed seems quite irrelevant to the sense of mystification that OPs such as this express.
That is why I say first there is an actual issue. And second, the proper way to start deflating it is not to divert the discussion into the pragmatics of language use but to dig into the neurobiology that could show how hue discrimination is really just another tool in the armoury of shape perception. So if you have a problem with one, you would have to feel that it is equal to any problem you might have with the other.
It's the right start. You are only offering a cheap way to handwave the problem away.
But you have a chance to refute me by showing how folk ought to just shut up and be satisfied by having it pointed out to them they can reliably pick out red objects or round objects or whatever else gets asked for. Metaphysically, this is all there is to know on the matter.
They do?
I'm not at all sure what that could mean. I, and I think most folks, do not attach numbers to roundness in any intrinsic way.
But sure, as Austin pointed out, limiting our considerations to sight alone will limit the account. Touch, smell and taste are more "direct" than sight.
And as a general point, philosophers don't know anything not known to other folk. We pretty much agree as to the physiology of sight. So far as we are addressing a philosophical question, it's not an issue of mere physiology.
It's not at all clear how a "dig into the neurobiology that could show how hue discrimination is really just another tool in the armoury of shape perception" answers 'Does the color red exist outside of the subjective mind that conceptually designates the concept of red?'. But showing that the word "red" is public, not private, does show that there is more to "red" than what has here been called "mental percepts".
Shapes appear to take up a quantity of space and time and materiality in a way that colours don't. Yet both are constructs of our neurobiology. Hence why hue discrimination is what gets rolled out as the mystifying topic and not shape discrimination.
Quoting Banno
Why the scare quotes? Did you want to make the neurobiogical point here?
If perception is essentially indirect, and yet also pragmatic, then we have to defend that as a way of speaking in terms of some intelligible spectrum that covers both the more "direct" and the more "indirect" poles of this dialectic.
I have argued that this nuance is what your approach lacks. It doesn't even begin to recognise it. And when reminded of it, starts looking for reasons to look past it.
Quoting Banno
So the Hard Problem is not thrown down as a challenge to the metaphysics of physicalism? You want to pretend that somehow idealism or epistemology in general are somehow "not philosophical topics"?
How much more bullshit do you intend to produce?
Quoting Banno
And once again, my question to you. Why might this need to be shown for redness as a quality and not ballness?
As a space and time occupying shape, folk usually find it unproblematic that "the ball" refers to a real thing rather than a private qualia. But for "redness", they become all suddenly twisted about whether it is something that exists "out there" in the world, or something that exists "in here" within the privacy of their minds.
So something is up and your language games story doesn't generalise very well. But perhaps you might have a go at showing otherwise?
I'm not holding my breath of course. Time has taught me only to expect further evasion.
Why isn't "ballness" (?) a quality? What's a quality, here, anyway? A thing in the world? A concept? It's hard to address a term that has so much baggage attached, but it is not obvious that the case with red is different to the case with "ballness" - the scare quotes are there to note the unusual usage.
Yes you are. Have been for years. It's the language game you've developed to protect your language games. :up:
(This answering a question with a question is just so handy. Always be evading. :up: )
I don't know. You asserted that there was a difference, first insisting that the "...account that works for the redness of red has to work just as well as that for the roundness of round, or the pencilness of pencils". Doesn't it? You then said that red was in some way qualitative, while round was quantitative, a contrast I wasn't able to follow. You next said redness was hard, but ballness easy. I'm not so sure of that, not having a clear notion of what "ballness" is. Then you said "Shapes appear to take up a quantity of space and time and materiality in a way that colours don't." I'm not sure about that, since colours do tend to occur together with shapes, and things that are coloured tend to have shape. You then said something about perception being indirect, which Austin showed to be an overgeneralisation.
You didn't lose me, since i couldn't follow you from the getgo.
But as such it's pretty vapid.
Family resemblances pretty much put paid to this idea. There need be nothing in common to all balls; rather they might resemble one another in various ways. Like threads in a rope, no individual thread running the full length, yet together they make one rope.
To this we can add Austin's point that there is no reason to supose that the word for red (he used grey) must refer to the very same thing in all instances - why shouldn't we use the same word to refer to different things? The red of a sports car and of a rose and of a face are all very different.
Sure, some are red while others are not red yet look red or turn red temporarily. Being red is different from looking red.
Being red is possession of the quality plus reference to the word 'red'. The quality is for example a pigment that systematically reflects or scatters wavelength components around 700 nm under ordinary conditions.
A red looking rose leaf or a face however may not possess such pigments, yet they can look red because of coloured lights from the environment or behaviour of blood vessels that temporarily make a face turn red etc.
If I am seeing the wrong colours then the colours I see are not mind-independent properties of the computer screen. So what are these colours I see? Percepts.
You are back to using the adjective "red". I am talking about the nouns "red" and "colour". Do you understand the distinction between an adjective and a noun?
Quoting Banno
Ask the same questions about the words "pain" and "pleasure". Regardless of what you or Wittgenstein think about language, pain and pleasure are mental percepts, not mind-independent properties of whatever objects or events cause pain and pleasure.
Ask also the same questions about the words "mind", "mental", "thought", "sensation", "belief", and so on.
It's unclear what you mean here. You seem to be using the singular noun "colour", which presumably refers to a singlular thing. So there's some singular thing that is in part mind-dependent and part mind-independent, as if half of it is in my head and half of it outside?
That certainly doesn't make much sense at all.
Perhaps what you mean to say is that the noun "colour" can be used to refer to (at least) two different things; one of those things is a mental percept and one of those things is something else? I've already agreed with this. My point is only that when we ordinarily think and talk about colours we are thinking and talking about the mental percept, not a surface layer of atoms that reflects certain wavelengths of light.
I don't think the OP, for example, is asking if atoms reflecting light is mind-independent. He's referring to the mental percept and asking if it's a mental percept or (as the naive colour primitivist believes) something mind-independent.
We don't ordinarily use neurology when we want to change or add a new colour to the kitchen wall etc. Ordinarily we use paint that reflects the desired wavelengths of light. Neither paint nor light is located inside the head.
What's inside the head when we perceive colours and shapes is the perceiving, i.e. a biological phenomenon that is constitutive for perceiving things, while the things that we perceive are located outside the head.
One does not perceive the neurological event of one's own perception (nor radiation, nor word use) but the colour or shape.
I perceive pain and pleasure. Pain and pleasure are mental percepts. I perceive smells and tastes. Smells and tastes are mental percepts. I perceive colours. Colours are mental percepts.
My ordinary conception of colours is that of "sui generis, simple, intrinsic, qualitative, non-relational, non-reducible properties ... not micro-structural properties or reflectances." This is how I am able to make sense of coloured dreams and hallucinations, synesthesia, variations in colour perception (some see white and gold, some see black and blue), and cortical visual prostheses; and it is these sui generis properties that I ordinarily talk about when I talk about colours.
Maybe you're different, but I suspect that the overwhelming majority of people are exactly like me (even if the majority do not recognise these sui generis properties to be mental percepts, naively believing them to be mind-independent properties of material surfaces).
Naive realism
1. Our ordinary conception of colours is that of sui generis, simple, intrinsic, qualitative, non-relational, non-reducible properties.
2. These sui generis properties are mind-independent.
Dispositionalism
3. Our ordinary conception of colours is that of micro-structural properties or reflectances.
4. These micro-structural properties are mind-independent.
I agree with (1) and (4) and disagree with (2) and (3).
I suspect that the overwhelming majority of people agree with (1), not (3) even if the majority also believe (2), which the science shows to be false.
And if the overwhelming majority of people agree with (1), not (3), then (1) is true and (3) is false.
That leaves us with:
1. Our ordinary conception of colours is that of sui generis, simple, intrinsic, qualitative, non-relational, non-reducible properties.
5. These sui generis properties are mind-dependent
6. Therefore colours, as ordinarily understood, are mind-dependent.
None of this denies (4) or entails that we can't/don't use the adjective "red" to describe objects with certain micro-structural properties.
Those are not so ordinary, and although they are experiences, they are unlike ordinary experiences evoked by the brain's empathic ability to memorize or imagine or hallucinate what things look like or feel like or sound like etc. That's why we call them dreams or hallucinations or synaesthetic experiences.
For example, when we dream of seeing a turtle, it's colours and shapes, we don't see anything. Instead we just feel or imagine it. Dreaming is radically different from actually seeing the turtle.
On your subjectivist account, all experiences are muddled up as "mental percepts" because of a simple but fatally ambiguous use of the word 'perception' (or 'appearance' etc) in two different senses, like Bertrand Russell did in the beginning of the 1900s. We should know better.
Quoting Michael
Those definitions are way too simple. I defend naive realism and dispositionalism. The ontological status of a disposition is open for discussion, but I think dispositions are real.
Do you deny that percepts exist when we dream? Do you deny that colours are properties of dreams? If you do not deny either then you must accept that colours-as-percepts exist when we dream.
Do you deny that percepts exist when we hallucinate? Do you deny that colours are properties of hallucinations? If you do not deny either then you must accept that colours-as-percepts exist when we hallucinate.
Do you deny that percepts exist when we having waking, "veridical" experiences? If you do not deny this, and if you do not deny any of the above, then you must accept that colours-as-percepts exist when we have waking, "veridical" experiences even if you want to also talk about mind-independent colours-as-dispositions.
So at the very least you must accept that there are both colours-as-percepts and colours-as-dispositions. My only claim is that the former is our ordinary, everyday conception of colours, not the latter.
You're saying that when I experience black, I'm experiencing an example of black. Everybody who has ever experienced seeing black has had their turn with this same thing: black percept. Right? It's something that transcends the individual?
Ask the same question about pleasure and pain.
Pain is like color. It comes in a bunch of types: stabbing, dull, electric, etc. We rate it from 0-10 and all that. So if I experience a stabbing pain and rate it at 4, this is a 4-stabbing percept, right? It's the same one everybody else experiences as 4-stabbing. 4-stabbing transcends the individual.
You don't want to talk about the black percept? Why not?
All I am saying is that colours as ordinarily understood are, like pain, mental percepts.
I don't deny that there are mind-independent objects with mind-independent properties that are the reliable and ordinary cause of such percepts. I just deny that these are what we ordinarily understand colours or pain to be.
Yea, I'm not arguing against you. I'm just analyzing the two opposing viewpoints, looking at the assumptions involved. It's about where universals come from. In a way, it's about where language comes from.
Well, as a nominalist I don't buy into universals. But the existence or non-existence of universals seems like matter for a separate discussion.
Quoting Michael
Universals are part of the way we speak. Nominalism is a particular explanation for it, not a basis for rejecting the idea altogether.
The theory you described says speech about color and other sensations refers to percepts. This assumes that we all have very similar experiences. You're saying that our ability to talk about these percepts hinges on this similarity.
A challenge to this view is that the similarity that is supposed to be the basis for the way we speak isn't verifiable. What we do verify is the outcome of social interaction that includes color speech. What's your view of that?
That it's wrong. The word "percepts" refers to percepts, the word "pain" refers to a subset of percepts, and the word "colour" refers to a different subset of percepts.
This Wittgensteinian approach that wants to explain all language in terms of some public behaviour just doesn't work, so move on from it. Some words refer to other things.
Okey dokey
It's neither. The ordinary everyday conception is described in dictionaries, and dictionaries don't say much about the nature of colour, nor the science. I looked up Cambridge dictionary, and there's no mention of percepts, nor dispositions. It says colour is an appearance or substance of paint, dye, make-up, clothes, eyes, flowers etc. That's compatible with naive realism.
Counter-arguments against naive realism are typically based on selective or manipulated or extraordinary conditions of observation (e.g. illusions, hallucinations). In that photo of the striped dress we see not only its colours but how differences in the fabric of the stripes reflect light in different ways depending on daylight or nightlight. One could add fluorescent colours to some of the stripes, show it at night, and falsely claim that the reason we see different colours is to be found in the brain, ignoring the addition of fluorescent colours. Arguments from illusion are that bad.
It is.
I trust physicists and neuroscientists over Wittgenstein.
It is strange to ask if mental percept are mind-independent, seems like we have already defined it as mind-dependent by calling it mental. You keep mentioning that science supports such notion, but I dont see it. As you mentioned in previous posts, you are not clear if you are committing to some sort of dualism. If you dont , are you saying mental percepts are identical with brain states. Problem with this is you are no longer talking about mind dependent concepts but mind independent (brain neurons etc I would think you would call mind independent). But if you go the dualism route, you out of the science realm and moving into the metaphysical realm, and we both know the many problems with this view since Descartes.
You're misunderstanding.
The Morning Star is a planet, but it is perfectly appropriate to ask if the Morning Star is a planet or a star (e.g. if one is unsure).
Our ordinary conception of colours is that of colours-as-we-experience-them, which contrasts with such things as colours-as-dispositions-to-reflect-light. The "common-sense" naive view falsely posits that colours-as-we-experience-them are mind-independent properties of trees and pens and chairs, but the science shows us that they are not; that they are mental percepts related to neural activity in the visual cortex.
Quoting Richard B
If the mind is brain states then to say that something is mind-independent is to say that it is independent of brain states. Brain states are not independent of brain states.
So if colours are mental phenomena and if mental phenomena are brain states then colours are brain states. Brain states are not properties of trees and pens and chairs, and so colours are not properties of trees and pens and chairs.
The common-sense naive view truly posits that colors are mind independent properties of objects because when I change the color of my rooms wall and get another bucket of paint with a different color, not a different mental percept. A scientific view truly posits that there is a correlation of brain activity when I look at my rooms wall color, and how that activity changes when I change its color.
Mental percept drops out of the conversation.
Some paint reflects 700nm light, which causes us to see red. Some paint reflects 450nm light, which causes us to see blue. Painting your room changes which wavelengths of light are reflected.
But colours as ordinarily understood are colours-as-we-experience-them, not micro-structural properties that reflect various wavelengths of light, and these colours-as-we-experience-them are mental percepts that various wavelengths of light cause to occur.
I intended this post above to be my final post, so I'll leave it there.
Yet it is more plausible to believe that it is the addition of a substance that causes the variation. There is no good reason to believe that the variation occurs without the added substance.
Previously your "only claim" was the claim that ordinary everyday conception of colours refer to mental percepts, but that's obviously false as was shown. But that was not your only claim.
For example, you claim that the colour variation in the dress is caused by the brain. I've so fat given you two reasonable counter arguments against the plausibility, and you evade/ignore both.
Quoting Michael
A summary of what? The article contains many different sections and summaries, and you picked one that partly (debatable) suits one or two of your single-minded assertions. :roll:
And adding cold water to boiling water means I no longer feel pain when I put my hand in the water. That doesnt entail that pain is a mind-independent property of (boiling) water.
All you are explaining is what I already accept; that mind-independent properties are causally responsible for percepts, and so changing those properties will change which percepts are caused to occur - because the brain reacts differently to different stimuli.
Quoting jkop
Because it is. Ive already referenced actual scientific studies on the matter.
My colleague and I are looking at the same computer screen and the same light is striking our eyes. Yet we see different colours because our brains process the stimulus differently. This is a proven empirical fact.
Quoting jkop
I agree with the part I quoted, which is why I quoted it as being what I believe is correct. I dont agree with the competing theories that I didnt quote. I trust physics and neuroscience over armchair philosophy.
Quoting Michael
I don't think you can consistently hold 1 and 4 without adopting a non-emprical epistimology. I say that because I don't see where the property of color is ontologically different than any other property such that you can draw a distinction between how you can know micro-structures any better or worse than colors. Both are properties and both are gained through perception, and we have already determined that perception is flawed due to mediation with the mind.
So, if you know that micro-structures are mind independent, your justification for that knowledge must be based upon something other than perceptions. It could be raw faith, it could be just a foundational belief to avoid solopsism, it could be a pragmatism, and it could be something else, but it can't be based upon empirically based information because such information is inherently subjective. From subjective perceptions you are concluding something objective and absolute, and I don't see how that can be done.
.
Sure. The relevance of that distinction here, however, escapes me. In both cases we would most simply parse "red" as a predicate: "There is a red ball" becoming "There is an x such that x is a ball and x is red". We can treat these both extensionally, as simply that the bunch of things in the class"red" and the class Ball" is not empty.
Pain and colour are different. I can hand you the pen, but not the pain.
Quoting Michael I agree. You somewhat missed the point, again. Why should there be a singular thing to which the noun "colour" refers, and which must therefore be either in your head or in your hand? Why shouldn't the word refer to various different things? Indeed, that's how it is used.
Quoting Michael
If we agree that colour is neither completely mind-dependent nor completely mind-independent, then we have made some progress.
I had a look at the interesting blog you cited previously. I gather you want to differentiate between, on the one hand, things that selectively reflect light of 700nm under white light, and things that reflect light of 700nm when that's all that is available on the other, with the former being called "red things" and the latter being "things that look red". Sounds fine to me.
This seems to be what @Michael is fussing about in talking of nouns and adjectives.
I'm not seeing how it answers the OP.
, and . If you have a red pen in your hand, you can pass the red pen to me. If you have a pain in your hand, you cannot pass the pain to me.
The analogy between pain and colour fails because there is a public aspect to colour that it not available for pain.
Colour concepts and colour experience
Christopher Peacocke
Published: March 1984
Volume 58, pages 365-381, (1984)
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF00485247
Quoting Banno
It is called stabbing.
Bald assertion contradicting everyday observable events, falsified by them, in fact.
Some people use "white and gold" and "black and blue" to pick out specific things. Some use them to pick out particular wavelength ranges within the natural visible spectrum to the exclusion of all else. Some use them to gather groups of things reflecting/emitting the same wavelengths. Some use them to pick out certain parts of personal subjective experience; namely the ocular biological structure's role in our daily lives(seeing things).
We all use them to pick out white and gold and blue and black things. We just differ on which things.
How many different ranges of wavelengths are emanating from the dress? The dress emits but one, towards both - you and he - at the same time during the same viewing. Saturate our eyes with bright sunlight, and we'll notice changes on the receiver's end, not the source/cause.
Do all of the eyes that are perceiving the very same scenery at the very same time from nearly the same vantage point perceive the same light? Yup. They do not all detect the same ranges though.
The article makes my point that we have to acknowledge why there is this idealist/realist tension when talking about perception why the redness of red is a Hard Problem quandry advanced by one side, and why the ballness of balls is matchingly put forward as something quite untroubling to the lumpen realist tendency.
As Peacocke points out, red just seems to be a psychological construct as all we can do is point to it when asked. It is out there in the world in some generally agreed way, but also essentially private like the good old beetle in the box.
But if asked to point to the circle in a collection of shapes, we can reach out and get our hands around it. A blind person could learn to discriminate circularity as a general concept. We can speak to the general essence of being circular as well as pick out suitable particular examples. The circle is the one with no pointy corners and smoothly symmetric like a ball.
Then as we continue on from shapes to objects, we all know that we can really get our hands around balls. We can feel their shape, weight, texture, even taste and scent. If circles where a bit Platonic as concepts, balls take on a hylomorphic and Aristotelian richness. Ballness becomes the essence of a very large class of possible objects.
And the fact that we are imposing this concept on nature we sure as heck make all kinds of material balls becomes what seems most salient. We have now swung across to the other extreme of the spectrum to the position that is most comfortable to the lumpen realist. The realm of chairs, kitchen utensils, puppy dogs and other medium size dry goods.
So idealists will focus on the redness of red to make their essentialist case. And realists will focus on the "ballness" of balls to make their accidentalist case. They will say sure folk can classify balls as a category, but plainly there is no such thing as ballness as a "real essence".
So perception gives both camps what feels like a strong ground in this argument between idealism and realism. But I say we have to dig deeper to get past the superficial language games. Any philosophical account must provide some unifying position on perception so that the redness of red and the ballness of balls can be understood under a single theory of cognition. Such as that of a biosemiotic modelling relation.
Our experience of red and of balls has to be either equally surprising or equally unsurprising. One way or another, we are asking them both to fit the same metaphysics.
Correct. Red is not a property of extra-mental (or mind-independent) objects but is a subjective affection which arises from a combination of our innate cognitive capacity and the powers (or properties) objects induce in us.
One can argue that this applies to all our senses. I think this is probably true, though the issue does get murky when it comes to touch. Not that we can't lose it, we can, and then we don't feel the objects we interact with, but the "extension" or solidity of the objects is very hard to "think away".
This has nothing to do with public and private. It has to do with a category mistake you're making.
We convey matter to our senses in different ways. If I want you to feel the pen, the pen must be put in your hand (or "passed" as you say). I click it for you to hear it. I wave it to spread it's aroma so you can smell it. I put it to your lips to taste it.
All those things can be shared or done privately. We can taste it and feel it together, or I can touch it or see it alone. That the experience of whatever the sensation is is ultimately private is obvious, but because you can't hold a pen up in the front of the room and we not all feel the pain of its point just means we don't experience pain by emitted light, soundwaves, or in an otherwise distant way.
I don't follow how it's more public for me and you to see a red pen simultaneously than for me and you to feel a warm swimming pool simultaneously. I recognize that often pain and direct touch sensations occur privately, but that distinction isn't consistent. I taste my drink privately but you could stick a second straw in the drink as well
You've simply identified that a scream is public and a caress private in the vernacular sense, but that doesn't identify a meaningful philosophical distinction. An important philosophical distinction would arise if I experienced a sensation you couldn't imagine due to an entire lack of consistent experience. In that case, we'd have a true beetle in the box, which is (maybe) what you're getting at.
I'm of the position that the pen is an amalgamation of sensate properties, underwritten by noumena. The phenomenal state is of those senses and it forms the identify of the pen to the perceiver, but this passing of public objects versus feeling of private pain doesn't form an important difference.
That we don't see pain distantly and touch color privately just means the category of pain is transmitted differently than the category of vision.
And yet all we have in our brains is neurons firing. Somehow that give rise to both the "subjective affects" and the "objective properties". If we see red as pure quality, and ballness as simple quantity, we are still left with the deeper fact that all that is happening in our heads is neurons firing. Just in different corners of the brain, as we can tell from the damage we can do by plunging something blunt into the "colour centre" as opposed to another spot that is the "object recogntiion centre".
Our philosophical positions are constrained by some pretty basic neurobiological facts. Somehow it is all just "neurons firing". The mystery to be cleared up starts there.
And that is the current neurobiological approach. Shifting the conversation to the enactive and embodied modelling relation that explains the neuron firing in terms of their neural architecture. How what they are doing is imposing a capacity for Bayesian reasoning on the world.
The idealists will complain that this leaves consciousness under-explained. The realist will dismiss it as instead an irrelevent complexification to them.
But because both camps agree that science should stay out of philosophy, at least they can agree on that.
Meanwhile, the science rolls on at a good lick. Sharpening our understanding of how things are.
Do you believe that pain is a mental percept or a mind-independent property of distal objects? If the former, does this lead to something like idealism? If not, why do you think that the claim that colours are also a mental percept leads to something like idealism?
I just don't understand your reasoning at all.
Some things, like pain, are in the head. Other things, like trees, are not. The science shows that colours, as ordinarily understood, are in the former group, not the latter. None of this entails abandoning realism entirely.
The adjectives "red" and "painful" describe things like pens and stubbing one's toe.
The nouns "red" and "pain" refer to the mental percepts that pens and stubbing one's toe cause to occur.
Quoting Banno
You cannot hand me the pain or the colour.
Quoting Banno
You used the noun "colours" to say that colours are more than just mental percepts. This is equivocation, like using the noun trees to say that trees are both woody perennial plants and branching diagrams.
This is different to simply saying that the nouns colours and trees can refer to more than one thing, which I have repeatedly accepted.
But colours as ordinarily understood in everyday life are mental percepts, not reflectances, and trees as ordinarily understood in everyday life are plants, not diagrams.
It is obvious in context that the OP is not asking if atoms reflecting light is mind-independent.
Not the same article, but this one is free to read:
And this quote may be of interest to @Banno and @Hanover:
Pain is a mental precept.
Quoting Michael
I'm just not buying into Lockean primary and secondary qualities where some qualities are deemed mind created and others inherent in the object.
Locke would acknowledge color is secondary, or mind dependent but would insist shape, size, motion, solidity, and number were primary, or not mind dependent.
I find that distinction arbitrary and impossible to support. A perceiver has no way of knowing what his mind created and imposed on an object and cannot begin to describe what a unperceived object would be.
All you know of the tree is the bundle of properties you perceive and since no property can be said to be primary, all the tree is as far as you know are those mentally imposed perceptions.
When you say the tree is mind independent, what is the tree? All you refer to are mind dependent aspects when you describe it.
The tree to you is just some vague whatever that makes the secondary properties in your mind appear.
Since you can't know of the existence of the vague whatever by perceiving it, you must have another way of knowing it. How do you know the noumena is there? Faith, necessity to salvage realism, or how?
But you just did with pain? You accept that pain is a mental percept. Presumably you accept that trees are not a mental percept?
Or are you actually an antirealist/idealist, rejecting mind-independence entirely? Because that seems like a matter for a different discussion.
I'm saying if a tree exists I have no idea what a tree is.
A "tree" is noumenal the way you're using it and it's greenness is phenomenal.
When you speak of its atomic level parts you know about, you're still speaking of the phenomenal.
All your talk of color and pain as being mind dependent is true, but you've not found in those properties some special exception. All descriptions of all objects are mind dependent. The speed of the subatomic particles in the tree are mind dependent as are their size and shape.
If your point is that color is mind dependent, mine is that every property you know of (as in truly every last one) is as well. Why focus on color specifically then?
Because that's what this discussion is about. We're accepting realism in the general sense; atoms exist, reflecting wavelengths of light, and trees are a particular collection of atoms. We then want to know if colours are, as the naive realist believes, mind-independent properties of trees, or if they are mental percepts like pain.
As summarised by the SEP article quoted here, and as mentioned in the several scientific studies I've referenced, the physics and neuroscience is clear that colours are mental percepts, and I am going to trust what physics and neuroscience tell us about the world and perception (and certainly over a philosopher of language like Wittgenstein).
Is it a problem that we don't know if the world induces the same subjective data in each of us? Is that unverifiable? What we know for sure is that "red" plays a part in social interaction.
Carrying on from this, here are two different claims:
1. An object is red if it looks red
2. An object looks red because it is red
With the first, a sentence such as "the pen is red" just means "the pen looks red", and the word "red" in "the pen looks red" refers to the mental percept.
With the second, one must explain the "because it is red" part.
One offered explanation is dispositionalism, which gives us something like "the pen looks red because it is disposed to look red". But again, the "red" in "disposed to look red" refers to the mental percept.
Another offered explanation references wavelengths of light, which gives us something like "the pen looks red because it reflects 700nm light". Unlike previous examples, this is no longer a semantic claim, but an empirical claim, and in most cases it is true, but given variations in colour perception and so-called colour "illusions", a pen can look orange even though it reflects 700nm light, and so to reintroduce the terminology given in (2), a sentence such as "the pen looks orange even though it is red" is both meaningful and can be true. In this case, the word "orange" is referring to the mental percept and the word "red" is referring to the reflectance.
But also in this case, the use of the terms because and even though are questionable, as theres nothing a priori wrong with these claims:
3. The pen looks red even though it reflects 700nm light
4. The pen looks orange because it reflects 700nm light
And so nothing a priori wrong with these claims:
5. The pen looks red even though it is red
6. The pen looks orange because it is red
This is Hume's phenomenalism, and I agree with it. There's nothing in the visual field that says: tree. Tree is an idea.
I was thinking more along the lines that I was describing Kant's transcendental idealism, which, per Google's AI function "is a philosophical position that states that the mind structures the data our senses receive from the world, meaning that the world as we experience it is dependent on the way our minds work."
That would appear a direct response to Locke's suggestion that there are primary qualities that describe true reality, which Kant pushes away into the noumenal.
And the phenomenal state we have of the tree is not just a tree standing in some sort of isolation, but it's of everything we think about the tree and the millions of pieces of data we use to then form it into a conscious state of the tree (i.e. transcendental apperception).
The discussion of the subunits of the tree (the trunk, the limbs, the leaves, and then going all the way down to its most basic atomic substructures) isn't helpful to the question of what is the tree devoid of the mental interpretation. Regardless of where we place our microscope to look, whatever we see remains mediated by the mind.
I think it's both. The idea that a thing is a bundle of properties is Hume's Bundle theory. Kant, who was inspired by Hume, goes further in undermining Locke by pointing out that space and time are also built into cognition, they aren't things we learn through experience. So among the "millions of pieces of data we use to then form it into a conscious state of the tree" is an innate spacio-temporal setting, with associated causes and effects.
It could be a problem is you choose to take it as a problem. We usually don't. If someone is in pain, say we can see a person is missing a finger or they got hit by a car, we take it to be serious and reason that if the same thing happened to us, we would react in the same manner.
Sure, we can't know for certain (anything in the empirical world) if my red is your blue. But strangely, this issue is rarely (if ever) brought up in regard to sound. If I hear someone sing a song I like, no matter how out of tune it may be, then I will be reminded of the song and think to myself ah yes that's Led Zeppelin or whatever.
So, we assume they are hearing the same song as us. I don't think sound is qualitatively more important than sight so far as our senses go. That is, I don't see why color should be a problem, but then sound is not.
Quoting apokrisis
If you push most people hard enough, I think you could get them to say that even those things which we consider "objective" cannot be proven to be so, so everything does end up being some phenomena in the mind/brain.
I think that we have to "bite the bullet" and assume that there is something out there, which is independent of us. Whatever that something may be cannot solely be a product of my mind, for if it is in every single instance a mental thing, then I see no way out but idealism, of a Berkeleyan variety.
Neurons firing, no doubt. But plenty of other things go on inside brains that aren't neurons alone, which probably play a deep role in how our minds work.
Quoting apokrisis
They can say that, but I'm not sure it makes much sense. One can do science without an explicit philosophy and one can do philosophy without an explicit science. But to say that because one should only stick to one or the other seems arbitrary and pointless to me.
It is forgotten that say, for Plato and Aristotle there was no distinction between science and philosophy. Nor was there one for Descartes, Hume or Kant.
It's after Kant that such distinction begins to be made explicit. However, I don't think "science alone" suffices for every or even most questions we have. It may have the best supported and reliable data set and theory but leaves plenty out too.
The issue I was looking at is how "redness" gets its meaning. Are the truth conditions for "It's red" internal (by which I mean subjective data)? If so, it seems that assumes we all have the same or similar experiences.
If we don't have the same experiences, couldn't we still behave as if we do? Each of assumes this, but it never shows up in social interaction. This would mean that the truth conditions for "It's red" are external. I think the issue I'm talking about applies to all the senses.
Maybe Wittgenstein's approach is more fruitful, "The apple is red" attains meaning by common use, it's how we learn to identify red, whatever exactly it all is.
If the experience of red is a private, localized experience, then how would "red" attain meaning by common use? How would that work in your view?
To your question yes, it's internal. The "external aspect", if one wants to make this distinction, would be to speak of wave-lengths and photons, which themselves don't have color.
Quoting frank
We do behave as if we had the same experiences even if my red is someone else's blue. But the color is not external to anyone, or any creature for that matter.
We, in our manifest image or folk psychology, act as if red belonged to things (roses, blood, etc.), but this belief, if taken literally, is false.
We may want to convey the redness and blueness, but what we actually do is exchange the word "red', "yellow", etc. and assume that by using "red", you see in your mind what I see in mine, but we can't be certain it will match.
I don't think we have good reasons to doubt that they are the same, or at least, very similar.
Right, I agree. I'm not arguing that we do have different experiences. I'm thinking about the uncertainty, and also the general uncertainty associated with internal things. It's uncertain that what was red yesterday is the same red as today, and it doesn't appear that there is any fact of the matter. This is Kripkenstein.
One way out is to say that we're all dreaming the same dream. We really can read one another's minds. This is just to bring up how the problem ultimately comes from our worldview, that says we're each locked in to private worlds. See what I mean?
I suppose it's analogous to the digestion example when we eat apples, roughly the same reliably happens, they're dissolved into whatever and absorbed by the stomach, transported around the body, etc (unless someone has an apple allergy), and we're less hungry. We (may) learn to associate pain with putting a hand on the hot stove, and hence (better) learn to identify/recognize hot stoves.
Some earlier babbling: 2023Mar2 (image), 2024Aug2, 2024Aug6
(I'm not sure "private" is quite the right word here, we're chatting about them intelligibly after all, but know what you mean.)
In the OP @Mp202020 asks: "Does the color red exist outside of the subjective mind..."
I replied it's outside, but might add that it's outside because I don't see my own seeing of a colour. I see the colour, which exists outside the seeing of it.
Same goes for other sensory modalities.
Also entirely mental experiences, such as imagining what a colour looks like. I don't imagine what my own imagining is like or looks like, I imagine the colour.
Sure, "ordinary" everyday objects are extremely complex, consisting of many physical, chemical and sometimes even biological processes which seldom repeat in an exact same manner.
That's made more difficult due to our own eye, brain, internal state, emotions etc. Such that it may be impossible to say that the red bottle I see next to me is the exact same red tone I saw a few seconds later. Yesterday is even more difficult. But we approximate and tend to say that yes, this red rose is the same color I saw yesterday.
Sure, the dream analogy works fine. Heck, even a wacky (contradictory) solipsism: we are all solipsists, in a way.
In other words, I'm the king of the universe. I knew it!!
I don't think that holds. The difference here is that we have a relatively easy way to "share" color (pointing at some colored object) but not for pain. But this is merely a practical restriction. If you could accurately measure neuron firings in your hand, you could also "share" that pain.
Quoting creativesoul
But people can agree that something has "blue the wavelength" yet disagree whether it has "blue the colour".
Quoting creativesoul
What do you mean with "eyes perceive light"? Are we talking about the eye as an organ? And are we talking about what happens when light waves interact with the eye or what kind of signal the eye transmits?
See what I said to Banno about the distinction between the adjective "red" and the noun "red":
Quoting Michael
Colours, as ordinarily understood in everyday life, are how things look, not how things reflect light. How things reflect light determines how things look, and so determines the colour seen, but reflecting light is distinct from colour.
When I think about the colour red I am not thinking about light reflectances; I am thinking about the visual percept.
Quoting creativesoul
We see the same light but not the same colour. Therefore the light is not the colour. The light is the cause of the colour (much like the chemicals in the food are the cause of the taste), nothing more.
Depends on what kind of medium we use. A group of blind speakers can use the word 'red' and speak successfully about the colour, its conventional or symbolic meanings etc. Experiences of the colour are not necessary in verbal languages. AI's use colour codes and don' t need to experience anything in order to be useful in graphic applications.
In aesthetic practices, however, we use samples or colour charts when words or descriptions are insufficient. The right use of a sample is to experience it, and the value of the similarity/difference between that experience becomes evident in our tastes, preferences, traditions etc.
A sample of red exemplifies the colour and it's various looks.
Colour codes are attempts to systematise manufacturing and communication about colours. Yet between a pair of colours referred to by the codes of a colour system there is a third possible colour. Moreover, there's no way to systematise colours with their looks. Hence It's better to experience an actual sample.
Hume, E.C.H.U., 2. 2. 16, 1748.
Quoting jkop
R.O.Y. G. B.I.V, from a prism?
In passing; just me, thinking out loud is all.
With regard to sound, most people would need to hear middle C in order to mimic it, but there are people who don't need that. If you ask them for middle-C, they can hum it exactly. A lot of these people have the same genetic anomaly.
Maybe the same is true of color.
I think that position is quite sensible. But if things such as shape are not on a different category from colour, doesn't that lead to a few absurdities?
For example, it is very well possible that where someone sees red someone else sees green, and no communication issue arises because the swap is always the same.
However, if someone sees and feels a round object where someone else sees and feels a square one, and the square-person told the round-person to grab the object by the edges, wouldn't the round-person be bewildered? Surely, when a square-person says corner the round-person would think of a round object, but the round-person can't think of anywhere special in that object (any given point on the surface of a sphere is the same).
Tetrachromacy is suspected to exist in a small percentage of the population. They might be able to distinguish between colours that to the rest of us appear identical.
Quoting Michael
Quoting Echarmion No, I don't think it is ever accurately transferred or shared. OR worth attempting as it seems out of spite, revenge, or anger that one would want to share their pain. Make another feel what they experienced, so they KNOW. Sounds like bad news to me...
You can try to make another feel the pain suffered but its up to them to open the flow and let in that experience. Like jkop said, expressed through one person's art, work, testimony, demonstration, tone, behaviors it is, i suppose, a "shared" pain, but it is not replicated accurately. To share the pain, it would require you to KNOW for sure what it takes to inflict that same pain onto another. Pain in different forms that I assume are not experienced quite in the same way.
The initial pain that a person suffered, physical or sentimental both require different methods of "sharing" this pain. We feel the pain, we relate, we sympathize with similar pains from one another, sometimes without intention or on purpose. Sometimes people WANT to feel the pain another person has suffered from. Who am I to judge?
The openness to receiving and allowing the flow (if you will) of the pain, in order to experience this "shared" pain. That requires both parties to trust or at the very least, take the word of another.
Passing pain and passing pens, both of them could bring undesirable outcomes. Passing the wrong pen, passing the wrong pain? As how can you know the person wont react to the pain in a way that is detrimental to their well-being? Is that what we wanted? To hurt people? Real nice.... :roll:
Quoting jkop jkop, do you think I correctly connected what you shared a few days ago in my response above to Echarmion? To me it seemed, the "shared" pain comment they meant was a physical demonstration or experience. Clearly not in the same circumstances, that may have heightened or lessened the initial pain from the start.
Is this the same as pain, like a heart break? Shared pain is through empathy, indirectly being experienced on different grounds. Is the "message" of the "shared" pain communicated at all? Can the message get across, as it could be "shared" or sent, even though it was not the exact same experience? Can't we get the gist of things? Is that good enough? Obvious to me now. I was re-reading the thread from the beginning and give that credit to jkop, as you mentioned empathy theory earlier to me. Cool!
That only points to the consistency among human beings when it comes to detecting gross properties of shape, but subjective consistency doesn't suggest objective existence. That is, if every last human being saw apples as red, you'd still conclude that the color were subjective, but then assume that their being red to human perception satisfied some universal need for humans.
Consider it this way, if we saw the world as an air traffic controller saw airplanes, as little blips on the screen, that wouldn't suggest airplanes were blips, even if every person saw it that way. That would just be our mode of perception designed for us to navigate our existence. The alarm that activates when another plane is approaching too fast is accepted as not being the airplane itself, but only an alert for us to be aware of the danger to our existence. It is as logically possible then to assume the visual we see of the oncoming airplane when it comes up to our face is not the airplane itself either, but is just our alert system activating.
If we accept evolution as true, the expectation would be that our senses would be designed for survival more than direct fidelity to the truth. Offensive smells are offensive not because it says anything at all about the object, but it could just be telling us about ourselves and what is beneficial to us or not.
My analogies do assume an external threat to our existence, but a construct could be created where they don't, but those threats are internal and they are modifying our behaviors as necessary. That is to say, if we're going to question reality, we can go as deep into the Matrix as our imagination allows us.
Sure, some people have "photographic" memory, others remember what it feels like to see particular colours. With practice you can get better at it. Colour samples make it easier to work with colours, and unlike memories, samples are open to view..
Brute perception of is physical interaction with light. My words were in response to Michael, who's been depending upon what he thinks the science says and/or supports. So, yes, we're talking about how the biological structures work. I suspect that there's much more to Michael's notion of "perception" than my own.
I take it that you're clarifying your own personal use, here in this thread, but you are not making some claim true of everyone using the terms "red" and "painful". Correct me, if you would please, should my take on that be somehow mistaken. I don't think your use has been consistent, but I may be wrong on that.
Quoting Michael
Agreed. Color is not the same as how things reflect light.
Quoting Michael
Understood. As you should be if you're using the term to pick out/refer to "the visual percept" That may answer my wondering if I'm taking you the right way.
Quoting Michael
I don't think that argument is valid.
We see the same light but not the same color. We agree on that. Therefore, seeing the same light is not the same as seeing the same color. The term "seeing" is being stretched beyond coherence. We do not see all the ranges of wavelengths entering our eyes.
We do not detect all the ranges of wavelengths entering our eyes at any given time. We also do not all detect the same ranges even when perceiving the same light at the same time. Therefore, perceiving light is not equivalent to detecting ranges. If color is light. Then seeing colors is on par with detecting certain ranges and not equivalent to perceiving light.
Or...
You and your friend are not perceiving the same light.
Quoting Michael
So, you're saying that at least some of the constituents comprising the food are not the food. To me, eating food is part of the cause of tasting it. The other part is how the olfactory and gustatory biological structures work. Seems to me that throughout this thread, your position completely disregards all the things outside the head. Things that are not mental, all of which are necessary for subjective experience to first emerge; that are necessary for illusions and dreams to first emerge; that are necessary for mental percepts to emerge.
Cheers. There is a famous argument called the beetle in a box, from Wittgenstein.
What gives our words stability is their place in our common, shared talk of what is around us. One way Wittgenstein showed this by pointing out that if we remove the shared part, as is the case with the beetle in a box, then we have nothing left to tie the word to, and it drops out of consideration.
It's part of what is now called the private language argument. He summarises the idea neatly with "Always get rid of the idea of the private object in this way: assume that it constantly changes, but that you dont notice the change because your memory constantly deceives you."
The intuition you seem to have hit on in your first few posts here, like your response to , is that for example it wouldn't matter if the colour I see as red is the colour you see as blue, provided that we agreed as to which things to use the word "red" for and which things we would use the word "blue". That is, the words for colour don't drop our of contention in the way the beetle does because we have this shared use.
It seems you've also stepped beyond the mere physiology of colour that a few folk think solves the problem. That we have agreed on the frequency of red, that certain pigments will selectively reflect this frequency, that we can use the word "red" as a noun to talk about such things specifically, all this is irrelevant to the issue you raised.
You've see here the range of contrasting ideas there are around the topic. That's partly because of the spectre of the interminable idealism/realism debate that crops up here every few weeks. You summarised the arguments neatly. The grain of truth in @apokrisis's pragmatic thinking is that neither side of this debate has it quite right. You can see the idealist tendencies in and .
You've wisely stayed out of the conversation about pain. That folk think feeling a pain and seeing red are much the same perhaps shows a lack of reflection.
This is a topic that can easily run to fifty pages with little change or agreement.
This may suffice for everyday life. But it would be a weird way for more ambitious communities of inquiry to organise. :roll:
In the case of sensation, it's that common biology gives us similar experiences of redness and pain.
Frank, how do you know that we do have "similar experiences of redness and pain"?
How else than by our common, shared talk of what is around us?
Commonly believed, no reason to doubt it.
Yep, a belief we have in common. Cheers.
Sure you can have your own philosophical platform of "everyday commonsensicalism" where science and metaphysics just drops out of the conversation as "all us ordinary folk just agree on our language use".
But right there you are already faced with the difficulty that everyday speech in fact enshrines this odd metaphysics of a lumpen realism entwined with an equally lumpen idealism. Folk just comfortably talk about bodies with minds and minds in bodies, worlds with selves and selves in worlds.
Do you really want to shut up shop on philosophical inquiry at this everyday level and call it a day ... for everyone?
The beetle in the box is about the pragmatic limits of inquiry. But it isn't about those limits in terms of sloppy everyday commonsensicalism. It is about the hard limits imposed once counterfactually structured inquiry Peirce's critical commonsensicalism runs out of differences that can make a difference. Quite another kettle of epistemological fish.
So as in the case of agreeing to name red as red, despite the apparent counterfactual possibility that Bob may be "really seeing green" and Alice "really seeing blue", we can see why this possibility would come to seem an uncheckable one and thus rightly "fall out of the the conversation". There is no clear way to justify the claim one way or the other. Bob, Alice and Banno can't huddle together and compare notes in any fruitful fashion.
There is some kind of reflecting surface that has a narrowly constrained luminance property, robust under varied lighting conditions, and there are these three folk at least agreeing they would classify the perceptual experience under the one socially-constructed label. Whether the perceptual experience is really the same, and so counterfactually might not be the same, becomes irrelevant to the level at which the conversation is being conducted the everydayness of given names to colours. Further inquiry looks blocked as counterfactuals are imaginable but not presentable.
But this is an extreme case. We can see that by how quickly things change as soon as we introduce any measurable counterfactuality at all. As in adding luminance information to the wavelength information.
You say that shade is primary red. The pure exemplar case as far as you are concerned. Bob says well it looks a tinge pink to him. And Alice says to her it looks a touch scarlet. What you see as being neither a little darker nor lighter than bang on central, they say sure, it's red. But a red that is a bit white, or a bit back. As you assert, it is not at all blue or green. But for some reason we could hope to discover, we do have a luminance disagreement that can be the subject of a discussion.
We could start checking eyeballs and optic tracts. Humans show surprising variation in their visual hardware. The colours out of two different eyes can be noticeably tinged for some. So it becomes perfectly possible to dig in deeper with the neuroscience and start accounting for that linguistic disagreement in terms of its more foundational neurocognitive basis.
Even the Hard Problemers are happy with science doing that as this is just then one of the Easy Problems science is so good at tackling. :razz:
But if everyone agrees that the fire engine over there is primary red or even pure pink or pure scarlet, as we get very used to naming colours where about the first thing we are presented with in life is a crayon set and the expectation we will learn to speak about these sticks of wax in socially correct fashion then our utterances lack counterfactuality. They lack explicit dialectical structure. The path to further inquiry is blocked as we assert no difference that could make a difference. Red is red just as the chair is a chair, the dog a dog, and lasagne is what awaits on the table for lunch.
So the beetle in the box story is simply about the limits of pragmatic inquiry in general. It applies to any scientific account as science demands theories expressed in the counterfactual logic which can thus be confirmed or denied in terms of the consequences that result. Does Nature answer yes or no to the well-put hypothesis?
Consciousness is not some unique problem for science. It is as bad for particle physics when faced with the apparently possibility of there being fundamental particles with no properties at all. What can one reasonably say or do to judge such a hypothesis one way or the other. It drops out of the conversation on standard pragmatic grounds.
But here we are discussing your defence of the idea that everyday language is already quite enough for you, and thus for anyone. If ordinary folk talk about minds in heads and heads on bodies with apparently no hesitations or qualms, then that becomes the agreeable metaphysics and everyone else can shut up and bog off.
Metaphysics is booted out of philosophy. Science is respected but expected to mind its own parochial concerns. Philosophy is reserved for ... well what exactly? Logic chopping and the polemics of ethics?
So yeah. Stop fobbing people off with this trite argument that the redness of red falls out of the conversation, and thus all the counterfactually grounded explanation that leads up to the arrival at such a limit also must drop out of the conversation.
That was the part of the conversation that was in fact the large discussion worth having. It was the metaphysics and the science that had already lifted the game in an interesting way.
The SEP article on fictionalism seems relevant here:
Some seem to insist on the fiction, denying the sense in asking deeper questions.
What does Wittgenstein's private language argument have to do with anything we're discussing here? We have words like "pain" and "sensation" that refer to things like pain and sensation. So either a) pain and sensation are not private things or b) our words can refer to private things. But also, of course, the phrase "private things" refers to private things.
Either way, it makes no sense to try to use Wittgenstein to prove that colours are not a type of sensation, comparable in kind to pain.
But more than that, as it stands your reasoning seems to amount to nothing more than "pens are red, pens are mind-independent, therefore red is mind-independent." This argument is a non sequitur, exactly like the analagous argument "stubbing one's toe is painful, stubbing one's toe is mind-independent, therefore pain is mind-independent."
Our eyes are detecting and responding to the same wavelengths of light. We see different colours because our brains react differently to the signals sent from the eyes, producing different colour percepts, and seeing colours is the occurrence of these colour percepts.
The science is clear on this. And thankfully so, as we are working on visual cortical prostheses that use direct electrical stimulation of the visual cortex, bypassing the eyes, to hopefully allow the blind to see (and in colour).
Your question was, as I understood it, that you get how we can doubt the redness of the ball is part of the ball but we can't doubt the roundness is part of the ball.
Is that a correct restatement?
If it is, my response is to ask what you're relying upon other than your senses to distinguish primary qualities (the roundness) from secondary ones (the redness). And the follow up is to then ask why touch is more reliable than sight.
My point being that your brain is what interprets and your mind is where the experience lies. Why must there be a direct link from what is "out there" to what is in your experience when it comes to touch but not vision.
My prior post just pointed out that the extent to which the brain could interpret and translate the data input is unlimited.
I think Witt's point would be that cognition is heavily influenced by language, which in turn reflects history, culture, and biology. Lacan says something similar, that language influences what you focus on, what you ignore, and what distinctions you make.
Would you agree that knowledge of color is somewhat language dependent? Some Asian languages didn't have words to distinguish green from blue. If you use the same word for both, that might diminish your awareness of a distinction, right?
I can distinguish shades of red.
I can see that there are 5 different colours (or hues if you prefer), not just a single red rectangle like below:
Without looking at your sample, identity each of those shades in this picture... without any words.
I dont need words to see that there are lighter and darker shades of red. I dont need language to see colour at all because seeing colours does not depend on language.
Yea, but you could do what you claimed, distinguish between the different shades, if you had words, like burgundy, cadmium red, cadmium red light, etc.. Or you might need to hold the sample up to the picture to tell the difference. Both of those would demonstrate color externalism.
No it wouldnt. Wed just have words that refer to individual hue percepts.
You just demonstrated that it's both. You see the shades of red, but you can't distinguish between them without an external crutch.
I can distinguish between them. Thats how I can see 5 hues in that first image. Its not just a single hue like the second image.
If that was true you would have easily been able to pick them out in the apple picture. You need an external crutch to distinguish between them.
I dont even understand what youre asking. What do you mean by pick out? Are you asking me to name each hue without using words? Obviously I cant do that because your request is nonsensical.
But I can visually see that the apple has a gradient of hues ranging from lighter to darker to lighter, and isnt just a single solid hue like the second rectangle I posted. And I can see this despite not having individual names for each hue, proving my point and refuting yours.
My point is that you need both internal and external data to distinguish between colors. That's pretty easy to demonstrate. By the way, the picture you posted doesn't show different hues. It was all the same hue, just different shades of it. Different hues would be like cadmium red versus magenta.
Which is wrong, because I don't (except insofar as an external stimulus is causally responsible for the sensation).
All I need is visually distinguishable percepts (whatever their cause). Animals can distinguish between the poisonous red frog and the non-poisonous brown frog without having to converse with one another.
You really need to move past this language-first approach to biology.
You're overlooking the very active role the mind plays in creating experience. You literally can't see the things your mind isn't prepared to see.
A fair amount of the stimulus your CNS receives is filtered out as irrelevant. Neuroscience speculates that experience is the result of applying filters to the data you receive so it can be compared to models. This is the reason you can't distinguish between shades and hues in a practical way. You haven't develop the modeling necessary to do it. Artists can do it because their minds are prepared to do it
Quoting Michael
As described above, this is not in keeping with the present scientific view.
Quoting Michael
This is very clearly not the case. Language plays a very important role in everything you experience.
Quoting Michael
This is behaviorism. You could do with trying to understand what your opponent is actually saying. I don't see you doing that.
How do you know how I experience?
I'm telling you there are plenty of experiences I have that language plays no role in. How do you know that to be false?
The present scientific view is that colour percepts exist, and do so when there is neurological activity in the visual cortex. This is what explains dreams, hallucinations, and variations in colour perception, and allows for visual cortical prostheses.
And it is these percepts, not a surface layer of atoms reflecting various wavelengths of light, that constitute our ordinary, everyday understanding of colours (even if we naively and mistakingly think these percepts to be or resemble some mind-independent property).
See the SEP summary I posted [reply=here;923564].
I'm guessing you're like me. You use ideas, like [I]tree[/I] to organize your sensations into something meaningful. Ideas usually go by names which you learn. You probably have an innate capacity for using ideas in this way, but it's developed and heavily influenced by your language and culture.
You very well may have nonverbal experience. I do. If I talk all day, I'll eventually become exhausted and nonverbal. It's not actually a whole lot of fun.
Yea, I don't think that's the whole story.
If we really wanted, we could really doubt anything. I am okay with that. My post was specifically in reply to your disagreement to separating properties in different categories.
I used the example of the ball to highlight that, while colour may be completely in our heads and each person has a different experience and no problem ensues in communication because the experiences are consistent between one another, the shape of something might also be in our head, but the fact that we are able to tell each other to grab an object by its corners without issues at least gives us reason to think that, though the experience is in our head, the experience of different people as to the shape of something seems to be the same.
If it were different, and one person saw a ball where one saw a cube, communication would break down, as we can't possibly imagine how to grab a ball by its corners.
This commonality of experience, shown by effective and reliable communication, seems to suggest that there are outside objects that produce the same experience to different minds. There is nothing prima facie however that suggests a commonality of experience of colours, I at least can't think of anything. So it seems that there is merit to the idea of colours being a property in a way that shape is not and vice versa.
[hide="Reveal"]Perhaps it is connected, in a way, to Banno's position.[/hide]
Quoting Hanover
To restate the post above, I wouldn't say there must be direct link, but that it is not spurious to divide this link (direct or indirect) into different categories be them secondary/primary property or another division.
Quoting Hanover
Also to restate it, we could say we are also relying on some necessary a priori synthetic propositions (a ball has no corners).
And I think I'm guessing I'm like you, which is that if I walk in drenched, with an angry look on my face, and with a broken umbrella, you recognize I got caught in the rain, my umbrella broke, and I'm angry about it. Do you really say all those things internally in words prior to arriving at your conclusion?
I'll trust you if you say you do, but I don't, which is why I find much of this language based metaphysics contrived. You have to buy into facts that are just false, and the facts are non-empirical, but entirely internal, so there's no evidence that can be pointed to to prove these critical facts needed to support the linguistic theory.
To sum it up, both shape and colour are experiences that I have and presumably that others have too. We use those words to communicate. There are some necessary synthetic a priori statements that we can make about square objects and round objects, some of those facts have consequences, such as how it rolls and so on. When it comes to the colour red, there aren't any necessary synthetic a priori statements we can make about it, are there? It seems that any synthetic statement about red has to be contigent.
Edit: my usage of "necessary synthetic a priori" might be unfortunate. I am trying to express the idea in some known philosophical jargon. The bottomline is that there must be something in common about different minds' experience of some shapes, otherwise communication would break down, while in the case of colours there doesn't seem to be any such necessity. The "necessary synthetic a priori" there is what I think is the reason behind such distinction.
Quoting Hanover
Sometimes I find that some people really do. Some people seem to have a language-dominated thinking, while others don't. Some don't have an inner monologue, some don't have a mind's eye, some have both and others none. Perhaps there is a real psychological difference at play. Nevertheless, I still cannot conceive that someone would see me red with an angry face and have to subvocalise "He is angry" before forming that belief it seems evolutionarily impossible too.
Honestly, I think your attitude is more about posters on this forum than about language philosophy. The damnedest interpretations of Wittgenstein show up here.
The real thing is just about how language influences what you perceive. People who suggest that sensation has nothing to do with perception are, as you said, just being ridiculous.
Quite a bit. If your "mental percepts" are individual, in your mind only and unsharable, then they are tantamount to the private sensation "S" used by Wittgenstein. You might now be calling "red" the percept you yesterday called "green"; you have no way of checking except your own memory.
But of course that is not what happens. You can check the colour of the box over there by looking at the box and by asking your collaborator. The box and the collaborator provide an anchor for your use of the word "red". An anchor that would be unavailable were red no more than something in your mind.
And pain works somewhat differently to colour. There is no equivalent to the box, no something that is available for us both to examine. So we develop pain scales and note the various difficulties they involve.
Take case that the argument here is not, as you suggest, "to prove that colours are not a type of sensation, comparable in kind to pain." Colours can be considered sensations, but not just sensations. The way we talk about colours and pains are different. They involve, in Wittgenstein's terms, different grammars.
Quoting Michael
Not quite. The argument is more that you and I can both choose the red pen from a container of various other colours, and hence that we agree as to which pen is red, and that hence being red is different to being black or blue - and that this is a difference in the pens, not just or only in your mind. We agree as to which pen is red and so being red involves pens as well as sensations.
Quoting frank
I agree with this, mostly. It is important to keep in mind that it's not language alone, but use that is relevant here. A male bower bird will collect blue things to decorate its bower because the female has a preference for blue items. The male collects blue things in order to get laid. The use is there without the need for language.
Michael might well be able to see different shades of red without having names for them, and demonstrate this by matching colour swatches. But having names for the swatches is also useful.
But the view that all this involves is sensations is oddly passive. One demonstrates this capacity by acting - sorting apples, choosing paints and so on. Seeing colour involves doing things in the world.
Quoting Michael
All this means is that scientists use that term to talk about seeing colours. Quoting frank
Yep.
My memory is sufficient. I have every reason to believe that today's headache is much like last yesterdays headache. I don't need some other person to talk to at all.
Quoting Banno
English grammar does not determine what's true and what's false. That we talk about colours as if they are mind-independent does not entail that they are mind-independent. Physics and the neuroscience of perception have proven that our presuppositions are wrong.
Quoting Banno
And yet we can, and do, talk about pain, which you seem to admit is a private sensation. If you admit of private sensations that our words can refer to then your private language argument fails.
Quoting Banno
And you're back to using "red" as an adjective. That pens are red and that pens are mind-independent is not that colours are mind-independent. You continue to repeat the same non sequitur.
Quoting Banno
Which can occur without some "appropriate" distal object reflecting light into our eyes. Seeing colours occurs when the visual cortex is active, and these colours seen are not mind-independent properties of pens. These percepts constitute our ordinary, everyday conception of colours (and even if we're naive realists who mistake them for being something else).
Ok, let's follow through on this.
One possibility would be to recreate the neural pattern in the hand of the victim in your hand. But that could be described as copying the pain from one hand to another - making a new pain. Another possibility might be to connect your nervous system to that of the victim in such a way that you felt the pain in their hand. But consider this carefully. How would you know that you had connected the neurones correctly, so that the level of pain you felt was the same as the level of pain felt by the victim? How could you know you had dialled the pain up or down sufficiently to match their pain? Even if you exactly matched the "neural firings", how could you be sure that the "subjective" result was the same?
In any case, we already compare pains, develop pain scales, say "I feel your pain", and there are empaths who apparently actually feel pain seen in others.
What I think salient is that the way we talk about pain (pleasure, joy...) is different to the way we talk about colour. You can buy a chair of a particular colour but not a chair of a particular pleasure.
Quoting Michael
You know Wittgenstein used the term "grammar" more broadly than do grammarians.
Quoting Michael
Sure we talk about pain, and so far as we do it is not private.
Quoting Michael
That's not the argument I gave. If we agree that this pen is red, and the others are not, then we agree to something about this pen, and not to something that is only in your mind.
Again, the argument is not that colours are mind-independent. It's that thinking about it in terms of things being mind-dependent or mind-independent is muddled, and can best be replaces by thinking about the actions of embodied people in a shared world.
I mentioned that. Matching the swatch is using an external standard to pick out the shade. That he would require that, and I think he would, seems to undermine his claim that lone percepts are the source of knowledge about color.
I think his idea derives from opposing subjective and objective, something that isn't all that helpful.
Perhaps, but sufficient nonetheless. I know that todays headache is much like yesterdays headache and that I hid my toys under the floorboards of my childhood home. I dont need verification from other people to trust that I remember correctly.
Quoting Banno
Then insofar as we talk about our colour percepts they are not private; but they are nonetheless percepts and not mind-independent properties of pens.
Quoting Banno
And if we agree that stubbing ones toe is painful and that hugs are not then we agree to something about stubbing ones toe; but pain is still a mental percept.
So once again, the fact that pens are red simply does not entail that colours are mind-independent.
Quoting Banno
Some things are neurological phenomena, some things arent. Pain is a neurological phenomenon, smells and tastes are neurological phenomena, and colours are neurological phenomena. Pens may have atoms that reflect light, but this physical phenomenon simply isnt what we think or talk about when we think and talk about colours. We may mistakenly believe that colours are properties of pens, and talk about them as if they are, but we would simply be wrong. The science is clear on this, and no deferment to Wittgenstein can show otherwise.
Do unto you what was done unto me to determine if my sensation is like yours.
If you want to know if my pain is like your pain, I can stick you with the same pin I stick myself.
Pin | Pain || Apple | Red.
Pin is to pain as apple is to red. There is nothing philosophically special about the sense of touch that distinguishes it from the sense of vision.
Can you wipe it with alcohol first?
Quoting Michael
Yep.
Quoting Michael
Nuh. If it were nothing but a percept, how do you explain our agreement? Perhaps by something like "intersubjective agreement"? Which is just to say that colour also has a public aspect.
Quoting Michael
But not only... and so on.
Quoting MichaelYep; no more than we are talking about neurological phenomena when we talk about colour. Again, the neurological phenomena in my mind is not the neurological phenomena in yours. Yet we both see the red in the pen.
Quoting Hanover
And yet we agree that the pen is red. So it's not an "internal" red either. The problem then is the demand that it must be one of the other.
Quoting Michael
Folk would be in error to insist that colours are not properties of pens, too. There are red pens. "The pen is red" is sometimes true. "Property" is itself a problematic term, especially since some folk think all properties are physical.
No, that is our disagreement. We agree we perceive the pen as red. Maybe you think the pen is actually red, but I don't.
We agree the pin causes us to perceive pain. Maybe someone thinks the pin is painful. I don't, but that would follow if one insists upon imbuing physical objects with mental interpretations.
Ok. So for Hanover, "the pen is red" is not true. I think it is.
So Umwelt realism? But even this doesn't work epistemically as we have access to more than the way we talk about than just "how it all is for us". We have neurobiological talk. We have physics talk.
As linguistic communities or rather that more general thing of semiotic communities we can talk "objectively" not just about our socially-constructed notions of being "selves" with "experiences", but as selves that are part of larger metaphysical and scientific communities of inquiry.
Dumbing things down to beetle in a box, private vs public reference, is fine for lumpen everyday chatter in communities that are in fact rooted in the Cartesian division of "self and world". You can thank a couple of millennia of Christian scholarship for the fact you find such a socially ingrained habit of thought to be your constant default ontology.
But if we are being serious about the issue the OP raises, a more sophisticated and less sophistic metaphysics would prevent what matters from dropping out of the conversation.
Quoting Banno
That's a nice little collection of dialectical distinctions. So what is general to them all? Have you thought about that or did you immediately stop right there for some reason?
This is insanity. No wonder Wittgenstein saw this as an illness.
If "the pen is red" means the pen looks red to me, I agree with that.
If "the pen is red" means the pen contains redness, I don't.
But the pen looks red to me, too. And given the right filter we might make the red pen look blue... which pen? The red pen. The red pen looks blue. Not Hanover's "The pen that looks red to me looks blue to me".
That there are circumstances in with each fails.
Yep.
But this ignores my disambiguation.
The constitution of the pen is disputed, not the appearance.
If by "red pen" you mean to define a pen as comprised of redness, whatever that means, then sure, your red pen can look blue if you filter it.
My point is there no such thing as external red, so your hypothesized "red pen" isn't a thing. Yes, the pen looks red. If you want to reclaim the ambiguity and say "yet we say 'the pen is red' and refuse to distinguish between reality and perception, have at it.
Fail in what way exactly? Less glibness and more precision please.
Ah - define... so what, setting out essence-of-pen? "Comprised" of redness? Nothing so sophisticated. Just one red pen amongst others, red and not so red.
Quoting Hanover
Then if you also think that there is no such thing as internal red, we might well agree.
Quoting Banno
As I said in previous pages of this thread, asking for a red or blue pen is picky. The main point of a pen is writing on paper. It is an object that helps us to put the words of our language written on a piece of paper. Back in the day, there was only black ink available and folks used to write with feathers. Never mind Egyptians or Greeks writing directly on the stone table with a pictogram.
Why are we that complex and choosy? If I ask for a red pen and there are no red pens at that specific moment, does it mean my ability to write is restricted?
I'd say my argument is that I cannot be sure that the subjective color people see is the same either.
I think a problem in this conversation is that for colour, we're using really big obvious differences: green, red, blue. And sure people will generally agree about the big categories. But that's the same with pain. Tell someone you stubbed your toe and they'll know the general outlines of what you felt.
But what about a collection of different reds all next to each other. What if the question isn't "is this pen red" but "which of these pens is cherry red"? Don't we get all of the same problems you outline for pain above?
Even if we got the same neuron firings from the eye, we couldn't be sure that this results in the same answer.
Quoting Banno
This is a good point, but again are we comparing colour and pleasure at the same level of precision here? Comfortable chairs don't usually have widely differing shapes. If I read positive reviews about a particularly comfortable chair, it'll probably be pleasurable to sit in. You can argue that there are some very particular tastes, but there are also people who are colourblind.
If we get into more finely grained colour scales, agreement gets more complicated. We can agree on what colour we see if we both have an external reference to agree on. But without prior calibration, could we actually pick out a "walnut brown" from a collection of brown sofas reliably?
There is no red "in" the pen. The pen just has a surface layer of atoms that reflects light with a wavelength of ~700nm. When light stimulates the eyes it causes the neurological activity responsible for colour percepts, and we name the colour percept ordinarily caused by 700nm light "red".
You are being deceived by the brain's ability to make it seem as if the qualities of visual experience extend beyond itself, like being convinced that your phantom limb is real. Physics and the neuroscience of perception have proven this naive realism false.
We're talking past one another. You're focusing on physics. Philosophy aims deeper.
Think about the domain of the red percept. It's you, right? Red dwells in you. Lacan says that you are a product of language use. Language sets out the whole framework of physics.
Prior to language, was there physics?
No, you need language for physics, don't you?
How did the planets move before Adam looked up and saw it go from evening to the morning?
We both know what each other are talking about.
The human viewpoint is that gravity did it. The view beyond human ideas is not available to me. That's a favored interpretation of the Tractatus: there are answers that lie beyond what we can know. When you realize that, you take a pause, sigh, and start asking again, knowing that you're reaching for something you can't have.
Assuming it possible the planets moved differently prior to human perspective, it does not follow they moved differently prior to human language.
I can accept that language offers us a tool to understand the world and that it shapes some of our understanding, but the idea that non-liguistic organisms have no understanding of the world or that all that I touch and all that I feel and all that I know is language mediated is a concocted theory to sustain a Wittgensteinian model that is likely based upon a misunderstanding of Wittgenstein.
I say "likely" because Wittgenstein's communication skills were lacking. Ironically.
There's a profound paradox about motion: Xeno's Paradox. A paradox is a sign that we've butted up against the boundaries of the mind. Stay away from the boundaries and everything is fine. In other words, stop trying to be God and be happy with your lot as a tiny human, with limited understanding.
Quoting Hanover
I understand what you're saying.
Quoting Hanover
He was echoing Plato, who has Socrates claim that every philosopher wants to die because it seems that that's the only way to get a vantage point on life: to sit outside it. As long as you're inside it, you have to be happy with the shadows on the wall.
That we can't know everything doesn't mean we can't know anything.
We still landed a man on the moon even if we've not figured out Xeno's paradox.
True. We still can't go beyond our limitations. That's what I thought you were trying to do with talk of what came before Adam's planets.
You're forever caught up in language games and not metaphysics, and so you ask these sorts of questions. I'll give you props for consistency, but your comments fail to appreciate perhaps my rejection of linguistic analysis as a meaningful way to fully address metaphysics.
So, no, I'm not in search of the essence, suggesting the redness is an accidental property and not a necessary one. I'm saying the pen has no red in it at all. It is not a property of the pen itself
The property of the pen itself is noumenal. The redness is phenomenal.
Quoting Banno
How could there not be internal red? I see red, and it's not even necessary that external stimuli exist for sensations to exist.
Say that a coloring agent is added to a clear pen in order to make it red. Different agents can be added to different pens in order to add different color to the plastic of the pen. Pigments and coloring agents exist out there, in the pen, independent of the mind. I cant see the color anywhere else, whether beside it, in front of it, or somewhere behind my eyes.
This leads me to believe the color, which is the coloring agent itself, mixed as it is in the plastic in order to produce a singular result, a red pen, is why the color is in the pen.
In scientific terms: the properties of the material in the pen determine the wavelength and efficiency of light absorption, and therefor the color. My question is: what properties in the color percept, whether added, removed, or changed, can explain why the pen is red?
What is the purpose of saying "The pen is red"? Why is that useful to say?
Does a red apple and red pen have the same constitution? Could we mean more than one thing in saying "the apple is red" vs. "the pen is red"?
The pen has the property of causing the experience of red under certain conditions.
Colour sensations occur when there is neural activity in the visual cortex. These explain dreams, hallucinations, variations in colour perception, and allow for visual cortical prostheses. They also occur in ordinary, everyday experiences, caused by electromagnetism stimulating the eyes. This has all been experimentally verified.
And that is all there is to our ordinary, everyday understanding of colour.
Using the term "colour" in other ways, e.g. as an adjective to describe pens that reflect certain wavelengths of light, or as another term for a colouring agent, does not refute any of the above, and is certainly not the use that is relevant to either the OP's question or the philosophy of colour in general. See for example the SEP summary quoted here.
Im wondering how this view accounts for the change of color, or the differentiation between colors. Mind independent things change color because their properties change. We can do this by adding pigments, dyes, etc. This accounts for the change in the color, which I think means the color is in the mind independent thing.
What mind-dependent things or properties change according to your view?
You are reporting upon what you see. Maybe you want to be provided the red pen Quoting Harry Hindu
The noumena isn't known.
Neural representations of perceptual color experience in the human ventral visual pathway:
So colour experiences change when the neural activity in V4 and VO1 changes.
You are presupposing that "red" denotes the "color percept" and not the "surface layer of atoms..." Why do you make such a presupposition? When people talk about the redness of some object they certainly don't seem to be talking about their own perceptions qua perceptions.
Quoting Michael
Physics and neuroscience seem to have confused you something fierce. They certainly haven't proved that colors denote only "qualia."
The "common sense" view, before any scientific study, is naive realism:
Naive realism
1. Colours, as ordinarily understood, are sui generis, simple, intrinsic, qualitative, non-relational, non-reducible properties
2. These sui generis properties are mind-independent.
This view contrasts with something like dispositionalism:
Dispositionalism
3. Colours, as ordinarily understood, are micro-structural properties or reflectances.
4. These micro-structural properties are mind-independent.
(1) and (4) are true, (2) and (3) are false.
The fact that people talk about redness as if it is mind-independent does not entail that they are talking about redness as if (3) is true. People tend to talk about redness as if both (1) and (2) are true. People don't tend to think about (3) at all. I suspect many people, especially children, wouldn't even understand (3); but they understand colours.
Those sui generis properties that we ordinarily think about when we think about colours are, in fact, mental phenomena, and not mind-independent properties of pens as some believe.
How's that? If I put 4 and not 3 together, it looks as if you believe that there are mind-independent micro-structural properties that are not responsible for colour...
Then what makes the pen red? Why do you and I both choose the same word for the same pen, if nothing of the pen has anything to do with its colour?
Of course the pen being red is dependent on its chemical structure and the light falling on it. And of course it is dependent on the mind seeing it. And of course it is dependent on "red" being a part of our share culture. It seems that you want only to look at one of the multiple ingredients that go into the pen's being red.
You see red in your dreams and conclude that there is no red while you are awake. That's muddled.
Most of metaphysics is word play.
As if saying "(red) is not a property of the pen itself" were not word-play. What does "itself" do here, if not to invoke the muddled Kantian mode of talking about the "noumenal"? All you are doing is saying "don't play that word game, play my word game".
And yet the pen is red.
I want to take this a step further. I suspect we will agree that you can be sure, at least sometimes, that we can be confident the colour people see is the same. Like when we both choose the red pen. But when we prefix the word "subjective", that colour becomes uncertain.
Why not avoid using the word "subjective", and keep your confidence?
That is, perhaps the notion of a subjective colour is a misapplication, and colours are not subjective.
yet
Quoting Hanover
It follows that we don't know any of the properties of the pen.
But we do know the properties of the pen. We know it is plastic, cylindrical, has a nib and an ink reservoir, is half empty and is red.
Hence the conclusion that talk of the noumenal is inept.
Quoting Hanover
So you want to say something like "the pen is red, but not actually red". This is enough to convince me that your account is mistaken. And shows well the sorts of word games you will play in your metaphysics.
Especially now we all use keyboards anyway.
It's a shame that we can't type in red here.
So you say.
Quoting Michael
Let's go back to your claim:
Quoting Michael
If the pen has a surface layer of atoms that reflect light at with a wavelength of ~700nm then there is both red in the pen and the pen is red. If by saying that the pen is red we were saying that the pen is or has a color percept, then we would be committing a category error, but we do not do that when we say the pen is red.
The common person does not know how the surface of the pen is seen by the eye. So what? Doesn't everyone agree that the pen has a property that corresponds to our communal predicate 'red'? It seems quite wrong to me to simply insist that 'red' means a color percept and not a property of the pen. It would seem to make little difference whether the property of the pen is fully understood. I agree with Banno that this is Kantianism run amok.
Quoting Michael
But you are splitting hairs, for it also does not entail that they are talking as if (3) is false. If you ask them how the eye perceives the red in the pen, they will simply tell you that they don't know.
-
Here is an argument for you.
My eyes and my mind allow me to see colors, and because of this to read text. If there were no color on the website then there would be no color in my mind, and I would not be able to read posts.
So, for the past few days I've been working on a special presentation box. The wood species and cuts are such that there is a remarkable iridescence emanating from the piece. This is more or less noticeable depending upon the amount of light it is bathed in. The contrasting dark and light tiger striped pattern switches back and forth. They're switching on the face of the box. That's where the pattern is located. The stripes are not in my head. They consist entirely of reflected light. Those reflections do not require being perceived. You can, however, look for yourself.
They go from being the darker stripes in the pattern to being the lighter ones, and vice versa. It is a mesmerizing shift in perception. Captivating. That change does require an observer(at a bare minimum a changing vantage point) It is a change in how the box reflects light according to the gradual change in the vantage point of the observer relative to the location of the box and the light source; how it looks from a gradually changing vantage point.
One can rest the piece in direct light, change the vantage point from which one observes the box by slowly walking around the box, and see for themselves just how the pattern on the box changes as described above. The cause of this change is largely due to the biological structures of the wood itself.
That is not entirely mental.
Cheers...
I hope you are as well!
:smile:
The joy of small things.
:wink:
But you can also acquire epistemically objective knowledge about it, because the colour that you see is open to view,. So, for example, you can study what it looks like under varying conditions, its interplay with other colours, measure its hue and saturation, compare your observations with others etc.
Your colour-experience is subjective in the sense that the brain-event that is constitutive for your colour-experience exists only for you when you see the colour. The colour that you see, however, is open to view.
Many confuse the ontological and epistemic senses of subjectivity. Like they confuse colour-experience and colour.
Consider the fact that neural connections are constantly formed and changed as you experience things. Thus you acquire a personalised network of neural connections in your brain. Red colours that you saw as a child provoked your brain to establish a set of neural connections as an adaptation to be used next time you see red colours, and eventually there's an existing network of connections waiting to fire away as soon as the right wavelength hits the photoreceptor cells in your eyes. This means that you can also hallucinate the colour, and neurologists or drugs can artificially evoke the colour-experience without anything seen.
But that's just the colour-experience. Without a colour to see the experience would be blind, and the connections in the brain that were waiting for the right stimulation dissolve or get used for other tasks.
I have not given a great deal of thought to the philosophy of color. Like much of contemporary philosophy, it doesn't seem like it would be a great use of my time. My basic view is something like the idea that color exists in the world in the way that radio stations exist, and the human eye is like a receiver for those radio stations.*
Now there are probably people who understand that eyes are needed to see colors, and yet do not appreciate the complexity of the receiver. Lording this over them would amount to little more than, "The receiver is more complicated than you realize!" Doing this seems like making a mountain out of a molehill. Doing so via the claim that color is entirely in the mind and not at all in reality seems to be such an exaggeration as to be simply false.
* Although this is not to say that a differently constituted receiver could not interpret the signal differently.
The SEP article on colour is worth a read.
Quoting jkop
You asked me for a red pen. I hand you a pen which is covered by a red label and says: 'red ink pen'. You start to use the pen, but it turns out that the pen writes with blue ink. What happened here?
TA-DA.
It is fascinating how humans are choosy about trifles. Colours were stamped on flags, and they caused endless problems and wars all over the world.
Then you are not reading what I am writing. So I'll refer you back to the previous post that was directed at you:
Your claim that there is red "in" the pen is the naive realist view that science has disproven.
Except when we say that the pen is red we are not (ordinarily) saying that the pen has a surface layer of atoms that reflects light with a wavelength of ~700nm.
e.g. when we explain variations in colour perception, such that some see a white and gold dress and some see a black and blue dress, we are not explaining that different people are seeing different objects reflecting different wavelengths of light. They are all looking at the same object reflecting the same wavelengths of light but see different colours. The colours they see, and that we are talking about, are not micro-structural properties or reflectances of the computer screen; the colours they see are mental percepts, whether they recognise them as colour percepts or not.
If that was true, then you could make the blind see by merely stimulating parts of their brains.
But since their brains have never recieved the right stimulation (e.g. from the eyes via the optic nerve), then the right neural connections for colour-vision have not been developed,.
The function of those connections (neural firings) is constitutive for seeing (i.e. having the experience), but without that functionality, there will be no experience, i.e. the blind won't even recognise the artificial stimulation of their brains. (or it might have other unforeseen effects, e.g. a tickle, raised arm, since the brain adapts to available stimulation).
Quoting javi2541997
The label is obviously wrong, but it could be worse, say, if the pen was red at one moment and blue the next, and labelled 'bled', or 'reue'.
We're working on it.
See a narrative review of cortical visual prosthesis systems: the latest progress and significance of nanotechnology for the future.
Quoting jkop
That may also be true, but does not refute anything I have said. It certainly does not entail that colours are mind-independent properties of pens.
Why is it useful to report what you see?
Quoting Hanover
In reporting what you see, you seem to know there are other people with other minds that can perceive what you do, in the way that you do, or else what is the point of reporting what you see? Why use language at all?
Exactly. Subjective experiences are only useful to talk about when wanting to know about the state of other minds, not other pens.
Even if others don't experience red the same as I do, it is irrelevant to the goal at hand, which is drawing one's attention to a specific pen. As long as their experience is consistent (they always experience the same color when viewing certain wavelengths of light), then they will know which pen I am referring to.
This is no different than language in that as long as each user of language is consistent in the way they use certain words, we can understand what they say. Colors, shapes, sounds, feelings, smells, etc. are all words in a (private) language that you translate into your native language of scribbles and sounds that others know the rules for deciphering.
When viewing the words on this page, does it matter what color others see the letters as, or does it only matter that they see the same scribbles and use the same rules for deciphering the meaning of the scribbles? People that do not speak English will see scribbles on this page. English speakers see words.
I recognize that I'm not going to sway your opinion because it's fully committed to the Wittgensteinian model, but there is perhaps value in pointing out the source of our ongoing disagreement to the extent there's confusion in that regard.
If our focus is only upon words (which is your model), then it follows their meaning must be deciphered from shared use as opposed to the ontologicial constitution of the object because to explore the meaning of an object absent language would violate your foundational principle.
That it to say, to you, the beleagured beetle is not what anchors the word "beetle" to mean beetle, but it is our shared understanding of the use of the term, as opposed to the mystery that lies within our box. An entire system has therefore been created to avoid figuring out what the beetle actually is through language alone. Since you won't break character and you insist upon responding consistent with your language-centric position, we just go in circles arguing within our preferred systems speaking (ironically) from unshared positions.
Hopefully this post will at least point out the competing systems and let the casual reader pick his poison.
You may believe my approach is a form of incoherentism, referencing that which can't be described, but I see yours as a form of avoidism and denialism, refusing to delve into the real question as to what the beetle is and refusing to admit to simple scientific truths about how perception imposes upon reality. The best you can say is that the beetle is something, but since we can't speak of it, we avoid discussing it, and we deny it can be anything but the very beetle we talk about.
This leads to a difficult direct realism that is attenuated by mental gymnastics where we don't actually say the beetle is exactly as it appears, but we instead say the beetle isn't anything other than what the lot of us agree that it is, but, at the same time, that is actually what it is. The term "actually" even causes problems for you because it offers the suggestion there is something other than what the beetle is versus what we agree the beetle is. "Actual" is outmoded Kantian talk according to this model.
The avoidism becomes most apparent in your discussions with @Michael where he begins to offer an explanation of the beetle, as in its color is not a part of it, and that results in your refusal to speak of the beetle as an object versus it being a word. That, I think, forms the substance of his repeated complaint that you can't distinguish between a noun (a thing) and an adjective (a subjective descriptor).
Maybe this summarizes this well, maybe not, but it's a try. I do think the fact that you can't admit to the simple fact that color is imposed on an external object and is a subjective interpretation is a serious difficulty with your position. My position suffers from possibly falling into idealism, or at least an irrelevant form of realism, which too is a problem. Mine at least (I'd argue) has a certain fidelity to truth where it's willing to admit we may get no where in finally explaining things because of limits imposed by the noumena, but yours (I'd argue) is conconcted. Clever, complicated, obscure at many points, but concocted.
So that the other person can be informed, more of less, of what I see.
Quoting Harry Hindu
It's true that I assume the listener understands me, but I don't think he fully understands me. This thread is evidence of that.
You seem to be trying to build an argument with these questions, so I'll keep answering you, but maybe move closer to the point because it's not apparent to me.
It may be the other person doesn't see what I see or know what I know. My expectation is that much of what I do experience I do not fully convey in words and that much of what the listener hears isn't accurate of what I meant. Maybe we have shared experience, maybe not. I'd find it hard to believe that two people would fully share an experience down to the last emotion or perception.
You sure are making a lot of knowledge statements about what you know about others' experiences for someone that says Quoting Hanover Why is it hard to believe that two people wouldn't fully share an experience down the the last emotion or perception if you don't have some knowledge about other people? Does it have to do with how others are shaped and behave in different ways than you? But then there are many similar ways that others are shaped and behave similar to you, too. So, wouldn't it be more likely that while they may not fully share an experience they do share some experiences, and those reasons for those similarities and differences can be pointed out as similarities and differences in our physiology and prior experiences? It doesn't seem as complex as some people here are making it out to be.
It means that the colour ain't in the head. That's why you need to add a prothesis, so that the brain can begin to develop neural connections corresponding to the information recieved from the the prothesis whose sensors are exposed to light reflected from pigments etc.
Given that the prothesis translates the information in the right way, the visual system is reconstructed, and the blind may experience colours. But it's improbable that an artificial prosthesis can do what nature does at the level of cells, neurons, synapses interacting with photons or on a quantum level even.
What you'll get is not a duplication of colour vision, but a replacement of it, like echolocation, morse code etc. But then it's no longer colour-vision, or ia meaningless use of the term (as Putnam proved way back in 1976 in his famous brain-in-a-vat-argument).
No it doesn't. That colour experiences require neural connections ordinarily formed in response to electrical information from the eyes does not entail that colours are mind-independent properties of light or a material surface that reflects such light.
What's so special about neurological activity that causes color? How does a colorless process cause color? How do we know that a robot with cameras for eyes connected to a computer brain that can distinguish between different wavelengths of light isn't experiencing different colors as those distinctions in its working memory? How do we know that any object isn't experiencing color (panpsychism)? What's so special about organisms when they are just another kind of physical object?
What's so special about neurological activity that causes pain? This is the hard problem of consciousness that is yet to be solved.
So in other words it isn't known whether pain requires the appropriate neurological activity, and so it is possible that pain just ain't in the head?
Maybe pain really is some mind-independent property of the knife that my body can sense when I'm stabbed with it.
What is pain?
Isn't pain information in that it informs you of some injury in/on your body? Can a robot be informed of damage to its body? If so, does it experience pain?
A percept that occurs when there is the appropriate neurological activity, often in response to electrical signals sent from nociceptors.
See for example Role of the Prefrontal Cortex in Pain Processing:
I don't think any amount of talking will convey to you the first person experience I have of anything. It will always be a rough estimate. Experiences are not just personal, they are highly contextualized and nuanced. What it feels like to visit a grave, for example, will include thousands of memories, pain, happiness, and maybe even the heat from the sun and pebble in your shoe. A report of an experience is an experience of a report, not a coveyance of an experience.
This doesn't answer my question. It just bumps against the hard problem again and we are back where we started.
What is a percept?
You have given a visual model of the brain and its processes, yet have explained that colors and shapes are only in our head. If our visual experience is that inaccurate in that we are seeing things that are not there, then how can we trust the visual explanations scientists and neurologists provide us. When a neurologist says "the mind (color) is an illusion", they are pulling the rug out from under their own visual models and explanations.
How does a colorless process create color?
Because you keep asking the hard question. We don't have an answer to it.
All I am explaining is what the science shows; that pain and colour are percepts that occur when there is the appropriate brain activity; they are not mind-independent properties of knives and pens.
Quoting Harry Hindu
How does a painless process create pain?
Any time you ask me a question like this about colour, just ask the same question about pain. Colour is just like pain, whatever pain is.
It does, and it's open to view. The prosthesis is at best a functional replacement, not a duplication of colour vision.
We see what is open to view, but only the seeing is inside the head. Some of the things we see are complex, context-dependent, dispositional, emergent etc.
And some of those things, like colour and pain, aren't.
I was speaking of color qua color, not color experiences, whatever those are. I dont doubt that you experience the changes in pigment, but it seems to me the changes in pigment are the result of the changes in the object, not some other mind-dependent property. We can test this by mixing paints. It results in a change in color of the paint. At no point am I altering a mind-dependent property to achieve the results.
Colour qua colour is the experience; colour isn't light, isn't how atoms reflect light, and isn't some third mind-independent thing that is neither light nor how atoms reflect light.
Quoting NOS4A2
Mixing paint changes which wavelengths of light it reflects. The wavelength of the light that stimulates the eyes is what determines which neurons are activated and so which kind of colour experience occurs.
At the moment your reasoning is akin to arguing that because it hurts when I put my hand in boiling water but doesn't when I mix in near-freezing water then pain must be a mind-independent property of boiling water that is then removed by the addition of near-freezing water.
Its not clear what were experiencing when we use that sort of language, though, leaving unexplained the question of what color is. Its impossible for me to understand what experiencing an experience is and what that entails. On the other hand, I do know that I am experiencing mind-independent objects, such as the paint, the light, and its surrounding environment.
The adjective red can only describe a red thing, and it is that thing that absorbs certain wavelengths, and reflect others. There is no reason for me to apply that adjective to any other objects, especially mind-dependent ones.
Do you understand what pain is? What smells and tastes are? Vision isn't special.
Quoting NOS4A2
I'm not concerned with the adjective "red". I'm concerned with the noun "red". I've been over this with Banno and others.
You can talk about pens as being coloured, just as you can talk about stubbing one's toe as being painful. But colours and pain are not mind-independent properties of pens or stubbing one's toe; they are the mental percepts (which may be reducible to brain states) that pens and stubbing one's toe cause to occur.
Besides, I can dream about red dragons. The adjective "red" is not being applied to some mind-independent dragon that reflects 700nm light.
But if I were to give a general account of the meaning of "the X is red" or "red X" it would be something like "the X looks red" or "red-looking X". The noun "red" in the phrases "looks red" and "red-looking" does not refer to a mind-independent property.
I know that others don't know what I feel when I tell them about it because I don't know what they feel when they tell me about it. I could question the person for hours and still have more questions.
The noumena doesn't refer to subjective experience. It refers to the object. That is, the pen is noumenal. The experience of the pen is phenomenal. The fact that I can't fully know another person's subjective experience isn't because it's noumenal, but it's because I simply can't experience it like I can a first person experience.
I've not argued that communication is worthless. I've only said that it can't be used to precisely convey my mental state. Whatever is expressed will be significantly limited in content.
Kant described transcdenntal apperception, which is the ability to form a single conscious state from the millions of elementary inputs. That is, as I sit here right now, I have a single conscious state. I could itemize various aspects, like what I see, how I feel, what I'm thinking about, etc., but the entirety of that mental state is singular. It is what I am experiencing in total right now. That cannot be conveyed.
That I might be able to convey to you the directions to the park doesn't suggest that I am able to convey to you my mental state. In fact, the directions I might articulate to you that will get you to the park is not how I conceive of getting to the park. I don't have a silent train of words going through my mind thinking about where I turn and where I go. I just know how to get there, and If you asked me for directions, I would think of the roads and the buildings along the way and then after the fact put that in to words so you'd know where to go. I can't transmit my mind's eye of me visualizing internally how to drive there.
We're way too in love with the notion that we must think in words. That's either a fabrication created by philosophers or I'm super strange in my thought processes. I think it's the former.
Heavy emphasis of "partially." Words aren't useless. They are massively important to communicate with one another. Words are an interpretation of mental states into symbols. The mental states stay behind and the symbols do the best they can to project one's thoughts to another. Much is lost in translation.
I know we smell, taste, and see our environment, yes.
The noun red doesnt refer to anything, save for maybe a concept or some other string of words like a definition. Nouns are persons, places, or things, and red is neither of the above.
But your general account uses adjectives, not nouns. There is no noun red in the phrase looks red because the noun is X and looks red is the predicate modifying it. You can try using red in the place of X and see what you come up with. The red looks .
It does, just as the nouns "colour" and "pain" do. It refers to those things that exist when we dream and hallucinate, that are caused to occur when we use visual cortical prostheses, and which explain variations in colour perception, such as the dress that some see to be white and gold and others as black and blue.
Quoting NOS4A2
Good catch. I was caught up in the preceding paragraphs. I just meant "word" there rather than "noun". But the point still stands that the word "red" in the phrase "looks red" isn't referring to some mind-independent property of pens. It is referring to the type of experience that the pen causes to occur.
Quoting NOS4A2
I'm not concerned with the verbs "smell" and "taste". I'm concerned with the nouns "smell" and "taste", e.g. a sweet smell and a sour taste. These are not mind-independent properties of flowers or food but mental percepts caused by brain activity in response to sensory stimulation of the nose and tongue.
You confuse them.
I sense a headache by having it, but having a brain-event is insufficient for having the systematic colour experiences that we have under ordinary conditions
A colour is open to view, while its seeing is in the head. The seeing is just the conscious awareness of the colour, while the colour is the bundle of lights and pigments that emerge as a colour when seen under ordinary conditions. It's a way of using light, which is open for anyone who has the ability. It ain't in the head.
The "naive" belief that the world is coloured, and that colours exist outside the mind, is perfectly compatible with ordinary language and the science.
Do you deny that dreams and hallucinations have colour? Because they do. Do you believe that the colours in dreams and hallucinations emerge from bundles of light (seen when my eyes are closed in a dark room?). Because they dont.
These colours are percepts, they occur when the visual cortex is active, and all of this happens when awake as well.
Quoting jkop
It is not compatible with science. Ive referenced several scientific articles and quoted the SEP summary on the matter.
Everyone denies it. Dreams may use memories and imaginations of colour that evoke a feeling that you incorrectly pass for color-vision.
Children who draw pictures are aware of the difference between an imagined colour and a visible colour on the picture in front of their eyes.
But for a science-buff like you they're all "percepts" :lol:
Yes, thats what neuroscience shows. Human consciousness does not extend beyond the brain. It certainly does not reach out beyond the body to contain distal objects such that they and their properties are constituents of experience. Any qualitative feature of conscious awareness - smell, taste, colour, pain - is either reducible to or a product of brain activity.
Waking sensations differ from dreams and hallucinations only in their cause, consistency, and intensity, but they are fundamentally the same kind of process.
The fact that depth is a qualitative feature of visual sensations has deceived you into thinking that things like colours are mind-independent features of objects outside the brain, like being convinced that your phantom limb is real.
The science is overwhelmingly clear on this, whether you accept it or not. Ive referenced the studies. To deny them is to commit to a delusion.
Hmmm this seems a really, really difficult account to accept. Is this to say that there is a 'correct' mode of seeing, and anyone who sees 430THz and does not accept they are seeing 'Red' is objectively wrong, or has retarded(in the medical sense) vision?
Unfortunately for parts of your account, there are some fairly glaring issues. Michael has picked up on one (but I think been less-than-direct about it):
Quoting Michael
If your take is correct, then the same experience is being had by the mind when dreaming, even if this is 'artificial' according to your view(memory, or some such being utilized by the unconscious mind). How is the colour actually outside the mind, when there is no possible way to even indicate that it is 'the colour' without this mind-bound experience?
I don't personally have a fundamental issue with saying 'colours' are simply (arbitrarily) defined as their wavelength of light, rather than any experience they invoke. But this doesn't seem to be how the word is used in every-day language.
Nope.
Other science-buffs believe that physics shows that only particles in fields of force exist, and everything else, including neuroscience and percepts, is delusion.
Which is just as selective, unscientific and false as your belief that colour perception is all about neuroscience.
So you think that this quote from Vision Science: Photons to Phenomenology is unscientific?
Or this from Neural representations of perceptual color experience in the human ventral visual pathway?
I'm going to believe what these scientists say over what you say.
Are you suggesting that the science of vision doesn't explain Red? Then how can you claim what you've claimed?
Quoting jkop
I smell Tuna...
Why difficult, and where does that idea come from that there could be a 'correct' mode of seeing?
Color-vision is a biological phenomenon, like photosynthesis, digestion etc. Would you ask if there is a 'correct' mode for digestion?
Perhaps if you fear that your digestion might malfunction or the like. Some seem to think that their visual system malfunctions, as in hallucinations, and a few think that all vision is hallucination, which would be an intellectual disaster to say the least and life threatening if it was true.
But to answer your question, no there's no duch thing ss s correct way of seeing a colour. To see it is a biological fact, just how nature works, and some of us may have better eyes than others. Eagle eyes are impressive, the eyes of a mantis shrimp are super weird.
Because of the remainder of my post...
Quoting jkop
The majority of your responses seem to indicate this. That colour is mind-independent and that the eye and mind must be in order to 'accurately' apprehend the 'colour' out there (this is plainly wrong, though) seems to be baked-in to your position on this.
Quoting jkop
Yes. When my tummy is being funny, i digest 'incorrectly' because of an aberration in the alimetary canal somewhere. Generally, these can be found, diagnosed and treated (though, that's not relevant). This can be applied to vision. I'm asking if you position is that this applies to colour. It seems you want to say no, but...
Quoting jkop
This is, in fact, to say there is a 'correct' way of viewing hte world, biologically. Someone looking at 430THz of light, and seeing Blue, is 'wrong' (whether that's a physical aberration or otherwise..).
No, are you trolling?
Quoting AmadeusD
Why, would you prefer extraordinary conditions?
For example, why would you select the colour for painting the exteriors of a house at night when you barely see it and not in daylight?
Selective references to authority are unscientific.
No, I am responding to what you are saying. There's not a lot of point quoting previous statements, and they would contradict what I'm trying to clarify (which is that there are contradictions all through this exchange...)
Quoting jkop
I have addressed this and why I've honed in on it. You seem to have missed:
Quoting AmadeusD
If this is the case, then there's a strict contradiction in your approach. You are insinuating there is no 'correct' way for the human vision to apprehend colours, but you want colours to be "out there" independent of our experience? Pls hlp lol.
It sounds like you're saying that neuroscience shows that human consciousness doesn't extend beyond the brain. It doesn't show that. We don't presently have a working theory for how experience works.
At the absolute minimum, it is stuck at that position. So, I think Michael's position is entirely tenable. Neuroscience doesn't indicate that consciousness extends at all.
Neuroscience doesn't say anything one way or the other about extension of consciousness. Therefore, if we want to talk about it, we'll have to back down into philosophy.
To the extent that one might want to argue for something like idealism or substance dualism or panpsychism, sure. So if that's how you want to defend naive colour realism then commit to one of them.
But as it stands the scientific view is that colour experiences correspond to neural processes (specifically those in the visual cortex) such that there are no colour experiences without corresponding neural processes and that different colour experiences correspond to different neural processes and so that distal objects and their properties cannot causally influence colour experience except by causally influencing neural processes.
I was criticizing your use of science to support your argument. It's your worldview that says consciousness is confined to brains. Science does not confirm that.
Quoting Michael
Experience is associated with neural processes. If that's what you meant by "corresponds" then fine. If you meant something more, you'd have to explain what you mean. Due to multiple realizability, there isn't any straight forward correspondence. Check out the strawberries that are experienced as red, when they're really black and white. That's an example a gross disconnect. Minor ones are happening all the time.
Quoting Michael
There isn't presently any working scientific theory about how experience works. It could involve some entanglement of the thigh bone for all we know. Again, you're confusing worldview for science.
Automation can mix physical pigments to perfectly match the color sample.
The scanner cannot see/detect/perceive color if color is nothing more than neural/psychological events.
This doesn't help the problem..
:brow:
There's something awefully funny going on in here.
Frequencies of light are not color... according to those I'm arguing against.
Occam's razor.
What's being explained by the invocation of "mental percept" that cannot be explained without it?
Yes, that is why my response is a bit of an objection. "colour" formally, is the experience of (sorry, caused by, in most cases) such and such light frequency. That these very rarely vary independently doesn't instantiate a 1:1 match.
My point about the scanner is that it cannot detect colour. Colour is an experience.
Excellent.
No. It causes (in general terms) the sensation we take to be caused by the range on the spectrum. That sensation is termed 'Red'. There is no red in the spectrum. Arguing that there is red in the spectrum is bizarre. If you're not doing so, I am not quite understanding the objection.
Also, if these several string-posts are in response to someone, I'm not seeing hte intermediary posts so sorry if anything is incoherent for that reason. If its just me, also sorry lmao.
Not a Skittles fan, huh? Taste the rainbow, except the rainbow has no colors.
Just off the cuff absurd conclusions following from the idea that color is nothing more than a mental/psychological event.
It detects what we've named "red", despite not having mental events.
To me, nothing you've used to object to the position has any effect on it. You're, in all cases, bringing the mental phenomenon to a physical fight. The only reason a Red skittle is Red, is because my mind creates a red experience for me in response to a(in this case, a very specific) frequency of light reflected of a cooked sugar surface. It isn't in the Skittle. THat's, again, bizarre.
Quoting creativesoul
Explanation: Nice, thank you
Relevance: None, unfortunately.
Quoting creativesoul
I'm also not entirely un-open to the idea that a machine could have 'mental events' in some form that delineates 'mentation' from 'consciousness'. There are bacteria who can react adequately to their environment (and show what would be considered unnatural coherence in those reactions) without any consciousness - but perhaps we have to give them mentation to make sense of it. Idk. It is distasteful to me, but I can't find a reason to just say "No, not that".
There is a further point, and all of your objections rely on it's facticity: the reality that we cannot point out Red without experiencing it. The only reason we could announce that a programme has 'created' Red is because the experience we have corresponds with what we call Red elsewhere. And this was programmed into the software based on the prexisting version of the same correspondence. It is all derived from experience.
There is no part of any of these discussions where colour obtains without experience. I get the feeling this is going to just end up with erroneous exchanges about language use.
How can I experience colour!? What if I never experienced red colour, and you asked me for a red pen? I would feel a big feeling of anxiety in my chest because I would not know what to hand you. But I know that pens are for writing. Why do you want it red? Choosy boy.
Gross disconnect between what? What do you even mean by "really" black and white?
Correct, just as sugar is not taste.
There are no red pixels in that picture. It's an optical illusion. You were talking about correspondence of experience to neural processes. The point was to explain what multiple realizability is. There is no simple correspondence between stimulus and experience.
What's a red pixel?
Quoting frank
I wasn't talking about a correspondence between stimulus and experience. I was talking about a correspondence between brain states and experience.
I guess you mean sweet rather than sugar, actually.
A pixel that produces the frequency of red.
Quoting Michael
That isn't there either. All kinds of brain states can produce the same experience.
Do you mean a pixel that emits 700nm light?
Quoting frank
Perhaps, but there are no experiences without brain states, and I doubt the same brain state can produce different experiences.
It's a range, but yea.
So when you say this:
"check out the strawberries that are experienced as red, when they're really black and white"
You are saying this:
"check out the strawberries that are experienced as red when they're not really emitting 700nm light"
But what does the "red" in "experienced as red" mean/refer to? Does it mean this:
"check out the strawberries that are experienced as emitting 700nm light when they're not really emitting 700nm light"
Right. I don't know what you're talking about with what followed that.
I'm asking you if "experienced as red" means "experienced as emitting 700nm light" given that you defined "red" as "emitting 700nm light".
I'm guessing you understood me just fine, you're trying to make a point by pretending you didn't?
I want to know if you accept the existence of colours-as-mental-phenomena.
I'm aware. That's the point. Claiming that the colour red is 700nm light is as mistaken as claiming that a sweet taste is sugar.
Rather, eating sugar causes a sweet taste and looking at 700nm light causes a red colour.
Sure. My point was that we have limited understanding of how experience works. It's not as simple as: 700nm frequency causes the experience of red.
Good. Then the claim I have been making since the start of this discussion is that colours-as-mental-phenomena constitute our ordinary, everyday understanding of colours. When we ordinarily think and talk about colours we are thinking and talking about colours-as-mental-phenomena (even if we do not recognize them as mental phenomena); we are not thinking and talking about wavelengths of light.
Quoting frank
Then why did you claim that there is a "gross disconnect" between a red experience and a picture that doesn't emit 700nm light? You seemed to be implying that it is "correct" for 700nm light to cause a red experience and "incorrect" for a different wavelength of light to cause a red experience.
:up:
I was just explaining multiple realizability in case you were interested. 700nm light causes red experiences so often that we call it red light. That's not a misuse of "red." It's just a different usage. As it happens, there are other brain states associated with the experience of red besides the one produced by red light.
Yes, that's what explains dreams, hallucinations, and variations in colour perception, as I have been arguing. Colours, as ordinarily understood, are the mental phenomena caused by neural processes in the visual cortex, regardless of their cause.
Quoting frank
And this is the important point. It's not the case that we call this experience a red experience because it is the experience of 700nm light; it's the case that we call 700nm light red light because it is the normal cause of red experiences.
The initial/primary use of the word "red" refers to the type of experience, with it's use to refer to the light normally responsible for it post hoc.
True.
Is arguing about semantics that interesting?
Clearly more fruitful.
I ask the hard question because he keep stating that pain and color occur with appropriate brain activity. If the hard problem isn't solved then it is a logical possibility that color and pain doesnt necessarily occur with brain activity. It might occur with any type of computational process, like in a robot.
I asked if a robot can experience pain if it is informed it is damaged. You avoided the question.
If another human experiences something completely different than you when they are injured, can you say they feel pain? This is why I ask the question about what pain and color are. If someone can experience a different feeling when injured and you still qualify that as pain then why not a robot with a working memory that stores information temporarily to work out a response. What FORM does that information take in its working memory? Conciousness is a type of working memory.
So the ultimate question you need to answer is does it really matter what FORM the percep takes if it is caused by an injury and the percept is not the injury but information ABOUT the injury? Does that qualify as pain?
Does it matter what FORM the percept takes if it is caused by an interaction of reflected light with a lens and a sensory information processor?
The case you are making implies that humans and their brains are special in that they have this special power to create colors and pain when science has also shown that humans are not so special in the grand scheme of things.
You keep confusing what is lost in translation with what is irrelevant to the situation. I don't need to know about how you feel about your loss to know where to find where they are buried. I don't need to know where they are buried to know how you are feeling about losing someone you love because I have lost loved ones too, so I understand what you are feeling. Why do we even have words the refer to mental states if something is lost when using them? How do you even know what is lost, if anything, without knowing the contents of another's mind when telling them about your feelings?
If I made it to the grave sight after telling me how to get there nothing was lost in translation. If I say "I understand how you feel" when you tell me how you feel nothing was lost in translation.
Let's take someone with congenital insensitivity to pain with anhidrosis. They don't feel pain but they can still be injured and can still be made aware of their injury another way, e.g. by seeing their broken leg or by being told by a doctor.
So if you're trying to reduce pain to something as simple as awareness of injury then it doesn't work.
What do you mean by "information"? Are you referring to the chemical neurotransmitters like glutomate that are released and sent to the brain? They, themselves, are not pain. The experience of pain occurs when there is the appropriate neural activity in the insular and secondary somatosensory cortexes, which usually occurs in response to these neurotransmitters, but direct electrical stimulation of these cortexes without any preceding tactile sensor involvement also causes pain.
See Role of the Prefrontal Cortex in Pain Processing
See also synesthesia, which seems relevant to your questions.
You know there's more at stake. Philosophy of perception is philosophy of mind, a tangle of philosophies of language, science, and some metaphysics.
Semantic externalism is one argument that can support the belief that colours exist outside the mind. But also internalists distinguish between the internal experience that you have and the internal object of the experience.
Conscious states have intentionality, i.e. they're about things. So even in case the experienced object is a construct of the brain, there's a difference between its constitutive sense and its intentionalistic sense. *
In the case of seeing the colour red, the brain constructs the experience (seeing), but doesn't construct the colour, it doesn't have to, since the colour emerges from the brain's encounter with the external state of affairs (light, cone- ells etc). Hence the experience is direct.
*) edit
Nor are we saying that it doesn't, which is what you seem to falsely believe. We mean that the pen has a property of redness, and the specialist is simply explaining what that property is constituted by (i.e. it is constituted by light reflection of a certain wavelength).
Quoting Michael
Explaining variations in color perception and predicating redness of a pen are two very different things, and the former is much less common. Confusing the two leads to problems.
Quoting Michael
No they're not. Were you to give an argument for such a position it would be invalid. If I am 100 feet away from the Statue of Liberty and you are a mile away from the Statue of Liberty, the size of the Statue will appear different to each of us, but it does not follow that we are merely seeing a percept.
If we were only seeing our own percepts then we would not be able to read posts on TPF:
Quoting Leontiskos
---
Quoting Lionino
What I find remarkable is the claim which says that it is science which proves that red is a "color percept" and nothing else. It is that magical appeal to "The Science" which keeps cropping up all over public discourse.
That's not the sense of redness that is our ordinary, everyday conception of colour. Our ordinary, everyday conception of colour is that of the mental percepts that light stimulating the eyes causes to occur, and that also occurs in dreams and hallucinations and synesthesia, and that allows us to understand what it means for some people to see this dress as white and gold and others as black and blue.
I just read Myles Burnyeat's, "The sceptic in his place and time," (quoted here). His topic is "insulation": that whereby one insulates philosophical claims from everyday claims and everyday claims from philosophical claims. I think Michael is the premiere representative of insulation on TPF.
In the final section of his article Burnyeat looks at the history, and concludes that insulation did not emerge with Pyrrhonism, Descartes, Hume, or Berkeley.* These all contributed in paving the way towards insulation, but they did not hold it. It was only with Kant that true insulation finally came onto the scene.
* I think Burnyeat overlooks the "two truth theory" of the Medieval period, which was almost certainly a precursor of insulation.
This is no longer a matter of philosophy. Science has solved the problem. All I am doing here is explaining what the science shows to those who persist in committing to armchair theorizing.
Neural representations of perceptual color experience in the human ventral visual pathway
Vision Science: Photons to Phenomenology
Color
I don't think you managed to read my post.
Quoting Michael
When someone says, "This pen is red," they are not saying, "This pen accompanies a mental percept of 'red'." "Red" does does not denote a mental percept. Try a dictionary, for once.
Quoting Michael
All you are doing is being confused by the science. Your inference is that because the sight of red requires a form of mental processing, therefore 'red' signifies a percept and not a property. This is just more bad philosophy; an invalid argument.
Again, it does not follow that colors denote percepts.
Yes, this is a profound issue with claiming Red is 'out there'. If it were, the description would pick it out from the world. But it doesn't. It picks it out of experiences which is why we don't all agree on what Red is (or, at least, what shades come under the banner). If Red is only in the experience, then your anxiety is, while misplaced imo, reasonable. The problem of other minds rears it's head...
But, I did note somewhere (i think anyway lol), that Red as 'out there' is optimal, in the sense that it allows us to actually refer to it without consistent skepticism. Every now and then something comes aong with the blue/black white/gold dress phenomenon though, and somewhat brings this to light.
I also had a realization last night: My right eye is significantly worse than my left. It cannot perceive colours as brightly or as saturated as my left eye, and it also perceives objects as smaller than does my left eye.
Which one is 'correct'? Is 'worse' the right word? I have no idea, but i like the bright saturation of my left eye more. But it feels artificial now, like saturation level on a television.
Color (Merriam-Webster)
1a. a phenomenon of light (such as red, brown, pink, or gray) or visual perception that enables one to differentiate otherwise identical objects
Consider two pens, a red pen and a white pen. Is it your claim that there is no external difference between these two pens? Or: that the only difference between the two pens is something the mind projects into the pens? (Note that your word "elicits" already tells us that there is an external basis for differing color perceptions.)
That is definitely not what "this pen is Red" means, or what a specialist is explaining. The specialist explains that Redness doesn't reside in the pen - redness is an experience triggered by the properties of the pen. The is how most experiences work. Why would colour be different? Joy isn't in a dog, or a child. It is triggered in me by the properties in those things. Similarly with satisfaction due to say symmetry. The symmetry isn't satisfying - my mind is satisfied by the properties instantiated in the symmetry. Symmetry is a good example, because we're usually visually fooled into the experience of satisfaction by symmetry. Actually symmetry is very rare in the world, but our minds 'create' the experience when triggered by certain external properties. They can't refer to the experience - they are the basis for it. Are we trying to create a circular relationship?
Quoting Leontiskos
It's neither. THe difference in teh pens is their respectively ability to reflect wavelengths of light. Unless you're equating the visual experience of Red as a 1:1 match with 430 THz of light, I'm unsure what's being posited... And if that is being posited it may be worth leaving off this discussion.
Quoting Michael
What I mean by information is the form pain takes and the form colors take and the form smells and tastes and sounds take in your consciousness. What I mean by information is the aboutness that your sensory impressions take in that your sensory impressions are not the pen or the injury, but ABOUT the pen and the injury. When you feel pain are you not informed that you have an injury? When you see the red of the apple are you not informed that the apple is ripe? You can be informed about being injured in other ways by sight as you pointed out, but the sensory impression you experience is dependent upon the type of sense that is being used - your nerve endings in your skin vs your eyes.
I should point out that when I stub my toe, I feel the pain in my toe, not my head. I don't confuse a stubbed toe with a headache. That is another point in that our senses also provide information about location relative the brain. The world appears located relative to the eyes, but we know that the world is not located relative to the eyes. The way the visual field is displayed - the form the visual information takes - as the world located relative to the eyes is what gives it the "first-person" feel.
No, you don't. You feel the pain in your mind. Pain doesn't obtain in the cells of your toe. This kind of confusion is not unsurprising, or without its reasons, but is clearly wrong. A toe does not feel pain without a mind.
...The idea here seems to be that we first state that the pen is red, and then we learn something about the way the eye or the mind processes color, and we then conclude that our statement must have been false. This is a very odd idea. It involves the strange notion that our statement must have been opposed to what we went on to learn.
I'm not sure what "aboutness" has to do with anything being discussed here. This history textbook is about Hitler, but it isn't Hitler; it's bound pieces of paper with ink writing.
I don't understand the reasoning behind this question. You're asking why speak at all if our speech isn't 100% accurate and complete in terms of what it conveys? My response would be because knowing something is better than knowing nothing. Why did we have black and white photography before color photography came out? Because something is better than nothing. And, I'd say, I don't labor with the belief that current color photography is 100% accurate in what it depicts. It's 2 dimensional, for example.
As in my example earlier of the air traffic controller looking at blips on his radar screen. No one believes that airplanes are blips, but we can all see the value in having him look at those blips.
Quoting Harry Hindu
Genesis 1:2
English Standard Version: "The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters."
New Revised Standard: "the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters."
Good News Translation: "the earth was formless and desolate. The raging ocean that covered everything was engulfed in total darkness, and the Spirit of God was moving over the water."
Septuagine Bible w/Apocrypha: "But the earth was unsightly and unfurnished, and darkness was over the deep, and the Spirit of God moved over the water."
Will the real Genesis 1:2 please stand up? That is, the one where nothing gets lost in translation.
The same way you don't confuse the car on your left from the car on your right: the direction of stimulation is extremely influential on how we perceive the stimulus. Throwing one's voice is a good example of where this is writ large - despite there being no voice coming from the direction one perceives (when on the receiving end!) - that is what one perceives. We can even be tricked about hte direction stimulus is coming from. Not being able to locate an itch is another perfect example. "I can't put my finger on it" has developed out of this experiential norm.
On-point to your comment, your internal depth perception is what creates the experience of distance - not the distance itself. It is your mind interpreting it which is why perspective can get really fucked up really quickly in the right physical circumstances. The mind does what it thinks it should be doing. It is not veridical in the philosophical sense.
I should say, if your argument is in line with Banno's hand-waving idea that we can somehow magically see things veridically, despite that being in direct contradiction of hte science of perception, I'm unsure we'll get far - which si fine, just want to avoid you wasting your time here if so.
Consider 2 sets of computer code, one that projects an image of a white pen on the screen and a second that projects a red pen on the screen. Which code is white?
That's a cool trick the nervous system does. Pain is handled by a special neuron called a nociceptor. People who have chronic pain develop nervous superhighways so that any pain stimulus in the area jumps onto the same path. In other words, they lose the ability to correctly locate the pain. That problem can eventually progress until they have what's call "generalization" where they can't locate pain at all. It's just everywhere.
Hmm? We could, by analogy, call the code white which causes the white image, but it is the image on the screen that is white, not the code.
Do you think that pens do not really exist, and the mind is just projecting them? That there is no difference between a dream or a hallucination and reality?
See:
Quoting Leontiskos
While i understand that you've removed what was a problematic formulation, this boils down to the same problem.
What is making that image white? Is it that "it reflects xxxx under normal circumstances"? Well, no. It is the light itself... So, the question is weirder now.
But for either the light, or a reflective surface of X property/ies, normativity is doing a lot of work there, and it also does not describe what we're trying to describe in any way. I find this a real problem. It may simply be that colours cannot be described other than by way of examples being generalised.
In this analogy, the code is the noumena and the color is the phenomenal. The point being that there is no reason to claim any property on the noumenal. The pen and the perception of the pen need bear no relationship to one another.
Quoting Leontiskos
I've not argued idealism, but I do wonder what can be said of the reality that realists speak of.
You're not discussing what the rest of us are discussing: perception, under General philosophy. But you claim the topic is not philosophical, hence your disregard for argument and reference to the authority of science..But that's not so scientific either.
Regarding aboutness, see Intentionality
But I am not a Kantian. I do not believe we can know about things that we cannot know (noumena).
Quoting Hanover
But even here your example fails, because just as there are distinguishing properties of red and white pens, so too are there distinguishing properties of red and white images, and also distinguishing properties of the two sets of code that generates those different images.
If the same set of code produced the two different images then your example would aid you; but it doesn't. There is absolutely no evidence for saying that there is nothing external about red, and all evidence to the contrary. Two pens which are alike in every way except color have different external properties that account for their different colors. Even Michael would presumably agree that the two pens possess different properties, and that it is precisely the differing external properties that result in our differing color percepts.
I'd say that the statement, "This pen is red," is opaque, in some sense simple or sui generis. It's not a scientific statement; it's not an anti-scientific statement; it's not a statement about light reflection, etc. The mistaken assumption that the statement is somehow reducible is leading to strange inferences in light of scientific findings.
For example, "By that statement you were saying that 'red' in no way involves the reflection of light, and so now we know you were wrong." The simple answer is, "No, the statement is not saying that 'red' in no way involves the reflection of light." The revisionists want to say that it is wrong to call the pen red, but they have no clear sense of why or how it is supposed to be wrong. ...And the quasi-idealist attempt to say that everything relating to redness is in the mind, and nothing relating to redness is in the pen, is a desperation attempt which surely cannot stand.
I don't think we can know about things we cannot know either. That's what it means to be noumenal.
Quoting Leontiskos
The red is what you perceive in your mind. It is that phenomenal state. So, look at an apple and the red you perceive is the red.
The word "red" is what I type, but it is not my fingers moving. It is the letters R - E - D. The input causes the output, but the input isn't the output.
That there is an object X that causes you to see red and an object Y that causes you to see white doesn't mean that X is red and Y is white. It's for that reason we don't say my fingers moving are the word "red."
If you want to say that X and Y are different to the extent one makes you see red and one white, that's fine, but that doesn't mean X is red, where "is" means "to be." X is a bunch of electronic impulses in the computer code example and it doesn't look red. It looks like code, or maybe just computer parts.
So, you and Michael are claiming that the properties/features/physical characteristics regardng the surface layer of red pens cause us to see color, and the color is nothing more than a mental event/phenomena.
Things reflecting certain ranges of the visible spectrum cause us to see red, or green, or violet. That seeing of color, according to you, is nothing but a mental phenomena.
Rather than claim that the pen is reflecting the red part of the visible spectrum causing us to see red, you'd rather say that there is no red part of the visible spectrum, rather there are certain ranges that cause us to see red.
Is that about right?
I understand what intentionality is. I don't understand what intentionality has to do with the discussion we're having.
A book is about a person, but the properties of the book are not the properties of the person. Experience might be about (or of) some distal object, but the properties of the experience are not the properties of the distal object.
Experience has colour properties. These colour properties might "represent" or "stand for" properties of distal objects (e.g. a surface that reflects light of certain wavelengths), but they are nonetheless distinct entities, and it is the colour properties of experience that constitute our ordinary, everyday understanding of colours. We just often naively assume that the colour properties of the experience are the properties of the distal object. This is what physics and the neuroscience of perception has proven false.
Agreed. But the semiotic position would be that "red" is reducible to some kind of sign relation we have with the world.
This ought to help clarify the stakes. The brain evolved to make sense or its world in terms that increased a species fitness. So there is no reason to think red exists as part of some wavelength frequency detection device.
But given that the brain's colour centre is sited right in the shape and contour decoding path of the object recognition region area, there is reason to believe that hue discrimination is all about the ecologically-relevant function of making shaped objects pop out of their confused surroundings.
Red is a useful sign that here is an object that now sticks out like a sore thumb as it is covered by a surface with a rather narrow reflectance bandwidth. Everything around it is kind of green, because well that is a sign that plants have their own evolutionarily optimal setting for the photopigments used in photosynthesis. And then red is the natural contrast that plants would used to signal the ripe fruit they want dispersing.
So all qualia ought to be reducible in this ecologically semiotic fashion. The logic should be clear from the environments we evolve in. Organisms are engaged in sign relations with each other, with other organisms, and with a world in terms of all its pressing threats and urgings.
This is why physics doesn't answer the crucial question. And nor does treating the signs as world-independently real actual idealistic qualia.
But a science of sign relations is possible. And that reduces what we sense and feel to ecological and evolutionary explanations.
We can, and do, use the phrase "red part of the visible spectrum" to mean "620-750nm light". Pens do reflect 620-750nm light, and so we can, and do, say that pens reflect the red part of the visible spectrum of light.
But this isn't our ordinary conception of the colour red. Our ordinary conception of the colour red is that of the mental percept that 620-750nm light ordinarily causes to occur. This is how we can make sense of coloured dreams and hallucinations, of synesthesia, of variations in colour perception (such as the dress), and of scientific studies like this.
The problem is when someone argues for something like naive colour realism/realist colour primitivism, or that there is a "correct" way for an object that reflects 620-750nm light to look. These views do not accept that the percept is a percept, instead thinking it a mind-independent property of the pen (or at least to resemble such a property). And these views are contradicted by physics and the neuroscience of perception.
Is that the only way to make sense of those things mentioned?
What's the difference between seeing red and the mental percept that 620-750nm light ordinarily causes to occur?
This makes sense to me, yes. It seems a pretty good description of what's actually happening rather than some formulation of "how i think of it". I'm not suggesting you are claiming one or the other here, just clarifying.
If red is just a part of the light spectrum (x to x frequencies) that's fine - but it means our epxerience of it is something else. If we're just singularly referring to different things, I'm unsure there's a solution other htan to adjust the language to note that. Though, to my mind, that's the case. The numbers which represent the range on the spectrum are what they are. The experience which is (usually, under 'normal' conditions) triggered by objects which reflect that range can't be the same thing. So, personally, i have no issue with things how they are - they seem to encapsulate the way i think about it as well. Though, this is going to obviously influence how much weight i put on either side of the coin.
Well. If red is part of the light spectrum, and certain things reflect that range, and we're capable of detecting that range, that's how we see red things. They would be reflecting that range even if we were not looking. That seems a problem for the view I've been reading from Michael, and I presumed(perhaps mistakenly?) you're in agreement with his view as shared here in this thread.
If red is part of the light spectrum, and red is a color, then light has/is color. That's a problem for Michael.
Sure seeing a red pen is not equivalent to a red pen. Moreover, seeing red is not equivalent to red. That's a problem as well.
Then you're equivocating. Earlier you've put forth the claim that light has no color. The visible spectrum is light. Red is a color.
Color, according to you, is a mental percept... nothing more. The visible spectrum is not.
Be well.
This struck-out seems an empirical correction, to me. It's significant to how we conceptualise, though.
Quoting creativesoul
They would. And if you want to say they are still Red, in the absence of experience, I then require something else to refer to the experience. Seems simple enough to me... They clearly are not the same thing, so we shouldn't refer to them by the same term. I would not want to say they are Red, in that context at least and possibly, at all (depending on whether or not I decide on some stringent version of this that I like better than others (such as a new word for stretches of the light-spectrum that aren't number ranges)).
Quoting creativesoul
I'm not sure we're totally aligned, but I think i'm much closer to his position than others trying to (ironically, given the post above this) equivocate between a spectrum of light, and a mental experience.
Quoting creativesoul
In the Indirect Realism thread, I noted this issue (that I think is linguistic) and posited a better form(in my opinion):
We look at objects;
We perceive the reflected/refracted/whatever light;
We see the images our mind puts together for us to make sense of the first two.
This seems to adequately delineate what i think are three distinct aspects of what we colloquially refer to as "seeing a Red pen" (content arbitrary - we're just using that example in the exchange).
Says who? Not the dictionary or common use. Certainly red is perceived by the mind, and certainly we have phenomenal experiences that include red-perceptions, but it does not follow from any of this that red is nothing more than a color percept, a purely subjective experience.
Quoting Hanover
I think it does. Is there any real argument to the contrary?
The base question here asks what 'red' means in the phrase, "This pen is red." The phrase means something like, "This pen possesses the color-property we call 'red'." 'Red' is a color-property of visual objects. I don't know how much more can be said about it.
Now you want to say that after we learn that the redness of the pen results from the manner in which the pen reflects light, we have somehow invalidated this claim. What is your actual argument for why the claim is invalidated? Is there a real argument here?
Quoting Hanover
'Red' is a sign, and the typing of your fingers are the efficient cause of that sign. The difference between the creation of a sign and the sign is very different from the difference between a red object and the stimulation of the eye which beholds it.
Quoting Hanover
What do you say it would mean for X to be red? If you have no answer to this question then your claims here are not meaningful.
Quoting Hanover
In the code example you are confusing the code with the LCD output that it produces. The code isn't white, but the LCD output is.
There is something Matrix-esque occurring here. "Hey dude, the apple you are eating isn't real, it's just code. It's the code that's real!" We could argue about whether this claim holds good in The Matrix, but there is the simpler route of noting that we do not live in The Matrix. Pens are not computer code. Is the claim about wavelengths more real than the color-claim? Only if we hold to some cousin of Scientism. But the more pertinent question asks why we are supposed to think that the two claims are even opposed.
Suppose you stopped appealing to scientific studies that do not seem to support the points you think they do. Would there be any arguments for your position? Where are the real arguments to be found?
Suppose that apokrisis is right that the ability to see fruit is bound up with the ability to distinguish the red range. In that case there is something normative or "correct" about the fruit-eater's ability to distinguish the red range. Or that green relates to the photopigments used in photosynthesis, and is therefore related to sunlight, the sunlight which is also normative for our color perception?
The point here is that the inference to the conclusion that there is nothing appropriate about the human ability to distinguish color is a metaphysical claim that goes beyond the science. I'm guessing there is no sound scientific argument with the conclusion, "...Therefore, color perception is purely arbitrary and subjectivistic." You are claiming to know things that you do not know. The colors in nature are not necessarily arbitrary, and our perception of them therefore need not be arbitrary either.
True, and I don't deny that.
Quoting apokrisis
Right. One can think of color along the lines of a number of different measures, but I see nothing special about the wavelength frequency approach. It is a quantitative measure relating to the visual operation, but need not be the center of gravity for sight or color.
Quoting apokrisis
This is how I tend to think of color, and it is how many of the ancient philosophers thought of color (i.e. color is the basis of shape).
Quoting apokrisis
Interesting. I had been thinking about the green photopigment, but not the red of fruit.
Quoting apokrisis
These are good points and arguments.
I want to say that the person devoted to some variety of Scientism labors under a strong fact-value distinction and claims that any sort of normative or value-laden predication must be false, and that the phenomena in question are then ultimately arbitrary. They appeal to "the science" to support this, in a circular fashion. I don't think these arguments are valid, but once a teleological reality is introduced as part of the genetic cause of the phenomena in question, the conclusion of the invalid argument is actually shown to be false. For example, a fixation on the quantitative notion of wavelength frequency can lead one to the conclusion that colors are arbitrary, but then the teleology of an ecological-evolutionary basis for both the faculty and objects of sight comes in to explain why colors are not arbitrary. (Regarding the faculty of sight, one could also consult the use of different colors in advertising.)
I think this is all well and good. Bona fide anti-teleological arguments are invalid, or at least inductive and to that extent incomplete. Ecological and evolutionary arguments can show why things like color are not arbitrary. But then as a theist I hold to a more fundamental teleological reality, which also points towards a diverse and multifaceted world. Ergo: I am not committed to the idea that the ecological-evolutionary explanation is the complete explanation. Perhaps alternative analyses will simultaneously hold true in the future.
Put differently, there is the thesis that it is arbitrary that blood and fruit are red, that leaves are green, and that the sun produces the color of light that it does. According to this thesis, it could equally be just the opposite. I don't see this as a scientific thesis, and I'm not even convinced it is a falsifiable thesis. At best we have no evidence for or against such an unqualified thesis, nor for any contrary thesis that operates at such a high metaphysical level. One could reasonably say that we have no evidence against such a thesis, so long as they also admit that we have no evidence for such a thesis. It is a non-scientific question. This is why I distrust the newspaper headline, "Science proves color is arbitrary!" (Not that you are saying this - the ecological/evolutionary argument goes far to show that color has a strong contextual significance. But the simple invalidity is also worth noting, even before falsification.)
Quoting Mp202020
And here is my initial answer:
Quoting Banno
and then:
Quoting Banno
I've since added that there is nothing in the physiological accounts offered hereabouts that is contrary to this, apart from the conclusion "Color is in the perceiver..." (Kim et al)
What is being rejected here is not the physiology. What is being rejected is a reduction of colour to mere percept, because doing so fails to account for the use of colour terms in our everyday lives.
The quote from Kim et al continues: "Color is in the perceiver, not the physical stimulus." Kim goes on: "The present study dissociated the perceptual domain of color experience from the physical domain of chromatic stimulation at each stage of cortical processing by using a switch rivalry paradigm that caused the color percept to vary over time without changing the retinal stimulation." Good stuff. Speaking roughly they claim to have separated the visual stimulus from the reported colour. Not all that surprising. Such experiments focus acutely on the physiology, and in so doing ignore the wider story.
And that's the main point here - that the place of colour in our wider world and life is not captured by calling it "subjective" or that colour is nothing but "mental percepts".
I'll again invite folk to have at least a cursory look at the Stanford entry on Colour, if only to note how long it is, and the sheer number of differing views on display. "There has been a strong resistance among philosophers, both to the Eliminativist tendency within the scientific tradition, and the related subjectivism." Colour is a much broader topic than can be explained by elimination or subjectivism.
No, it doesn't do that at all and that's also entirely irrelevant to what is, at base, an empirical question. Is a wavelength of light the colour we perceive, when we don't perceive it?
Obviously not. Additionally, several physiological descriptions of light and sight, coupled with the knows facts of perception, fly entirely in the face of your position including those provided by Michael " class="external-link">here
You're obviously free to reject them, but there is an extremely steep uphill battle for anyone claiming the experience of red is the wavlength of light which triggered it. To such a degree that I would call you Sisyphus.
Agreed. And an excellent definition of Scientism. Semiosis aims to be a science of meaning. And so it assumes that anything we value as an idea or habit must have pragmatic value as "a way of life". Even if it doesn't meet the approval of Scientism.
But as I argued earlier, semiosis is balanced precariously between idealism and realism. It is having to make its own case as something beyond either of those two monisms. The thing that is different in its triadic structuralism.
My bold claim is just how quickly this project has been progressing these past 50 years.
Quoting Leontiskos
OK, theism would be our sticking point then. I doubt I could have had a more atheistic upbringing. :smile:
But pursuing that line would be futile unless you were defending some point where a deity must intrude into the workings of nature. If God is unnecessary for consciousness, fine feelings, or the Platonic necessity of mathematical patterns, then where is His role in causality?
Natural philosophy can push the need for divine cause pretty much completely out of the picture. Especially if even the Cosmos is a Big Bang evolutionary story the telic inevitability that comes with it describing a natural thermodynamic arc of an ultimately hot and small event falling endlessly into a heat sink a Heat Death just as ultimate of its own creation.
Once the entire history of the Universe is reduced to the dialectical simplicity of a "great inversion" the hot/small halving and doubling its way to the cold/large then any divine intervention or finality is really pushed to the fringe. Efficient and final cause are now the start and finish line of the one larger "motion" of a mutualised symmetry breaking.
The Planckscale as the supposed efficient cause the triggering quantum event is also just as much the final cause in that it is indeed as hot or energy dense as it is spatiotemporally small. And the same applies at the Heat Death when the Planckscale is just inverted to become 1/Planckscale. The de Sitter vacuum state of being as large as it is cold and devoid of energetic potency.
So all causality appears to be wrapped up in this physics. It is pure internalism. No divine hand needed either to light the blue touch paper, nor call time in a final judgement.
Of course Scientism struggles to articulate this as a story of the Big Bang because it is so bad at recognising final cause. The principle of least action and action at a distance are still a bit embarrassing to talk about, even if they are essential to normal physics.
But Natural Philosophy encourages the idea that the Cosmos is a Darwinian event, and even a structualist story in particular, a dissipative structure story. And I like the idea that pansemiosis is another way of labelling the physics of dissipative structure. Although it responds just as well to other labels like systems science, infodynamics, hierarchy theory. Plenty of folk quietly feeling the same elephant.
But anyway, that would be my next challenge. Where does any divine cause seem needed in a Cosmos that keeps seeming to be explained in the terms of a self-organising structure of relations?
If it can be shown that the Cosmos is not just some random thermal event, but instead the self-organising story of a world managing to exist because it constructs the very heat sink upon which its existence is contingent, well where is even a God of the gaps a necessary character in the collective narrative?
And the problem here is this bogus notion of "our everyday lives". As humans we are semiotically organised across at least four levels of reality encoding. Genes, neurons, words and numbers. At least four levels of "language" are involved in constructing our "everyday mentality".
So much is assumed by this idea of there actually being this thing of our "everyday lives". It reeks of the social privilege that it claims to transcend.
Nothing.
But the question under consideration isn't "what are all the ways that we use colour terms in our everyday lives?".
Rather, we are using the word "colour" to refer to something in particular and are asking what that thing is. Both the naive colour realist (which is the "common sense" position) and the colour eliminativist/subjectivist are using the word "colour" to refer to the same thing; that sui generis, simple, qualitative appearance. The naive colour realist just falsely claims that this thing isn't a percept but a mind-independent property of material bodies.
As a comparison, when we ask what the Morning Star is we are referring to a planet and are asking what it is (not knowing that we are referring to a planet and not a star). We don't respond to such a question by arguing that the term "Morning Star" is also used to refer to the archangel Lucifer.
And what's the difference between hallucinating red and the mental percept that 620-750nm light ordinarily causes to occur?
Or between dreaming red and the mental percept that 620-750nm light ordinarily causes to occur?
No-one says that the word 'red' has the properties of the distal colour that it refers to.
Evidently, you don't understand intentionality.
The intentionality of perception means that there's a difference between the experience that you have, and what that experience is about. Even if nothing is seen and you only remember or imagine a colour. You conflate these two senses in your blind marketing of percepts.
Nothing.
Hallucinations, dreams, and non-hallucinatory waking experiences all involve neural activity in the visual cortex, producing colour percepts.
I know. And colours, as ordinarily understood, are properties of the experience, not properties of what the experience is about. The naive colour realist commits a mistake in thinking these experience properties to be distal object properties.
That's precisely why physicists and neuroscientists say such things as "color is a psychological property of our visual experiences when we look at objects and lights, not a physical property of those objects or lights."
What creates the depth perception of pain inside your lungs instead of a pain inside your bowels?
Evidently, you don't know. :roll:
One does not see the properties of one's own seeing, but the properties of what the seeing is about, the colour.
I see colours when I dream and hallucinate on mushrooms. I see white and gold when I look at the photo of the dress. I feel pain. The schizophrenic hears voices.
If I internally create the fearsomeness but not the redness, how do you decide which traits of the perception go into the internally created bucket and which go into the objectively existing bucket?
I am excitedly looking forward to the moment my prediction realises and my smugness fully blossoms as a beautiful orchid.
No, those are experiences evoked by stimulation of the neural connections that your brain developed when you were awake and did see colours.
When you dream or hallucinate seeing a colour, you have the experience, but you don't see anything, and that's why they're called dreams and hallucinations.
Brain stimulation is insufficient for colour-experiences. Stimulation from a sense organ that interacts with light and discriminates between different wavelength components is necessary for colour experiences. Therefore, colours exist outside of the brain. They emerge from the interaction between the whole visual system and available light and pigments
And colours are constituents of these experiences.
Quoting jkop
This is a word game. You might not like to use the phrase "the schizophrenic hears voices" because it's an hallucination but it is perfectly acceptable to describe the phenomenon in this way.
Quoting jkop
That does not follow. Colour experiences might depend on neural connections which only develop in response to optical stimulation by light, but your conclusion that therefore colours are mind-independent properties of light/distal objects is a non sequitur.
Well think about it.
A blind person doesn't have visual experiences. Without a working light-sensitive organ that stimulates the brain to develop the necessary neural connections for having visual experiences, the blind guy can't have any visual experiences. There's no way a neurologist could artificially evoke visual experiences without the necessary neural connections in place. They're developed naturally when our working light-sensitive organs interact with the behaviour of available light in our environment..
It is indeed possible to temporarily evoke visual experiences while blindfolded, dreaming, hallucinating etc i.e. when we don't see anything. But then we are exploiting the neural connections that our brains developed when we did see things.
We can also stimulate non-functioning auditory nerves in the profoundlly deaf by implanting a cochlear implant. Once implanted, the person will begin experiencing beeps that he learns to translate into words and sounds so that he can properly respond to them. That person's perception of the sound is entirely different from those with normal functioning auditory nerves. That would lend support to the fact that the sound is not in the bird's chirp, but it's in the listener's head, and there is no reason to believe that the deaf person's perception of the chirp is the same as mine.
We both would say, however, that the bird chirped, yet our internal states would be entirely different.
I can imagine the same could be done of vision, where an artificial visual stimulator could offer flashes that could be perceived such that the person would call an object a "chair," but his perception of that chair would bear no resemblance to my own. He'd see a particular array of flashes, yet I'd see a particular shape, yet we both have the shared experience of something, both of which we use the shared word of "chair."
That explains linguistic use. It doesn't explain metaphysics and it refutes direct realism.
So you've never heard of Franz Brentano and intentionality of mental states? If you don't want to continue the conversation just say so. It's much more becoming than playing dumb.
What does that mean for some bound pieces of paper to be about something else? If all humans disappeared but our books were left behind, would the bound pieces of paper still be about Hitler? In other words, is aboutness mind-dependent?
I would argue that aboutness is everywhere causes leave effects. The book is about Hitler because of the existence of Hitler and someone's intent to write a book about him. The book would not exist if neither of those events happened. The crime scene is about the criminal because of the evidence the criminal left behind. The tree rings are about the age of the tree as a result of how the tree grows throughout the year. The color red is about the wavelength of light entering your eye. Of course I've simplified the causal processes significantly, but my point is that effects carry information about their causes. As such, information is everywhere. The world is not physical or mental. It is informational. Relational.
May I suggest the following book: https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691144955/aboutness
The blind can't see the red pen, and if brain-stimulation is insufficient for making the blind see it, then I don't know of a good reason to believe that the red pen that we see is a brain event.
Quoting Hanover
Yeah, perhaps some functions are easier to replace with prosthetics? Echolocation can to some extent replace some of the functions of vision, but it ain't vision. The human eye is so sensitive that one single photon causes a measurable response in it. The visual system discriminates intensities and wavelength components, and the brain develops and adjusts neural connections accordingly. A comparable prosthetic visual apparatus seems implausible, but who knows?
Even so, it seems fairly clear that brain-stimulation is insufficient. The blind could learn to use an artificially applied vibration inside the brain for identifying objects and states of affairs, and we could call it "vision". But it's a meaningless or different use of the word vision. Our behaviours would begin to differ, I imagine.
Regarding direct realism, I won't discuss it here. It has its own long thread.
Quoting frank
I don't see how any of this contradicts or contrast with what I have been saying, including the part where I mentioned the distinctions between direct and indirect realism.
Quoting AmadeusD
Which is to say that the mind interprets the pain (information) as located in your toe. Information has to be interpreted. When we get at the actual cause is when we have interpreted something correctly. We still experience mirages even though we know the actual cause of the experience. Understanding the correct cause doesn't dispel the illusion. It becomes predictable. We can now predict when we will experience a mirage based on certain environmental conditions.
What I find so odd is when someone makes these scientific explanations, like frank did above, as if that somehow makes what we experience questionable, when science is based on empirical observations. Why should I trust frank's explanation to be veridical? Why should I trust your post as possessing any type of veridicality? Either what you and frank said is true, or it isn't. Which is it? You only pull the rug out from under your own statements when you call into question what your statements are based on. It's like the silly saying, "We don't know anything" when that is a statement of knowledge. It sounds like you are the one on Banno's side with your word games.
Which accomplishes the task of having planes land and take-off in a safer way. The blips accomplished the task they were designed for - nothing lost in translation.
In saying that no one believes the airplanes are blips, you are implying that we aren't expecting more than what the blips are telling us to accomplish some goal. We don't need to know the color of the plane to prevent it from crashing into another one while landing.
Quoting Hanover
How about they all stand up together?
You seem to misunderstand my point. Dreams can be about things but dreams are still mental phenomena, caused by neural activity in the brain.
So your claim that distal objects are the intentional objects of waking experience and so therefore colours are mind-independent properties of these distal objects is a non sequitur.
Intentionality simply has no relevance to the dispute between colour eliminativism and colour realism.
If you're conceding our perceptions might just be a pragmatic stimulus to navigate the world, which may or may not bear any resemblance to the object, then we're agreeing. If the pen is not red, but just appears red, then you're not asserting a direct realism.Quoting Harry HinduWith disagreement. Surely you don't think there is one final interpretation of the Bible that irons out out all the inconsistencies. Jesus died to save mankind from the original sin that occurred in the Garden of Eden said no Jew ever.
If our perceptions may not bear any resemblance to what's out there, then why believe the science that led you to accept indirect realism?
This is like asking why we accept the Standard Model if we cannot see electrons with the naked eye.
I don't think so. It's more like asking why you accept science of any kind if you can't rely on your senses to tell you the truth.
Science reliably predicts the behavior of my perceptions. Physics is the study of the way physical objects are observed to act.
Do you trust the numbers on a Geiger counter to tell you the amount of radiation in the environment, even though the numbers do not resemble radiation?
The presumption you have that one can trust one's experiences if and only if one's experience "resemble" their causes is a fallacy.
Why would you believe you actually have a geiger counter in your hand if your perceptions may or may not resemble the object?
I want to try to clarify this before responding - your position is that despite hte experiences being (at times, anyway) indistinguishable, they are not both experiences of colour?
I need this clarified, as currently, what you've asserted is bare nonsense. Your description actually supports the idea that colour does not reside in the object, but that, even so, you require an object to instantiate the colour? Are you saying the brain "records" colour from objects and replays it to itself while dreaming? Because... Ha...ha?
I addressed that with the very question I asked you, and which you conspicuously didn't answer. We don't need our experiences to resemble the things we believe in. The direct realist trusts a Geiger counter even though the numbers on the screen do not resemble the radiation they purport to measure.
And this is especially true of colour. I don't need to believe that the colour red resembles 700nm light to trust that objects that appear red reflect 700nm light. It's certainly not infallible, but it's reasonable enough.
You quoted from the comment which is, in almost it's entirety, a response to this:
Quoting AmadeusD
You could add phantom limb sensation to this as an exemplar of why it's totally wrong to think the pain is either occurring, or derived from, the cells you are perceiving to be hurt. They are injured. Not painful. Your mind creates the pain to alert you to the injury - and is very, very often inaccurate. Hell, seeing blood can increase the level of pain in an injury.
Quoting Leontiskos
Those distinguishing features are not colours and we cannot accurately map them, other than standardized terminology such as ranges of frequency. It says nothing for their quality or how they have the mind (usually) spitting out a certain colour experience. "not knowing" isn't hte same as "knowing it's not".
Quoting Harry Hindu
I'm finding it hard to tell whether you're partial to an indirect, or a direct conception of perception. But, given my own position i'll respond to what I see:
The first part: Fully agree. Understanding that C fibres fire, travel to the brain, and hte brain creates an illusion of "pain in the toe" rather than "signals from the toe being translated to pain to ensure I address the injured toe" has nothing to do with whether there is pain "in the toe". There plainly is not.
However, these are scientific explanations: The way pain works shuts down the option of direct perception of it. Hanover has made a similar point, and also noted that it just goes ignored - hand-waved away instead of confronted.
The science of perception, optical physiology, psychology and (in this context) the mechanics of pain fly in the face of a 'direct perception' account. It isn't even coherent, which has been shown several times. I personally find it helpful to continue the discussion, because it helps to streamline and economize responses to clearly inapt descriptions of experience. Intuitive, yes, but as helpful as folk psychology in understanding what's 'really' going on.
BUT, even with ALL of that said, if the point is that perception is necessarily indirect, then science can only get us so far. Observations are all we have - and I think Michael and I hit a bit of a curvy dead end with this issue. But, personally, I'm happy to just say science is the best use of our perception in understanding regularities of nature. Not much more could be said, unless we're just going to take the socially-apt chats about it at face value for practical reasons. In that case "science is objective" makes sense - but is just not true.
1. Some of what you know about the Standard Model is information from your senses.
2. The rest is apriori knowledge.
3, You can't arrive at the Standard Model using apriori knowledge alone.
Conclusion: you have to believe your senses are telling you the truth in order to accept the Standard Model.
This is what Russell was talking about. It's a conundrum.
I don't even know what you mean by "senses telling the truth". Hanover and I are talking about experiences resembling their causes.
Quoting frank
Russell said the opposite: if direct realism is true then we must accept physics, but physics tells us that experiences do not resemble their causes, therefore if direct realism is true then indirect realism is true.
But your claim that if indirect realism is true then we must reject physics is a non sequitur.
Either way, we have to either a) accept indirect realism or b) reject physics.
Although I don't want get into the entire direct vs indirect realism debate here. I'm just focusing on colour.
Haha, I'm not quite sure this is the conclusion that is required here - I think he's pointing out that it's likely neither are the whle story. But this was very, very funny.
Why do you trust your senses if what they show you may or may not resemble what's in front of you?
Quoting Michael
That is a conundrum, because it can't be both.
Why do you trust a Geiger counter to tell you the local level of radiation?
If I was like Hanover, I wouldn't trust that I have a Geiger counter in my hand. Is there some reason you can't just answer my question? Why do you trust your senses?
I already have. Why won't you answer my question? Why do you trust a Geiger counter to tell you the local level of radiation? It doesn't resemble radiation at all.
Michael is now being slightly obtuse, but I think it's because he has answered this:
The experience resembles the cause. The reading of a Geiger counter does not resemble being irradiated.
I missed it. Where did you answer why you trust your senses?
My use of the geiger counter starts with trusting my senses with regard to the existence of the device. I trust my senses when I observe a readout. I trust the sensory input I received during the time I studied physics so that I have a vague idea how a geiger counter works. I always have a little doubt about the proper functioning of electronic equipment which is mostly a result of experience, so I trust what the counter says if it makes sense, in other words, if it fits in with everything else that's going on. Is that what you're looking for?
How do you know this to be so?
Why do you think that there must be a something, which is the thing "colour" refers to?
Why shouldn't we use the same word to refer to multiple, different things... indeed this seems to be exactly how colour words are used. They refer to multiple things that are quite different.
Quoting Michael
If your theory does not explain the way we use the word "colour" then what grounds could there be for your claiming it to be about colour?
Is this to say you understand (if not accept) that Red the epxerience and Red the frequency range (if you insist on muddying hte water) aren't the same thing?
If so, the blatant confusion this is causing to erudite thinkers such as we'me (lmao) over something as simple as what Colour is should be reasno enough
I believe in the existence of a Geiger counter despite the fact that experiences might not resemble their cause for the same reason that you believe in the existence of radiation despite the fact that Geiger counters do not resemble radiation.
Your very supposition, that if experiences do not resemble their cause then experiences cannot be "trusted" is a non sequitur and barely coherent.
Which was what?
I'd ask you to note that the notion of the noumena is not my invention - I didn't put the beetle in the box. The odd things here is that you insist that the noumena is not something about which we can know anything and then proceed to tell us about it. I'm just drawing attention to the inherent inconsistency that involves.
So if my sin is not to delve in to something about which we can know nothing, so be it.
Quoting HanoverI've been at pains to deny most of this. The argument I have been making is that colour is not only "subjective", since there is considerable agreement as to the colour of the things around us.. Your not noticing and accounting for this is also "a serious difficulty with your position".
Colour is not a solipsistic subjective interpretation. That does not mean it is not an interpretation.
I addressed this with the example of the Morning Star, but perhaps you need a simpler example.
If you ask me if bats are blind, and if in context it's clear that you are asking about the flying mammal, then I don't need to talk about anything else that is referred to using the word "bat", e.g. the club used in baseball.
Quoting Banno
I also addressed this before. The question "is the colour red mind-independent?" is not the question "is anything referred to by the term 'colour red' mind-independent?". Perhaps you need to re-examine the distinction between use and mention.
The question "is the colour red mind-independent?" is using the singular compound noun "colour red" to refer to a single thing, and then asking if that thing is mind-independent. Unless they provide greater clarification, you need to make a reasoned assumption as to what that thing is. It's clear in context that the OP isn't asking if 700nm light is mind-independent, or if a micro-structural surface that reflects 700nm light is mind-independent, but is asking if that sui generis, simple, qualitative appearance named "red" is mind-independent.
In other words, it's clear in context that the OP is asking which (if either) of realist color primitivism and color eliminativism/subjectivism provides a correct account of colour appearances.
Well, no, it isn't. The colour red of a sunset is not the very same as the colour red of the sports car out on the street.
Or, if you must have it this way, the colour of the sports car is not the same as the colour of the sunset. And yet we use the same word for both.
A point made multiple times.
Further, Quoting Mp202020 is not the vary same as Quoting Michael
"Mind independent" serves only to befuddle.
:wink:
You seem to be intentionally misrepresenting my position, so I'll try an even simpler approach.
The term "colour" is also used to refer to the way quarks and gluons interact through the strong force, but that use is irrelevant to the question asked by the OP, and to the philosophy of colour in general.
"Morning star" is a definite description, functioning as a proper name. it picks out an individual.
Colour words are not proper names. They do not pick out some individual.
But, if someone were to mistakenly think of a colour word - say red - as a proper name, and hence to search for the individual named, they might well be obliged to invent a "mental percept" to stand in for the absent referent.
But they would then be stuck, because it is apparent that the mooted referent of "red" changes both over time and place, as well as from mind to mind.
If you work with a theory of language in which all words are nouns, difficulties will ensue.
The problem is even worse for those who think all things are signs.
Yep. "colour" has different senses. But that is not what I am pointing out to you. I am pointing out that "red", in the sense of the colour word, does not refer to a single thing, but at the least to multiple different things.
I might think that "you seem to be intentionally misrepresenting my position", but rather I will assume that the point I am making is somewhat difficult for you to grasp because of the background assumptions you make.
And only the sense relevant to the question being asked is relevant, not any other sense. It is clear in context that the OP isn't asking if light or atoms reflecting light is mind-independent, and so any use of the word "colour" or "red" that refers to light or atoms reflecting light is irrelevant.
Quoting Banno
The single thing is a type, not a token.
Oh, I quite agree. Odd that you think this worthy of mention. Seems to be the same misunderstanding as Amadeus.
Quoting Michael
All the more reason not to take an analogy with individuals ("morning star") seriously. But what I have said applies to type.
You have previously said that colours are both appearances and something else. Except by this you just mean that the word "colours" can be used to refer to both appearances and something else.
But the use of the word "colours" to refer to this something else is of no relevance to the question asked by the OP. It is clear in context that he is asking about the appearance. And physics and the neuroscience of perception support colour eliminativism over naive colour realism with respect to this question.
Quoting Michael
Well, there we have it. Straight from the horse's mouth, so to speak. On this view you're advocating for, you're clearly stating that there is no difference between seeing, hallucinating, and dreaming. Yet, there most certainly is. This is all very odd, considering that earlier you professed one of the reasons for holding that view was because it explained hallucinations, dreams, and seeing. What you call an explanation, I would call a confusion. There are differences between seeing red, hallucinating red, and dreaming red.
Reductio ad absurdum is adequate for rejecting the position you're arguing from/for. Equivocation is as well. Self-contradiction is also. I've neither the time, nor the inclination to show those again. You've sorely neglected to directly address those charges, in lieu of low hanging fruit.
I did? Where? I'd like the context.
Here's the OP:
Quoting Mp202020
No mention of "appearance" in that. Indeed the use of quotes indicates that attention be paid to the word "red", as opposed to... the appearance? I read it as asking something like 'does our use of the word "red" refer to something that exists outside the subjective mind that conceptually designates the concept referred to by the word "red"?' And I think from the discussions I've had with Mp202020 that they would readily agree this was not the best wording.
That is, it seems to me that the question is about the use of the word "red" rather than about the appearance of red.
In summary, @Michael, it seems that you think the word "red" must refer to a something, and in the absence of anything suitable in the world around us, you have resorted to claiming that it refers to a 'mental percept", borrowing the term from folk who use it to talk about what is seen by the subjects they put into MRI machines.
It's not that different to the folk who say that the word "red" refers to the concept "red", and think they have provided an explanation rather than just added a few words to the question.
Anyway, the answer is that you trust your senses because you don't have any choice. You're an obligate direct realist, at least in the way you behave. Where there's a conflict between the way you behave and the philosophy you espouse, blah blah blah.
If the biological machinery behaves in a certain way when one looks at a red pen, and yet also behaves the exact same way when there is no red pen, then we have a hallucination(malfunction).
If the biological machinery acts as though one is looking at a red pen, but it is doing so while one is sleeping, it's causing one to dream about a red pen. Again, there is no red pen.
Red pens are always included in seeing red pens, but they are never included in hallucinating or dreaming about them.
Sure, the biological machinery acts the same. That's not an issue.
Only part of the machinery acts the same way - V4, apparently...
There's an old argument (from Davidson?) that is relevant here. Supose that we propose the theory that a certain firing in the part of the brain named V4 just is seeing red. We experiment on a thousand folk and in all cases we find the firing of V4 occurs just as they report seeing red.
But then we find subject 1001. When V4 fires in that way for them, they report seeing blue.
What are we to make of this? Will we be good scientists and acknowledge the theory falsified, because Subject 1001 reports that they see blue? Or are we going to say instead that Subject 1001 is mistaken?
I suppose it will depend on our funding.
No, that doesn't seem to be hte case. It seems to be hte case that you're not really understanding what Michael and I have said in response to your position.
If you had just said "yes" in response to my question, it would have been clear. But given your response here, it remains to be seen whether you're even understanding the point.
"Red" does not exist outside the mind. This is true whether or not you take 'Red' to refer to "a" thing or "multiple" things. It isn't "out there", regardless.
In any case, I was trying to have you commit to a position on "Red" which is an apt thing to want you to do. If you position boils down to "Well, it doesn't matter - use it how you use it" then why are you here? If your position is that Red is something other than a mental experience of an "actual" thing then I would want to know what on God's Green Earth you could be referring to, given that Red is not mind-independent?
Quoting Banno
This is also what I got from you, so it's highly likely you misspoke if that's not your intention. Given I quoted you exactly saying colour words are used to refer to multiple things, this cannot be a failure of understanding or a confusion on our part. What do you refer to when saying "red"?
Well, there are certain groupings of nerves(specific parts of the nervous system) that do different stuff than others. If certain biological structures are always active while urinating, it does not make urinating equivalent to the structures.
That seems to apply equally to C4 fibres and pain as well as V4 and seeing red.
And yet there are red pens.
(note the obfuscation in "the mind", as if there were only one...)Quoting AmadeusD
To point out that red does not "exist" in "the" mind.
Honestly, AmadeusD, You do not seem to be on the same page at all.
Perfect.
Oh brother...
You would investigate a biomechanical reason for this. If V4 firing causes X cascade in the brain(resulting in the 'Red' experience, that is to say) for all other subjects, then subject 1001 is an anomaly and we would be bad scientists for thinking they were mistaken as opposed to different. Is what we're calling V4 the same
Quoting Banno
This is bare assertion; the responses to it going ignored. Hand waved, if you will.
Quoting Banno
Red doesn't 'exist'. It consists in an experience we've termed Red. That this is a purely mental phenomenon doesn't disappear because you've chosen slightly less rigid language.
Quoting creativesoul
Yes. I cannot fathom how this, if taken as true, allows Banno to pretend Red is in the pen. It isn't even part of hte process that gets us to Red, in this context.
Quoting creativesoul
This seems to be the (honestly, stupid) mis-interpretation Banno is running with. Its a bizarre one, and not hte position being put forward.
We know how things affect the world and so can know about a thing from its effect.
Perhaps a different analogy is more helpful. A blind man can know that he is eating an apple because he knows what apples taste like, but the taste of an apple does not resemble the apple or any of its properties. An apples taste is a phenomenological consequence of the apples chemicals interacting with the tongues sense receptors.
Sight isnt special. Visual sensations (such as colour) need not resemble their cause.
You see, it's not only about biomechanics because it involves the subject's report. This is the bit that goes unrecognised in the "mental percept" account.
I didnt say that. I was only saying that the percepts that occur when dreaming red and hallucinating red are the percepts that ordinarily occur when 700nm light stimulates our eyes. That's why they're all referred to using the word "red".
It's certainly not the case that a red hallucination percept is a blue dream percept is a green waking percept.
Dreams, hallucinations, and non-hallucinatory waking experiences differ in what causes these percepts to occur. With dreams it's internal processes when asleep, with hallucinations it's internal processes when awake, and with non-hallucinatory waking experiences it's sensory stimulation when awake.
Your experiment takes as a given that asking the subject is the gold standard for determining color. That is, you take their word as truth and you try to find what the cause of the truth is.
And that seems right because it'd be odd to tell someone they can relax because their test results showed they weren't in pain after all.
But, you raise another point and that is if stimulation of V4 resulted in the subject seeing red and numbing V4 eliminated red from their seeing it, we'd be forced to conclude red was quite literally in their head and not in the pen.
Would not such a finding about V4 disprove that red is in the pen? If not, what would? Is your position falsifiable?
My suspicion is that the only way for you to concede that the red is not in the pen is for people to stop saying it is. That is, when they call the pen blue, then you know it's not red.
If that's the case, why even entertain the scientific arguments? Your claim is not scientific. It's linguistic.
Ok, this clarifies what you're trying to say which I very much thank you for.... But this is just a silly as the previous version.
It is about Biomechanics. Otherwise, your TE is pointless. If it were about self-report the first 1000 are unreliable anyway.
Quoting Lionino
How can you tell it happens inside the lung and not inside the intestine?
Except he says the colour red and not the word red.
I think it more likely that he is misusing quotation marks than misusing the word colour. To give him the benefit of the doubt, hes saying the colour referred to by the word red, with his use of the word colour referring to a type of visual appearance.
Sure - in this case. But it would be wrong to conclude that therefore the only way we use "red" is to refer to firing of certain cells in V4 - as worng as to conclude that "red" just is light at 700nm.Quoting Hanover
Yep.
But the argument being presented by Michale, Amadeus and perhaps yourself has the pretence of being scientific. Hence my pointing out some methodological flaws.
Ok. There's no reply to that, it's so far off track. Central to the experiment are reports of colours seen.
I doubt anyone who would not give consideration to the difference is going to be asking for a linguistic analysis of the word colour in a discussion entitled Perception.
Hes most likely asking the simple question that I am answering.
What has been presented here by myself and others shows that there is more to the way we use the word "red", and hence to the place of red in our dealings with the world, than can be accounted for by the simplistic assertion that red is one of various purely mental or neurological phenomena.
This is not to say that the use of the word "red" does not involve individual mental or neurological considerations.
I see what you're saying. But consider the spoon dipping into the two dimensional world. Everyone sees the same thing. There is therefore agreement about what's happening, and further, causality is noted. The passing of the spoon causes things to disappear from the world because it bumps them out of the film or plane. Can these guys say they understand the world?
Nobody in the world realizes what's happening, and indeed, they can't even imagine it. There's no telling what's really going on.
This is all to point out the biggie from Hume: our confidence in our knowledge of the world is not based on anything logical or empirical. I'm not arguing for direct realism because it doesn't need an argument. You can't live without it. Indirect realism inevitably opens up into global skepticism. It's an unsolved puzzle.
It's directly on track, for the discussion - but you're right, there is no response. If what you're trying to point out is that my use of 'Red' runs up against this, because we're relying on self-report. Yes. Yes, that is the point. Red doesn't obtain other than as an agreement between self-reports and so is instantiated only in the experiences we are agreeing about. Clear?
Quoting frank
This is, to me, a complete and utter cop-out. YOu seem to accept that indirect realism is actually hte case, but that we have to pretend direct realism. This is, I would think, the position of indirect realists in geenral? Not the debate here, but that struck me as odd.
Quoting Banno
Which, as far as defeating the notion of Red being 'out there', it is. The discussion you're having (which is a bit muddled and equivocal - might be hte point, though) is about how we use the word Red. Fine. That's not what Michael and I are getting at. We're talking about the colour 'red' as-experienced. That has been clear for pages and pages.
You can't. You can infer based on a pretty nifty evolutionary trick of pain signalling through neurons. But pain signals get mixed up all the time and we perceive pain incorrectly as to the injury that caused us to feel any pain at all. I've given a few examples. Feelings of pain are patently not occurring inside the injured area for two reasons:
1. The above - pain signals are not apodictic indicators of anything; and
2. An injured body part doesn't 'feel' anything. The perceiving mind does.
Yep.
You're having a separate conversation. This is not a thread about linguistics.
Quoting Banno
Respectfully, not enough to understand what you might mean here. An attempt to respond: Okay, well I would assent to most of what you've said about the every-day use of the word Red.
Not sure how that relates to the wider discussion here though. That understanding of the word being multiply-used is taken as an observable phenomenon. It doesn't seem to me this is capable of betraying a discussion around whether or not the colour Red is a mental percept. Or being particularly relevant - more of a "Yes, and?" type of statement.
Some here have failed to see this. They complain that looking at language is not looking at the world. But nothing could be further from the case. To look at how words are used is to look at the way the world is. Talk of the experience of red is talk of the way we use "red". Failing to account for this is failing to look at what you are doing.
I'm an ontological anti-realist. Both direct and indirect realism are facets of our present psychology. I can't take either seriously because I don't have a vantage point from which to determine .
Plus I think you've overlooked the Geiger Counter.
I do not think this is the case. The complaint (using that word mildly) you're making, and the 'confusion' you seem to want to point out isn't a confusion. IF your point is that the conversation being attempted is not apt due to the issues you see with the language, that's also fine - but I would disagree. It hasn't been missed - I don't think it's a problem for the discussion.
This is now extremely off-track. The colour Red is not anything else but hte experience of hte colour - so either we're dealing with purely self-reportage, in which case, who cares - this is a dead end - or we're trying to figure out why those reports, in almost every case, seem to agree. This is likely because 'red' is a sensation which language can approximate with reference to other things. This means that calling something 'Red' is a helpful fiction - similar to my comment in the other thread. It has nothing to do with whether or not the object contains or doesn't contain what our mind assigns Red to.
Quoting frank
That's fair. Can you elaborate on how you feel i've missed the Geiger counter? And in waht way? Genuinely a bit lost lol - i did respond to that exchange a couple of times.
Again, this is blatantly false. Your gears are spinning but not making the connection.
I was just kidding.
I think the exact reverse is true.
"the colour red" is not anything but the experience of Red. Otherwise, you're talking about a symbol. And there are many symbols which we use the word Red to refer to. But using the word Red to refer to a colour has my position relatively vouchsafed against the issue you're trying to push in here.
Again, the issue is acknowledge, it just has nothing to do with referring to the colour Red rather than "a Red X". You are plainly missing this distinction in service of pretending word games matter to what we're talking about. And again, so this cannot be missed - the connection has been made. It is not an obstacle.
If I convinced someone that I was raised to call what they mentally apprehend as Red as Blue, we would still come to terms. Because when refering the colour, the symbol isn't relevant. It's relevant when you want to connect something else to the colour such as when you say "hand me that Red pen".
The absurdity of this should be plain. How do you tell that you are experiencing red? Well, because you know what "the colour red" is. So what is the colour red? Well, it's the experience of red. And what is the red in your experience? Why, it's the colour red, of course...
Let's just say that this is not amongst those things from which I would expect to learn much, and leave this silliness behind.
The moment I hand you a red pen, of course. :snicker: More than 20 pages discussing about this. Ea! Philosophers enjoy twisting basic trifling matters!
Quoting AmadeusD
Therefore, a blind (and colourblind) person would not experience red in their lives. Yet we made symbols or writing systems to help them understand what is red. Hmm... colours are tiresome often.
It's no more absurd than saying the same thing about pain. Pain is the experience of pain.
It needs the support of physics and the neuroscience of perception, which it doesn't have. It's not the sort of thing that can be proved a priori or just assumed.
Quoting Michael
Quoting Michael
Sigh.
The percept that occurs when we hallucinate red is the percept that occurs when we dream red is the percept that optical stimulation by 620-750nm light ordinarily causes to occur.
Or if you prefer, the neural activity that is responsible for dreaming red is the neural activity that is responsible for hallucinating red is the neural activity that optical stimulation by 620-750nm light ordinarily causes to occur.
When this neural activity occurs when asleep we call it a dream. When this neural activity occurs when awake but not in response to optical stimulation we call it an hallucination. When this neural activity occurs when awake and in response to optical stimulation we call it a non-hallucinatory waking experience.
I ask because according to this:
This seems consistent with what I have been arguing, and so I want to see for myself if the author of the above is reading Searle correctly.
If Witt is correct, then the engagement in language games is inescapable. It's not like I get to be a Kantian metaphysician and you a Wittgensteinian linguist and we then go about proselytizing our respective positions.
So, to the extent @Michaelargues the pen is not red and you say it is, the dispute per Witt is over proper usage. Since our community of speakers does typically defer science to scientists, it is proper to argue the pen is not red based upon best scientific theory.
That is, your commitment to your unsophisticated definition of red that doesn't take the full neuroscience involved is just a stubborn nuance of yours. That I insist upon calling Pluto a planet because that's what I've always done, simply means I obtain usage through a relatively ignorant community of speakers.
If the best scientific description of an object places color as a brain construct, then we should deny the pen itself is red if we want to side with the educated community as opposed to those who've not truly considered the issue.
If you touch something with your hand, you reliably know it is on your hand, not your foot.
Quoting AmadeusD
No sense perception is. We have fallen back into solipsism.
Quoting AmadeusD
Begging the question, aren't we?
I will restate the question: if the pain happens exclusively in the mind, how does a burn on your finger hurt your finger and not your foot?
These questions are not answered by saying that we sometimes use the term "red light" to refer to 700nm light and that tomatoes and strawberries reflect 700nm light.
By the way, for a previous discussion on this topic, there is this https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/879257 (it continues in the next page with javra)
The question is not well posed. What is the function of "appear" here? All those fruits have a property in common, otherwise we would not see something in common in them. And that property is the profile of the emission spectrum of whatever substance is optically predominant, for an outside looker, in that object. In the dark, the strawberry looks black, but strawberries are red.
In each of these, 'red' may take on a different meaning.
An important distinction is that the Sun looks white, but it can be correctly said to be green.
That does not follow, and nor does it follow that if they have a property in common then this common property is the property that they appear to have in common.
This problem isn't one that can be solved by a linguistic analysis of how the word "colour" is used; it requires scientific study of tomatoes, the human body, and phenomenal consciousness.
It does follow if we do not admit ex nihilo regularities. That is, as soon as we accept that everything has a cause, and that our senses at least sometimes are caused by outside objects, the commonality of some senses will have a cause in common some would call this a universal, platonic or not.
No it doesn't. See for example the science and complexity of bitter taste:
I was talking metaphysics there, not biology.
Speaking of biology, there are many molecules that may bind to bitter taste receptors. One part ot the causal chain that typically gives us the perception of bitter taste is the binding to the respective receptor, whatever molecule binds to it. Being able to bind to the receptor is a common property of those molecules, and that ability breaks down to their molecular structure, they either have it or they don't.
Now, talking grammar. Of course, you will then say that no molecule is bitter, bitterness is a perception. That is correct, but that is because that is the only possible meaning that 'bitter' may take. However, that is not the case for colours, 'blue' may very well take on a physical meaning. It would be otherwise if 'binding to the bitter taste receptor' was a current, chemical usage of the word 'bitter', but it is not. What I am saying can be attested in dictionaries.
A converse example is that there are many molecules that may bind to hemoglobin, but only oxygen gas allows us to survive. Here, the binding molecule does matter.
The question "do objects like tomatoes, strawberries and radishes really have the distinctive property that they do appear to have?" is not answered by saying that the word "red" can refer to different things.
Quoting Lionino
This amounts to the claim that the property that all objects that appear to be bitter have in common is that they cause a bitter taste.
I'm fine with that, but it isn't taste realism (as the sister to colour realism).
If all you can say is that the property that all objects that appear to be red have in common is that they cause a red sensation then that amounts to colour eliminativism.
Says who? I have replied before that the question is badly posed.
I think the answer that you want specifically is that they do not have the appearance, it is something constructed by our mind. The word that does the trick there is 'appear'.
I understand it just fine, as do I suspect most laymen, scientists, and philosophers of colour. Try reading the first section of the SEP article.
"Understanding it just fine" means you do not notice the ambiguity in the phrase.
Quoting Michael
There is no such thing as a "scientist".
Quoting Michael
The property they have in common is something in their chemical structure. That chemical structure is part of a causal chain to elicit bitterness.
Quoting Michael
Some objects have a property which reflects red light, whether we are there to see it or not. We may call those objects red, even if these objects can only possibly exist in the dark, where they would appear black. Likewise, we may call the Sun green, even though it seems white to us.
There is a physical meaning of 'red', 'blue', 'green' that is used in physics.
And that is not relevant to the question "do objects like tomatoes, strawberries and radishes really have the distinctive property that they do appear to have?".
This isn't a question about language use.
Let me rephrase that: "Do red objects have the private experience of red in them?"
Do you think it is a proper rephrasing? If so, it is a better one understood by two people instead of just one.
The answer to the rephrased question is obviously not. Again, the trick word there is 'appear', that, if ignored, leads us to the same semantic ambiguity that shows up in this thread all the time.
I have directly answered this, here and elsewhere. If it is not landing, I apologise. But restating a question I have answered doesn't help me much.
You can't know. Your brain creates the illusion because it has to, for evolutionary reasons, to ensure you see to the injury - and is often wrong in quite obvious ways. The pain is not in the injured area. This isn't even a controversial take. It is how pain works, empirically. The idea that the pain is in the injured area suggests that it would hurt whether there was a mind or not. That is plainly dumber than a doornail. If this isn't your suggestion, you're not being sufficiently clear for me to response adequately, i don't think.
Because the experience is not in the objects viewed. It is in the mind. This is why a Blind person can adequately assent to an audio symbolic representation of 'red'. And, to the degree they can, they are almost certainly wrong. We could never know, though.
Quoting Hanover
:ok:
If you cut off someone's foot, the person might still feel pain in what they believe to be their foot. This phantom pain is caused by the severed nerves that once traveled to the now missing body part and so the brain identifies the pain where it once was.
You can reliably stop the phantom pain by removing the person's brain. Without the brain, there is no pain because it is the brain that makes the pain.
Then there are other sorts of pains that you don't really identify as having a specific location, like the pain of a breakup. You don't say that your face is sad because your women done left you. Or maybe you do. I don't really know you all that well.
And so what is this illusion? What is this idea that something is happening all the way down there instead of the idea that is happening all the way up here? How does it come to be?
There is a cause, and an effect. Contact with C-fibers at a sufficient level is the cause. Pain is the effect. They cannot be the same thing, right? So, we're off to a racing start.
Now, we already understand that pain signals travel through the body via the spinal cord to the brain, where the brain receives the data (think Chinese Room) and looks up the appropriate sensation to deploy to the perceiving mind. And, again, for some reason this isn't landing: it is often completely wrong in what it deploys, making it quite obvious pain is not in the effected area. It is caused by the affected area, but hte pain itself need not actually correlate with the injury. Or a part of the body at all, it seems.
There is no room here for a position other htan that pain is a sensation subsequent to an event in the area it is supposed to draw our attention to. Its almost regular failure to do so accurately is clear enough to me.
Of course.
Quoting Hanover
Hopefully it was that simple. By removing the brain, which is where experience is located, and putting it in a vat, you split the brain away from the medula, which sends the pain impulses to the brain. So the brain feels no pain because you removed it from the rest of the body. Is the separation between the body (as opposed to the brain) and the pain so easily done then?
Quoting Hanover
It is their loss, not mine, ok?
Quite right.
Quoting Hanover
Not quite right. A simple appeal to science would probably not appeal to Wittgenstein. The game in hand is that of making special provisions for pens which write with red ink.
But of course you grossly misrepresent the argument I've presented. I am again obliged to repeat that the physiological account is correct, but incomplete. I'm pointing to the absurdity of your "we should deny the pen itself is red". There are red pens.
And yes, I understand the special place you have for "itself". It's this infatuation that leads you into the scientistic view. You want to say that the pen is red but the pen itself is not red. I want to say that "the pen itself" is a nonsense.
You've done absolutely nothing to support this. You just assert it - maybe because you can't think past your visual field ;)
Again, the physiology is correct, just incomplete.
If you wish to present a case that there are no red pens, be my guest.
I've not argued that. I've argued that 'red pens' are not 'Red'.
Perhaps you've twisted yourself up in the language hehe. Reference is tricky when you think things consist in their symbols.
I'll leave you to it. For my part, I don't think you have understood something here. Try going into a shop and asking for the red pens that are not red and see how far you get.
I think those are involved in the reflex, not in the perception of pain. Not important anyway.
Quoting AmadeusD
There are also A-fibers.
Quoting AmadeusD
So something happens in the brain, as a consequence of signals sent from the body, that equates to a mental feeling.
?
Quoting AmadeusD
In other words, the body is a sufficient but not necessary condition of pain.
Since it is sufficient, there is the question: is experience spatially extended, or is it located at "a point in the pineal gland"?
This question is in fact extremely important for biology and (it may come off weirdly) politics: do worms who lack a central nervous system but still react to stimulus feel pain, and thus suffer?
That body has been cut off, but the brain can still feel. Feeling Y.
Issue: feeling X and feeling Y feel the same, indistinguishable.
Example: the realest dream of a cow is indistinguishable from actually seeing a cow.
Question: how do we discriminate feeling X from feeling Y? Are they indeed exactly the same?
Consequence: can experience be located in different points, or is experience non-spatial?
Example: do I feel things in my finger and my brain/mind, or just my brain, which correlates, through induction, some sensations to some points in space?
Maybe that makes the problem more clear.
Ironically, you've missed my point completely - and it was a linguistic one. Haha, i suppose. We'll see around this corner again, i'm sure :)
Quoting Lionino
I think there is, but it's going on in this thread, not the world. My most recent reply to Banno (which he responded to in the quote above) points out this difference. It has been missed. Which is why, earlier, I was suggesting we do away with using the same term to refer to things that aren't in the same categories. No one, in every-day life, understands the difference of refering to Red, the colour, and referring to things as red-causing things.
Quoting Lionino
I'd say this is right, though, im unsure how a neurophysiologist would respond lol.
Quoting Lionino
I think this is reversed. The body is not necessary. You can even feel bodily pain without hte body sending signals to the mind. That's how powerful the illusion can be. You may not even have the body part indicated by the pain.
Quoting Lionino
My understanding is "no", but hten, are we also talking 'emotional' pain? I still think no, lol. But yes, interesting questions for sure. Quoting Lionino
This, imo. A fairly simple explanation can be gleaned here: https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/neuroscience/sensation-of-pain
I think, as philosophers, we would do well not to tread on ground for which we are not quite prepared.
If this is so, how is it that we have the distinction between dreams and lucidity?
Perhaps there was no real point for you to make.
But we're not in the shop. We're here. Use is contextually based. Maybe a tomato is a fruit, but I'm asking the shop owner to direct me to the vegetables for the tomatoes. I'll speak French in France as well.
This reduces to what we just think are one another's idiosyncratic uses of language. I say the pen itself isn't red, which is consistent with how the neuroscientists define it. Reliance upon experts to define terms in an intellectual setting such as this is reasonable. What do you suggest, a democratic vote?
No.
But key there is "understands" the difference. Physicists say that some star is red, even though they can't see the star at all, all they got are numbers on a screen. People who learn pop science, which are many, will take on that use of 'red' to refer to things they can't see. They will say UY Scuti is red, even though they have never seen it. Do they understand the difference between the cause of red and the experience of red? Likely not, but that doesn't mean that they are not talking about a different thing as when they say the shirt is red, when they say UY Scuti is red (a scientifically correct statement). Who are we to say one domain of discourse is invalid and the other is valid? If you want to do prescriptive linguistics, English is the wrong language for that, I recommend Icelandic instead.
When you say "in every-day life", you mean "to those that don't pay attention to philosophical matters". Should we, in philosophy, take input from those that don't pay attention to philosophy? I suppose the common-sense philosophers would chant "yes".
[hide="Reveal"]Quoting AmadeusD
In my experience (which is vast), physicians are likely the most uncultured, ignorant high-tier white-collar professionals out there. Much more than engineers or lawyers. So my guess is that they wouldn't reply at all. He would just prescribe you benadryl and call it a day to go to the nearby overpriced restaurant. Perhaps it is not the case when they are actual academic researchers instead of clinicians. I used to know an actual academic neuroscientist, brilliant woman, great company.[/hide]
Quoting AmadeusD
I am taking it you misread. I am saying the body is not necessary, but it is sufficient. So we are agreeing there, unless you miswrote.
Quoting AmadeusD
Quoting AmadeusD
We are all entitled to our opinions on topics, but I like to furbish my opinions with reasons.
Not really a tangent, but weakly related: I detest those goofy "Well we have less philosophical problems with this stance so I am taking this stance" arguments. One that comes to mind is the Quine-Putnam indispensability argument. Quine is the king of shit metaphysical arguments. Scientific parsimony needs to stay away from metaphysics.
Quoting Banno
Have you had the realest dream of a cow, or just the realest-1% dream of a cow?
You show signs of recognising differing uses. Progress. The physiology is not the whole story.
A child learns to differentiate between dreaming and being awake. How? It's partially to do with their interactions with others.
You can't possibly be lacking this much in humour.
Ah well. I prefer human interactions anyway ;)
Quoting Lionino
I don't think this is really apt. They don't know they are saying different things. They think that the colour of the star matches the colour of the shirt. IFF they could see the start, it would match their experience of hte red shirt. The different uses are there, but I don't think they are acknowledged as different uses. I just don't think people make these distinctions. Barely anyone takes Red to be anything but a property of some objects that they cannot escape, when their eyes are open.
Quoting Lionino
This is one of my biggest pet-peeves. It is the reason things like Austin and Searle make me laugh so much. Ignoring things doesn't make them go away. Just like ignoring that I've made a distinction between 'red objects' and 'the colour red', spoken about the former - Results in Banno responding to both at once which would be a reasonable response, had i confused the two uses.
Quoting Banno
They largely differentiate being asleep to being awake. Not dreaming. These can be confused all the way through life and indeed, are.
How do they lean what dreams are?
Quoting Banno
I am not really a psychologist of dreams, even though Freud was a cocaine addict, but since you are asking my opinion, I will give to you:
It is the things, which are sometimes coherent and other times incoherent in respect to each other, that come before waking up to the thing that is always coherent in respect to itself every single time we wake up. In other words, induction and comparison.
When it comes to that quote, I will read the thread eventually. Most likely not this year.
You lost me here.
Here is the problem, however:
Even if they don't get annihilated with fatal radiation before seeing the star properly; depending where they are, there is a chance they would just see white from UY Scuti, even though it is red. The Sun itself, classified as a yellow dwarf, looks white, even though spectrographically it is blue-green.
Quoting Banno
I live through something. Experience X
I wake up.
I live through something. Experience Y
I go to sleep.
I live through something. Experience Z.
I wake up.
I live through something. Experience V.
Experience Y and V are coherent with each other (the sky is blue, my friends from this city are here and not my friends from the other city, I can't fly), while experience X and Z sometimes are completely incoherent.
Additionally, experience X and Z come after going to bed in the preceding experience. Experience V and Y come always start with waking up. There is another distinction between the two groups, though not enough to tell which is real and which is fake. What helps us tell real from fake is coherence.
The realest dream of a cow is, by definition, indistinguishable from actually seeing a cow. It is the dream when taken as a whole, and arranged temporally with the experiences that came after or before it, that is rationally determined to be a dream or reality. But if the dream is simply the realest dream of a cow and nothing else, and it is so long ago that we forgot about what came before or after that experience, there is nothing telling us whether we dreamed that cow or actually saw it false memories, deja vu's, may sometimes come from dreams.
Your argument reduces to saying that my use of the term "red pen" is incorrect because no one uses it that way. My argument is that they do. The physiology dominates my definition.
Since use is determined by whatever the community says it is, then I say my definition is correct. I live in a different community than you apparently.
We're just arguing over who's the better dictionary writer.
This runs into the distinction. They are wrong to think they would see Red. In THAT sense, the star is not red.
Quoting Hanover
And it seems to be by design.
Meaning that there is some sense in which the star is red, and another sense in which the star is not red. Since we are not violating the LNC, this must mean that the word 'red' may take on related but different meanings. My original statement.
Quoting Hanover
I vote for myself.
Idk what part of the link you are referring to.
Sure. That is not what they discern. That's my point. You discern this difference. That is not what is happening when the average person refers to both the shirt and star. They think they are referring to the same immutable property of the two different objects. That's what I disagreed with - not that two senses are being employed.
Quoting Lionino
Yeah, that's not what I linked, weirdly. Let me see if I can both figure out why that's the case,a nd provide hte page I intended to link.
This was the link I intended (if this again links to that indexical page, ignore it, and move to the below)
From the linked article:
"Pain receptors, also called nociceptors, are a group of sensory neurons with specialized nerve endings widely distributed in the skin, deep tissues (including the muscles and joints), and most of visceral organs.
....
Activation of nociceptors generates action potentials, which are propagated along the afferent nerve axons, especially unmyelinated C-fibers and thinly myelinated A?-fibers. At the spinal cord level, the nociceptive nerve terminals release excitatory neurotransmitters to activate their respective postsynaptic receptors on second-order neurons.
....
The nociceptive signal, encoding the quality, location, and intensity of the noxious stimuli, is then conveyed via the ascending pathway to reach various brain regions to elicit pain sensation. Physiological pain responses normally protect us from tissue damage by quickly alerting us to impending injury."
If we take this account seriously, the possibility to pain being in the injured area is not open to us. It is a mental phenomenon triggered by events in the injured area which are not mental events. Back to the interaction problem, it seems.
So in summary, if we could not tell when we were dreaming, then we could not tell if it's a cow or a dream cow.
Well, yes.
But we can tell when we are dreaming.
So. Not very convincing.
Odd.
Use is determined by... well, what we do. Not by what we say we do.
That's not very common. It's only happened to me once.
Not when the dream is happening, though.
No, not always - retrospect isn't all that relevant here. If we can only tell the difference by dry comparison, then the events themselves are not phenomenally distinguishable. I think that's more important for the point... But yours is taken, nonetheless.
Quoting Banno
Clearly untrue. We are told what to do with language all the time. Institutions and systems enforce language use constantly. Sometimes under threat of force.
You say you use words in some way other than saying them?
Doubly odd.
I had an 8:00 am class in college that I'd go to and come back home and sleep. I was half awake and half sleeping and I knew I was asleep so I'd fly and do other cool shit I couldn't do when I was awake.
I think sometimes people who talk about how other people think actually think there's one way of thinking. I'd suspect Picasso saw things like he painted them more than that he just jumbled his real thoughts.
I had a professor once who talked about what dogs could think and I think he thought he knew, but I knew he never could have had a dog, or if he did, he never took it seriously.
The animal thing foreclosures me taking seriously that language is needed for serious thought.
Wittgensteinian is interesting to the extent he lets you know the logical conclusions of analytic philosophy where the only objective is to define your terms and forget about the world
Do you mean that he revealed this about analytic philosophy with his criticisms, or do you mean to characterize his own philosophy as exemplifying this "objective"? The former is an interesting take, but the latter seems obviously wrong.
Surely not???
This couldn't possibly happen on this forum. :razz:
This is the issue:
The question "do objects like tomatoes, strawberries and radishes really have the distinctive property that they do appear to have" is not answered by saying that the word "red" can refer to different things. Your entire approach to the problem is misguided.
The two main positions with respect to this problem are colour eliminativism and naive colour realism. Physics and the neuroscience of perception support the former over the latter.
True, but your initial thought is expressed with words such as 'experience' which can be used in two different senses. That's why some of us talk past eachother, and a few vacillate between the two senses without noticing it.
Your initial question is about the relation between mind and experience: Is the experience outside of the mind?
That could be easy to answer, if we'd use the word 'experience' consistently.
It could also help if we notice that the initial question refers to the relation between experience and mind, not other relations, such as experience and word, experience and object, or word and object.
I think he revealed it through his working it through to its conclusion. I didn't take him as a critic of analytic philosophy though, just more taking it where it went.
I think you meant that though, just using "criticism" to mean logical analysis as opposed to one skeptical of it.
Yet that would be a very interesting suggestion, which is likely wrong, but to think his point wasn't we ought abandon metaphysical analysis based upon his analysis, but what he really set up was a reductio ad absurdum that his followers mistook and they embraced his absurd conclusions instead of rejecting analytic philosophy as he meant to show was absurd.
I like that suggestion actually.
My updated suggestion is that you're talking out of your hindquarters.
During the dream, we often cannot tell that we are dreaming.
When the dream has been long past, we may confuse memories of that dream with memories of real life.
So we can't, in all circumstances, tell when we are dreaming.
I said I liked the suggestion, not that I thought it correct. The idea that a whole movement has been created from misunderstanding sarcasm is an entertaining thought.
to this thread, however I view it as a pleasant sign that I brought up something meaningful to a lot of wonderful people such as you all. I very much appreciate the interaction from the community here!
Well, we still have the hard problem to contend with here. If colors are not parts of pens, then how can they be parts of neurons, or neural processes?
How were you able to determine that your dreams are dreams and not the same as your waking experiences? How did you determine that a mirage is not a pool of water but bent wavelengths of light? The same goes for a bent stick in a glass of water. How were you able to determine what is what and what is not? Was it using ONLY one sense? Did it involve ONLY using your senses?
I never was asserting direct realism. What I was asserting is that we can still get at what objects are by using only our experiences of them. Indirect realism coupled with determinism is how you do it. Causes necessarily determine their effects. Effect carry information about their causes. Only by interpreting the correct causal pattern can we get at the way things are.
Asking how things are independent of looking at them is a silly question. You are assuming that there is something lost in translation when there it is just as likely that there isn't anything lost. How do you know that anything is lost in translation if you can't experience it? It's only an assumption. You have to know the truth to be able to lie. You have to know that something is missing to say that something is missing. How do you know that something is lost in translation?
Everything that is real has a causal power. We can get at the existence things we can't see by observing the things they interact with and the effects they leave behind. If the information you get allows you to solve some problem, or accomplish some goal, then that is all you need. Nothing was lost in translation.
Just think of all the trivial things you do throughout the day that you accomplish and never wonder about what was "lost in translation". Are you able to drink a glass of water. Does the water make it from the pitcher to the glass and then from the glass to your mouth? Do you get to and from work without any issues? Are you able to recognize your loved ones? Are you able to use your smart phone to accomplish tasks? How is it that you are able to make it to this website every day? All of these things you do and do them successfully day in and day out. So how can you say that there is something lost in translation?
Information is everywhere causes leave effects. Most information is irrelevant to what your current goal is, but relevant to some other goal. It's not that something is lost in translation. It's that something is lost in misinterpretation. When we misinterpret what we are experiencing, we are not getting at the true causes. It is more likely that we will fail. Maybe not the first or second time, but eventually we will realize that our interpretation does not work all the time and we will try to come up with a better interpretation. This is basically what science does. There is nothing lost in translation because every cause leaves some effects that we can experience. It is only the interpretation that can be wrong and make it appear that what our senses tell us is wrong. But by making more observations and incorporating logic do we overcome what we believe to be an illusion produced by one of our senses. The distinction between empiricism and rationalism is a false dichotomy. Both are used in together to get at the truth, or to acquire knowledge.
It seems to me that the distinction between direct and indirect realism is useless. Would you say that you have direct or indirect access to your mental phenomenon?
How did scientists come to realize how pain works and that our experience of it is incorrect if all they have to go by is their own observations which you are calling into question? Somehow we were able to still get at how pain works for you to make these assertions so confidently.
The location of the pain in my foot is brute. I interpret the pain as being located in my foot because most, if not all, of the other times the pain was located in my foot I had an injury on my foot. Now, there could be a time that I am mistaken that my foot hurts with no injury. Instead the injury is in my lower back where inflamed tissue, or a herniated disk is pressing on a nerve and causing sciatica. So, by using more than one sense, and logic, I can still get at the truth. As I said before, we have more than one sense for fault tolerance - to check what one sense is telling us, and we have the ability to reason, to compare past experiences with current ones, and to predict what experiences we can have.
Yes, because we dont have an answer yet.
Quoting Harry Hindu
If pain is not a part of knives then how can it be a neural process?
Your question doesnt make much sense.
Quoting Harry Hindu
Sense and reasoning.
Perhaps. But that is very much not the same as the claim that we can never tell the difference between having a dream and being awake.
This seems telling. Yes, we all use words in ways other than to simply make statements. You know that. We use them to do all manner of things, from making promises to declaring war.
Good thing I never made that claim then.
You see colour realism and colour eliminativism and nought else.
Again, take a look at the SEP article, which sets out a few of the problems with eliminativism and some of the alternatives seven main theories each with many variants.
So again, I am not rejecting the physiological account. I am rejecting the nothing but in "colours are nothing but mental phenomena". And doing that leaves "Colours are mental phenomena, at least in part".
And a perusal of the article will show that I am in good company.
Yes, but unfortunately there are many who take this view, that dreams cannot be identified, as proof of something metaphysical, even if they rarely state what. It's one of the most repeated memes hereabouts, usually followed by an ellipsis rather than a conclusion...
You changed what I said to salvage what you said.
I didn't make any claim about types of statements, performative or otherwise. I said it odd to suggest that words could be used in ways other than saying them. Whether I report of your marriage or pronounce you married, in either case I say it.
In any event, you said "Use is determined by... well, what we do. Not by what we say we do."
What we do with words is say them (or write them). Their usage after spoken is another thing. And so we can go back to what we were talking about, and that is definitions because that's all we're limited to.
The definition of "red pen" is that thing that is out there that appears in my head as red. You disagree, but that disagreement is not philosophical. It's that you think I don't speak English like I ought to. You think I use my words inconsistent with the way my community of speakers does. I disagree, so now we are in some sort of sociological investigation, where we go out into our respective communities and figure out how it is we arrive at the words we do and then we can debate who's correctly identified the way we're to talk.
And that is the whole thing of it. You've argued consistently that this whole metaphysical debate is off limits and that the proper way to go about knowing about the world is to figure out how we use words. So let's put that to the test now that you've got full buy in from me. "The pen is red" means we have a pen object and a red subjective state because my community relies upon neuroscientists to tell me what my brain does and that's how I use my words.
We're now just in a contest as to who can write the best dictionary for the task at hand.
The thing that stands out to me is how few folk are addressing the actual argument I presented, in any more than a trivial fashion. I like to bring in to question the notions of subjectivity and objectivity, the division of the world into internal and external things, and the notion of private and public concepts. Your OP gave me that opportunity. So many folk take these divisions as central, even undeniable. but due consideration shows that they cannot be maintained in a coherent way.
If we were able to divide the world into subject and object, internal and external, private and public, and to put colours firmly in the subjective, internal, private zone, then all would be good for many folk here.
But colours are demonstrably a part of the objective, external, public world.
Hence the question: If "red" is just in your mind, when you ask for a red pen, how is it that the person you are asking hands you what you want?
And despite the pages of protestation, I think it still stands.
A flick through the pages will show many arguments directed towards me as if I had maintained that colour is nothing but an objective, external, public notion. That is not what I have been maintaining, so those arguments miss the their target.
I have not offered a substantive account of the nature of colour. I do not need to, in order to show the poverty of the scientistic view. Indeed I think there is reason to doubt that any theory of colour will be complete.
So there remain philosophical puzzles here. It is just that they are not answered by understanding the physics.
I'm not sure what your view is. Too many posts to keep track of.
I changed it to show that language is more central to this issue than you seem to hold. To say that 'all we do with words is to say them' is to trivialise the way our world works.
It leads to silly, solipsistic statements such as
Quoting Hanover
How does @Lionino know how the pen appears in your head? Your definition doesn't even get to stand up, let alone take a step forward.
Quoting Banno
Congratulations for finally spelling out your position. Not sure why it had to take so long.
The simple way it fails is that there is everyday talk about colours and then there is scientific talk about colours. The first requires no real philosophical clarification. The second absolutely demands it precisely to head off a collapse into everyday lumpen realism and its evil twin of everyday lumpen idealism.
In our everyday linguistic practice, even animism is quite acceptable. We can complain about how it only ever rains on the days we have off, as if the weather operates with malign intent. No one is particularly confused by this kind of mixed message talk. It can seem both true and false at the same time while also doing the intended job of sharing a viewpoint about how life itself can seem unnecessarily against us.
But in philosophy of mind, you have to start being more rigorous. The confused ontic commitments of everyday social chatter have to be brought to the surface and given a hard working over.
What is missing from all your posts as far as I can tell given their normally sketchy and evasive tone is recognition that human psychology is socially-constructed in a way where we are all taught to objectify ourselves as subjective creatures. And that is just how the system semiotically works. To live in linguistic communities, we must become our own narratives. We must have a running story of "our private self" that stands in fruitful contrast to the "other" that is "the real world out there".
So the "big mistake" you are trying to correct with all this beetle in a box guff is not the bug but the feature at least so far as everyday community life is concerned. It is a division we must participate in creating for there to be this thing of socialised humans doing their human social thing. The creation of a private realm that makes sense of there being a public ream, and vice versa.
Science understands this aspect of the human psyche. We have social psychology that can tell us exactly how it all works. Self-awareness, autobiographical memory, socialised emotions, the "faculty" of creative imagination or of rationalising reason these are not things in need of a neurobiological explanation but a social-constructionist explanation. These are ways in which the neurobiology of mind has become extended by Homo sapiens making the semiotic step to being also the new thing of linguisticallystructured lifeforms.
If we clear that little issue out of the way which is the level a lot of your "philosophy" gets stuck at then we can get down to the more basic issue of what the neurobiology has to say about sentience, awareness, consciousness, etc. The more difficult "hardware" level issues of accounting for the phenomenology of "being a mind".
So the problem ain't scientism. The problem is failing to divide the general problem of "consciousness" into its separate semiotic parts.
Set some example case like "why does red look like red", the first thing we ought to do is reply that well, there is this simple socially-constructed level to that story, and then there is this deeper neurobiological level which seems to be what you are actually interested in here.
And clearly, Wittgenstein is not a great place to start if we want to move smoothly into that deflationary science-based approach. Anglo logicians had no clue about the evolutionary structure of human cognition.
Whereas Peircean semiotics would be precisely a good place to start. It was highly influential to the development of social constructionism in the early 20th C and had become equally as relevant to the neurobiology by the late 20th C.
So sure, you can set things up that you are here to fight the good fight against scientism. For you, humanism or whatever has to come first. And any dialectical framing of the metaphysical issues this dividing into subjective vs objective, etc has to be already a wrong step because ... well, Hegel was a silly old fool.
My criticism of this is that it is a stale position that talks past what is of relevant philosophical interest.
The phenomenology of colour experience can't be deconstructed simply as linguistic analysis. Although sure it is worth doing that properly, and so appealing to the relevant social psychology there.
But then what folk are really bothered by is that the firing of neurons is supposed to generate these ineffable feels somehow. And the question becomes how is science as the not so everyday linguistic community best explaining that.
Rehashing Wittgenstein might help a bit with the social constructionism perhaps at a stretch. But it is quite unequipped for the neurobiology. And trying to draw a boundary around the whole topic in terms of the "pragmatics of everyday linguistic communities" is a sad defensive tactic.
There is no reason not to do philosophy of mind properly. The answer to bad metaphysics is well organised inquiry.
But the point is, that the division between primary and secondary qualities is basic to Galileo and to early modern science and philosophy generally. The fact that this keeps coming up is due to this bifurcation of nature (Whitehead). Its not due to the predilections of individual posters or some newbie mistake on their part. Its deeply baked into our cultural framework. Thomas Nagel puts it like this:
[quote=Mind and Cosmos, Pp35-36] The modern mind-body problem arose out of the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century, as a direct result of the concept of objective physical reality that drove that revolution. Galileo and Descartes made the crucial conceptual division by proposing that physical science should provide a mathematically precise quantitative description of an external reality extended in space and time, a description limited to spatiotemporal primary qualities such as shape, size, and motion, and to laws governing the relations among them. Subjective appearances, on the other hand -- how this physical world appears to human perception -- were assigned to the mind, and the secondary qualities like color, sound, and smell were to be analyzed relationally, in terms of the power of physical things, acting on the senses, to produce those appearances in the minds of observers. It was essential to leave out or subtract subjective appearances and the human mind -- as well as human intentions and purposes -- from the physical world in order to permit this powerful but austere spatiotemporal conception of objective physical reality to develop. [/quote]
That remains the default framework for much of modern naturalism, for example in the work of Daniel Dennett whose entire model revolves around it. It is, of course, true, that this is being challenged from many quarters and there are many emerging alternatives (biosemiotics being one) but it remains highly influential. But I think the centre of gravity is all shifting towards the 4E approach (enactive, embodied, embedded, extended, )
(Where I find Wittgensteins approach to these questions frustrating, is because it seems so obtuse and indirect. Yes, he challenges scientism but you have to immerse yourself in his writings and worldview to understand how. Ive found other critiques more direct including Thomas Nagel, Whitehead, and Husserl Crisis of the European Sciences.)
This is true. The conundrum is coming from a worldview that says people are isolated consciousness bubbles. You can't see inside my bubble. The most extreme consequences of this is a complete breakdown in meaning as described by Quine and Kripke.
So you can explicate and maintain the distinction between primary and secondary qualities? I'm not so confident.
**Primary qualities** are characteristics of objects that exist independently of any observer. These include qualities like shape, size, motion, and number. They are considered objective because they can be measured and exist whether or not anyone is perceiving them.
**Secondary qualities** are characteristics that depend on the observer's perception. These include color, taste, sound, and smell. According to early empiricists, these qualities dont exist in the objects themselves but arise from the interaction between the object and the observer's sensory apparatus.
For Galileo, this distinction helped differentiate the mathematical and measurable aspects of nature (primary qualities), which were the focus of scientific inquiry, while secondary qualities were subjective and tied to human perception.
Im not *defending* that distinction, but Im saying that it was widely accepted in post-Galilean science and philosophy.
And if you were arguing for one of them then we could have a meaningful discussion. My problem is with your approach to the problem. Our concern is with perception, not with language, which is why the phrasing in the question presented above is important: "do objects like tomatoes, strawberries and radishes really have the distinctive property that they do appear to have?".
This is not answered by saying that we use the word "red" to describe tomatoes. That we agree that tomatoes are red is a red herring.
I think it lurks under a lot of what you say about it. Unconsciously.
Oooh goodness.
Quoting Wayfarer
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/11175/philosophical-plumbing-mary-midgley/p1
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/9453/midgley-vs-dawkins-nietzsche-hobbes-mackie-rand-singer/p1
Hmmm.
[quote= "Michael;923564"]This combination of eliminativismthe view that physical objects do not have colors, at least in a crucial senseand subjectivismthe view that color is a subjective qualityis not merely of historical interest. It is held by many contemporary experts and authorities on color,[/quote]
Well, if you see no meaning in this discussion, you are welcome not to participate. Quoting Michael
Well, there are red tomatoes, and one way of saying that is that some tomatoes have the property of being red. Not sure what what it means to further ask if they really have the property of being red...
But that's kinda my point.
If "the tomato is red" means "the tomato looks red" and if the word "red" in the phrase "looks red" does not refer to a property of the tomato then tomatoes do not have the property that they appear to have.
Instead we have a case of eliminativism, subjectivism, and projectivism, as opposed to naive realism, reductionism, or dispositionalism.
Yes, and so we engage in further examination. We do not simply leave it at we agree that tomatoes are red.
I was simply commenting on your entry:
Quoting Banno
I was fleshing out why it is seen this way, with reference to the division between primary and secondary, objective and subjective. I wasn't disagreeing with your post, I was attempting to explicate it further. I didn't intend to take issue with what you were saying but to provide background to it.
Furthermore, having now joined this thread, I should comment on the OP:
Quoting Mp202020
I agree. I've argued along these lines most of my time here. But I don't think it's the final word (well, obviously not...) as the question can be approached through a number of perspectives, with different intentions. To approach is as a cognitive scientist is not necessarily to raise the philosophical question about the experience of redness at all. The two perspectives aren't necessarily in conflict.
To paraphrase the Lankavatara Sutra, the world does not exist outside of experience. Neither does it not exist.
Come on apokrisis, how can such a gigantic exaggeration just roll off your keyboard as if you were stating common fact?
The exaggeration is twofold. First, it's still debated to this day, whether psychology qualifies as a science. Many compromise and call it a "soft science". Second, it's highly doubtful that even hard sciences tell us "exactly how" anything works. The hard sciences seem to be able to use mathematics to make awesome predictions, but they really are incapable of telling us exactly how anything works.
So if that giant double exaggeration is the premise which the following part of your post is based on, it might as well just be ignored. But, being the faithful philosopher which I am, I can't resist a poke or two.
Quoting apokrisis
Better put, Peircian philosophy was influential in allowing ambiguity, vagueness, and imprecision to infiltrate all sciences, not just the soft sciences mentioned, by making such vagueness appear to be unavoidable and acceptable even in the mathematics employed by the hard sciences.
You criticize Wittgenstein, and praise Peirce, but it has been argued that Wittgenstein was very much influenced by Peirce, in his criticism of the supposed rigour of mathematics. Like Peirce, he pointed out how vagueness, as ambiguity, infiltrates even to the core of mathematics.
[quote=Wittgenstein, Peirce, and paradoxes of mathematical proof, Sergiy Koshkin] A proof alters a formalism by turning a string of symbols into a usable
proposition, it is the proof, or its blueprint, at least, that enables its use
and makes it meaningful. Hence, it remains meaningless in the absence of
a proof. Another proof of the same proposition will alter the meaning
yet further, will link the sentence to different groups of axioms and/or in
different ways, hence the proposition proved will not be the same. It is
only our habit of attaching shadowy entities, meanings, to all well-formed
sentences, even those that do not have any use, that leads us to believe in
the sameness.[/quote]
https://philarchive.org/archive/KOSWPA
It seems we have the habit of attaching a "shadowy entity" to the word "red", a meaning. In reality though, the word has a different meaning each time it's used, depending on context. Things don't really have "the property of being red", it's just that things are commonly said to be red.
John Locke did a pretty good job. Kant showed how he was wrong, but Kant isn't exactly our worldview, is he?
I did specify social psychology. I agree that psychology in general seemed a science in disarray when I studied it in the 1970s. Apart from psychophysics, it was basically so crap I switched to biology. But then Vygotskian psychology reached the West, social constructionism picked up where symbolic interactionism left off, the positive psychology movement began to form. And I had moved on to cognitive neuroscience and paleoanthropology anyway.
So I found my way to the science of value. I never waste time on the dross.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Indeed. But what then did he add?
There's an entry in SEP on "Primary and Secondary Qualities in Early Modern Philosophy", but no follow up with more recent comment. The interest is mostly historical. There are however entries on colour, touch and olfactory and auditory perception, addressing more specific issues.
So the notion of primary and secondary qualities has faded somewhat, and we can ask if this is because it has become so ubiquitous as to be taken as granted, or if it has been shown to be too wanting to be of much use. I think it's the latter.
There are a few problems with the distinction. I commented earlier how "quality" dithers somewhat between "property" and "predicate" Perhaps this dithering gives it some faux respectability. Is the quality of brownness a property had by the table or merely a predicate in a description of the table?
There are issues in sorting things into either the primary or the secondary box.Take heat for example, which might appear to be a secondary quality, only felt, and unlike temperature. The illusion that a piece of metal feels colder than a book at the same temperature lends credence to this. But then heat will melt steal. Which box, then? Is heat only something we project onto the world, or is it something out there in the things around us?
And if primary qualities are understood as those that we can measure, is air pressure a primary quality? Electric current?
And if the idea is that secondary qualities are only perceived, while primary qualities somehow inhere in the object, why and how is it that we only know about primary qualities through our perception? Is there a vicious circularity in the definition of primary and secondary qualities?
It's not that these criticisms are definitive, since each might be answerable, but that such considerations have led to more recent work bypassing the primary/secondary distinction, and the troubles they cause, in favour of more detailed analysis.
All this by way of showing that the distinction between primary and secondary qualities might not be as foundational as suggests.
Hmm, I guess that's a matter of opinion.
Quoting apokrisis
A slightly different way of looking at the same problem is what he added. Neither proposed a solution, in my opinion, merely pointing out weaknesses which others could then see and abuse. The abuse persists and the weakening of mathematics, and logic in general continues. And it will continue until people start to see the need to get rid of the weaknesses rather than to use them for their advantage.
You seem to be talking about notions of the continuum which would be a small part of Peirces semiotics. And you have your own ideas about how to abuse logic I fear.
It doesn't have to be left there, if you like. So long as it is noted that we do agree that tomatoes are (sometimes) red, and that a theory which cannot account for this is thereby inadequate.
So any theory that claims colour to be a something in an individual's head, and no more, is inadequate.
Its still writ large in current philosophy of mind. Search for eliminativism in this thread and there are half a dozen returns, most of them advocating it.
Quoting Banno
Yes, and yes. Primary qualities or attributes are just those which are measurable, and, crucially, those that are said to be mind-independent. A hue may look different to different observers - although thats hard to tell - but any value that can be measured objectively is not subject to opinion. Principally: mass, charge, velocity, dimension, and location. Just those elements of matter and chemistry which are said by materialism to be the foundation of all else that exists.
Quoting Banno
We dont just perceive them. We measure them!
What do you think is the backstory behind the argument over qualia in philosophy of mind? Qualia is just a jargon term for quality. Materialist philosophy of mind insists that only the primary attributes of matter are real - these manifesting as electro-chemical bonds and reactions between cells, and so forth. All of the attributes of organisms that are subject to rigorous objective measurement. Qualia by contrast are said to be those qualities of existence that are felt by subjects - including precisely the kinds of qualities under discussion, such as colour, texture, appearance, and so on. Eliminativism is always insisting that these are in some sense illusory (leaving aside the obvious contradiction that illusions are errors in consciousness.)
So the distinction is not historical it is still a tectonic one under the contours of current philosophy of mind. And youre not even describing it accurately.
I think it faded from philosophy because Kant showed that knowledge of the categories of primary qualities is apriori. The old way is still the prevailing one among regular people. Most still think of an object's girth as something that's mind-independent, while its color is not.
Quoting Banno
I think he was just saying that it's the way most people think.
It's not solipsistic at all. My comment referenced an external object. Solipsism says I only know my own mind.Quoting Banno
He can't know my beetle, so we don't talk about that. What he can know is what I say and so long as we use the words in a consistent way, we get to play our language game together.
Maybe we have the same beetle, maybe we don't. We must realize it's irrelevant so we remain silent about it.
What is important is that we have a commonality of usage, so when I say my pen looks red you compare it to the other times you've heard the word and you assume a consistency. All that is important is that our language interaction work.
If you ask what's behind the curtain, as in, what is the meaning in the mind and what are the phenomenal states, you go hopelessly down the road of asking what precedes language and what exists independently of it.
Such is linguistic philosophy.
I am aware of the strained argument that an external object must exist to remind us of our prior usage. That seems ad hoc and wrong, designed perhaps to avoid my conclusion that the external is irrelevant for the playing of the word game. I say there's a red pen and you agree and so we speak together, regardless of whether we have a metaphysical underpinning.
This is about words. If the red reaaly is out there or really is just imposed by the brain doesn't matter. All that matters is that when i explain my view, you understand it and I speak it consistently.
In the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word is God. And that's that. Sentences can mean very different things in very different contexts.
Anywat, I don't buy into the above, but I can recite if having to sit for an exam.
My own view is a dualistic theism where there are hearts and minds and an entire inner and external world of mystery and purpose, where every blade of grass sits exactly where it does for a specific reason, including there being a higher purpose for our having this conversation.
I say that just to avoid any confusion that i buy nto what I recited above.
Here's that search.
I'm not seeing it. Distinguishing primary and secondary qualities is mostly of historical interest - perhaps except for you and maybe @Michael.
Quoting Wayfarer
So the list of primary qualities includes electric current, speed, pressure, torque, potential energy, luminosity...
Ok.
And oddly, roughness moved from being a secondary to a primary quality when the invention of X-ray diffraction permitted it to be measured.
But is seems it needs to be pointed out that when a notion such as primary and secondary qualities is superseded, it does not thereby disappear.
Quoting frank
And that was uncontroversial? I think it stoped being useful when folk found themselves doing more work on what the difference was than on how it explained anything.
Cutting to the chase, I don't see that it helps here.
The point is, colour is not a beetle. @Lionino cannot see your beetle, by definition, but you both see the red pen. You both see red.
Quoting Hanover
Indeed. And if colour is only in your head, then how is it that Lionino is able to use the word in a way that is consistent with what is in your head? Could it be because there is a shared pen that is red?
Quoting Hanover
Well there's progress. Small steps.
Quoting Hanover
There's your problem right there then. That and that all variations of idealism have trouble avoiding solipsism.
Current is measured in amps. Why do you think it can't be measured?
But that's just me. You go on ahead.
Not a member of the 110 club, then? That's people who've been shocked by 110 volts AC. I've been a member since I was a kid.
I bet it does. :lol:
Ok. Again, it doesn't work for me.
Current is an object in its own right. It's a flow of electrons (or holes, depending on your point of view).
Hmm. Not convinced. Seems strained.
I don't think you're familiar with the concept.
Which concept? Current? Object? Conviction? Strained?
Are you going to defend pressure, heat and torque in the same fashion?
And just to be sure, I'm not claiming the distinction between primary and secondary qualities cannot be made, but that it is difficult to maintain, and not of as much use as other notions.
Current is an object like a waterfall is an object. The water flows over the rocks. I guess you could think of the waterfall as a property of the rocks, but that's kind of weird. It's more like something that's happening to the rocks. Likewise, current flows in a conductor, like iron. The flow is something happening to the iron. Anyway, we usually talk about current as a thing, not a property.
Quoting Banno
I could.
Quoting Banno
It's like a lens through which people see the world. Color is mental, length is not. Does it fall apart at the edges? I think it probably does, but so does every way of thinking. There is no complete package. That's why philosophy never ends.
Colour is precisely measurable, so this criterion does not work. @Banno is correct that the 'primary/ secondary' distinction is outmoded.
[quote=Nature and Subjectivity in Alfred North Whitehead; https://www.mdpi.com/2409-9252/3/2/12] Whitehead describes modern thought as plagued by a radical inconsistency which he calls the bifurcation of nature. According to Whitehead, this fundamental incoherence at the foundation of modern thought is re?ected not only in the concept of nature itself, but in every ?eld of experiencein modern theories of experience and subjectivity, of ethics and aesthetics, as well as many others. In The Concept of Nature Whitehead states that nature splits into two seemingly incompatible spheres of reality at the beginning of modern European thought in the 17th century: Nature on the one hand refers to the (so-called) objective nature accessible to the natural sciences only, i.e., the materialistically conceptualized nature of atoms, molecules, cells, and so on; at the same time, however, nature also refers to the (subjectively) perceptible and experienced, i.e., the appearing nature with its qualities, valuations, and sensations. Whitehead considers this modernist division of nature in thoughtthe differentiation of primary and secondary qualities, of ?rst and second nature, of a material and mental spherea fundamental, serious, and illicit incoherence. His term for this incoherence is bifurcation of nature, for the question of how these two concepts of natureobjective and subjectiverelate to each other remains largely unresolved for Whitehead within the philosophical tradition of modernity.[/quote]
Similar analysis expressed by Hans Jonas:
[quote=Hans Jonas, The Phenomenon of Life: Towards a Philosophical Biology]The tremendously enlarged universe of modern cosmology is conceived as a field of inanimate masses and forces which operate according to the laws of inertia and of quantitative distribution in space. This denuded substratum of all reality could only be arrived at through a progressive expurgation of vital features from the physical record and through strict abstention from projecting into its image our own felt aliveness. In the process the ban on anthropomorphism was extended to zoomorphism in general. What remained is the residue of the reduction toward the properties of mere extension which submit to measurement and hence to mathematics. These properties alone satisfy the requirements of what is now called exact knowledge: and representing the only knowable aspect of nature they, by a tempting substitution, came to be regarded as its essential aspect too: and if this, then as the only real in reality.
This means that the lifeless has become the knowable par excellence and is for that reason also considered the true and only foundation of reality. It is the "natural" as well as the original state of things. Not only in terms of relative quantity but also in terms of ontological genuineness, non-life is the rule, life the puzzling exception in physical existence.
Accordingly, it is the existence of life within a mechanical universe which now calls for an explanation, and explanation has to be in terms of the lifeless. Left over as a borderline case in the homogeneous physical world-view, life has to be accounted for by the terms of that view.[/quote]
You should read the article I referred, it's quite interesting. The subject is how Peirce dealt with "the problem of induction", and how this relates to Wittgenstein. Peirce's distinction between corollarial (habitual) proofs and theorematic (creative) proofs, is argued to be influential to Wittgenstein's middle work, and this work of Peirce is shown to have a relation to inferentialism in general. The question is whether all conclusions derivable from a set of premises or axioms are already predetermined, or do proofs produce something new. Peirce's Theorematic proofs are creative, producing new knowledge.
[quote=p9-10] However, as already Peirce pointed out, theorematic reasoning involves
foreign ideas, concept formation or transformation over and above the
theorems formulation, and the background knowledge. The nature of these
new concepts is suggested by his examples, and is made explicit in modern semantic information theory. They manifest in the construction and/or
recognition of new patterns, auxiliary figures in geometry, composite structures in set theory, or compound predicates and propositional formulae in
formal systems (DAgostino, 2016, p.170). One defines new objects, and/or
finds new ways to describe their properties and interrelations with other
objects, old and new. Many previously proved properties are turned into
new definitions. Conceptual omniscience is problematic because much of
mathematicians effort goes into crafting definitions, and few theorems are
proved about objects introduced already in the axioms. Skeletal semantics
of the model theory, that parses formulae down to basic elements, is not
the semantics of informal proofs (Azzouni, 2009, p.18). To use Dummetts
own example, the concept of ellipse does not appear in either planimetric or
stereometric axioms, and it is only one among an infinite variety of objects
they give room for. That theorems about ellipses should be proved at all is
not determined by the formalism.
Of course, ellipses are strongly motivated by common observations, but
this suggests exactly the empirically mediated determinacy that Wittgenstein describes. In the practice of mathematics, definitions do more than
single out formal patterns. Newly formed concepts are linked to concepts
from other formalisms, informal intuitions, and applications outside of mathematics. When conceptual resources are specified in advance, the interpretational labor required to make proofs and theorems meaningful can not
be captured by them. And without an interpretation of the language of
the formal system the end-formula of the derivation says nothing; and so
nothing is proved (Giaquinto, 2008, p.26). The meaning of unproved theorems is not determined because, after all, we may not be smart enough to
deduce them, let alone anticipate concepts to be introduced in their proofs,
or statements. The appearance of elliptic curves and modular forms in the
Wiless proof of the Last Fermat theorem gives an idea of just how much
new concept formation can be involved.['quote]
Long ago, someone who has posted on this thread insisted that Mount Everest did not have a height until it was measured. Pragmatism and Pierce and stuff had led them to this opinion.
After I stoped laughing, I was left puzzling that they could have such an odd conception of length. Presumably for some folk, length is mental.
Anyway, nice analogue with the waterfall. So is a waterfall a primary quality of a cliff? Not during a drought, I supose. We might have some level of overall agreement.
Glad you said that. I thought it obvious.
You might be interested to note that measurements of its height have varied considerably since it was first observed, and that furthermore its height is also changing due to movements in the underlying tectonic plates.
You can make exact predictions of how a colour should appear to a viewer, but appearance still requires a viewer. Obviously there are the color-blind who can't differentiate red and green. There are many other anomalies governing colour perception i.e. different types of organisms see by different bands in the electromagnetic spectrum. In that sense, perception of colour always entails a subjective aspect, as a phenomenon, because 'phenomenon' means 'what appears', and that isn't included the spectrographic analysis of a colour. (c.f. Mary's Room).
Quoting frank
+1. Seems not.
Philosophy has corrupted the minds of the young. Again.
Of course. It just seems to me that if one sets out to measure the height of a mountain, one already presumes it has a height to be measured.
The implications are interesting. One concludes that reality is a construct of the mind, the other, not a construct at all.
I don't dispute the reality of objective facts. Where I differ with cognitive realism is that I claim that objective facts are still in some fundamental sense dependent on cognition. Speaking of Mount Everest, for instance: if Mount Everest were to be sentient, then it would probably not comprehend humans, as humans are so small, and their life-spans so perishing, that they would be incomprehensible to a mountain, their movements imperceptibily brief and small. But Mt Everest would recognise glacial flows, as they stick around to tens of thousands of years, and have the mass to alter the topography of the mountain itself. At the other end of the scale, were microbes to be sentient, they would perceive human bodies as the limit of their Universe, and thousands of generations of them would live and die within a single body.
None of that is to deny that Mt Everest is - let's see - 8,849m (although source notes there are still disputes due to topography, ice mass, and other factors. That is the 'agreed definition' although whether it is objectively true is still, ahem, up in the air :-) )
Appearance of anything requires a viewer. So where is the distinction?
The whole thread is about it, it shouldn't have to spelled out. The physical attributes of a wavelength of light vs how it appears in the eyes of a subject. The former is exactly specificiable in objective terms, the latter is prone to subjective particularities. This is what the OP was getting at and what has been debated since.
I'm glad they made sense for you.
In some ways the structure of Tibetan Buddhism was a bit too close to my lapsed catholicism, a bit too ritualistic. I did like the incense and decor.
Nope. That is just Banno trying to rewrite ancient forum history to console his still hurt feelings. :grin:
Quoting Wayfarer
The more important measure in everyday humans terms is that Mt Everest is numero uno. The peak that stands above all others.
But others might protest that is not the metric that encodes the greatest skill, the greatest effort, or whatever else ought to be given prime importance due to some socialised context.
Science might indeed offer you a least socialised metric in terms of metres above sea level. All other aspects of being a mountain such as being a tectonic bulge rising and falling over eons, or a fractally complex feature that is of some average roughness, hence easier or harder to climb are allowed to fall away in that particular view.
It might be the measure that is pragmatically useful at a really general level of physical description based on spatial distances at temporal instances. Kind of like, you know, Newtonianism. :up:
So generally you are right. Folk philosophy does tend to make that primary vs secondary property distinction. And it is sort of there in the data. Hue discrimination seems somehow different even as a neurocognitive act than object recognition.
The perfect sphere of a ball set against the messy fractal scene of a typical natural landscape just kind of pops out as being "that kind of Platonically perfect object that we form as an ideal object".
The backdrop has scale symmetry a fractal averageness to it. The ball has its rotational symmetry an abstract symmetry that only comes into view once we get all spacetime relativistic on Nature's arse. That makes a ball a rather striking thing even on our back lawn. It is clearly "out there" even if it is also about as Platonic an object as, well, a square.
Then hue discrimination comes from the other pole of neurocognitive decoding. We can say it is about wavelength as if a frequency of light is the key that flips the detector switch in a cone receptor cell and our brain suddenly feels that "redness".
And yet really there is huge complexity in the neurology to even start the discrimination. The round football is striking against the fractal garden backdrop. But hue discrimination has to build a whole contextual hierarchy of contrast to get to where it wants to go.
Just as a taster, consider how the three cones are already set up at the retinal level to construct both the visual sameness and the visual difference that gets the game going. Same information cut both ways in dialectical fashion so as to have any hat to hang the processing on extract some difference that makes a difference as it has become the signal that stands proud of the noise....
With the football in your back garden, it seems to tell its own tale. If it appeared only this morning, perhaps a neighbour booted it over the fence. There seem to be no low level behind the scenes type neural processes going on. If the football is easy to see and explains itself, this is because you understand the intellectual type stuff about rotational symmetry vs scale symmetry. It is your choice whether to take an everyday lumpen realism about balls on lawns or to get mystical about Platonic strength forms.
But with hue discrimination, there is a massive amount of preprocessing to create the same kind of "its just obvious" pop out contrast. To have the immediate and primary impression that the football is blue with yellow stripes and not red with green ones.
At the end of the day, it if pops out, it pops out. Our neurology is doing the job it is meant to do. We can be lumpen realists speaking in everyday language about thoughtlessly inhabiting a cosy familiar world of medium sized-dry goods. The whereabouts of our pending luncheon the only concern.
However the immediacy is an illusion. The reality is the phenomenal complexity of an acquired neurological habit. We must each build hue discrimination for ourselves as bodies that develop neural pathways via processes of growth and pruning. We must get wired for colour as a pragmatic interaction we form with the world as we find it.
That's the look of surprise you see starting to form on the newborn's face as it emerges. Nothing makes sense. And yet within a few months, it really starts to fall into its comprehensible patterns. Footballs that are red. Redness that is not just about footballs.
Of course. I read somewhere - can't recall where - that ancient Greek has a very limited range of words for colours, and that the 'wine-dark sea' of the Homeric epics might have really reflected that they couldn't differentiate the colours of wine and the ocean as we do now. And there's the old trope, I think now debunked, about the Eskimos having 37 terms for snow, allowing them to make all kinds of differentiations in snow colour and conditions which we ourselves wouldn't see.
Anyway I think you would concur that color perceptions are instances of the co-arising of sensation, apperception and judgement - neither objective nor subjective but transjective - 'referring to a property not of the subject or of the environment but a relation co-created between them'.
Quoting apokrisis
[quote=Pinter, Charles. Mind and the Cosmic Order (p. 29). Springer International Publishing. Kindle Edition. ]Everything you see, hear and think comes to you in structured wholes: When you read, youre seeing a whole page even when you focus on one word or sentence. When someone speaks, you hear whole words and phrases, not individual bursts of sound. When you listen to music, you hear an ongoing melody, not just the note that is currently being played. Ongoing events enter your awareness as Gestalts, for the Gestalt is the natural unit of mental life. If you try to concentrate on a dot on this page, you will notice that you cannot help but see the context at the same time. Vision would be meaningless, and have no biological function, if people and animals saw anything less than integral scenes.
The obvious reason for this is that life plays out in whole events, and the objects with which every animal interacts are complete things. A deer must instantly recognize the form of a cougar (and vice-versa), a squirrel must see the separate branches on a tree, a honeybee must know different kinds of flowers each having a distinctive design. Birds must tell the difference between nourishing and poisonous butterflies by subtle differences in wing design and markings. The habitat of every living thing is multiple and complex, and survival depends on the power to learn and recognize its intricacies. Even single-celled animals respond differentially to complex configurations. The more we learn about animal life, the more clearly we see that all perception and all action are designed for survival in a multiform and dynamic world of whole objects and complete events. In such a world, living organisms must be able to perceive undivided patterns and whole configurations.[/quote]
Well, yes, since facts are true and hence in some way propositional. Of course what you believe is dependent on cognition, cognition being what you believe.
Speaking quite approximately, of course. There be devil's in the detail. Or at the least, in the overly long threads.
Been reading Kafka?
Incidentally - a Medium essay on the origin of 'transjective'.
The word 'colour' is commonly used to refer to both objects and experiences of objects, and it is not a matter of it being appropriate to use the word only in one context or the other, but the word is appropriately used in both, although obviously in different senses.
The question is "do objects like tomatoes, strawberries and radishes really have the distinctive property that they do appear to have?". Any interpretation of the proposition "the tomato is red" that does not concern the appearance of the tomato is a red herring.
But also, we agree that stubbing one's toe is painful, but pain is nonetheless in the individual's head, and so your claim above is also a non sequitur. Our words can, and do, refer to mental phenomena, and we can agree which things are causally responsible for that mental phenomena.
I don't. And I'm not the only one. I pointed out the rather large difference between colour and pain previously.
Can you pass me the red pen in your hand? Can you pass me the pain in your hand?
These are quite different.
You cannot pass me pain or colours.
Odd. Fine. Toot toot.
That is a faulty assumption. When one sets out to measure a mountain, they assume that the mountain is likely measurable. You are making the cliche mistake of confusing the map with the territory. The "height" is what is on the map, it's not a part of the territory.
"Height" is defined as "the measurement from base to top". "The measurement" is a product of the act of measuring. The height of a mountain simply does not exist prior to the measurement of the mountain, it is a value, a number which is produced from the measurement. Are you not familiar with Wittgenstein's "standard metre"?
Incidentally, physicist John Bell had some interesting things to say about this common mistake. The common misunderstanding of "measurement", expressed by Banno in the statement above, misleads many people in their interpretation of quantum mechanics. To properly understand quantum mechanics it is necessary to recognize that a measurement is something produced by the act of measuring, and it does not precede the act of measuring.
Nevertheless, after having been taught this numerous times, Banno will continue to make similar statements, indicating that the ignore function in Banno's brain is often turned on.
This is why I have recommended the paper Hoffman has jointly co-authored on Eigenforms and Holography.
The answer, simply put, is that yes, objects do have the properties we perceive them to have because they are observer-dependent. Hoffman's layman level work leaves the causal, knowable nature of the world ambiguous and that to me sounds like Kantianism.
But this newer work makes some good headway on the metaphysical implications of ITP. I believe they say quite adamantly that there is no world sans observation, without observation/decoherence, we have the quantum state of indeterminate possibilities/properties. Upon observation, a classical state is registered:
" If interfaces encode information about fitness, then they do not encode information
about the observer-independent ontology or causal structure of the world. In the present
conceptual framework, of course, this is tautologous: there is no observer-independent
ontology or causal structure in any world that is defined only relative to an observer. "
As they continue, space just is icons/eigenforms encoded into a 2D surface - where an icon's 3D appearance is encoded informational redundancy not only about an object's appearance,but possible actions one can take WRT to it. Apple can be eaten, thrown, smashed, juiced etd. "Space" is just how many bit-flips you need to get from one icon to another.
Objects in space are there to communicate information about your fitness. They are not apart from you - Yourself and the environment are co-dependent and co-arising. You're entangled. A system dividing itself into two -- but not separate things-- to communicate information to itself about how to perpetuate its own existence. If you don't interpret the icons properly, the Conscious Agent-Decision-Action loop breaks and both you and the environment "die".
So there is nothing "behind" or "underneath" appearances. Without observation, there is just superposition of quantum possibilities, but no "unknowable" world out there. I do believe, though, that there are many observers and many concomitant worlds, but these are their worlds, so this might actually be a kind of ontological pluralism.
This strikes me as incorrect. What we both see is the beetle, which would include its properties, including its redness. I speak of my beetle and you of yours, but it becomes irrelevant as to what it actually is. All that is relevant is we speak consistently enough to play our word game. That is, don't speak of what I see.
It's when you ask what actually we see you run into problems. You can point to the pen as evidence of what is being seen, but you can't then in turn say the beetle is X in an ontological way. All you can say is that red is defined as that pen we both see, but not suggest you have any idea what we both see. Quoting Banno
If I say that color is entirely in my head, you can't disagree with this, else you fall into metaphysics. You've committed to a linguistic model, so you violate your principle to suggest to know what my beetle is. Your position is that the beetle is irrelevant for our conversation and so you'd ask I remain silent about it
So, assuming your linguistic model true, Lionino and I have no knowledge of redness or pens in an ontological way. We have words and only words. I see you do things and hear sounds associated with that and from that I figure out what game you must be playing, and from that, I join in and we word play.
The pen is just the thing we hang a word on. Saying it "is" red must be kept clear. "Is" is being used to state a definition, not an empirical fact here. As is in "the bachelor is unmarried" versus "bob is unmarried."
Where I find this unsatisfactory is that if you ask what this pen is in an empirical sense, not a definitional sense, you get no response. Literally, silence. And I'd like to know what a pen is other than that indescribable thing we've labeled "pen."
That exploration is worth having even if you've figured out how to communicate without it.
No, they aren't. They refer the exact same categories of property and present hte exact same distinction, lost in common-use of hte words involvd.
You seem to note that the distinction is key in the analysis, and deny it's effect. Interesting. Then again, you miss, completely, and in a pretty cartoonish way, the difference between "look", "perceive" and "see". All discreet events which provide different elemtsn of a single process of apprehension through perception from stimulus to expereince. So, the discussion has been entirely on-point. References need not be anything deeper than reference. "Red pen" is a reference not a description. It seems to me you want to call the pen Red because it causes red experiences which is correct. But, you seem unable to accept that this si the claim being made. The pen isn't red, on any description given in this thread.
It's a misuse of your own theory to make the claims your making, even if we accept that common-use matters as much as you seem to think, in conceptual analysis (BIG hint: Common use of words has precisely zero to do with conceptual analysis until you're in the realm of analysing language which is not happening here. Seems to be your pet area - and, to that degree, go for gold. You're good at it).
Quoting Hanover Missed then why writing the above response - sorry, think it's a really, really good point. I think it is describable, but only describable by reference to our experience (aesthetically, even!). This removes any certainly outside of hte word game - but it does present the exact delineation you've aptly outlined. I just think Banno is sitting pretty on "thats nonsense. This is how we refer to things.."
Unsatisfactory indeed.
Yes! More small steps. A small progress. One can have a conversation concerning the beetle: 'But suppose the word "beetle" had a use in these people's language?If so it would not be used as the name of a thing'.
It wouldn't be the name of a thing. No ontology of beetles.
Quoting Hanover
That's your painting of the arch linguistic philosopher rather than anything real. "We have words and only words" is far from what is the case. We have pens. There are things shown, not said. Like what a pen is.
The beetle analog was written about pain, not colour. While to some extent there is an overlap, one can produce samples of colour and chat about whether these are red, and what shade of red. One cannot do the came with pain; what one sees is the manifestation of pain, the groaning and grimacing. One cannot see into the box.
Supose that we all do see colours differently, and named them accordingly - so what @Lionino sees as red, you see as blue, and you both use the name for what you see. This is to take @Michael's suggestion literally! If @Lionino were to ask for the red pen, you might say "There is no red pen here, but there is a blue pen, and from past experience I know that Lionino is content for me to pass the blue pen when he asked for a red. At the least, it shuts them up.'
But this is not what happens, at least in my case. I undertake no such ratiocination. If you do, or if Michael does, then so be it. At the least, that would explain why these threads are interminable. The question, then, is how it came to be that you learned these words?
But what we see is a red pen, not a blue. And this is not only a result of our physiology, but of the way in which we learn to use colour words.
Interesting. But "there is no world sans observation", and yet "without observation/decoherence, we have the quantum state of indeterminate possibilities/properties" - so isn't "the quantum state of indeterminate possibilities/properties" just the world as it is without observation?
If so, then it is not the case that we have no world without observation?
This brings out part of what appears so circular in Hoffman - he uses the physics of the world to show that there is no world. This leads me to supose he has missed something important. Or perhaps I have. Is physics like Wittgenstein's ladder, to be thrown away once climbed? That would be odd, given how effective physics is at doing things.
Its also perfectly compatible with the Buddhist philosophy of ??nyat?, the absence of own-being of particulars, and the doctrine of dependent origination. (I thought perhaps with your forum name, this might ring a bell.)
I downloaded and tried to read that article, but I am not the audience for it. The audience is other academics, cognitive scientists, and cognitive realists who need to be persuaded in their own terminology and using their own methods. Its above my pay-grade.
Quoting Banno
But he doesnt say that. What hes disputing is the mind-independent nature of the objects of physics. Whereas for you, what is real is by definition what is mind-independent. As I said earlier in [s]this thread[/s] the thread about Hoffman, his book could be called the case against cognitive realism. He doesnt say nothing is real. He has a lot to say about science, and bases his arguments on science, so hes not calling the efficacy of science into question, which would indeed be self-contradictory. Hes pointing to physics itself as undermining the claim that objects of cognition are mind-independent. Thats one crux of the argument.
No. You do not have this.
It may be helpful that where you clearly do not understand what someone is saying, you simply ask for clarification. This seems to be somewhat hard for you, as opposed to assuming and putting words in people's mouths. If you have to make genuinely stupid assertions like this to get around things people put in front of you, that's something to reflect on :)
that's one for the scrapbook!
Though I am loath to wade into this discussion, and two pages behind, I can't resist pointing out that the optical absorption spectrum of a tomato, and the emission spectrum of light illuminating a tomato are both measureable.
But carry on.
By definition, "height" is a measurement. You just like to use words in a realist way, and claim that since you can use them in this way, it makes what you say true. You do the same with "change", claiming that since you can use "change" in a way which doesn't imply the passage of time, then it is true that "change" doesn't imply the passage of time. I can do the same with "arsehole", claiming that if I use "arsehole" to describe Banno, this means it's true that Banno is an arsehole. This is the failure of "meaning is use". It only accounts for one side of meaning. the using, it doesn't account for the other side, the interpreting.
Direct - there is nothing between my mind and itself. That's the nature of the distinction. I have direct access to my experiences. Not their causes.
It might not 'mean much' out there in the world, but in terms of the discussion we're having its the central, crucial thing to be understood. So, I reject your opener on those grounds. But i acknowledge that for a certain kind of philosopher, this is going to look like a couple of guys around a pub table arguing over the blue/white black/gold dress. I disagree is all :)
Quoting Harry Hindu
By noticing that pain doesn't exist outside the mind. We can acknowledge things exist outside the mind - I am not an idealist. Inference is good, but not good enough for this type of thing. Banno's "there is a red pen" claims are experience-bound, so pose no issue for this account. Your point, though, might.
I think the response is something along the lines of, well that's what science does. Eliminates possibilities. If pain exists sans any injury (or even limb!!) then it would seem it is a referent, which can experience aberration. I think that's right, and tracks with both my experience, and the apparent observations of physiologists and pain researchers(nociplastic pain is a great exemplar of where this throws spanners in the works of traditional treatment for pain, but opens up avenues for solving other chronic pain issues with novel, psychological approaches - results may vary!)
Quoting Harry Hindu
This seems right.
Quoting Harry Hindu
Yes, I also agree with this. You're describing the mechanism by which our mind successfully, in most cases, has us attend to our injuries. I see no issues.
How have I come to learn the meaning of the word "pain"?
This is the question that the OP poses in the first sentence. But the question is actually not about 'perception'. The study of perception is (as many on this thread have pointed out) a matter for cognitive science. But whether the color red exists apart from experience is not about perception as such. It's a philosophical question related to 'the hard problem of consciousness' and the relationship between perception and experience.
The suggestion is that I am on the left, Lionino is on the right, and that the colour we each see the apple to be is a mental phenomenon, falsely projected onto the apple. The apple does not really have the property that it appears to have.
The fact that I pass Lionino the apple when he says in our non-English language "flurgle nurgle blurgle" is utterly irrelevant to the issue being discussed.
So then, there is a difference between seeing red, hallucinating red, and dreaming red. Hence, if they all include "the mental percept", and yet they are distinct, then it only follows that the notion of the "mental percept" is inadequate/insufficient for explaining those differences.
The differences are explained by the cause of the mental percept, as I literally explained in the comment you quoted.
What causes hallucinations of red?
Quoting Michael
Did you even read the comment you quoted?
Of course, smart ass. What we call something is not equivalent to causation.
We know what causes seeing red. What causes hallucinations and dreams of red?
https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/symptoms/23350-hallucinations#possible-causes
https://health.clevelandclinic.org/why-do-we-dream
This strikes me as special pleading and a category error, holding a special rule to the sense of sight as opposed to touch and then asking why we can't publicly see the pain in the object. It's just such a confused statement. If we insist the red is in the pen (which is your thesis), the we must insist the pain is in the knife (which would avoid the special pleading). We then need to publicly experience that pain, which would be performed by each of us touching the blade of the knife and feeling the pain as a group. To demand that we must experience the pain distantly like we do color just makes a category error. Touch doesn't require photons for perception.
And note that the above doesn't suggest the color or the pain was in the mind. I'm keeping this consistent with the thesis that the object contains the attributes, not the mind. The fact that we have to reach out and touch the knife for the pain in the knife to be known to us doesn't anymore suggest the pain is an object of the mind than is color because you also must open your eyes to see the color. That is, with regard to any sense, you must make your perceptions available to the object to experience it, whether that be looking at it across the room or touching it with your finger.
I recognize this is a criticism and not a recitation of Wittgenstein which I've otherwise been delighting you with, but it just makes so little sense to me how you can concede to pain all the indirect realism concerns, but then just decree that the same things don't apply to color. For the sake of this academic experiment, I'm willing to consider the idea that we are compelled to limit our understanding of the world to that which can be spoken of, but I have to apply this game we're playing consistently. That is, if the pen has color we can point to and it remains something beyond just subjective experience, then I can't suddenly stop playing your game and then worry about pain being in its own special class that is just subjective experience.
That is, let's pick a model: Either we have these qualitative states of red and pain we can speak of and we have this world of phenomena and noumena or we just have our community of words. I'm saying pain is no different than red. Either they're both phenomenal states or neither is.
Well, your confusing pain and touch certainly is an error. They, again, are not the same. So:
Quoting Hanover This is exactly not the case with pain. It inflicts itself whether you "make your perceptions available" or not. Pain is not touch.
Quoting Hanover
What twaddle. No, that's not the "thesis" (are we writing doctorates now? That explains the length of this thread). Pain is not in the knife.
Quoting Hanover
Ok. You go with such absurdism.
Much as
Quoting Michael
You are obligated to deny that being red is communal in order to maintain your limited account. And yet, overwhelmingly, we agree as to what is red and what isn't. Here are some shades of red:
Here are some shades of pain:
Notice that the shades of red are red? Do you suppose that the shades of pain are painful? No; the items in the first are red, the items in the second are not pain.
That it has to be pointed out that pain and colour are different shows the culpability of both your lines of thinking.
I don't what follows from the fact that pain and color are different. I might be hopelessly lost.
I certainly am!
Threads such as this reach a point where the differences reach absurd levels. The basic point I would make is that colour is not entirely in the mind of an individual, but also functions at a social level. I think that pretty well undeniable.
The broader methodological point is that philosophical dichotomies such as subject/object. subjective/objective, internal/external, private/public are difficult to maintain on close examination; this is shown by the issues that arise for example if it is claimed that colour is only internal and subjective.
The claim from Michael and Hanover seems to be something like that colour is private (subjective, internal) in the same way that pain is private. But it seems to me that neither pain nor colour are entirely private, and further that there are quite important differences between our talk of pain and our talk of colour.
I suspect the usefulness of this thread has been passed, that there is little left to say.
And we agree as to what is painful and what isn't.
As always your arguments are non sequiturs.
Claims that the dichotomy of private/public is undeniable.
Quoting Banno
Then denies the dichotomy of private/public can be the subject of a claim.
Sounds legit. :up:
I don't even understand what you're trying to say here. That I can't see pain when I look at that chart? Obviously, because pain is felt, not seen. That I can't feel pain when I look at that chart? Obviously, because looking at things doesn't tend to cause pain.
But if you visited me in person then you could show me "shades" of pain by first punching me, then breaking my finger, and then having me put my hands in a bowl of bullet ants.
What, exactly, would any of that prove? It certainly wouldn't prove that pain is not a mental phenomenon. And so showing me a bunch of images that I see to be red doesn't prove that colours are not mental phenomena.
He gave the game away. If you want to talk about the biology of consciousness, he is just going to confuse you by talking about its sociology. That way he gets to complain about another repetition of the same old chestnut running over 100 pages.
Apparently, you read about a 10/10000 of what anyone on the opposite side wrote. This has been attended and move past multiple times. You trying to drag this back is what's mucked up the flow. The discussion otherwise was interesting.
Quoting Banno
Perhaps for you. That would explain why you cannot move past a distinction that doesn't touch on the conflict being worked out.
Quoting Michael
Not quite. He's trying to argue for a point neither of us(I don't think) would deny, and applying to a different problem. Standard for him, but not a non sequitur I wouldn't say.
:up: Seems a few of these around at the moment here on TPF.
Yep.
Quoting Hanover
This is a bit like saying that we can dream about apples therefore we don't know whether apples exist, because we never know whether we are dreaming. It is a kind of overdoing of skepticism which is not in fact rational.
Quoting Hanover
Do you think fearsomeness is purely internal? I would suggest looking into the emotion and reality of fear, and what elicits it.
Those dichotomies cannot properly account for that which is both. Some experience consists of both subject and object, internal and external things. All talk of experience is both, public and private.
That's the broader point that came to my mind. The inherent inadequacy of those dichotomies to be able to take sensible account of all human experience.
What counts as the bare minimum criterion for what counts as being an experience?
For starters, I say it must be meaningful to the creature having the experience. We must be able to say how.
I asked what the difference was between seeing red stuff[hide="Reveal"](what happens when we look at red stuff)[/hide], hallucinating red stuff[hide="Reveal"](which never happens while looking at red stuff)[/hide], and dreaming red stuff, [hide="Reveal"]which also never happens while looking at red stuff[/hide].
"Nothing" was your reply.
If I want you to understand red, I show you a red card. If I want you to understand sweet, i give you a piece of candy. If I want you to understand massage, I rub your shoulder.
If I want to cross categories and let you understand pleasure through vision, I create a visual scale with smiley faces. I suppose I could correlate tastes to sounds and smells to taps on the shoulder and make all sorts of scales.
None of this makes pain special.
This is so i basic I find it hard to believe it is where dispute lies, but I suspect the role of pain to Wittgenstein is being misunderstood. I'd love to think myself so clever that I pierced this complex philosophy, but I find that hard to believe.
Witty's? You need only be about a 16 year old who is not on Tik Tok to understand that he is full of it, most of hte time, and wants to upend things because its fun. Clever is what he was. I would want to be clear. Something he seemed entirely incapable of.
Yup.
Seeing red pens is an experience that is partially caused by red pens. Hallucinating and dreaming red pens are experiences partially caused by seeing red pens. Hallucinating and dreaming red pens are partially caused by red pens.
There are very different basic elemental constituents. Red pens, while playing a causal role in all three, do not play the role of elemental constituent in all three. There are no red pens in dreams and/or hallucinations of them.
I was mocking Banjos abuse of these dichotomies to serve his rhetorical purposes.
The need to tease out what is neurobiological about consciousness, and what is then socially constructed, is where my semiotic approach to cognition starts.
Consciousness of course functions for us as a cohesive whole. And yet it is an integration across a hierarchy of semiotic levels. There is information encoded in forms that are genetic, neural, linguistic and numeric. These all fuse to inform the results. Perhaps not seamlessly, but adequately. Good enough for all practical purposes.
Banjo just wants to stop the conversation before it slips beyond his narrow grasp. And who really knows why.
Yes, and I have no reason to disagree with you even though I don't currently have a grasp on the full implications of semiotics, especially as regards its application to non-human realities such as non-human biological organisms.
Quoting apokrisis
Okay, interesting. I don't often argue theism on these forums, although I am not necessarily opposed to doing so. The argument at hand is more subtle:
1. If theism is true, then God's will is an existent teleological reality.
2a. Theism is true.
2b. There are no teleological realities.
2a represents the modus ponens and 2b represents the modus tollens, and in this case we are adjudicating between 2a and 2b. I think we both reject the scientistic interpretation of 2b, and then what remains is a difference over a more narrow version of 2b, "There are no divine teleological realities."
Quoting apokrisis
...and then in this version of the argument the internalism ends up being externalized, to one extent or another. So in this rendition the naturalist will posit a brute fact where the theist posits a intentional ordering, and these sorts of disputes move further and further towards metaphysics and away from science. So if Michael were to say that color is arbitrary, I would want to know what it is arbitrary over and against. I would want to know what is precisely meant by 'arbitrary'.
Quoting apokrisis
So is pansemiosis something like the idea that semiosis occurs even where there is no organic life? Curiously, the first hit on Google initially frames the idea theologically.
Quoting apokrisis
I have never put much stock in scientific arguments for God's existence, but that is in part because I have not kept abreast of the science and would not constitute a very good judge. Reframing the supposedly brute-fact structure as intentional or teleological is not a scientific move. But I recently learned that the Big Bang was initially seen as evidence for creation by both sides, and that scientific internalists like Einstein resisted the theory because of this. I found that surprising and interesting. It is interesting that it is intuitive and commonly accepted that
My point here was not that we have clearly demonstrable arguments for the modus ponens with 2a, but rather that we have no clearly demonstrable arguments for the modus tollens with 2b. The more interesting question surely has to do with the narrower version of 2b, but I will leave it there for now.
When do you actually 'see' a Red pen?
Given that we only call the pen 'red' by convention, can this particular difference (realistically, the proximity to the trigger (whereas dreaming is far askance)) really do much lifting?
In all three cases we're experiencing the event of 'looking at an object we apprehend as a pen which will write with red ink", right? We're trying to delineate between them with levels of 'world-aptness' to ascertain whether colour obtains within, or without.
(Aside: deception also causes an issue with Banno's account quite directly - hand me that red pen. *hands you a "blue pen' which is coloured Red externally* - can you see the muddle here? Not rhetorical - if I'm missing or overthinking, please help! lol)
If the result of all this is that we never 'actually' see a red pen, when contrasting several obviously different experiences I'm unsure where that would leave us.. Uncomfortable, no doubt lol. And the question is no longer open to us. Some of this is linguistic though. When I say "see" I only mean to say that I currrently "mentally apprehend that which I have come to believe is X". Beyond this, I can't say i'm "seeing" any objects. Looking at them, sure.
When 'you' have biological machinery close enough to our own.
What difference are you drawing/maintaining? If it's unacceptably weak, then why mention it?
This is unfortunately, quite unhelpful. That obtains in all three cases and provides no basis to delineate.
Quoting creativesoul
None. This is literally something I am asking you to address. You drew the distinction. I would like a conceptual analysis of the difference between the three cases. If that distinction is unacceptably weak (I am questioning whether it is and asking for clarity)) why did you mention it?
I see the distinction you made as weak - I am trying to have you explain what it is in your mind, so we can talk about it.
Quoting AmadeusD
We already drew and maintained the distinctions between seeing, hallucinating, and dreaming?
Those still hold.
They all include biological machinery. They do not all count as seeing a red pen. Please keep up.
What distinction do you think I drew?
There are no red pens in hallucinations and/or dreams thereof.
So you've claimed.
Which distinction?
Quoting AmadeusD
I've given a brief causal history as well as an in depth enough elemental constituency.
Am I am asking for a justification. Intuitively, I am (and have been) agreeing with you. They are clearly different experiences. My point in these last two comments has been to tease out what you see as different between them, if what we're happy to say is that all three obtain in the mind.
Quoting creativesoul
I think this is incorrect, depending on your response to what the difference would be between these and the "seeing" instance. That's all I'm asking... I would call it incorrect if we cannot pick out a feature of hte 'actual' seeing of a Red pen in contrast to the other two. I hve to say, this seemed clear to me rereading the exchange.
The other things you've replied seem to assume something other htan the above, so ill wait for a response here before approaching them, if the seem relevant at that point :)
That's too bad.
The red pen is not an elemental constituent within dreams or hallucinations thereof. The difference between seeing, hallucinating, and dreaming pens is the pen.
I don't know how much plainer, clearer, or more precisely that can be stated.
You aren't adequately addressing the question. It is not plain or clear what you mean, because your claim relies on several things i am wanting clarity on.
If I am entirely misapprehending you, and you actually hold the position that "A red pen" exists out there, on the table, regardless of any facts of perception then my response is entirely inapt, and this goes back a few pages... That seems plainly wrong to me. But you're holding that there is a red pen in one instance, and not the other two. I want to know why you think that... not jus reassert it?
NB: The I responded when all you had said was "Too bad". That certainly seemed like bad faith, no?
Aha! Not at all really. My bad if that got bad in your eyes.
:flower:
I don't like the baggage of 'obtain'. Require minds... sure. Include minds... sure.
Are you suggesting the Red Pen is actually out there, in the world, whether or not it is perceived?
And that the mind merely does the perceiving of a mind-independent red pen? Yes? No?
Hold up. Biosemioticians like Stan Salthe explicitly recognise a hierarchy of grades of telos that runs from human purpose to biological function to physical tendency. Sorry, no divine intervention involved. Just the appropriate divisions of semiosis as a system science approach embracing all four ArIstotelean causes.
Quoting Leontiskos
Not really. The brute fact is structural rather than material. So developmental rather than existential.
And science has gone the same way even at Its fundamental physical level of quantum field theory. Hence Ontic Structural Realism as the recent shiny new toy in metaphysics.
Quoting Leontiskos
Yep. And science can have its modern atheistic version. One which reduces to dissipative structure theory, and so not half as exciting of course.
Quoting Leontiskos
The argument goes different. GR showed the cosmos is unstable. It would either have to be contracting or expanding. If contracting, it ought to have already disappeared from existence. It indeed exists, so therefore it must be expanding. And therefore have had an abrupt creation-like beginning. A creation event in which spacetime and its material contents got going on their eternalised expanding and cooling. Forever falling into a heat sink of their own construction.
There's a bit of an identity crisis here. I do not know what you're picking out - if anything - to the exclusion of all else with "Red Pen".
The red super fine one I last put in my wooden writing utensil holder, is still there despite my not looking at it now...
So, yes.
I would say that red pen is actually in that holder, on top of that back bench at that location, right now.
Quoting AmadeusD
I wouldn't say that.
Ah, no (after reading your response), this is my bad. "any given red pen" should have been the phrase, because it matters not what instance we're talking about. Either pens can be red, whether or not we know they are, or they can only be red in virtue of our experiencing them as red. One must trump the other, save for lower-level disagreements.
Quoting creativesoul
Okay. This may clarify some of what I was confused about in your different phrasings and descriptions.
Quoting creativesoul
What do you take the pen to be when it isn't being perceived. Red? Or Red-causing? What element of it is red, when not being perceived? This is what I am not able to ascertain in any of these realist accounts. What makes the pen red "out there" (we know that 'use' is what makes it a pen, so I'm halfway in understanding the position).
I think that's right. Pain is presented by Wittgenstein as an example of a sensation. He probably chose pain because it produced a special example, in the sense that unlike many other sensations, which he could have chosen, pain may be purely internal, without an external "cause". Nevertheless, he presented "pain" as a specific type of the more general, "sensation". Whether or not "sensation" in the sense of pain, is the same word as "sensation" in the sense of colour, so as to avoid equivocation, is another question. But Wittgenstein enthralled himself with ambiguity. That's why it's so difficult to find agreement on his "complex philosophy".
Ain't that the truth. I think this makes a lot of commentary on him redundant, too. Russell obviously had some insight, and the original translators too but overall, so much murkiness due to his ambiguous language (ironic, lol) as to what's being discussed.
Can you see something (relatively simple 'something') that could be a difference between pain and colour as sensations? Or a way in whcih one is not a sensation the way the other is and therefore supporting Witty's endless assurances that our language is hte problem, and not hte problems. LOL.
Exactly the same as it is while looking at it.
But, thank you - my confusion is now slain.
You asked me "what's the difference between hallucinating red and the mental percept that 620-750nm light ordinarily causes to occur."
The mental percept that 620-750nm light ordinarily causes to occur is the mental percept that occurs when we hallucinate red. That is why it's hallucinating red and not hallucinating green or voices. But it is an hallucination because it is caused by something like drugs rather than 620-750nm light stimulating the eyes.
Phenomenal consciousness is either reducible to or supervenient on brain activity. The only connection between distal objects and brain activity is that distal objects often play a causal role in determining brain activity. This is what the science shows.
Given this, it's not at all clear what 'direct perception' is. That phenomenal consciousness is 'of' distal objects? What is the word 'of' doing here? If, for the sake of argument, phenomenal consciousness is reducible to brain activity then this amounts to the claim that brain activity is 'of' distal objects. What does that even mean?
It strikes me that 'direct perception' requires a very different (unscientific) interpretation of phenomenal consciousness, e.g. some kind of extended immaterial mind that reaches out beyond the body.
Regardless, it is a fact that colours are constituents of phenomenal consciousness, and so an explanation of colours requires an explanation of phenomenal consciousness. The hard problem is still unsolved, and so the best we can do is recognize the neural correlates of colour percepts.
Maybe replace "of" with "about"? In the sense in which intentionality emerges from our brains with 'mental objects' being about distal objects?
What does it mean to say that brain activity is about distal objects?
Regardless, our primary concern isn't with intentionality but with appearances. As asked by Byrne & Hilbert (2003), "do objects like tomatoes, strawberries and radishes really have the distinctive [colour] property that they do appear to have?".
Prima facie one can claim that distal objects are the intentional object of perception but also that the visual imagery (e.g. the shape and colour) they cause us to experience does not resemble their mind-independent nature (much like we'd say the same about their smell and taste), i.e. maintaining the Kantian distinction between noumena and phenomena. That strikes me as being indirect realism rather than direct realism, not that the label really matters.
I can't say I am particularly interested in fitting into either box, let alone fighting for one of them.
It's questionable whether pain is properly a sensation rather than a sort of idea. This is because pain crosses all the sense types. Generally we think of pain as a type of touch, but sharp sounds can be painful, bright lights can be painful, even the tastes and smells which we judge as very bad can be painful.
When I look at my OED dictionary definitions, the first definition is "the consciousness of perceiving or seeming to perceive some state or condition of the body or its parts or senses or of one's mind or its emotions;..." and this is the most common use. Notice the use of "or" which allows ambiguity. The second definition is "a stirring of emotions or intense interest esp. among a large group of people (the news caused a sensation)".
Notice that neither definition refers directly to what is produced by a sense organ, what we might call the sense image, or the percept. Both definitions of "sensation" refer to the conscious awareness of something, which may or may not be classed as a percept. In the case of pain, there is no percept. So what happens with the conscious awareness of pain. and consequentially the use of the word "pain", is that it becomes a concept which we use to refer to a type of "sensation" which is emotionally based, rather than being based in sense perception. This creates a distinguishable difference between types of sensation, which is more formally exposed in the distinction between types of "feelings". We can use "feeling" to refer to the activity of using the sense of touch, and we can also use "feeling" to refer to things produced by the emotions. In the case of "feeling" the difference between having a percept and not having a percept is very evident from the very distinct uses of the word.
The fact that "pain" in its common usage refers to an emotion based concept, rather than a percept based concept becomes very evident in Plato's work. Pain is commonly contrasted with pleasure, and such contrasting is a conceptual function which cannot be done with percept based sensations. There is no opposite to red. Plato shows that such contrasting in itself is a faulty way of analyzing emotion based concepts, by showing why pleasure is not truly contrasted with pain. From here he moves toward an "objective" way of looking at pleasure and pain, where "objective", and "the object" of emotionally based concepts are a good, a goal. In this way, the emotionally based feeling, or sensation, has a causal object, but the object is a good, as a goal or objective, rather than a sense percept.
Quoting apokrisis
Then it sounds to me that he rejects 2b, no? Were you reading "theological" instead of "teleological"?
Quoting apokrisis
Oh, I agree that the structure is what is at stake. Later in my post I said, "Reframing the supposedly brute-fact structure as intentional or teleological is not a scientific move."
Quoting apokrisis
But it seems that, at first, not only did Einstein fail to recognize this, but he actively opposed it. For example:
Quoting Einstein and Lemaître: two friends, two cosmologies
To my understanding, later on Edwin Hubble empirically confirmed Lemaître's thesis by showing that the universe is in fact expanding, at which point Einstein capitulated. Einstein's resistance is a good example of the way that metaphysical theories interact with the scientific data.
Moving a bit further:
Quoting Leontiskos
We could call the narrower version 2c:
2c. There are no divine teleological realities.
Or, "There are no teleological realities or causes external to the universe itself." I think this is what your point with Salthe was directed against. It seems to me that the arguments here will be parallel to the arguments surrounding 2b, namely that there is a key difference between saying that one has no evidence for something and saying that something does not exist. This is sort of a topic of its own.
Im not clear what you are driving at. But I have no problem if you are saying the negative cant be proved. I cant claim evidence against a transcendent God did it story. One could always adjust a supernatural claim to lie just beyond the reality that can be evidenced.
I mean scientists can posit superdeterminism as the way to regain realism in quantum mechanics. There is always a way to suggest a hidden cause beyond the reach of the evidence available.
So sure, as pragmatists, we advance by having beliefs that we seek to doubt. Einstein had his classical presumptions and because they could be counterfactually expressed, they could be shown to be wrong. Or at least forced past the bounds of counterfactuality, as with superdeterminism.
I understand it being questionable, but I do not understand actually thinking this. Pain is a sensation of touch with varying degrees to it - high-enough, and you experience a sensation. The aversion response is certainly an emotional/psychological aspect of pain, but that aspect is not necessary to describe pain. It is the ideal response to pain (well, pain accurately alerting one to an injury anyhow).
Loud-enough noises vibrate elements of the ear in "painful" ways such that the physical vibrations send the signal to "stop/avoid this noise" to the brain to avoid damage but often, these go either unheeded emotionally, or are overwhelmed by more, or higher-degree sensations (think about wtf someone needs to turn the music down to read road signs correctly).
Similarly with other senses - smells - some chilis are physically dangerous to smell due to the chemical composition of the air which carries the aroma in question - they can destroy cells in the nose/sinuses. These are, in the cases you've pointed out, anyway, the same thing(i.e a sensation) under different levels of description - but they are not 'different' ways of accessing the same mental phenomenon. For completeness, you mention taste - but 'painful' taste is that which is actually harming the tastebuds (bloody chilis do not like humans!!) Though, i take pain to be just that, anyway so perhaps 'idea' is actually correct anyway? Sensation, as best I can tell, is the mental percept resulting from a sensory stimulus. They can, in that way, simply be wrong if our machinery isn't calibrated to accurately convey the local issue (injury) to the brain for review.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
If 'pain' can be characterised as a mental phenomenon, the 'or' is only indicating the cause (i.e what triggered the c/a-fibers). I'm unsure this allows for any per se ambiguity in the concept. The one exception here would be "emotional pain" which I think is incorrectly labelled pain rather than discomfort - which can, acceptably, be left very vague and subjective. "sensation" per se is not-well defined, i'll grant you - but it seems pretty obvious that a "bodily" sensation must be a the result of the senses. This then gets into how mental phenomena such as pain are merely triggered by the senses and so pain, within a dream, could not properly be described as sensation, but an idea. One which is triggered by the senses in some way, would be a sensation. Does that at least track with the delineation you're outlining?
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I would say this is a good example where a word is referring to two obviously different things and we can jettison that second def. for the purpose of this discussion. I take it to be a metaphorical extension of the first, in any case, to apply to 'the body of persons' involved in the 'sensation' caused. As if humans were atomic parts of a whole. So, it seems irrelevant to discussing 'bodily sensation', as we seem to be doing.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I don't think this is right, but I do think that this does happen, wrongly. The above responses go some way as to why. Emotions often conflict with the sensation of pain. I believe pain is, like vision, a result of sense perception but is simply open to the all the aberrations vision is open to, being that we never "view" the actual object in the visual field on this account. Pain is rightly not conceptualised as something 'taken in' from without, via the senses, but something produced by the sense-data of touch interacting with the sense organ (in this case, pain receptors/skin variously described as such under particular conditions of intensity, locality etc.. receiving pressure, angle, surface coverage, angle-of-motion etc.. to inform the signal to be sent). All senses are indirect in this way as I understand them both on the empirical, process related information, and the conceptual coherence (or, incoherence, really) involved. And they are all open to being wrong. I think holding a 1:1 concept of the internal representation of sensory data is probably wrong.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Which is, at best, misleading. The opposite to pain or pleasure is a lack of touch sensation. Nothing to trigger a percept of either. They aren't entirely dispositional states - 'pleasure' can be characterized as uncomfortable, and pain as satisfying.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
This, to me, went completely off the rails right before this conclusion. Introducing 'the Good' made this almost impossible for me to wade into, and I apologise as it seems to just not make much sense as a result. I realise that's as likely to be me missing something!
I also asked what the difference was between the mental percept that 620-750 light ordinarily causes to occur and seeing red, and dreaming red.
You claimed "nothing" as an answer to all three questions. If there is no difference between four things, then they are the same.
They're all experiences. Three different kinds of experiences. "Mental percept" is not one.
Hallucination, dreaming, and seeing are very different experiences. Seeing a red pen is a common experience that always includes a red pen.
Hallucinating a red pen does not.
Dreaming one does not.
They are not equivalent experiences. They are all existentially dependent upon red pens. They do not all include red pens.
They all include mental percepts. They do not all consist entirely of them. I'm cool with admitting that all dreams consist of little more than biological structures doing their thing. Dreams consist of biological autonomous neurological functioning. Red pens are not. Therefore... dreams of red pens do not consist of red pens. Hallucinations consist of biological autonomous neurological functioning. Red pens are not. Therefore...
Seeing red pens is not always and/or necessarily an experience that requires color vision. Hallucinating red pens does.
We can expose an individual devoid of the biological structures necessary for noticing color to a red pen. They are otherwise very similar in biological structures to us. They can then follow that red pen around. Clearly, they see that particular red pen. They're paying very close attention to it. They're following it with their eyes. I would not deny them of mental percepts. I would note that their percepts are not the entirety of their experience. I would not deny that they are fixated upon a red pen. Their experience of that particular red pen includes that pen, despite their inability to know it's color.
Color doesn't always matter.
They cannot hallucinate red pens. They cannot dream red pens.
Sometimes it does.
Meaningful correlations, associations, connections always matter. Red pens can become very meaningful to a color blind creature. That meaning neither results from nor consists of either hallucination or dreams of red. Red pens play a meaningful role in experience without any subjective private quale... redness.
We can agree that the negative can't be strictly proved, but I do not see it as a matter of theological unfalsifiability:
Quoting apokrisis
Einstein had a great deal of difficulty doubting his own theory because his metaphysical parameters did not admit of the possibility that his theory could be wrong. For him it was presumably not even a proper theory or thesis. A non-static universe was for Einstein bad physics in an obvious way. Similarly, for Scientism teleology is bad science, for science is supposed to be inherently mechanistic. As with Michael's positions, these claims have to do with the paradigm being used, and not primarily with the scientific data. They only become falsifiable once a paradigm shift makes room for a new kind of data.
Similarly, if the naturalist thinks that the only possible argument for theism is a god of the gaps argument, then it seems to me that it is the paradigm that is controlling his conclusion more than the data. A piece of evidence may be absent, but it may also be deemed inadmissible. It would seem that the naturalist is by definition conceiving of the only possibly live evidences for theism as inadmissible. The argument is something like, "If God were an object within the universe then he would be experimentally verifiable, and the absence of this experimental evidence is evidence of absence." The (classical) theist responds that this is a fine argument except for the fact that God is not and has never been conceived as an object within the universe. Internalism is a non-starter for the theist. It's not a matter of adjusting supernatural claims, but rather of attending to the actual claims that have been with us for thousands of years.
More pointedly, the question of whether the metaphysical structure is or is not a brute fact is not adjudicable within a naturalistic paradigm, but it does not thereby follow that it is not adjudicable. The presuppositions of the scientific domain can be interrogated, just not by science. If there can be evidence for something, then there can be evidence for the absence of that something, even when there cannot be proof for the absence of it.* The question is then not one of whether the naysayer has proof for the absence of something, but whether they have evidence for the absence of something. Certainly Michael has no proof that color is arbitrary, but the substantial question asks whether he has evidence that color is arbitrary (and this evidence will in turn help us to understand what is meant by 'arbitrary' in this context).
* And because of this the god-of-the-gaps paradigm of the modern naturalist matches the theological paradigm of the modern fundamentalist, which ensures that these two camps seldom talk past each other. Both are working with a similar conception of God.
Care to set out the match?
I don't think we can say this. There are many internal pains, sore muscles, stiffness, headaches, stomach aches, and pains of other organs. I don't think it's proper to call such pains a sensation of touch.
Quoting AmadeusD
I also do not think this proposed distinction between pain and discomfort is useful. What one person calls discomfort, another would call pain. What is subjective is the proposed distinction.
Quoting AmadeusD
Do you not have internal pains? These are not the result of any of the five known senses. You are not touching your stomach when you feel a stomach ache.
Quoting AmadeusD
I think this is all wrong. You start with the faulty assumption that pain is produced from the sense of touch, and you proceed from that false premise. Pain is not produced from the sense of touch, as internal pains demonstrate. If you knew some of the science about how pain is supposed to be an interaction between the brain and the inflicted part of the body, through the medium of the nervous system, you would recognize that your proposition is very likely false. There is no sense of touch involved in pain, there is an inflicted part of the body, and a nervous system with a brain involved. If I remember correctly, it is commonly believed, in the field of medicine, that the brain actually sends the pain signal to the inflicted part, not vise versa. This is how Tylenol is thought to work, by affecting the part of the brain which sends the pain signal.
From the early stages of fetal development, when the first synapses form, brain activity begins to spark the flame of consciousness. This process continues as the brain matures, with consciousness developing alongside. Perhaps, it might appear that consciousness supervenes on brain activity, emerging as the brain grows and becomes more complex, it is also reducible to these very brain process.
That makes consciousness both dependent and fully explainable by brain activity, and by the brains activity...I mean thinking thoughts...This unit I am seeing, instead of choosing between reducibility OR supervenience to explain what intel hasn't allowed us to see yet, shows how maybe its both working together instead.
*See Henry P Stapp, an American mathematical physicist, known for his work in quantum mechanics, particularly the development of axiomatic S-matrix theory, the proofs of strong nonlocality properties, and the place of free will in the "orthodox" quantum mechanics of John von Neumann.
Mind, Matter and Quantum Mechanics 1993: In this book, Stapp addresses the implications of quantum mechanics for the mind-body problem. He explains how quantum mechanics allows for causally effective conscious thought to be combined with the physical brain. Which aligns with what I mentioned above.
Mindful Universe: Quantum Mechanics and the Participating Observer 2007: This book explores how quantum mechanics can radically change our understanding of the connection between mind and brain. Stapp discusses the role of consciousness in the dynamics of quantum mechanics, which could support the view on the interplay between brain activity and consciousness.
Here is a link to one of his papers, if your interest hardens: "Quantum Interactive Dualism: An Alternative to Materialism" Note this paper was published in 2005, between the time his major works we complete its clear his ideas on the interactions between QM and consciousness were evolving and refined over time.
Quote from the abstract in the paper link above, "First, it injects random elements into the dynamics. Second, it allows, and also requires, abrupt probing actions that disrupt the mechanistically described evolution of the physically described systems. These probing actions are called Process 1 interventions by von Neumann. They are psycho-physical events. Neither the content nor the timing of these events is determined either by any known law, or by the afore-mentioned random elements. Orthodox quantum mechanics considers these events to be instigated by choices made by conscious agents. In von Neumanns formulation of quantum theory each such intervention acts upon the state of the brain of some conscious agent. Thus orthodox von Neumann contemporary physics posits an interactive dualism similar to that of Descartes. But in this quantum version the effects of the conscious choices upon our brains are controlled, in part, by the known basic rules of quantum physics. This theoretically specified mind-brain connection allows many basic psychological and neuropsychological findings associated with the apparent physical effectiveness of our conscious volitional efforts to be explained in a causal and practically useful way."
Bad habits became muscle memory while always paying close attention to the relationship between the cutting tool and my body. Complacency won when I did not pay attention to how close my thumb was to the tool. Two things cannot occupy the same space during the same timeframe.
Reaching over a cutter to grab a push stick is a bad habit to form. I no longer have that habit.
These are all examples of physical touch, though? These are all situations where some physical force exerted on the pain receptors has triggered a signalling cascade to your brain. Maybe there's more to be said, but I don't see a different other than in sort of spatial locale. I can hurt my tongue by running it along the edges of my front teeth, as an example. The tongue is a muscle.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I think this is shying away from the real meat here. It's not a distinction. Pains are generally uncomfortable, but not always. Discomfort is largely not painful (without the former being the case, if you see what i mean). They come apart and are distinct, but I'm not trying to put them in a relation to one another.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Addressed above, A stomach ache, generally, is the physical (sensory) event causing pain internally (though, you're actually describing discomfort here so I'm not sure your objection works anyway - internal "pain" is generally hte result of an actual physical aberration - say, a torn stomach lining. All of these feelings arise from sensory data, internal or external. I think you are insinuating that internal pain is not 'caused'? What could it be caused by if not sensory data (just, from within, not without)).
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
You say it's false - i think you haven't shown that at all. I'm unsure you've even shaken my position with what you've said...
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Dealt with, and I disagree with your account of pain. It seems plainly wrong, empirically speaking.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I do. And that is actually exactly why it appears to be true to me. What are you specifically referencing here? I ask, because all we know about pain seems to violate your position in many ways.
Some excerpts that are apt here:
"Nociception refers to ... processing of noxious stimuli, such as tissue injury and temperature extremes, which activate nociceptors and their pathways.
...
"The receptors responsible for relaying nociceptive information are termed nociceptors; they can be found on the skin, joints, viscera, and muscles.
...
"Pain perception begins with free nerve endings ... The multitude of different receptors conveys information that converges onto neuronal cell bodies in the dorsal root ganglion (stimulus from the body) and the trigeminal ganglia (stimulus from the face). There are 2 major nociceptive nerve fibers: A-delta fibers and C-fibers. A-delta fibers are lightly myelinated and have small receptive fields, which allow them to alert the body to the presence of pain. Due to the higher degree of myelination compared to C-fibers, these fibers are responsible for the initial perception of pain. Conversely, C-fibers are unmyelinated and have large receptive fields, which allow them to relay pain intensity.
...
"The body is also capable of suppressing pain signals from these ascending pathways. Opioid receptors are found at various sites ... The descending pain suppression pathway is a circuit composed of (the part missing here doesn't matter, i'm just connecting the following to the whole piece) .. It suppresses information carried via C-fibers, not A-delta fibers, by inhibiting local GABAergic interneurons."
It then speaks about how in some complex pain disorders, the pathway is aberrated and signals cross, weaken, intensify etc... due to a couple of conditions, but describes them in the above terms.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
This does not seem to be the case, at all. Unfortunately, it doesn't even seem reasonable to suggest that the brain sends a "pain" signal to the injured area. How would that even work? Where does it land? What does it do? Cause the area to simply relay more pain signals to the brain? This is getting a little silly, tbh.
It seemed to me, though I do not have the resource on hand, that the way most pain medications work (Tylenol included) is inhibiting the brain's pain receptors so as to uptake less signal from the affected area (or, none, in some cases). I did find this:
"...by directly inhibiting the excitatory synaptic transmission via TRPV1 receptors expressed on terminals of C-fibers in the spinal dorsal horn. Contrary to previous studies on the brain, we failed to find the analgesic effect of acetaminophen/AM404 on the CB1 receptor on spinal dorsal horn neurons."
This directly suggests that all that is happening is that the signals from the affected area are arrested along the ascending pain pathway.
I am familar somewhat with Roger Penrose's ideas on the subject. I've never been clear about the distinction between local and non-local however. Are they both referring to aspects of quantum space or, then, what?
But the facts forced him to change his mind. A cosmological constant was added to his equation of state. He remained uncomfortable, but so what.
The issue didn't really become a crisis until measurement showed the Universe lacked the critical mass to be in fact expanding. But then measurement also showed that there was then this "dark energy" as a new contribution to now guarantee its eternal expansion.
So whatever Einstein might have wanted to believe about anything was irrelevant as he had framed a theory with deductible consequences and thus inductively confirmable measurements. Pragmatism in action.
It is all the more impressive that such an epistemic method worked despite the deeper intuitions of one of the most brilliant ever thinkers. And that a "humble priest" could have played a part in correcting him.
Quoting Leontiskos
Again, a pragmatist asks only what use is this belief? Does the belief have observable consequences? If not, it is not even a theory capable of being wrong. So it is up to the theist to deduce the consequences of their theory such that they stand counterfactually opposed to some clear alternative and so measureable on that explicit basis.
Even the null hypothesis would do as that alternative the statistical case that there is some effect to be discussed rather than just some random noise in the data. So what difference does your version of a God make in this natural world? What difference would His absence make? What effect are you making claims for in a suitably counterfactual fashion? Where is then the evidence in terms of at least some statistical reason for a pause for thought?
Quoting Leontiskos
Of course the theist might take refuge in transcendence. But why would any rigorous epistemology go along with that? Once isn't a pragmatist because one dislikes truth. One is accepting as this thread underlines that we are epistemically bounded in being that kind of creature which models its reality rather than "experiences" its reality in some kind of direct and brute fact fashion. Internalism just is our epistemic reality.
Which is why Peirce's arguments for also an ontological internalism a pansemiotic metaphysics of immanent creation becomes such an appealing alternative.
And that seemingly wild proposition has become only ever more believable as the facts in favour of ontic structural realism, topological order, dissipative structure, quantum field theory, etc, keep spilling out of the scientific mainstream as its latest "well no-one saw that one coming, did they?" surprise.
Quoting Leontiskos
When one metaphysics endlessly has to retreat in the face of scientific advance, and the other metaphysics instead keeps looking scientifically sounder by the day, I would say history is indeed passing its judgement on the beliefs of humans.
Quoting Leontiskos
Am I operating in that paradigm? As a pragmatist, I would say not. If you can show me the effect in some controlled fashion show it isn't just nature being random then I would say, well let's start investigating that as a class of cause.
So Peirce of course had to presume something as a starting point. He "believed" nature is essentially tychic. Rooted in true spontaneity.
But then the logic of that is that absolute spontaneity can't help become what is now thought of as "order out of chaos". The pansemiosis of dissipative structure theory. Or the path integral of quantum field theory.
If everything is striving to be the case, not everything can then be the case as most of it becomes self-cancelling. Order emerges in topological fashion as all that cannot in fact self-cancel away.
This is a summary of ontic structural realism. This is how relativity comes to encode spacetime as global Poincare invariance and quantum theory comes to encode spacetime's material contents as local "chiralised" gauge invariance.
The Big Bang is the tale of infinite dimensional possibility being broken by its own dimensional symmetry breaking. Absolute spontaneity reducing itself to a Planckian residue of just three spatial directions organised by exactly those global and local symmetries that could not in the end be completely cancelled out of existence.
The Big Bang starts at the point where nearly all free possibility was wiped out. And that then resulted in a hot seed of dimensional structure a fleck of energetic order which took off towards its own form of self-cancellation or temporal inversion in expanding and cooling its way to its own Heat Death.
So as a cosmology that provides a metaphysical alternative to transcendent theism, it is pretty detailed. It relies on mathematical strength arguments about Lorentz boosts and Lie groups. It demands all the mathematical machinery of general relativity and quantum field theory. It raises a whole set of factual issues about "the missing critical mass" or "quantum weirdness".
As I say, one metaphysics runs to escaped being eaten up by scientific advance. The other is instead the product of that scientific advance. What Peirce proposed as an epistemic logic is also indeed panning out as an ontological logic. Both in the science of mind and the science of the cosmos.
For some off reason, this thread is ringing a bell and I feel a connection may exist to better explain this so its easier to picture...maybe look at this attempt I shared, my first time learning what a paradox was. Lol, I am not saying I nailed this problem at all. I didn't even use probability to answer, intuition only. But I am saying, even though I can't explain it now, I am feeling a connection is there for me to make...I'll keep you posted. https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/14022/cinderella-problem-anyone-understand-it
Yes, very true! I suppose my point is that someone who does not share Einstein's intuition will not feel any force from his claim. Such intuitions are often defended by a vague appeal to "the science," which is what I think is happening in Michael's case. Then when one probes the supposed inferences they find that there is nothing more than an intuition. My background theism causes me to desire to remain open to the possibility that color may have some non-arbitrary meaning, and this provides me with an additional motive to question the validity of the inferences. That is the minor point I was trying to make at the outset.
Quoting apokrisis
Sure, and I haven't really considered these questions vis-a-vis pragmatism. I also haven't worked out where Peirce's pragmatism ends and James' begins. At the same time, I don't know whether intuitions such as Einstein's are pragmatic in this sense. The same would go for John Henry Newman's "illative sense," which is a kind of broad and fundamental inductive or abductive belief. Not all beliefs are equally pragmatic, or equally able to be suspended.
Quoting apokrisis
I think there are many different kinds of arguments for God's existence, especially when God is taken to be transcendent and is thought to be able to manifest in very different ways. I don't really know enough about you to know what kind of argument would resonate with you, or whether I am capable of making it.
Quoting apokrisis
And why would any rigorous theology go along with the idea that God is reducible to an epistemic object? This is where the incommensurable paradigms begin to collide, and I don't know that there are neat and tidy answers to be had.
For example, is an epistemology less rigorous if it admits of beings which transcend humans, and in particular the capacities of the human mind?
Quoting apokrisis
Yes, I agree.
Quoting apokrisis
I don't know, but you began with a god-of-the-gaps inquiry and it seemed that you were unfamiliar with the relativizing of the would-be brute-fact structure. We see a similar dynamic when Aristotle is content to appeal to brute facts where Plato will desire a higher and more unified metaphysical explanation.
But my point there was that the naturalist is generally able to talk to the fundamentalist without in any way prescinding from a naturalistic paradigm, for the fundamentalist has a tendency to confront naturalism on its own terms. Think for example of intelligent design theorists, who hold that there are demonstrable and unfillable gaps. But I am more of a classical theist, and the classical theist won't generally address naturalism on its own terms. What this means is that the fundamentalist's evidence for God can straightforwardly square off against the naturalist's evidence of absence, because they disagree primarily on the particular evidence and not on the general inferences. But evidence of absence for the fundamentalist's God need not count as evidence of absence for the classical theist's God. This does have to do with transcendence, but the transcendence is not ad hoc and in fact predates the fundamentalist's approach by a large stretch of time.
Quoting apokrisis
And would you say that effects that cannot be controlled can still count as evidence?
Quoting apokrisis
Interesting.
Quoting apokrisis
Okay - I think I followed this part best. :grin:
Quoting apokrisis
So then what is the counterfactual case for Tychism? For the idea that Logos is a byproduct of chance rather than a fundamental reality?
As I read the Wikipedia article on Tychism I find that much of it seems to be in sync with theism and not opposed to it. According to that article it is primarily meant to target deterministic, necessitarian, mechanistic accounts. But I should say that many of the ideas in the culture strike me as leaning too heavily on extrapolated forms of Darwinian theory. In many ways Darwin has become our keystone to interpreting the world, and think this may be due more to a vacuum than to careful thinking or observation.
I get it now: when scientists say the world is not locally real they mean superposition and maybe something like "many worlds" (?), and so non-local would be classical. I hope that's right because it feels right. It's weird how someone can read something and not get the key words but still get something out of it lol.
Anyway- the Nobel Prize in Physics for 2022 was awarded to three scientists for proving the world is not locally real. But is this like saying that noumena is not locally real? We know from experience what the classical is and isn't.. It's pretty interesting how this raises ancient questions but dresses them in modern garb (stylish). Between observer-centric theories and, say, pilot wave theory or objective collapse theory, there is John Wheeler's "participatory universe" theory, which states that the substrate of the quantum combined with the nucleus of the consciousness is what creates the world. It's an interaction between "I" and "not I". It's more of a duality becoming a whole rather than a duality of separation, and this is what guarantees we can have knowledge of the world
Quoting Gregory Thanks for sharing some further reading! I have never heard of John Wheeler! Glad you brought him up, he's a good ole Florida boy and I am from the sunshine state myself! I will add this all to my list.....Thanks!!
You know, I have left plenty of breathing room for superposition to work in my thoughts on which theories I am leaning towards supporting with more surety. I have been swaying back and forth for the past two years, I am combining a lot of different ideas to make sense of one...I am hoping in time we will be able to eliminate many silly options, that potentially bog down the systems flow of intel more than we know....
Something about MWI, I just can't get on board with. I never liked it and it just sounds off to me so I haven't bothered entertaining it much. Perhaps, I could do a little peeking and see if anything sticks out that's new. I guess it will have to be done on my end eventually to be sure that its wrong. It doesn't seem solid enough for provable progress to be had from there though, maybe before its time?
I have no agenda so I am easily adaptable at the phase I am in, creating the framework for a bigger discussion. I am open and again, left plenty of room to comfortably account for superposition to work. I feel like we have the parts, we just have to start building the damn thing...with no template but as one.
Probably a reason I never liked MWI was because it goes against, [ I believe Wayfarer mentioned it first in Donald Hoffman thread - (with refer to Bohr/Einstein) ], the Copenhagen interpretation, MWI theories are saying that the wave function never collapses and that every possible outcomes of the quantum event exists in its own separate universe...that is just not working for me, the words alone are not adding up. Something feels off.
I currently lean towards the Von Neumann-Wigner interpretation, also known as "consciousness causes collapse," suggesting that, like I said in the first explanation about non-local and local, that consciousness of the observer plays a critical role in the collapse of the wave function. Not just focusing on the role of the observer in the causing of the wave function collapse, like the original Copenhagen interpretation. That is focused on the probabilistic side of QM and that is not my forte. THAT is evident and what is clearly shown in my Sleeping Beauty Paradox* twist, that probability nor mathematics is my strong suit...weirdly enough, though that I am still seeing connections, as I do mention in the thread from 1+ year ago, the measurable nature of the experiment and did so before learning about the actual concepts from a reputable source working in the field. Fun!!!
But yeah in Stapp's work the influence of Von Neumann's Process 1, is big too. You can read about it in the paper I linked earlier.
*Tired thinker thread OP titled, Cinderella problem* and hypericin posted OP after tiredthinker, called Sleeping Beauty Paradox. I commented because I wanted to show that a thread with this paradox was already started and also included a summary of my twist. See Pg 11/20 of hypericin's thread. I got no response in either thread. Perhaps, reasonably so. I didn't even know what I was talking about....or did i?! Kidding, i know nothing :cool:
The red part of hallucinating red, dreaming red, and seeing red are all the same thing; the occurrence of that mental percept, either reducible to or supervenient on neural activity in the visual cortex, that is ordinarily caused by 620-750 light stimulating the eyes.
The when and how it is caused to occur is then what distinguishes dreams, hallucinations, and non-hallucinatory waking experiences. It's a dream when it occurs when we're asleep, it's an hallucination when it occurs when we're awake and in response to something like drugs, and it's a non-hallucinatory waking experience when it occurs when we're awake and in response to light stimulating the eyes.
And maybe I am not your classical naturalist. If you take structuralism seriously, matter isnt really very material when you get down to it. Even Aristotles prime matter or Anaximanders Apeiron are a little too substantial. Platos Khôra isnt right either but has something to recommend it. Somehow the material principle must be reduced to the purist notion of a potential. As in perhaps a Peircean vagueness or quantum foam.
Form is also only expressed as limitation. The inevitability of symmetrical simplicity. The standard model of particle physics keeps pushing until it finds someway to wind up at the ground zero of U(1). The universe in its final state as a bath of holographic blackbody radiation.
So as a metaphysics, neither matter nor form appear very real in any substantial sense. Reality seems derealised in a way that neither naturalists nor theists would think about things. It is all a lot more tantalising.
Quoting Leontiskos
Tychism pairs with synechism. So you have local fluctuations and global continuity. The systems science story of hierarchical order. Each of these conceptions grounds the other. They are really each others inverse by logical definition. Chance and necessity as the opposing limits defining the actuality we find sandwiched between these two limiting extremes.
Logos and flux would be another twist on the same thought.
Quoting Leontiskos
Well Peirce lived in a very theistic times. There was plenty of social pressure, and advantage, to frame things in that light. And I dont think a semiotic metaphysics in general could come across as clearly opposing an immanent kind of idealism or divine principle as - as I argued - it shouldnt either stand for anything like an orthodox material account of Nature. It is poised in some metaphysical space of it own that sees both classical materialism and classical idealism as suffering from misplaced concretism and not tuned into the subtleties of Aristotelean hylomorphism as an argument.
Quoting Leontiskos
Well evolution is a pretty robust logical concept. How would you even prevent it happening in the sense that given a variety of possibilities, the most effective - in what ever sense that means - is going to win out.
Why else is physics so tied to the principle of least action? The path integral says every quantum event is a sum over a whole universe of possibilities. Thats a pretty dramatic application of Darwinian competition in its physicalist sense.
Your equivocating "red".
It seems that you focus on the sensory aspect of pain, and I focus on the affective aspect of pain. I did this to argue that pain is not simply sensory, as you claim. Since "pain" in its scientific representation, is understood to consist of both of these aspects, we must be very careful if we try to assert that it is one or the other.
Do you agree that it is wrong to say that pain is simply a specific type of touch sensation? Unpleasantness is a defining aspect of "pain", and this makes the experience referred to by this word more than a simple sensory experience, there is also an emotional aspect of the experience called "pain". For comparison consider the tase known as "sweet". This is a basic taste which most people enjoy. However, "enjoyment" is not inherent within the definition of "sweet", like "unpleasantness" inheres within the definition of "pain".
That example demonstrates the following conceptual difference. It is understood that whether or not sweetness is enjoyable, is dependent on the conditions of the subject experiencing the sweetness, and so this emotional "affect" of enjoyment, is said to be "subjective". In the case of pain, unpleasantness is a defining feature, so one cannot feel pain without the unpleasantness, and so this emotional aspect is an "objective" aspect of pain, it is a necessary condition.
Therefore the emotional aspect of the taste, sweet, is separable from the sensory experience of sweetness, so that we can talk about the sensory experience without considering the emotional aspect. However, in the case of "pain", unpleasantness is the defining feature of that concept, and so we cannot separate the emotional aspect to talk about the sensory experience of pain, as if it is not necessarily unpleasant. We can though, separate the sensory aspect and talk about "pain" as an emotionally based concept, representing unpleasantness, without the necessity of any sensory input. And, the fact that "pain" as an emotional concept, is a true representation of the reality of pain, is evident from experiences such as phantom pain, and some forms of chronic pain.
I am being very explicit with what I mean by the word "red", which is the opposite of equivocation. I'm saying that the colour red, as ordinarily understood, is the mental percept that 620-750 light ordinarily causes to occur, and that this mental percept exists when we dream, when we hallucinate, and when 620-750 light stimulates our eyes.
Any other use of the word "red", e.g. to describe 620-750 light, or an object that reflects 620-750 light, is irrelevant, because the relevant philosophical question is "do objects like tomatoes, strawberries and radishes really have the distinctive [colour] property that they do appear to have?", and this question is not answered by noting that we use the word "red" in these other ways.
Quoting apokrisis
Not all naturalist thinking is limited in this way. Joseph Rouses radical naturalism is one example of alternative paths that are being taken by new materialists.
Thanks for the paper. In modern quantum theory they make as fine distinctions as scolastics of old. How many angels can fit in a quark, so to speak. The thing about Many Worlds is that people wonder, regret, and dream of what "could have been" a lot. Humans want it all, however it is that they get it i guess
I look at it almost like multitasking, maybe that's not the word I should use...but I kind of relate to what I can only describe because lack of better words, as "living in my head" as I let things get to my head. Subjectively speaking from my own life experiences as ME, when I am in this mode it seems to effect my performance. I tend to shut down under pressure, I used to cry easily if someone yells too scary and loud, or if I got in trouble at school no matter how stupid, I avoid confrontation, I have insane stage fright, but its not that I couldn't learn to control myself better, its that for some people I think the mind does bring outcomes that are undesired and inconsistently messing with the performances or messing with the way I end up handling a situation. I am still too worried about what people think, but have come a long way. So proud.
Where was I? Ah yes...the damage!
I think some times we can/ought to be able to "undo" or "redo" or "take-back" a decision or act before the damage is fully done or run its course. Sometimes the damage or "outcome" or "result" that comes from the decision, choice, act is not...it's too late. [Now, now, where could it be? where could that take place, a choice that is take back able? where is it still not too late? Hm? Ill give a hint. Think: privacy of your mind] :wink:
Those undesired or unnecessary outcomes stemming from questionable behaviors* or as I like to call them "unnecessary necessities" that bring results within a certain time frame whether it brought quick response results or a lag...that time clip is of interest to me. When the triggered response shows up in the body we can track whether it was instinct, intent, learned skills, reasons, beliefs, desires, maybe life they lead (lifestyle, identity, are you lost or found?) that leads to the an act, choice, decision that caused the damage to the line of no return...
What unit are those outcomes even in and how can we smush it in with time constraints or clips to get anything useful out of all this? Perhaps, it's not worth it.
BUT I still wonder if this is measurable...a limit, maybe? There is a line, i think, that when its crossed, we can't turn back. The damage that was done, consequences are seemingly immediate (to our physical bodies and selves at least).
Freak accidents should be tied into this somehow, with that time is important as it is always somehow constraining when its in decision-making moments and time it takes for that choice to bring the bad outcome, how quick the results play out from when the thought first stemmed in the mind, how much was thought out and how long did it take to act on that thought...and where did that thought come from?
I don't expect you Gregory, or anyone to answer or get into all this here...though I'd love to go back and forth all night. And could.
You had an interesting take on Many Worlds, a bit relaxed for me sure but like I said when I replied to the quote I wouldn't disagree. I joke when I say this but I am jealous of that, a relaxed take. As I am the opposite in character. Intense...
Anyways, as I was relating to these people you speak of stuck in "could have" in a somewhat similar way, I think but not exactly. I just definitely get what it could be like, what it means, how to get out of the stuck pattern of thinking that's keeping us stuck. Its tough and especially considering environments, circumstances, abilities,moods,will? etc...that do play a role into thinking patterns, some times.
These decisions could be linked to lifestyle and social life. Even personality, behavior, patterns, themselves in the individual can effect each other differently. It's not so easy to pin-point, I am realizing but I think doable. I am worried if any of this would be worth it, I could be unbothered if it wasn't...
Its like we constantly have to remind ourselves and work at it with self (in privacy of mind) and I think its important to not be fully recluse. Being alone in this process is quite...melancholic. With support from another that cares about you in a place of knowing that they have your back, no judgement, mutual trust and love. That you can be that back to another, is just as important and the lesson that also needs to be learned. Its the give and take...love and be loved. Is this fairness or balance? I don't know which works better, does it make a note worthy difference? I sharpened my pencils....
I imagine this data hard to capture though as its difficult to link what effects what. As once it comes to the subjective level of each our own lives, experiences, beliefs (if any-religion), circumstances, positions, abilities, etc. it could be tough to test given how inconsistent our skills to get reliable intel, gather it, and determine weights and values. It may be tough to communicate what exactly is going on, from either end...Unless honesty is a verified step that comes after the initial aware or unaware results, that focuses or filters the A or U into new folders for focused results...
Time can be a very hard thing for people because we only have so much of it. If we want everything to be perfect, we have to accept that for every mistake there can be an equal or greater victory.
But Rouses concern here appears epistemological whereas I was talking ontological commitments. Rouse wants to place the scientific image within some wider pluralistic space of materialistic images. I am instead asking about the best possible version of that scientific image. What would it be like to bring our scattered scientific understandings of the world into one coherent image of natural being?
A difference would likely be that the image in our minds has to be so abstracted and mathematical that it restructures our own habits of thought. We would be picturing a dynamical pattern of growth and symmetry breaking. Our understanding would be more kinesthetic in being about the movements of forms coalescing in spaces. A holistic geometry of relations rather than just some kind of cause and effect narrative.
If you are thinking in terms of pure structuralism, everything drops away except a stabilising architecture of relations - the constraints that produce the freedoms that compose the constraints in the one single triadic web of action.
And there you would have it. How reality hangs together according to what science has discovered. Its deep structural logic. The symmetry that imposes itself on all possibility.
Getting to that level of the scientific image is what anyone who really gets the geometry of nature right in their heads is doing. But it is not then an easy thing for people to share and compare. That is one reason I would always offer Peircean semiotics as an anchor. And systems science in general. The dynamical structure of nature is a form not to be seen as if from the outside but something to become a lived and embodied experience.
It has to be an image in the internalist kinesthetic sense of always knowing which way to move so as to flow with the flow of the natural structure.
No. The opposite of equivocation is using one and only one sense of a key term in a logical argument about the ontology of our referent(s).
Well, that remains a contentious matter. The 'red part', huh?
:brow:
There are common elements within each. The mental percept that 620-750 light ordinarily causes to occur is but one. It does not follow that seeing red, dreaming red, and hallucinating red are equivalent in every way. There is no distinction between four different 'things' according to what you've argued(claimed and reaffirmed when later asked).
It does not follow from the fact that seeing, dreaming, and hallucinating red all involve the mental percept that 620-750 light ordinarily causes to occur that there is no difference between seeing red and the percept under consideration.
There are physical, non-physical, subjective, objective, internal, external, private, public, meaningful and meaningless elements. All three kinds of experience differ from one another in their elemental constitution.
You've no ground to speak in such ways. The consequences of your claims - if true - is that you cannot further discriminate between those four things. What is the difference?
Nothing.
The experiences consist of mental percept. They also consist of auditory functioning. We do not conflate hearing a sound with the sound. We ought not conflate seeing red with red, dreaming red with red, and/or hallucinating red with red.
Those are very different in the constitution. They are existentially dependent upon one another.
Seeing red pens is an experience that always includes red pens, whereas dreaming and hallucinating them does not - cannot. That's one elemental difference. The pen.
There is no red pen while dreaming and hallucinating red pens.
So? I'm talking about colours, not pens.
There is a clear distinction between wavelengths of light and the corresponding colour. We can certainly conceive of a variation of this image with the colour red on the left, the colour violet on the right, but the wavelength staying as it is, with the shorter wavelength on the left and the longer wavelength on the right. Such could even be the case for organisms with a different biology, and so a different neurological response to the same stimulation. We even see examples of that with the dress, where different colours are seen by different people despite looking at the same screen emitting the same light.
And the fact that we use the adjective "red" to describe tomatoes because they look to have the colour on the right is completely irrelevant. They look that way because they reflect that wavelength of light, and our biology just happens to be such that objects which reflect that wavelength of light look to have that colour. That's all there is to it.
But the colour just is that mental percept, falsely believed by the naive realist to be a mind-independent property of the tomato. Physics and neuroscience has taught us better.
:yikes:
Not only that, but colour is far more complicated than your simple description. Our eyes are never receiving one simple wavelength of radiation from an object. there is always a mixture to be discerned. Mixing is the art of the artist. A red object is not simply an object emitting or reflecting light photons only at some specific point between 650 and 700 nanometers. And the dress is a fine example of the problems we may encounter dealing with the mixing of radiation.
Take a look around your field of vision, and notice all the different colours, flowers are great and may make you wonder how evolution produced such an array of beauty, The human eye is capable of discerning millions of different colours, and this is not a matter of there being an infinite number of points between 400 and 700 on the number line, it is a matter of mixing. On top of all that mixing of photons with different wavelengths (if "photons with different wavelengths" makes any logical sense), there is the matter of non-mixing, the boundaries we see.
At the edge of each object there is a boundary, and there is background radiation, foreground radiation, radiation coming from the right and from the left, with an endless number of boundaries in a common field of vision. The capacity to perceive boundaries is the most fascinating aspect of the sense of vision. Because we can discern such a huge number of differences in the various mixtures, a slight change to that mixture is evident as a boundary. The boundaries give us the impression of objects. But what exactly is a boundary? A non-dimensional point of difference? A one-dimensional line of difference? A two-dimensional angle, or three-dimensional corner of difference? Of course it's not an angle or corner at all, it's curved in some way. And what lies behind that boundary, to the inside of the object, where light doesn't seem to be able to penetrate?
Quoting apokrisis
Th epistemological for Rouse is secondary to the ontology of agential materiality, what he calls intra-action. This ontology erases the boundary separating nature from culture, the manifest image of thought from the scientific image of nature. His point is that a best possible image is always going to be relative to commitments and material practices which are contingently formed through indissociable interaction between the world and our purposes.
Sure, and I don't really know enough about Peirce to engage these things. I tend to read Aristotle through Aquinas, although I recognize that in many ways Aristotle was the better philosopher.
Quoting apokrisis
Okay, but Logos also seems to be something different from both chance and necessity. Nevertheless, theism tends to be averse to the notion of fundamental flux, and this is at least one data point where classical theism clashes with a Peircean (and also an Aristotelian) model.
Quoting apokrisis
But it is interesting that Peirce was not opposed to Medieval thought in the same way that modern science traditionally has been. For example, he read thinkers who his contemporaries were largely ignorant of, like Aquinas and especially Scotus. For this reason theistic semioticians like John Deely relate to Peirce in an entirely different way than they relate to scientists bound by modern thought.
Quoting apokrisis
Right, and it does not seem to be as agonistic and reactionary as many of the forces at work in modern science.
Quoting apokrisis
As I understand it, there are competing models that do not make such a strong use of the Darwinian principle of randomness or random mutation.
But considering the idea that the most effective possibility will win out, are we saying that what is known in a prior way to be most effective will in fact win out, or is "most effective" being defined as whatever ends up winning out? It is that dallying with necessitarianism which strikes me as odd, especially as a keystone for interpreting increasingly large swaths of reality. Teleology is becoming more and more acceptable, and yet the telos seems to always be up for grabs. Mechanistic science avoided the whole problem by turning a blind eye, but once teleology is admitted the idea of an ordering Intellect or Mover becomes more plausible.
Thats still just epistemology.
Hence the God of the gaps issue. My position argues from the point of view that even chaos cant help but self-organise itself into some form or order. Chaos negates itself. Therefore order emerges.
Quoting Leontiskos
Yes. When learning about Peirce as a group of biologists and complexity theorists in the 1990s, the Peircean scholars making sense of his vast volume of unpublished work were mostly theology researchers. Deely was one.
Quoting Leontiskos
It depends how much information we have about the situation. If you know that the U(1) symmetry of electromagnetism is the simplest possible chiral form, then it is not a surprise that the Big Bang did not stop evolving until it arrived at that final simplicity.
If you know that the chemical reaction with the most bang for buck on the planet Earth is the redox reaction of carbon-oxygen bonds, then it is no surprise that life on Earth kept evolving until it not only could harness this reaction but even set up the planet to have its Gaian balance of oxygen and carbon.
So the basic entropic race drove the Cosmos towards an ultimate symmetry breaking simplicity, and Life, as the negentropic response, was driven towards its maximum negentropic advantage.
The goals existed in dialectical fashion. And they forced Nature through a whole set of unlikely hoops so as to arrive there.
Quoting Leontiskos
Science earnt its keep by being the epistemology that delivered a mechanised world. Teleology could take a back seat as technology was the pragmatic point. Humans existed to supply the point of a world of machines.
But when it comes to now incorporating telos into science, the mathematical inevitability of topological order or dissipative structure is how that is happening.
That could be seen as a thumbs up for Platonism, divine immanence, idealism, or whatever. Or it could be seen as the arrival of a structuralist understanding of Nature that rides on the back of stuff like Lie groups, thermodynamics, path integrals, and Darwinian selection.
Quoting apokrisis
And I suspect Rouse would consider Peirces view of the scientific image as an epistemologically-based first philosophy:
Of course. He wound things right back to raw phenomenology so as to get going again on a more solid epistemic basis. That is how he could then commit so wholeheartedly to an ontology where the Cosmos is the evolutionary product of "the universal growth of concrete reasonableness", its laws "the development of inveterate habit".
How we can develop a logical understanding of the world is then our best model for how the world itself could come to have that logical structure. Epistemology becomes ontology in its most direct possible fashion.
A reasonable person is going to find a reasonable universe the Kantian point. But then also, a reasonable universe is going to eventually find itself inhabited by minds that can echo its reason. That is how Peirce closes the loop with his pragmatism.
This is a good summary....
Quoting apokrisis
i certainly agree that the way that we characterize the genesis and nature of human reason and logical understanding serves as a model for our understanding of the world. If we believe we can ground this reason in the sovereign epistemology of realism, then this will define our understanding of the world. But how would
the universe look to us, and how would we approach the structure of its reasonableness, if we adopted a post-sovereign epistemology?
But dont we - even at the meta-epistemic level - ground it all in pragmatism? A chair is real enough to take my weight.
Your quote aims at the usual fashionable social good of pluralism. But that seems to be reasonable only as an epistemic claim based on an endless capacity to doubt. Pragmatism instead is a positive alternative in being based on a willingness to believe - and then test. Belief becomes an inveterate habit if it keeps passing the test. And that same evolutionary credo explains reality as a whole.
So all this talk about struggles and boundaries seems only to come from a presupposition about pluralism and its need to overcome totalising discourses, particularly ones such as pragmatism which seem intolerably successful. Just too good to be true.
But lets first address the actual epistemic difference that separates those who claim there is always going to be a reason one can doubt - hence all possibilities remain forever in play - and those who instead say being reasonable has to be founded in a willingness to hazard a guess and live pragmatically with its consequences. That is the one best way to proceed when it comes to knowledge.
Well put
The light without color?
Earlier you forwarded the claim "there is no color in light". The visible spectrum is light. If there is no color in light, and the visible spectrum is light, then it only follows that there is no color in the visible spectrum.
Yet you offer a rainbow called the visible spectrum.
Colorless rainbows. Earlier I was pointing out that possible unacceptable logical consequence. Here it is in it's glory.
Light is just electromagnetic radiation, which is the synchronized oscillations of electric and magnetic fields. Colour is not a property of these fields. When it stimulates the eyes this causes neurological activity in the visual cortex, producing colour percepts. Just like chemicals stimulating the tongue cause neurological activity in the gustatory cortex, producing taste percepts. Colours are no more "in" light than tastes are "in" sugar.
Your naive projection has long since been refuted by physics and neuroscience.
Are you saying that there are colorless rainbows?
Light is unlike chemicals.
Correct, they are like tastes. They are mental percepts caused by neurological activity, often in response to sensory stimulation.
It's not clear what you mean by the question, but I'll quote Newton's Opticks:
Rainbows look coloured because the various wavelengths of light cause various neurological activity in the visual cortex producing various colour percepts. This is the scientific fact.
It follows from what you wrote. I showed that.
Quoting apokrisis
The chair certainly produces predictable constraints and affordances in response to our engagement with it, but the meaning of chair, that is, what those constraints and affordances entail, are the result of neither of a practice-independent reality impinging itself on us anor world-independent conception forcing itself on the world. Rather, the pragmatic use defines the sense of the reality of the chair, and as our practical engagements transform themselves in tandem with the world that they shape, the meaning of a pragmatic use context, and the empirical and theoretic concepts built from it, changes its sense. Knowledge doesnt represent the reality of things in the world, it anticipates and enacts relations of active interaction with a world.
Quoting apokrisis
We are already intimately and actively embedded within a world, which means that we are always thrown into beliefs, practical forms of meaningful engagements with our surrounds. Truth and falsity relate to the relative amenability of aspects within those intelligible patterns of engagement. We dont just test to confirm already anticipated events, we also anticipate beyond what is confirmed and true, in the direction of not already foreseen possibilities that may shift our conceptions. Reality isnt something we simply aim to explain, but to participate in constructing in new directions.
Be equivocating.
Quoting creativesoul
These comments are inconsistent. The first states the visible spectrum is light. The second states the visible spectrum is biologically created. The first is a direct realism claim. The second is an indirect realism claim.
An internal experience of light can be experienced without there being any external light source. These are called phosphenes and they can be created predictably with electrodes in the brain, so much so that they can assist those with damaged optic nerves to "see."
https://www.pennmedicine.org/departments-and-centers/ophthalmology/about-us/news/department-news/vision-scientist
The point of this is that it is empirically proven that an internal, subjective experience can be evoked by direct brain stimulation. This means that you cannot conclude anything about the constitution of the stimulus from the experience. The smell you smell is the product of stimuli upon the brain, so the perception is entirely the creation of the brain.
You can no more say the electrode is a dot of light than you can say the tree is green.
So how does that impact my position given that I've already been explicit that I am rejecting Cartesian representationalism the ontology that permits all representation to be misleading and instead promoting a Kantian/Peircean enactivism? A modelling relation view where our beliefs only have to be "near enough for all practical purposes or observable consequences".
Quoting Joshs
And so? Didn't I say that Peirce started to get things right by beginning over from that givenness and then carefully examining its logical structure.
Quoting Joshs
Again, I just shake my head as you describe the Bayesian Brain at work. We come at the world armed with all the habits of anticipation that were found to be required to cope with that world. As babes, our phenomenology is just a blooming, buzzing, confusion. From experience, we learnt to pragmatically organise this into a known world behaving in predictable ways. Like little scientists, we formed the stories and lived by their consequences, continually growing and learning, updating our habits of belief to the degree that practice required.
You are not saying anything I wouldn't say here. But you are avoiding the point I made. And that is that your pluralism relies on the claim all knowledge can be doubted, while my pragmatism says it is only unreliable belief that needs to be adjusted.
Your pluralist project appears to be reassert the very Cartesianism you would claim to reject as an enactivist. To retreat into the privilege of "personal phenomenal experience" at the expense of the broader social level enactivism offered by a pragmatist epistemology Peirce's community of reason seems a very backward move to me. Or certainly, self-contradicting.
The first paragraph shows the consequences of adding Michael's earlier claims to known fact.
The second paragraph is also known fact. It makes no difference to me whatsoever which one counts as "direct realism" or which one counts as "indirect". I'm neither. At least, I reject the idea of color as a biologically independent entity.
And yet... you and Michael are doing exactly that.
Quoting apokrisis
How does Peirce understand the relation between model and what is to be modeled? Would he agree with the following from Rouse?
Quoting apokrisis
Rouse follows Wittgenstein, Nietzsche and Heidegger in dissolving the basis of Cartesian doubt. Descartess understanding of the basis of skepticism, the gap between the perceiving subject and the perceived world, is based on unexamined presuppositions concerning the nature of subjectivity and objectivity which produce this gap (and this doubt) in the first place. We always stand within one social framework or another of practices of meaning, and the concept of doubt simply doesnt arise at the level of the framework as a whole. It is only within the structure of a particular contingent framework (language game, paradigm, form of life, constructed niche) that we can doubt particular facts and talk of truth and falsity.A language game provides us with the presuppositions that make doubt or validation intelligible. When we move from one language game to another, it is not a question of doubting or invalidating the previous game, but of entering into a new world. What constitutes reliable or unreliable belief is only determinable within each game, but does not apply to transitions between them. Did Kuhn say that Newtonian physics was replaced by modern physics because the former was an unreliable form of belief, or because, while both were reliable in their own way, the latter solved a greater number of puzzles?
Quoting apokrisis
Im perfectly comfortable agreeing with Foucault and Deleuze that the subject is an effect produced by social processes of subjectification, and that points of view are only intelligible within larger shared practices of meaning.
Strawdogs and ad homs... wonderful.
Colors corresponding to wavelengths of light...
Are there colorless rainbows?
I responded to this above. If Newton doesn't answer the question then you need to clarify what you mean by it.
I'm not concluding anything from my experience. I am telling you what physics and neuroscience have determined. I accept what the scientists say about the way the world works, not what some armchair philosopher says.
Quoting Michael
My question is: Why are humans such suckers for foliage?
Reds, yellows, oranges, browns. What do we get out of seeing the foliage? Is it a sign for the opportunities to come? Is it the weather we love? Is it the the photo op? Is it the beauty? Is it nature, showing us this beauty? Do we realize that?
The changing colors of leaves in the fall, for example, show their aging life phase. BUT what are animals seeing that we are not equally concerned with, or aware of, as we sip our pumpkin spice chai latte's, living our best lives under the foliage? Posing for "pictures or it never happened" to share this moment with our fans, they will see on our socials how we show off our meals and our acts in the day via Shoutbox or Instagram! It signals to people different messages than what it signals to animals, either way its updating information in our brains...were learning to "know" something more from this experience...both ends.
For animals, the leaves changing colors is a sign for the changing climate and what the next move is. Observing these changes can predict a lot about the family, tree, and the environment.
Another important part that color attributes to in nature is involved in a dynamic process occurring with plants, fruits and veggies and their color changing process. As fruits ripen, the degradation of chlorophyll reveals other pigments that were always present, and additional pigments are produced. This process is signalling ripeness to animals, which in turn aids in seed dispersal. This could show how color changes are not random but serve a purpose seemingly specific to the survival of certain species in nature.
I don't like the taste of browning bananas, I like them while they're green!
Our perception of color is influenced by sensory and neural mechanisms, but the role of color in nature points to an external reality that transcends individual perception. I'm aware that while color seems to have an objective basis in nature, it doesn't fully resolve whether colors exist independently of perceiving minds.
So she thinks, so she knows... Then of course to remain silent in irrelevance as one would anyways, is fine because no one wants to see it. No one wants to hear it. Or them. They are too ugly, words are too sad, and the lives are too painful. Not a single soul needs it. We also don't need to see what is, only what works for us to survive and reproduce. The consequences are colorful and your behavior is telling. It's called a "red flag" for a reason...we want more from things than we ought to think about in silence, in acts that never come to light. The thoughts, ideas, dreams, memories. We want answers before we are fit to handle and when we are willing to accept what those options are, it may be too late to experience again.
How rude of me to think, "Hide all the ugly people, I dont want to look at them." Ha! But how nice of me to be honest with my preferred....taste. Remember, the Lipstick Effect? How colors and visual appeal have deep-rooted significance in human behavior.
And also, as humans, our conceptual frames are socioculturally expanded. We are involved in some grander language game. Joshs born Aztec is very different from Joshs born in, say, 1970s Ohio, or 12th Century India.
But do you now agree that sociocultural multiplicity that pluralism, that degree of social freedom is still the product of pragmatic constraints? That it is a way of life that works in the usual organismic sense of being able to repair and reproduce the fabric of its being over some longer run? As a set of habits, it has proven itself properly tested against a larger ecological reality?
So to claim plurality as itself "natural" can only be true within the framework of pragmatism.
One could of course claim that plurality is natural as there is something else that transcends the pragmatism of being an ecologically-constrained organism. For example, a target beyond "this world" in the shape of a divine imperative or some moral absolute.
But is this the argument you are making? And if not, are you content with an ecological constraint on the freedom of our language games and ways of life?
We can try stuff out within those limits? We can do our best to imagine ourselves a better world by more deeply understanding the world we were already thrust into with some set of genetic habits.
We probably do agree this far. Except a lot of those with a utopian concern for the current state of human society don't really seem to want to factor in the environmental constraints on the expression of our social freedoms.
I would argue for example that social justice becomes a nice to have when the question is how do we avoid ecological disaster.
That is why I focus on the "superorganism" analysis of the human condition. The one that places our collective trajectory in its larger thermodynamic context. Our everyday choices must be seen to be making pragmatic sense within that long-run conceptual frame.
You're contradicting yourself at nearly every turn, in addition to the fact that your 'argument' leads to the absurdity of you claiming out loud, for everyone to see, that you do not conclude anything about stimulus from your experience all the while insisting that there is no color in stimulus.
Notice that this is not the conclusion of your account, but a presumption.
Quoting Michael
No, you aren't. They have 'determined" no such thing. You are treating the presumption as if it were a conclusion.
You are taking the special case in which for the purposes of experiment researchers restrict "seeing red" to having a "mental percept of red" and taking this to be what "seeing red' is in every other case.
Quoting Michael
An imagined naive realists and mind-independent properties. You haven't explained what that might be. Is your claim that "The tomato is red" is true only when someone is looking at it? So there are no red tomatoes in a box, unobserved? One can never order a box of red tomatoes without threatening metaphysical collapse?
Does the mildew smell nauseating when no one is smelling it?
[Quoting Banno
There is no nauseating mildew in a box unsmelled? One can never order a box of nauseating mildew without threatening metaphysical collapse?
Quoting Banno
Someone hasn't. That's for sure.
But making me feel nauseous isn't like making me see red!
Yes it is.
Was this one?
:yawn:
Seemed that way too me too
I'm reporting what the science says.
Opticks:
Neural representations of perceptual color experience in the human ventral visual pathway:
Vision science: Photons to phenomenology:
Color:
I'm not. I'm saying that our everyday, ordinary conception of colours is that of sui generis, simple, qualitative, sensuous, intrinsic, irreducible properties, not micro-structural properties or reflectances, and that these sui generis properties are not mind-independent properties of tomatoes, as the naive colour realist believes, but mental percepts caused by neural activity in the brain, much like smells and tastes and pain.
The relevant question "do objects like tomatoes, strawberries and radishes really have the distinctive property that they do appear to have?" is not answered by engaging in a linguistic analysis of all the ways that the word "red" or the phrase seeing red are used, and so your continued insistent to appeal to language is a fundamentally flawed approach to the problem. The only people who can answer the question are physicists and neuroscientists. Armchair philosophy is useless in this situation.
I genuinely think this thread has made it clear that the discomfort with this (apparent) reality is all that lies behind htis debate.
Well, you're reporting what the writer says. If the author is a scientist, then you're reporting what a scientist says. And they... and we... are theorizing from observation/experiment. Not all scientists agree on the theoretical extrapolations you're presenting. Theoretical physics is philosophy. So, it seems to me that you're reporting on both, the experiments, and the philosophical explanations thereof. Those are flawed as well, as I'll address shortly.
First...
Here's what I'm saying: The biological machinery under consideration - in complete and total absence of external stimulus - is inherently incapable of seeing, dreaming, or hallucinating anything at all, colors notwithstanding. Seeing, dreaming, and hallucinating colors takes more than just the biological structures.
Second...
I'm not disagreeing that hallucinations and dreams happen even though there is no typical external stimulus present. I mean, hallucinating and dreaming red pens, never includes a red pen. It is only after one has seen color, that can one hallucinate and/or dream that color. It is during dreams and hallucinations that the same biological structures behave as if they were seeing a red pen, not the other way around. There is an existential dependency at hand here. It's important.
Third...
If there were no cake, then there could have never been anyone smelling one. If no one ever smelled a cake, there could never have been anyone dreaming or hallucinating cake smells. Likewise, if there is no creature capable of smelling cakes, there could have never been cake smelling, even if there were plenty of cakes being baked. It a complex process, replete with necessary elemental constituents.
So...
It takes more than just biological machinery. It also takes more than just cakes. Hence, to isolate only one necessary element in a complex process is to lose sight of and/or grossly neglect the fact that it's a process, and that process consists of different things, all of which are necessary for the emergence of seeing colors and smelling cakes.
You want to ignore the fact that dreams and hallucinations are existentially dependent upon veridical perception, excise the biological machinery from the rest of the process, and then claim that all three consist of only that machinery.
Depending upon one's notion of physiological sensory perception, it could sensibly and consistently be said that smell and color are both inherent in distal objects. Newton came close until positing "sensation". Colored things possess mind independent physical properties that are inherently capable of being seen as colored by a mind so capable. I think Searle holds something like that, but I'm sure his is more nuanced.
I personally reject the idea that color exists at all in the complete absence of both/either colored things and/or creatures capable of seeing color.
Can you perhaps lay out which two aspects you're referring to, in terms of the scientific understanding? I cannot see any room for the weird "pain in the toe" aspect in any scientific reading I've seen (I don't think!).
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Not really, but I think pain from sensory input and pain with no sensory input are the same thing from different sources. The experience is the same. Seeing a shadow in the exact same shape as an actual image (which you can also 'see') might be analogy here. Maybe a slightly better one would be apprehending something's shape due to touch, rather than sight.
In any case I take it that you're trying to get out of me an admission of difference between pain the "Sensory input" and pain the "mental experience". I could probably be pushed. Onward...
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
This does not seem true to me. I think I have covered this earlier. I'm unsure I will go back over it, but a pretty darn clear example is BDSM behaviours or combat sport. For some, "pain" is literally an academic label for something they don't shy away from whereas for most, that is the case.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I just think this is obviously wrong for reasons above, and elsewhere. I am less inclined to be pushed now :P
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
It is not (on my account/view).
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
It is (on my account/view) a different concept. Emotional pain, it seems to me, is actually a different but related mental experience. Perhaps, a bad one and hte unpleasantness in this concept seems to inhere, but I think you are wrong to conflate them and transitively apply this to "physical" pain. There are blurred lines - being emotionally struck can cause nausea for instance, but is that pain? I should think not. Discomfort. Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
This, for me, seems to indicate exactly the opposite and represents an aberration in a physical signalling system. THe expereince remains the same.
I told you already. The two aspects are known scientifically as the sensory aspect of pain and the affective aspect of pain. If you research those to names you'll find plenty of information.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0149763408001188
Quoting AmadeusD
I was talking about the unpleasantness of pain. This is what makes it so that we cannot say that pain is simply sensory. Did you not read my example of sweetness? The taste of "sweet" is not defined as a pleasant or enjoyable taste, and sweet is simply a sensory experience. But if "sweet" was defined as a pleasant sensory experience, then it would be in the same category as "pain" which is defined as unpleasant.
Quoting AmadeusD
The definition of pain in my OED is: "1a the range of unpleasant bodily sensations produced by illness or by harmful physical contact, etc.."
Notice, "unpleasant" is the defining aspect of pain, sensations which are unpleasant. If you do not acknowledge this, then you and I will always be talking about different ideas when using the word "pain". And we' will be forever talking past each other in any discussion like this because I will refuse to accept the contradictory idea of pain which is not unpleasant.
That does not actually seem to be the case. This seems a floated theory on how to get around some esoteric aspects of pain, so to study them. The paper is speculative and philosophical, not scientific. You can tell they are way off track, without even havign access to the full paper (your link does not provide this):
" How can one obtain an account of the experience of pain that does justice both to its objectivity (and thus its similarity with exteroception) and to its excess of subjectivity?"
The former is a misnomer. They are trying to conflate pain with damage or stimulus. They are clearly not the same, and so conflating same as aspects of the 'same' thing is erroneous. I see how this approach will be very helpful in treatment of pain, but it does nothing for our discussion best I can tell.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
No. No it's not. I have given plenty of examples which violate this definition. It is inapt. Pain is not inherently unpleasant. If that were the case, the examples i've given would not obtain. I think what you meant to discuss is discomfort. I tried to lead you here... Discomfort is inherently uncomfortable. Pain is not.
The pain is in the limb, not the brain. The brain plays a role, but not as the location of the pain. It is the locus of one's awareness of the pain. Hence, after having already evolved the neurological pathways of having experienced pain in the limb, they are primed to act that way again, despite no longer having a physical extremity located where the pain seems to be coming from. It's akin to neurological muscle memory. Biological structures acting as they do... mindlessly.
:zip:
And yet
Quoting creativesoul
Obviously, pain is not in the limb. That para honestly felt like trolling... Is it?
Quoting creativesoul
These are aspects of visual world of a perceiver. If you're suggesting, in these terms, that colour inheres in the Rainbow... hehe. Nope. Try changing your terms around to be idependent of perception. Could make some headway..
I can't make you pay attention to the whole post. Hallucinations of red pens never include red pens. The pain feels like it's coming from where the limb used to be for the reasons already explained in the parts you edited out. The phantom pain is the result of having already had pain in the limb. It's what is happening when the neurological structures are acting as if there is pain in the limb.
It does not follow that no pain is located in limbs.
Pots and kettles.
'Felt like'???
Or projection, perhaps.
Nice red herring, strawman, non sequitur, etc...
I made the case a few posts back. See for yourself.
Yep - Michael is begging the question and then falsely appealing to "the science." This has been going on for a long time now.
---
Quoting Hanover
This poor argument is at the bottom of so much confusion on TPF. I have often considered devoting a thread to it. It is the basic modern error of thinking that Cartesian anti-Pyrrhonism represents the only kind of knowledge.* The modern skeptic will characteristically identify some absurd possibility, note that it cannot be apodictically ruled out, and then conclude that we have no reason to believe it is not the case. This is sophistry. To give an example, we could cash it out this way:
The error relating to (1) is always the same, and the corrective is to note that there are different kinds of knowledge and evidence. Knowledge and evidence are not an all-or-nothing affair. Aristotle pointed out 2500 years ago that the one who is intent on applying a criterion of mathematical certainty to every subject is fundamentally confused about the nature of knowledge.
This is of course related to Lionino's thread on Cartesian dualism:
Quoting Leontiskos
One approach to this modern form of skepticism is Pragmatism, but I think there is a simpler answer. The simpler answer is that one does not require perfect certainty in order to have knowledge. I do not need to have perfect certainty that I am not dreamingwhatever that is supposed to meanin order to have good evidence for believing that reality exists.
* Burnyeat shows that Descartes was self-consciously interested in an inflated version of Pyrrhonism, which we might now call modern skepticism.
It strikes me as a performative contradiction, given the fact those purportedly holding the first claim as true have been incessantly making claims about the constitution of the stimulus.
Quoting Leontiskos
Yup. As far as I'm concerned, one need not be certain at all in many cases. Certitude is confidence. Knowledge is not. One can be unshakably certain and wrong just as one can be very hesitant and right, to put it roughly.
I like AJ Ayers answers to radical skepticism given the awareness of our own fallibility. It does not follow from the fact that we have been wrong about some things that we've been wrong about everything. It does not follow from the fact that we cannot know everything about something that we cannot know anything about it.
Yep, I think this is surely correct as well. Similar to what I said earlier:
Quoting Leontiskos
To place the idea in an image: someone in Michael's group might claim that, via the scientific findings of a microscope, they have proved that the human eye does not perceive reality. But without the legitimacy of the human eye the findings of a microscope have no value, for the microscope presupposes the human eye. More subtle iterations of this fallacy are percolating throughout this thread.
Yes, it does actually. In any case, we can actually jettison this entire part of the debate (I am well aware of what I see as erroneous arguments earlier in the thread from yourself - i am not coming at this in bad faith (you may think bad reasoning; so be it)). The disagreement is deeper than an issue of 'pain' and of reducibility, and demonstrability.
What we can do is simply ask:
Where is the pain? If it is in the limb, you can show me.
But you cannot show me pain.
You can show me potential stimulus for pain.
That's all. I need not take this much further to be quite comfortable that your position is not right (yet..)
Further, in this passage:
Quoting creativesoul
You are making a couple mistakes here(on my account - read all as such. I am not here to make absolute claims. I am, and will continue to often be wrong):
This is plainly wrong. An Hallucination, if it is of a red pen (so called), then that is what is present in the hallucination. Your position relies on your position. Which is to say, it is tautological. IFF hallucinations do not include anything they purport to represent (I take this as incorrect for reasons askance from this particular issue) then your point is extremely apt, loud, and clearly made in such a way I could not dispute it other than on grounds of linguistics (though, I wouldn't. That would be clear to me). But, it seems you rely on that there is a strict difference between the image conjured by the mind when eyes are cast, and the one conjured when no eyes are cast. I disagree. There is no solution to this disagreement, as it stands. You think they're not the same, and I do. We're in the weeds now. Onward..
The "red pen" in the hallucination is the same as a "red pen" gleaned from casting your eyes toward the object we (by convention) call a 'red pen' which, importantly, is just denoting it's function, not what it 'actually is'. It is a label indicating what it will cause in the perceiver.
Given this position, yours simply makes no sense. I can't understand why you think the 'red pen' in the Hallucination is not the same as the 'red pen' when one's eyes are cast on an object which, by convention we call a red pen. It might seem silly, but again, on my account they are the same, let's call it, mental image, triggered in different ways. A red pen can be inferred from any writing implement, and an experience of the colour red (mentally speaking). And, that is what the object is actually attuned to, as a conventional object. It is created to induce the experiences we have labeled variously as "(such and such of/for/and/before/after/because of etc)... a red pen". If you hand me what you think to be a red pen, and my experience looking at it is not red, you cannot tell me I am wrong. That is, in fact, what the object triggers in my mental space. On your account, this is an hallucination? (genuine Q, as it's a role reversal from your point about hallucinations not including hte object of their image).
But again, these all make sense on my account - not on yours, so I'm not trying to do some "You're an idiot" type thing here. I think we see things differently enough that we couldn't come to terms. Several of our competing points are independent of our disagreement about that particular point and simply go back to whether a mental image is it's object. I say no, which Hallucinations are a prime evidence for. If a mental image is not synonymous with it's object (which it couldn't possibly be, right?) then we have no appreciable difference to instantiate in some account. Nevertheless, It's probably worth my addressing:
Quoting Leontiskos
I agree, but you are the confused one. Hanover is exactly right. This is how the body/brain works.
Exactly. Unspoken necessary presuppositions. Collinwood comes to mind.
Care to shoulder that burden?
Edit: Nevermind, I see you just claimed that hallucinations of red pens include red pens.
Right, and we can run these arguments directly if we like:
Quoting Hanover
Given that the "empirical proving" is itself an experience, according to Hanover we cannot conclude anything from this experience. His conclusion is self-defeating.
More concretely, suppose a scientist observes that they can evoke some form of experience via brain stimulation. Hanover thinks this proves that experience is untrustworthy, and yet the scientist's observation is nothing other than an experience. So why isn't their experience untrustworthy? *crickets*
Hanover is making exceptions for himself in an ad hoc manner. He wants to invalidate experience, except for all the experiences that he doesn't want to invalidate, namely the ones associated with empirical tests. Hanover and Michael are both thinking about science in a muddled way, as if it were distinct from human experience. This is on par with the way that our culture treats science as an omniscient and inscrutable god, such that the word 'Science' may as well always be reverentially capitalized.
This whole approach should be suspect from the start, for arguments for hard skepticism cannot be domesticated in the service of scientific knowledge. When your monster chainsaw cuts down everything in sight, there is no use pretending that you are sitting safely on the high limb of Science. Science is the very first victim of the idea that all human experience is untrustworthy.
Hmm... I get it's a quip, but i'm not quite sure what you mean - your account showed to me (though, I saw this prior) the limb doesn't contain the pain in either the non-, or the phantom case (. Not sure what else could be said here. It might come down to something further on here...
I suppose what I'm trying to get at, is that (this may be askance from Michael/Hanover - if so, please do note it because it seems a bugaboo for you guys) we can't know for certain what's going on. That's actually the basis for discarding certain positions that require it. We can't positively discriminate based on 'experience' but we can remove what's not possible. We can't even experience a situation where the pain is in the toe or the colour is in the pen because they are not experiences open to us. One would need to be a toe, or a pen, to have such an experience of pain or 'being red'. And that, even if possible, would just further complicate the matter for reasons that are cartoonish and irrelevant. No human has ever had an experience of pain without their mind. No one has ever seen a red pen without their mind. So, it seems either there's an inviolable relationship between the two (experience/mind) which is read as a single entity qua whatever qualia you're talking about (pain in a toe, eg) or the claim is that there isn't, and the mind merely imports experiences (i.e pain, colour, texture) from elsewhere. I cannot accept that as it doesn't seem open to me to claim on either the grounds above (i.e we cannot make such positive claims) or because it is in clear violation of several types of experience we actually can have (mental pain mediation is one example). There is no 1:1 when it comes to stimulus v experience. It is all approximate.
What we can do in this context is eliminate unsupportable claims (not unsupported - those could well be the case, but are not being presented correctly). The claim that pain is in the toe is not supportable. We need not be apodictic or even emotionally certain of this to know that our position is not supportable. In the cases in front of us, I see that both 'viewing a red pen' and 'pain in the toe' are mental experiences. This does not rely on any form of scientific claim due to 'objective' experiment. It is self-evident, and only needs itself. However, the issue of the scientific understanding of how pain works certainly presents room for 'us' to do as you describe and that does seem to be happening in other arguments. I don't think I require this viz. I am uncertainexactly what is going on, but I am certain it is not red being imported from without, into my mind, and same with the pain. It is not being imported from the toe to my mind - something else (similar to a radiowave) moves from the triggered area, through my body physically (which does not hurt - important) and arrives in my brain, where my mind is triggered to give me an experience which would seem to be pain the toe so that I know where to tell the doctor it hurts (or whatever.. just a vessel). I would assume, from previous replies, you're going to label this a redherring/strawman etc.. I cannot understand that, if so. It would be helpful if you can set that account right - so far, the above accords with all you've said. Nevertheless, that reliance on 'objective' measures is certainly an issue (and, If I've inadvertently, or simply prior to due consideraiton)
So I 100% take that objection, and pretty much agree that relying on something like the minutiae of scientific anatomy is not that helpful to make a positive claim if we're saying perception is non-veridical. But, perception is close enough to get a lot out of it. And, the 'lot', to my mind, is able to show that it can't be the case (rather than "it is the case that..*insert positive claim*) that pain exists independent of the mind perceiving it. If the argument you're using merely creates a, let's say, inviolable relationship between "actual pain" triggered by an instance of injury, and the purported 'hallucinatory pain' (excepting phantom limb issues, on the grounds you've used to link it to the former "actual" account of pain) then, while I disagree, I can't argue against that. It is a position which cannot be adjudicated on empirical grounds. And, that, is where I think the entire thing lies. Maybe what's going on with the claims positive to a certain mode of perception is that if the institution of 'science' is telling us something like "well, we've never seen X, so we're not saying it's the case" is being taken too far. But, in this way, Leontiskos is laying out a severe red herring. Hanoever is not exempting himself. He's (I think, wrongly) delineating between kinds of expereince of perception. Perceiving 100 experiments that give us the same result, is pretty good, even though digging down Leontiskos is right to say each individual scientist is at the whim of their perception. That is clearly true.
Quoting Leontiskos
I would agree. Yet, you're not able to make the claims you're making on these grounds, so I'm unsure where that would lead... Will let Hanover actually answer instead of my speculation above.
But isnt this approach failing to take into account that the witnessing selves are part of the semiotic construction of a witnessed reality? And there is a difference between the scientistic and the folk phenomenological account on this ground.
One view speaks to that of ourselves - our socially constructed notion of being an actual experiential being. The one having the experiences when we move our heads, widen our eyes, see something come into focus and mumur to ourselves, I see a red pen.
My point is that already we are constructing the self as the ultimate subjective witness, when objectively - as science can tell us - this is merely a socialised narrative.
An animal lacking language just exists in its world in a direct embodied fashion. It reacts to a red pen in terms of appropriate learnt behaviours and without any extra internal narrative about witnessing the world as a self who might thus have done something otherwise than react in a direct animal fashion.
So your eyeball may be pressed to the microscope, but there is also this idea of a you in play that comes at reality with already a theory. It is possible you were dreaming, hallucinating, distracted, careless, or whatever, when you saw what you thought you saw.
Even just at this regular linguistically constructed level of being a reliable observer of reality, you felt equipped to be able judge the rationality and soundness of your verbal reports about what was in fact the case. You can contrast a real red pen and a hallucinated red pen in terms of being a counterfactually theorising kind of self.
So the next step to a mathematically informed observer - the fully scientific ideal - is not such a great difference. We can swap out our phenomenological stance for the laboratory stance at a drop of a hat.
What we cant do so easily is recover what being a self would have been like as a languageless animal. What it would be like not to live in this narrative haze of counterfactual possibility that adds so much complexity to our sense of self - our sense of always being both firmly rooted in reality and yet also floating somewhere else beyond it at the same time.
Huh. I think that's a very strange thing to say. Unpleasantness is exactly what "pain" indicates to me. It refers to a wide range of unpleasant feelings, just like the dictionary states. What does "pain" mean to you? Does it simply mean the sensation of touch? Are all touches painful to you, or do you have a way to distinguish a painful feeling from a not painful feeling?
Quoting AmadeusD
Yet you keep falling into the same trap of asserting you know how the body/brain works while at the same time asserting that we cannot trust our senses. How do I know that you read what you read about the body/brain accurately when you depend on your eyes to see the words? How do we know that some mad scientist didn't plant these ideas in your head, or that you didn't hallucinate the experience of reading "facts" about bodies and brains?
Just because someone can change the time on the clock to report the wrong time does not mean that clocks are useless in telling time. We eventually come to know that the clock is wrong by observing other clocks. In other words, we can determine the validity of what one sense is informing us by using other senses, observing over time and using reason.
If we were to evolve in an environment full of mad scientists that directly stimulate our brains, over millions of years our brains would have evolved to use the scientists as a means of knowing about the rest of the environment in the way that we currently use light in the environment to inform us about things that are not light, like pens and brains.
Well, yes. Tomatoes are usually red when ripe, especially the shop-bought ones. Other varieties might be orange, black or green, some with striated combinations of these colours. They are cultivated to this end, so reliably that the seed can be bought and sold. Some varieties of radish are white, some purple. Strawberries that are not red are tasteless.
Claiming that they do not "really" have these colours is a misunderstanding of the nature of colour.
If solipsism is the only logical conclusion of recognizing some amount of difference between the object and the perception and naive realism is the only practical solution to avoid that slippery slope, then I choose solipsism because at least it is logical.
Naive realism suffers from the same logical failure you assign to indirect realism in that it demands that objects are as they appear, but empirical studies (i.e. the study of things as they appear) prove soundly that objects are not in fact as they appear. In fact, what naive realism teaches us is often we have perceptions that do not correlate with reality, as in hallucinations, direct stimulation of brain cells, and and damage to various nerves and anatomical structures. That is, the system you use to prove that things are as they appear proves that things aren't as they appear. This seems a nice matching bookend to your criticism that indirect realism can't prove things aren't as the are if indirect realism demands the evidence received is inherently flawed.
What we learn is that there is no fully satisfactory answer, which is obvious, as if there were, this would be a physics class and not a philosophy class where there are no answers.
If you scroll up somewhere above, I long ago acknowledged that the difficulty with transcendetal idealism is that it creates an irrelevant sort of realism, where we can only assert an external reality, but we can't ascribe much to that reality. The alternative, which is to just say WYSIWYG suffers from another host of problems.
What does seem clear to me is that the pen is whatever it is, but its redness is not part of the pen, but is part of the person. That is the conclusion demanded of direct realism.
But this is only half of the conversation, the larger part circling around Wittgenstein, words, and beetles, none of which sheds a whole lot of light on the topic, and much of which was so unconvincing I have to believe that it's been poorly presented here because it's so facially invalid I can't see how it can be taken seriously.
No, claiming that they really have these colours is a misunderstanding of the nature of colour.
Vision science: Photons to phenomenology:
Color:
Neural representations of perceptual color experience in the human ventral visual pathway:
Opticks:
...and you go over the same undisputed physiology. Again.
The tomatoes are red. So is the pen. And the physiology is also correct.
The question isn't "are tomatoes red?". The question is "do objects like tomatoes, strawberries and radishes really have the distinctive property that they do appear to have?"
You have admitted before that colour terminology is used in more than one way, and I have agreed. The problem is that you are then using this to equivocate. Any meaning of the word "red" or the sentence "the tomato is red" that does not concern the tomato's appearance is irrelevant. And any meaning of the word "red" or the sentence "the tomato is red" that does concern the tomato's appearance is explained by physics and neuroscience, specifically showing that tomatoes do not have such a property.
If I put on a pair of color distorting glasses and the tomatoes appear white, do we need to question if the color of the tomatoes are really red? Or that the circumstances have changes where the reported color of tomatoes is white. And if I damage my brain in such a way where tomatoes appear white, so be it, the circumstances have changed. Notice no mental percepts needed, although we need a human community agreeing on color judgment.
Of course they are, else you wouldn't be seeing anything; you'd just have light reaching your eyes and then nothing happening, e.g. blindness or blindsight.
Yep. They really have the distinctive property that they appear to. They are red.
Quoting Michael
Not I. I'm using it the way it has been used since well before recent developments in physiology. If you hang your argument on the difference between "Is the tomato red?" and "is the tomato really red?" then you are going to have to explain how red tomatoes are not really red, and end up looking a bit silly.
The trouble is that you take "red" to refer only to "mental percepts", and that can't be made sense of.
The science proves otherwise. They have a surface layer of atoms that reflect various wavelengths of light, but no colour, because colour is something else entirely.
If the science shows that the red tomatoes are not red, then the science is wrong.
But of course, it is Michael, not the science, that is in error, with an overblown claim that can't be made to work.
Quoting Michael
Yep. Red is not the surface layer of atoms, and it's also not your mental percept.
Well, if you're just going to dismiss the scientific evidence because it disagrees with Wittgenstein's nonsense story about a beetle then we're never going to agree.
I'm going to trust the science, not armchair philosophy, when it comes to explaining how perception works. You do you.
But that's not what I have done. I have not "dismissed the scientific evidence". I accept it wholly. Have done, repeatedly, all the way through this thread, explicitly and repeatedly.
What is rejected is the assertion that red is nothing but a 'mental percept' - a term with a fairly specific use in certain experiments, but not in sorting tomatoes.
I haven't claimed that. I have only claimed that the red mental percept is our ordinary, everyday understanding of red (even if we do not understand that it is a mental percept).
"...the red mental percept..."
There is only one?
It is very unclear what a 'mental percept" is, when you take it out of the context of the scientific papers that use it.
Hence it is rather hard to see how it could be the very same as the red used to sort tomato seeds.
And? It's unclear what electrons are when you take them out of the context of the scientific papers that talk about them.
Yep. But we do not use electrons to sort tomato seeds.
You want to equate the colour red with a thing you call a red mental percept. But they are not the very same thing.
Yes they are.
Ok. Explain them. You said "the red mental percept". Is there only one?
There are lots of percepts, many of the same type. Every pain is a percept, every pleasure is a percept, every sour is a percept, every red is a percept.
Ok. So which ones are red? Only the red ones? Why isn't there a vicious circularity in claiming that red is the very same as red percepts?
This isn't difficult Banno. If you understand what it means for pain to be a percept then you understand what it means for red to be a percept. If you don't understand what it means for pain to be a percept then I can't help you.
And of course, this is only the beginning of your problems.
The red percepts are red, the pain percepts are pain. These questions are tiresome, so if it's all you can resort to then I'm going to end it here.
Then you are using the difinendum in the definiens; defining red in terms of the red percept, with the resulting vicious circularity.
You're asking me which percepts the word "red" refers to. I can only answer such a question by using a word that refers to these percepts, and given that there is no appropriate synonym for "red", all I can do is reuse the word "red".
The word "pain" refers to pain, the word "red" refers to red, the word "sour" refers to sour.
There's nothing "viciously circular" about this.
Yep. So you have not explained red by equating it with a red percept.
So on to the next problem. If red is a mental percept, who's mentality is it a percept in?
What are you talking about? Your obsession with language is leading you to nonsense. It's incredibly simple for anyone who isn't blinded by Wittgenstein.
Pain is a percept, red is a percept. That's it. If you don't understand what pain percepts are then read some neuroscience and stab yourself in the foot.
But not only a percept.
Where are these percepts to be found?
And what is the common essence of calling these all percepts? I guess I can not use family resemblances, or I will be accused of being blinded by Wittgenstein.
Try Vision Science Photons to Phenomenolgy if you want to know more.
I'm sure you will be able to explain your account without sending us off to such a text. It can't be that hard.
Quoting Michael
You want to change the topic back to pain, again. But of course pain and colour are quite different.
The question that you might address is how calling red a percept helps.
So let's go back to what you said was the basic issue: "do objects like tomatoes, strawberries and radishes really have the distinctive property that they do appear to have?"
Now percepts are not mentioned in this. You want to jump to the conclusion that objects like tomatoes, strawberries and radishes do not really have the distinctive property that they do appear to have, but of course that is either nonsense, or a play on words. Your claim to disdain mere wordplay leaves you closed to noticing when you yourself play with words.
Tomatoes, strawberries and radishes really have the distinctive property that they do appear to have. They are red.
Not quite, no. I've addressed this apparent hypocrisy recently and wont rehash because I'll make a pigs ear of it.
Quoting Harry Hindu
These are the precise issues I addressed in the referenced response. Quoting AmadeusD
Suffice to accept this part of it, at least LOL.
Quoting Harry Hindu
This is precisely the defence I've run, in other terms.
Quoting Harry Hindu
Yes, correct. This, despite not having any direct access, or certitude about our sensory apprehensions. Its a best-guess, and if that's the best we have, it's the best we have.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Very much fair, and I think this may illustrate what I'm saying: Clearly, as between you and I, there is not a 1:1 match between pain and "unpleasantness". Pain (i.e a sensation that indicates injury - physical, or mental (but mental is awhole different discussion I think)) doesn't, inherently, mean displeasure. Maybe that's clearer?
Perhaps you need to maintain my position (that pain is mental) to support the idea that pain is inherently unpleasant, as clearly, to the injury part (i.e the "physical" aspect of pain) this is patently not hte case.
I don't have an account because I'm not a physicist or neuroscientist. As I have repeatedly said, perception cannot be explained by armchair philosophy.
Quoting Banno
Only in that they are caused by quite different brain activity.
Quoting Banno
You're equivocating.
If we take dispositionalism as an example then "the tomato is red" means "the tomato is disposed to look red". The word "red" in the phrase "looks red" does not prima facie refer to a property of the tomato, and so it does not prima facie follow from "the tomato is disposed to look red" that the tomato has the distinctive property that it appears to have.
So what do you mean by "the tomato is red"? Without further explanation your claim here is a non sequitur.
So you have claimed. I rather think you are equivocating on the notion of "really", wanting to say that red tomatoes are not really red - the implication being that there is one true way of using words such as red, and all those folk who think that their tomatoes are red are mistaken.
I think you know what is meant by "The tomato is red". And without calling on mental percepts.
But I suspect that the account you try to give of what "The tomato is red" means supposes that there must be a something to which the word "red" refers, perhaps the property of being red, that is common to all red things. And such an approach doesn't work here. Rather, if you take a look at how we use the word "red" you will see that it is used to talk about a range of different things, very few of them being mere mental percepts.
Jesus christ lol.
Quoting AmadeusD
For sure, there are many types of unpleasantness, and not every one is pain. "Unpleasant" is the wider concept. So not all unpleasantness is pain, but all pain involves unpleasantness.
Quoting AmadeusD
No, not any clearer at all. I think you misunderstood what I meant when I said that unpleasantness inheres within the definition of pain. "Inheres" means existing within something, as an essential property. What this means is that pain implies unpleasantness, because one cannot have pain without unpleasantness. But the inverse is not implied, unpleasantness does not imply pain, because there is unpleasantness which does not involve pain, so pain does not inhere within the definition of unpleasantness.
Quoting AmadeusD
We are not talking about the physical aspect of pain. We are talking about pain. I went through this already. There is understood to be a sensory aspect of pain and an affective aspect of pain. You want to focus on the sensory aspect, but just because there is a sensory aspect does not mean that the affective aspect is not a real, and necessary part of pain. Have you not researched those two aspects yet?
Okay, and it is no coincidence that you are choosing solipsism, here. Your presuppositions point you in this very direction.
Quoting Hanover
Where have I or anyone else here attempted to prove this so-called "naive realism"? The answer is simple: we haven't. Yet the strawman proves eternal.
Quoting Hanover
The recurrent problem is that your position attempts to draw some kind of substantial conclusion from the fact that there is "no fully satisfactory answer," and this conclusion is logically invalid. There is no problem with pointing to someone's answer and arguing that it is not fully satisfactory. The problem arises when you say, "Your answer is not fully satisfactory, and therefore my opposed position is correct." The invalid inference is the problem, and it is what I have seen from folks like you and Michael in this thread.
Looked at from a different angle, a system which is not fully satisfactory is better than a system which results in performative self-contradictions.
Quoting Hanover
These are more false dichotomies. "My position is pretty bad, but the only alternative is what-you-see-is-what-you-get, therefore we have to accept my position." To claim that the only two options are the infallibility of the senses and the inability of the senses to penetrate reality is to posit a false dichotomy.
This is a recurrence of a kind of Cartesian dichotomy between perfect reliability and certitude, and zero reliability and certitude. The two extremes are not the only possibilities (and I don't mean to indicate that Descartes was himself unaware of this).
I will have to think about this post more, ideally when my head clears of Covid. I don't know that I disagree with any of it, but I also am not convinced that Hanover was making a semiotic argument in the way that you indicate. The argument that he gave seems to me to be invalid, and we could try to generalize it as something like this:
1. If a faculty is not infallible then it is not reliable.
2. X is not infallible.
3. Therefore, X is not reliable.
...Where 'X' is something like the senses or the mind, and (2) is justified by things like dreams and hallucinations.
I think this is just an invalid argument. Something can be reliable without being infallible. The person wielding the argument could press for (1) if they like, and there is admittedly a paradox at play in that neither (1) nor its opposite can be demonstrably proven, but I think we have good non-demonstrative reasons for believing that a faculty need not be infallible in order to be reliable.
That's a separate matter. :smile:
I just like pointing out how the semiotic approach goes further in emphasising that our model of the world is also the model of "ourselves in the world". The witness and the witnessed are inseparable even in their separation.
So I wasn't meaning to correct you. Just having fun outlining the next step that people never quite arrive at. Rest easy with the covid. :up:
Quoting Hanover
1. "The point of this is that it is empirically proven that an internal, subjective experience can be evoked by direct brain stimulation."
2a. "This means that you cannot conclude anything about the constitution of the stimulus from the experience."
3. "The smell you smell is the product of stimuli upon the brain, so the perception is entirely the creation of the brain."
(3) seems to be a non sequitur plain and simple. There is nothing at all here which proves that perceptions are "entirely the creation of the brain."
But what about (2)? An example would be, "Some people have visual hallucinations, therefore we cannot conclude anything about external objects of sight from the input of our eyes." This looks like a bad argument, albeit not necessarily false. The conclusion depends on the frequency and nature of the aberrations. I would simply say that not all visual aberrations result in the unreliability of sight. Instead of (2a) we could draw (2b) from (1):
Er, this is a quintessential example of vicious circularity. The fact that you can only answer such a question by giving a circular answer just shows that your account has failed. If you were correct in saying that 'red' means a percept, then your answer to Banno's question would viciously recur as follows:
Or else:
(As Banno indicates, option 2 fails to distinguish red from any other percept)
Cf:
Quoting Michael
Quoting Michael
If every red is a percept then it makes no sense to speak substantially about red percepts. The equivocation becomes more clear if you compare, "The red pen," to, "The red percept." If we follow your lead and reduce each statement consistently, then the first renders, "The red percept of the pen," and the second renders, "The red percept of the percept" (or else via option 2, "The percept of the pen," and, "The percept of the percept"). This all reflects a muddled understanding of language. Predications of color cannot be reduced to predications about percepts in the way you claim. You are involved in category errors which conflate an object-predication-intention with an efficient-cause-intention. It is two different things to talk about the redness of an object as opposed to the percept which mediates that redness. You are simply incorrect to claim that whenever we are talking about the redness of an object we are talking about nothing other than the percept which mediates that redness.* Your attempt to try to treat color predications as percept predications demonstrates that color predications are not percept predications at all, which should have been obvious from the start.
We can also see this by noting that we generally only refer to the perceptual apparatus when we are speaking about perceptual aberrations or abnormalities. For example, when colorblindness enters the conversation recourse to the perceptual apparatus of the colorblind subject will be at hand. But if we cannot distinguish the red object from the red percept, then we will no longer be able to talk about colorblindness, or any other kind of abnormal visual processing. Ironically then, if 'red' meant only a percept we would lose a great deal of scientific rigor. (This is similar to the Protagorean, "Man is the measure," result, which is akin to the way your approach overstates the case. Perceptions are not interchangeable with realities, even when it comes to color. Someone who forgets they are wearing red-tinted glasses might call a white ball red, but we all recognize that they are wrong despite their percept.)
* Your "scientific" argument would be more correctly exposited if you claimed that the subject commonly commits an error of inference regarding the cause of their visual experience. In that case I think you would still largely be wrong, but at least in a more plausible way.
I think the following two passages provides some insight on how Wittgenstein viewed perception and colors:
From Wittgenstein's "Last Writings on the Philosophy of Psychology The Inner and the Outer Volume 2",
"Psychology describes the phenomena of color-blindness as well as those of normal sight. What are the phenomena of color blindness'? Certainty the reactions of the color-blind person which differentiate him from the normal person. But certainly not all of the color-blind person's reactions, for example not those that distinguish him from a blind person. - Can I teach the blind what seeing is, or can I teach this to the sighted? That doesn't mean anything. Then what does it mean: to describe seeing? But I can teach human beings the meaning of the words "blind" and "sighted", and indeed the sighted learn them, just as the blind do. Then do the blind know what it is like to see? But do the sighted know? Do they also know what it's like to have consciousness?"
"Indeed he might be astonished when he sees the object, but in order to 'be astonished about the colour', in order for the colour to be the reason of his astonishment and not just the cause of his experience, he needs not just sight, but to have the concept of colour."
We don't learn concepts of "color" and "seeing" by only experiencing colors and seeing. We don't teach children what colors are by sharing are experiences of mental percepts of color, but by using the words under particular circumstance and seeing if the child can do the same. We don't teach what "seeing" means by describing what seeing is, but by using the word in the form of life humans typically engage in. By using these learned words and acting in the appropriate ways, we demonstrate to our fellow humans we do experience such things as colors and seeing.
No, it doesn't. I seriously do not think you are taking enough time to read these replies. I am directly, stringently addressing this point in each reply and you seem to miss it entirely. I have given you several inarguable examples of why pain is not always unpleasant and further that this isn't part of it's nature. If you reject this, fine, but you need to actually tell me why all the examples and reasons are wrong. You have not. The quote you used directly contradicts your position by my existing in this discussion. You can't be missing that, can you? You're replying, after all, to someone who does not always experience unpleasantness along with pain.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Yes they can. Sorry.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Agreed. This was never put forward. Unpleasantness infers (well, requires) discomfort to obtain. Pain does not require unpleasantness to obtain. It simply doesn't. I don't know why you're claiming this against empirical evidence of millions of humans experiencing pain without unpleasantness - and in fact, experiencing pleasure from pain. This is just... why are you trying to simply erase a load of facts about other people's experience, including mine? Are you trying to say I'm lying?
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I got you the first time. You're just not confronting what i've said at all. My reply is directly relevant to this, and unfortunately, shows it to be wrong. Pain is a sensation directed at the host attending to an injury. Unpleasantness is just one mode of this occurring to cut through other stimuli. Pain is patently not always unpleasant. I experience this fact all the time. Why are you not getting this??? "hurts so good"
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
This wasn't suggested. I think you're maybe off on your own tangent now? All i put forward was that "unpleasant" sensation requires discomfort to be so labelled, but "pain" does not require "unpleasant" for hte same. And it doesn't. Sorry if you still think it does - this one isn't a "positional" disagreement. You are wrong. As I and billions of other's instantiate. If you've literally never felt a pain without also feeling that it is unpleasant, that's a shame - but understandable. It's a tricky thing. I absolutely, almost sexually, enjoy the pain of scalding water on the tops of my hands, my inner thighs, behind my shoulders and right on my hip bones (to the point that i had very midly burned myself many times in pursuit of it (opportunistic pursuit, to be sure)). It is definitely pain. But it is definitely not unpleasant. Its a tool telling me to stop fucking running scalding water on myself lmao. EVENTUALLY this can get unpleasant - as, when my skin starts melting, my brain kicks it up a few notches. Fair, too. I'm not exactly the most caring about my own body in this way. I self harmed for years. another notch on this club.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
It seems you did not read that paragraph very well, as nothing you've said aligns with anything I've said. Huh.
Quoting Leontiskos
This is a an opportunistic reversal of Banno's argument. We use language differently. Great! "red" conceptually is a percept (lets pretend) and "the red pen" or "the red percept" is a label which is conventionally used to cut-down the actual phrase "Items we use to write with, containing ink flowing to a nib, which reflects light in "such and such a range" so as to trigger, under normal circumstances, that percept referred to as "the colour red" as a property of the brain-generated image of the object viewed by the sensory organ". But we don't say that. We say "red pen". Not "because we say X, therefore, Y". That's just shitty reasoning that makes no sense unless you think that language literally creates the world (I think Banno does).
Nothing around this thread violates this. There's nothing circular about hte fact that we re-use, mis-use and multiply-use words - and can be wrong in how we use them. The convention "literally" has had to undergo a redefinition because of it's constant misuse. Not a misuse anymore, is it?? Because convention said so. Not in any way relevant to trying to tease out the basis of colour experience. This doesn't touch on any of the science/scientistic claptrap you lot are stuck on. However, Michael has made some mistakes... not my circus. I just reply where I can see a point.
Quoting Richard B
yes we do. We literally compare items and teach children that the correlation in their mind between these items is due to colour concepts. Shades come after and probably fit better into what you're talking about. having raised two children, and specifically tasked with introducing the younger of the two to colours and hte understanding of them (as between objects) says I know that this is hte case.
"basic stuff" but you don't understand inferences, or fixing the nonsense you come up with sometimes. Tsk tsk.
You need to get over your obsession with language. The discussion is about perception, not speech. We must look to physics and physiology, not to all the ways that the word red is used in English.
I don't care about how Wittgenstein viewed perception and colours. He was not a physicist or a neuroscientist and so he didn't have the appropriate expertise. To think that somehow an examination of language can address such issues is laughable. Do you want to do away with the Large Hadron Collider and simply talk our way into determining how the world works?
That the pen is red just is that it (ordinarily) appears red, and the word red in the phrase appears red does not refer to a mind-independent property of the pen but to the mental percept that looking at the pen (ordinarily) causes to occur.
I don't think this is really the case, and that is why this sort of discussion goes on forever. Our model of the world is one put together through the scientific method of experimentation and observation. The model of ourselves in the world is based in principles of moral philosophy, because it must include intention motivation, politics and other human interactions. These two types of models are very far apart.
I would assume that you know your mind to be real. Then which is the case - direct realism, indirect realism, both, or neither? If you can talk about the contents of your mind like you can talk about the contents of your pants pocket, then what is the difference if you're telling me the truth in both cases?
Quoting AmadeusD
You couldn't at least link it in your reply considering that we are 38 pages into this discussion?
Quoting AmadeusD
If you were able to accomplish your task using your senses then was it really a best guess or an accurate perception?
If these problems only arise in philosophical discussions and not in everyday life, then maybe there's an issue with philosophy. Most philosophical problems are the result of a misuse of language. Our survival in a hostile environment is evidence enough that we have more than a best guess about the state of our environment. I would argue that instinctive behaviors that evolved as general responses to a static environment are best guesses whereas humans have evolved to allow us to be more adaptable to changing environments to the point where we no longer need to adapt to our environment. We mold the environment for ourselves.
I am arguing that despite the "indirect" nature of perception we can get a "direct" sense of what the case is by understanding that determinism is the case (which is why time can seem to have no direction as effects are as much about their causes as causes are about their effects) and that effects carry information about their causes. "Direct" and "Indirect" are in quotes because I find that they unnecessarily complicate the discussion. I find it very difficult to believe that humans have been able to shape their environment to such a degree simply based on "best guessing". Are we having an effect on our environment or not?
Quoting AmadeusD
What would be the point in showing you pain? The pain is for me, not for you. I am the one injured, not you. The pain is about the state of my body, not yours. If I hit my thumb with a hammer, I could bash your same thumb with the same hammer and you'd have a good idea of what I was feeling, but that would not be the point of me informing you that I am in pain. The point would be to seek assistance. This is what I mean that philosophical language use tends to muddy the waters here.
Besides, if pain is only in the mind, then the stimulus is only in the mind. When I ask you to show me the stimulus, you are referencing your own visual experience - the visual location of the injury, which is in your mind. As we already discussed a while back visual depth is in your mind so you run into the same problem with any sensory experience you have. Based on what you have said in that we cannot show you pain it does not follow that we can show you the stimulus.
Let's say I have a severe injury on my back. I cannot see the injury but I can feel it. Adrenaline may be masking the severity of the injury by masking the pain. You, however, have a clear view of the injury. Who has more accurate information about my injury? If you can have more information about my injury because of the level of detail human vision provides over the sensation of pain, then what does that say about the direct vs. indirect distinction when it comes to knowing what is the case?
This is another example of the category error conflation between an object-predication-intention and an efficient-cause-intention.
<"The pen appears red" does not refer to the pen but to a percept>
When we speak about the pen we are speaking about the pen, not about percepts. Pens and percepts are two different things. Maybe you (erroneously) think everyone should replace all of their color predications about pens with predications about percepts, but this in no way shows that when people talk about red pens they are doing nothing more than talking about percepts.
I don't plan to draw this out, but Banno's argument is worth affirming. I've had enough discussions with you to know that this conversation is going nowhere. In fact while having discussions with you in the past I received PMs from others, "Just be aware that conversations with Michael go nowhere. Don't inflate your expectations."
Yes, and as you seem to imply, this is a rather different claim than Michael's. It is the claim that we should stop thinking of redness as a property of pens, as opposed to the claim that red refers to a percept in common use.
'Red' is a word which does not refer to a percept.
If we like we can talk about red-qua-percept, and this is obviously to talk about a percept.
Quoting AmadeusD
Look, pens and percepts are different kinds of realities, reflecting different categories. The categories are not interchangeable. And observe what happens when you try to interchange them:
[/list]
Now I truncated your sentence for brevity, but note that (1) is true and (2) is false, and this is because pens and percepts are not interchangeable. A pen is an item we write with, whereas a percept is not. "Red pen" and "red percept" are two fundamentally different kinds of linguistic entities.
Yes, and that's the fallacy. See the SEP article on color:
This is what we naively do, and physics and neuroscience has proven it false. When you talk about red pens you are talking about both pens and percepts, whether you realise it or not.
Yes. Perception cannot be explained by armchair philosophy. It can only be explained by physics and physiology, and so I am simply reporting on what the scientists have determined. I'll do so again:
Vision science: Photons to phenomenology:
Color:
Neural representations of perceptual color experience in the human ventral visual pathway:
Opticks:
They are literally saying "color is a psychological property of our visual experiences when we look at objects and lights, not a physical property of those objects or lights", "color is a sensation", "color is in the perceiver, not the physical stimulus", and "For the Rays to speak properly are not coloured. In them there is nothing else than a certain Power and Disposition to stir up a Sensation of this or that Colour."
I cannot be misrepresenting them by quoting their own words. They mean exactly what they say.
Your only retort seems to be that we talk about colours as if they are properties of pens. And yes, we often do. And we're wrong, as the science shows.
It's you who are claiming that the tomato is red but not really red; these are your words, your word game. All I'm doing is pointing out how silly that is. You pretend not to be involved in a discussion about language but your view hinges on your use of a single word.
I'd say they have absorption spectrums within the 'spectrum space' that people typically classify as red.
They have a somewhat distinctive absorption spectrum as individuals, although they don't have perfectly homogenous surfaces, and different areas on the surface of the tomato will vary in absorption spectrum to some extent. However most of the subregions of the surface of the tomato, despite being somewhat different in absorption spectrum, still fall within the spectrum space typically classified as red.
(Or at least, that is what I would say if I was particularly in the mood to be pedantic.)
It seems more an effort to discuss at the level of neurobiology. And so the "language" or semiotics of perceptual experience.
Of course hue discrimination appears in our language games too. Ask any interior decorator. They have 100 names for shades that are nearly white.
But words are the currency of a socially-constructed level of world-modelling. Neurobiology concerns the far more complicated science of neurobiological world-modelling.
You keep mixing these categories, or just in fact bluntly pretending there is nothing worth talking about beyond your narrow comfort zone. But without a neurobiology of perception, there can be no social game of comparing beetles in boxes. The private/public distinction would be metaphysically moot as the grounds for it would simply fail to exist.
They're not my words. I said that the tomato does not have the property that it appears to have. The property that it appears to have is in fact a subjective quality, and so is a percept, not a mind-independent property of material surfaces.
You are showing yet again that you are equivocating. As you have mentioned before, the predicate "is red" doesn't just mean one thing. What the dispositionalist means by "the tomato is red" isn't what the naive colour realist means by "the tomato is red". According to the former meaning, "the tomato is red" is true. According to latter meaning, "the tomato is red" is false.
My concern isn't with the sentence "the tomato is red" precisely because the sentence is used to mean different things by different people (and you haven't explained what you mean by it); my concern is with the nature of a tomato's appearance. This is explained by physics and physiology, not by language, and eliminativism is consistent with the science (with projectivism explaining the way we think and talk about colours).
There's nothing in the science that contradicts what I've offered here. It takes more than just biological machinery doing its job... mindlessly.
Subjectivism and eliminativism are both philosophical positions, so to speak. So, this...
... strikes me as a very odd combination. Dennett laid waste to the subjectivist notion/tenet of qualia(tastes, smells, colors, etc.) using physicalist eliminativism in "Quining Qualia".
What's bothering me about this thread is the fact that many of us agree about the biological machinery and the irrevocable role it plays in all veridical perception, hallucination, and dreams. I'm interested in how that all works, from an evolutionary progression standpoint.
I almost want to treat the autonomous biological machinery doing its work as if it were some sort of living recording.
Hallucination and dreams are to veridical experience as a video recording is to experience. Sticking with that analogy renders some folk hereabouts wanting to equate the experience with the record thereof. I don't know if that's a great analogy, as they all fail when pushed far enough, but hopefully that makes some sort of sense.
You're making a number of excellent points. I appreciate the patience and willingness to do so. I'm sure I'm not alone.
As is mine. I've no idea how you arrive at the notion that color is nothing but a mental percept, which is to say that biological machinery alone is enough. Brains in vats.
Quoting apokrisis
Okay.
Quoting apokrisis
That makes sense.
Quoting apokrisis
Okay, good. This helps me understand your thermodynamic approach with a bit more resolution.
Quoting apokrisis
What would you see as the adjudicating factors between the two conceptions?
If we are approaching it from a purely scientific angle, then my hunch here is that Platonism requires at least some form of meaning- or explanation-recursion, and one which points in the direction of transcendence. This would be something like the Platonic rationale for rejecting a brute fact scheme. If such a thing is not present then I don't know where a scientific argument for Platonism would come from.
I haven't watched the video yet, but my guess is that it has something to do with them being nardo putty-looking ass whips.
What you are insisting in this discussion, that pain does not necessarily involve unpleasantness, simply indicates that you and I have a different understanding of the what the word "pain" means.
You keep referring to examples you have given of pain without unpleasantness, but I can't find any such examples. All I see is assertions.
In order that we can discuss our difference in opinion as to what "pain" refers to, you need to provide for me a definition, or some examples. Tell me what sort of sensation is "pain", if it is not an unpleasant sensation as the dictionary defines it. Or, is it not a sensation at all? Is pain a bunch of neurological processes? If so, then what distinguishes the neurological process called "pain" from other instances of the sense of touch?
Quoting AmadeusD
Again, you are simply insisting there is empirical evidence from millions of humans, and saying that I am denying it, without providing any such evidence. The fact that in many cases, pleasure comes from pain, does not prove that pain is not unpleasant. Plato covered this very thoroughly, because at his time there was a believe that pleasure was nothing but a relief from pain This would imply that all pleasure comes from pain, and pain is a necessary requirement for pleasure. as the pleasure comes from the relief which is actually the pain ending.
But Plato demonstrated how there is pleasure which does not require pain. What this indicates is that "pain" is not a proper opposite to pleasure. However, it does not demonstrate that pain does not consist of unpleasantness. Unpleasantness may still be posited as the proper opposite to pleasure, and since there are unpleasant feelings which are not pain, pleasure may be derived as a relief from these feelings rather than from a relief from pain.
Quoting AmadeusD
Oh good, here's a sort of definition. It's not adequate though, for two very important reasons. First, 'the sensation of an injury' does not suffice because there are many internal pains like headache, stomachache, commonly called "pains" which are not due to injury. Second there are many instances when "the host attending to an injury" does not involve pain. If we look at natural healing, the first and most obvious is coma. Also, in the natural process of healing a wound there is always much time with no pain, and often an itch (which is not pain) develops. Further, there are unnatural instances, when the injury does not cause pain, such as the use of painkillers. They are called "painkillers", not "host attending to an injury killers", because they do not prevent the host from attending to the injury. In other words, it should be very clear to you now, that there is no specific sensation associated with "attending to an injury", so this would make a very faulty definition of pain.
Quoting AmadeusD
Finally, an example for me to look at. What you are doing with this example, is taking your faulty definition of pain, "the host attending to an injury", and saying, 'I have had injury before, without unpleasantness, therefore pain, which is the sensation of the host attending to an injury does not require unpleasantness. I think we've all experienced injury without pain. Sometimes, I'll accidentally cut myself without even noticing it, until I see blood. So all your example really does, is prove that your definition is wrong. We can, and do, have injury without pain, and your example is a demonstration of this this. So this is just more evidence that there is no specific sensation which can be defined as the host attending to an injury, as injury causes many different sensations, crossing all sorts of boundaries.
Well it would really be nice to know how Plato conceived of the Khôra in relation to the Eidos. Was it more a void or an Apeiron? Was there some move he began making from the transcendent imposition of structure on the material world to the immanent emergence of structure by way of privation?
All this seems in play in Plato and Aristotle. And everyone interprets according to their preference. But that is the basic difference I would say. A dualism of transcendence or a triadicism of immanence.
Since this is a philosophy forum, I will provide some interesting nuance views of color and mental percepts from for philosophers who were admirers of the achievement of science.
From the Analysis of Mind by Bertrand Russell:
If there is a subject, it can have a relation to the patch of colour, namely, the sort of relation which we might call awareness. In that case the sensation, as a mental event, will consist of awareness of the colour, while the colour itself will remain wholly physical, and may be called the sense-datum, to distinguish it from the sensation. The subject, however, appears to be a logical fiction, like mathematical points and instants. It is introduced, not because observation reveals it, but because it is linguistically convenient and apparently demanded by grammar. Nominal entities of this sort may or may not exist, but there is no good ground for assuming that they do. The functions that they appear to perform can always be performed by classes or series or other logical constructions, consisting of less dubious entities. If we are to avoid a perfectly gratuitous assumption, we must dispense with the subject as one of the actual ingredients of the world. But when we do this, the possibility of distinguishing the sensation from the sense-datum vanishes; at least I see no way of preserving the distinction. Accordingly the sensation that we have when we see a patch of colour simply is that patch of colour, an actual constituent of the physical world, and part of what physics is concerned with.
From Word and Object by W. V. Quine:
"If there is a case for mental events and mental states, it must be just that the positing of them, like the positing of molecules, has some indirect system efficacy in the development of theory. But if a certain organization of theory is achieved by thus positing distinctive mental states and events behind physical behavior, surely as much organization could be achieved by positing merely certain correlative physiological states and events instead. Nor need we spot special centers in the body for these seizures; physical states of the undivided organism will serve, whatever their finer physiology. Lack of detailed physiological explanation of the states is scarcely an objection to acknowledging them as states of human bodies, when we reflect that those who posit the mental states and events have no details of appropriate mechanisms to offer nor, what with mind-body problem, prospects of any. The bodily states exist anyway; why add the others?"
From Language, Truth, and Logic by A.J. Ayer:
"To determine, for instance, whether two people have the same color sense we observe whether they classify all the colour expanses with which they are confronted in the same way; and, when we say that a man is colour-blind, what we are asserting is that he classifies certain color expanses in a different way from that in which they would be classified by the majority of people. It may be objected that the fact that two people classify color expanses in the same way proves only that their colour worlds have the same structure, and not that they have the same content; that it is possible for another man to assent to every proposition which I make about colours on the basis of entirely different colour sensations, although, since the difference is systematic, neither of us is ever in the position to detect it. But the answer to this is that each of us has to define the content of another man's sense-experiences in terms of what he can himself observe."
And Lastly, from Seeing Things as They Are by John Searle:
"Question 2 How does the account deal with color constancy and size constancy? I will consider these in order. Imagine that a shadow falls over a portion of the red ball so that part of it is in shadow and part not. Did the part in shadow change its color? Well, obviously not, and it is obviously not seen as having changed its color. All the same, there is a difference in the subjective visual field. The subjective basic perceptual properties have changed. The proof is that if I were drawing a picture of what I now see, I would have to include a darker portion of the part in shadow, even though I know that there has been no change in its actual color. It is extremely misleading to describe this phenomenon as "color constancy", because of course the experienced color is precisely not constant. It is because of my high-level Background capacities that I am able to see it as having the same color even though at the lower level I see it as having in part changed its color. I want to emphasize this point. At the basic level, the color is precisely not constant, neither subjectively nor objectively. It changes. It is just at the higher level that I know, because of my Background abilities, that it still keeps the same color."
It's not my conclusion; it's what the science says, and I am simply reporting on that. I have no idea why you and others think that you can figure out how perception works by sitting in your chair and thinking really hard.
Russell is not saying what (I think) you think he's saying. When he says "the sensation that we have when we see a patch of colour simply is that patch of colour" he is saying that colour just is that sensation. This is perhaps clearer in a later work where he says this:
I don't have a copy of Searle, but according to this:
This seems to be arguing that colours are mental phenomena and that the predicate "is red" is used to describe objects which cause red mental phenomena.
On colour, Quine has said this:
Your quote of him is him arguing for eliminative materialism, which I have previously accepted is a possibly correct account of so-called mental phenomena (e.g. pain just is a type of brain activity, and so colours just are a type of brain activity).
:smirk:
:roll: According to Searle, colours are systematic hallucinations, and what characterizes hallucinations is that you're having experiences without experiencing anything, not even percepts.
And hallucinations are what? A type of mental phenomenon, not a mind-independent property of tomatoes. Therefore colours are a type of mental phenomenon, not a mind-independent property of tomatoes.
Quoting jkop
This is such a nonsensical sentence.
The next step, I believe, after freeing oneself from naive realism, is to free oneself from materialism altogether, and understand that the so-called "effects of the stone upon himself" are not properly called "effects" at all. The percept is a freely constructed creation of the living being, rather than the effects of a causal chain. This understanding enables the reality of the concept of free will. The living being's motivational aspects, which are very much involved in all neurological activity, and appear to allow the being to act with a view toward the future, (understood in its most simple form as the will to survive), cannot be understood as the product of causal chains. This is what science reveals to us, through its inability to understand such aspects in determinist terms.
The point of this example is to show that Russell is concerned about the grammar of colour, so we can get it right about what science is actually investigating.
Im talking about dynamics. Dissipative structure, far from equilbrium systems, maximum entropy production principle. That class of self organisation in nature.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/783285.Order_Out_of_Chaos
The topic is about perception, not grammar. Science explains perception. This has nothing to do with language at all. We can imagine that we're deaf, illiterate, mutes if it helps you move on from this distraction. We still see colours. I don't need to be able to say "this box looks red" and "this box looks blue" for me to see a visual difference between them. The development of the words "red" and "blue" to name the difference comes after the fact, not before.
Okay, fair enough. This is something we should revisit at a later date, preferably in a more apt thread.
Again from Russells Analysis of the Mind Lecture VII The Definition of Perception
The notion of perception is therefore not a precise one: we perceive things more or less, but always with a very considerable amount of vagueness and confusion.
Russells analysis is a conceptual one, not experimental.
When a mental occurrence can be regarded as an appearance of an object external to the brain, however irregular, or even as a confused appearance of several such objects, then we may regard it as having for its stimulus the object or objects in question, or their appearances at the sense-organ concerned. When, on the other hand, a mental occurrence has not sufficient connection with objects external to the brain to be regarded as an appearance of such objects, then its physical causation (if any) will have to be sought in the brain. In the former case it can be called a perception; in the latter it cannot be so called. But the distinction is one of degree, not of kind. Until this is realized, no satisfactory theory of perception, sensation, or imagination is possible.
From what I gather, Russell is reluctant in calling mental percepts perception at all. And seems to want to move in the direction of Quine and just be concerned with brain activity. Again Russell is not performing science here, but has a lot to say what perception is all about in a general sort of way.
Whether you call it "perception" or not is irrelevant. Call it "blugh" for all it matters. The only thing that is relevant is that the visual quality that we naively think of as being a mind-independent property of a tomato's surface is in fact a mental phenomenon either reducible to or caused by neural activity in the brain, usually in response to optical stimulation by light. This is what the science shows, and no appeals to grammar or beetles in boxes or anything of the sort can prove otherwise.
This is a rather neat summation of the mistake of thinking that either colour is a mind-independent property of objects, or colour is a mental phenomena caused by neural activity in the brain.
There are alternatives. Many have been listed Here.
But perhaps the generic form of the mistake is in thinking that there can be one explanation that will work for all the many and various ways in which we might use colour words.
One cannot do philosophy without giving due consideration to the language with which one does philosophy.
No, it's not.
Science shows that certain biological structures are necessary for all perception. Makes perfect sense in my book.
It does not follow that there are no differences between hallucinating, dreaming, and seeing red things. Science does not say that. You do. Your arguments have recently led to absurd conclusions. I've thought of this more and more recently.
Well put.
I haven't claimed that there is no difference. We've been over this. They differ in what causes the mental percept.
Quoting creativesoul
Yes, it is. See all the quotes here.
Maund: "It is this problem that historically has led the major physicists who have thought about color, to hold the view that physical objects do not actually have the colors we ordinarily and naturally take objects to possess."
Newton: "For the Rays to speak properly are not coloured. In them there is nothing else than a certain Power and Disposition to stir up a Sensation of this or that Colour."
Kim et al: "Color is in the perceiver, not the physical stimulus."
Palmer: "Color is a psychological property of our visual experiences when we look at objects and lights, not a physical property of those objects or lights."
Maxwell: "Color is a sensation."
How much more explicit does this need to be for you?
And this is the mistake that you are forever making. This has nothing to do with the various ways in which we might use colour words. This has nothing to do with language at all. This is about vision and whether or not its qualities are mind-independent properties of tomatoes. We naively think they are, but physics and neuroscience has shown that they're not.
The fact that the word "blue" is sometimes used to mean that someone is sad or that the word "green" is sometimes used to mean that someone is inexperienced simply has no relevance at all to the discussion.
Sir. You most certainly did.
You drew a hard fast equivalency between four different things. When I asked you what the differences were between them the answer was the same.
"Nothing"
That is most certainly to claim that there are no differences!
Fer fuck's sake!
Indeed we have. Very little attention has been payed to this. You've yet to have responded to the important parts. Ignoring issues does not make them go away.
Quoting Michael
Okay.
He acknowledges and talks about both internal and external components of color vision and seeing color. He makes good points regarding the subjective aspects of color vision/seeing red as well as the objective ones.
Nothing he says aligns with the mistake your entire philosophical edifice, informed stance, rests its laurels upon. See the top of this post.
You asked me for the difference between an hallucinated red and a red percept. There is no difference because an hallucinated red is a red percept. I didn't say that there's no difference between seeing a red pen and hallucinating a red pen.
You should try reading more carefully.
You should try quoting more carefully.
Yes, and I don't grant the others that this is a uniquely or idiosyncratically Witgenstenian truth.
-
- Thanks. You as well.
My "stance" is repeating what those more knowledgeable of the matter have said:
Maund: "It is this problem that historically has led the major physicists who have thought about color, to hold the view that physical objects do not actually have the colors we ordinarily and naturally take objects to possess."
Newton: "For the Rays to speak properly are not coloured. In them there is nothing else than a certain Power and Disposition to stir up a Sensation of this or that Colour."
Kim et al: "Color is in the perceiver, not the physical stimulus."
Palmer: "Color is a psychological property of our visual experiences when we look at objects and lights, not a physical property of those objects or lights."
Maxwell: "Color is a sensation."
Quoting Michael
None of them did.
The second and third are at odds.
You believe em both?
I edited this, so please keep this in mind.
Alternatively, Newton, From Opticks, said,
From what has been said it is also evident, that the Whiteness of the Sun's Light is compounded all the Colours where with the several sorts of Rays whereof that Light consists, when by their several Refrangibilities they are separated from one another, do tinge Paper or any other white Body whereon they fall. For those Colours ... are unchangeable, and whenever all those Rays with those their Colours are mix'd again, they reproduce the same white Light as before.
He acknowledges and talks about both internal and external components of color vision and seeing color. He makes good points regarding the subjective aspects of color vision/seeing red as well as the objective ones.
Nothing here to support the presupposition that four different things are equivalent. That's what you've done.
Searle eviscerates the Bad Argument - "that the existence of hallucinations and other arguments show you never see the real world, you just see your own sense data" - which looks to be the very case that @Michael is attempting to make, that we never see red, only ever percepts-of-red.
I asked what the difference was between seeing red stuff[hide="Reveal"](what happens when we look at red stuff)[/hide], hallucinating red stuff[hide="Reveal"](which never happens while looking at red stuff)[/hide], and dreaming red stuff, [hide="Reveal"]which also never happens while looking at red stuff[/hide].
"Nothing" was your reply.
Quoting Michael
Quoting Michael
Quoting Michael
Sigh.
This would be a neat argument for why colors and percepts are not the same thing. The percept of the ball changed, but its color stayed the same.
Cherry picking one liners as a means of putting forth a position. Doesn't work very well if the authors do not agree with one another.
But the example gives is telling.
So now provide the link to the study in which some neurobiologist looked at someone's mental phenomenon while the subject was looking at a ripe tomato as observed red mental phenomenon.
If red cannot be a property of tomatoes the how are they the property of neurons?
Yes, the hard problem has not been solved yet your explanations assume that it has. That's the issue.
Colors are a type of information.
No, the change is the shadow falling over a part of the red ball, making that part look dark red. That's what there is to see.
The "percept" (or mental phenomenon) is the seeing, not the colour that one sees. Even if the colour is a systematic hallucination, it is not a percept. What makes it systematic is the fact that the hallucination is causally constrained by the eye's interaction with wavelength components of light.
What makes causality and determinism necessarily materialistic? My thoughts naturally lead to other thoughts. Certain experiences are prerequisites for certain thoughts. It seems to me that my thoughts can "bump into" other thoughts and create novel thoughts. New thoughts are an amalgam of prior thoughts and experiences. It seems to me that causality and determinism could be just as immaterial as material.
It seems as if you are rather arbitrarily cutting off consideration of the scientific picture somewhere in the brain or at the retina.
However the light source being reflected off of the tomato and into the eyes is no less a relevant part of the scientifc understanding of what is happening.
OK then, just take "materialism" out of that post, and replace it with "determinism", if it offends you.
What if I said that the tomato appears ripe? Do we really need to make it clear whether we are talking about the appearance or the tomato when talking about the tomato to others?
Yep. There is naught to talk about but our experience of anything. Otherwise, Noumena.
The speculative metaphysics going on in here to support the idea that colour is "out there" is really weird. It's gotten very boring though as no one seems to be understanding each other, and I apologise to anyone who wanted a direct reply. Having read these last two pages, I cannot understand how half of you tie your shoes :nerd:
To have a true understanding of the human condition.
A true understanding does not simply consist of "things are as they are".
Yet the ball does not change colour...
It might change colour if someone painted it, or if the surface faded in the sun.
So we have an superficially enigmatic situation in which the ball does not change colour but the colour changed. Is this a paradox? Not at all. We understand the background of each description, and we acknowledge the truth of both: this is what a red ball in part shade looks like.
Which brings out again the falsehood of thinking there is one notion of colour to rule them all.
So some locutions would have more phenomenological accuracy? Curious that you might want to contradict yourself so blatantly.
Brilliant stuff, Apo. :rofl:
You're welcome.
I little more exposition on Searle's view of colors:
From Seeing Things as They Are:
"Color is a bit tricky because of such phenomena as spectrum inversion and color constancy, and we will get into those issues in the next chapter. Let us now examine our visual experience of the red ball. Is the visual experience itself red? Emphatically, visual experiences are not colored. Why not? Colors are observable to all, and visual experiences are not. The color red emits photons of about 6500 angstrom units and the visual experience emits nothing. So it is wrong to think of the visual experience as itself colored. Also, to think that visual experiences are colored is almost inevitably to commit the Bad Argument because one has to ask who is seeing the color."
(The Bad Argument Searle refers to is any argument that attempts to treat the perceptual experience as an actual or possible object of experience.)
He continues, "First, for something to be red in the ontologically objective world is for it to be capable of causing ontologically subjective visual experiences like this. The fact of its redness consists at least in part in this causal capacity (with the usual qualifications about normal conditions and normal observers) to cause this sort of ontologically subjective visual experience. There is an internal relation between the fact of being red, and the fact of causing this sort of experience. What does it mean to say that the relation is "internal"? It means it could not be that color if it were not systemically related in that way to experiences like this. Second, for something to be the object of perceptual experience is for it to be experienced as the cause of the experience. If you put these two points together, you get the result that the perceptual experience necessarily carries the existence of a red as its condition of satisfaction."
An absolutely crystal example of Searle's inability to think clearly. He very much likes his hand waving.
Quoting Richard B
It is uncanny how close this sort of thing is to Aquinas. I think Searle would've been edified to read the pre-modern realists who dealt with some of the same problems in a less skeptical age.
Yep, I often thought if Wittgenstein wanted to theorize instead of just describe he might have moved in the direction that Searle has.
I will have to take your word about Aquinas as I am only familiar with his arguments for the existence of God.
This is based on Searle's ontological distinction between modes of existence. Entities like mountains, molecules, and tectonic plates have an existence independent of any experience. They are ontologically objective. Entities like pains, tickles, and itches exist only insofar as they are experienced by a subject (for Searle this is either a human or an animal). They are ontologically subjective.
Of course it's relevant, but it's not colour. Just as stubbing one's toe is relevant to explain pain, but isn't itself pain. Pain and colour are what happen in the head after.
Neural representations of perceptual color experience in the human ventral visual pathway
This has nothing to do with intentionality. This has to do with colours.
Yes, that's what I said in that previous post:
"the predicate 'is red' is used to describe objects which cause red mental phenomena."
But our ordinary, everyday conception of colours is that of the ontologically subjective visual experience, not a material surface of electrons absorbing and emitting various wavelengths of electromagnetic radiation.
This is how we can make sense of such things as the inverted spectrum, or different people seeing a different coloured dress when looking at the same photo emitting the same light.
That's just sad.
The science has shown that naive colour realism is wrong and that eliminativism and subjectivism are right. Projectivism explains why we are initially naive colour realists, and dispositionalism provides a reasonable post hoc description of how we use such predicates as "is red".
I guess that having been informed about the relevant science for a long time, it's rather baffling to me that so much energy is going into such a philosophical discussion.
It baffles me that people still think it's a matter for philosophy, as if we can use a priori reasoning to figure out the nature of sensory experiences and their relationship to distal objects. It's even more baffling that some think that this can be determined by an examination of language.
And perhaps most baffling of all is those who accuse me of misrepresenting the science, as if Maxwell literally saying "colour is a sensation" is not the father of electromagnetism literally saying that colour is a sensation.
I agree with your take on the issue, but philosophy isn't just about using apriori knowledge. It's partly about stepping back from science to understand the biases it operates with.
That brings up the issue of understanding the biases of those who step back from science
Right, in white light that has the energy of daylight the pigments emit photons of about 700 nm. In shade (ambient light) they emit photons with less energy. Hence the red is darker or less saturated in the shade.
A damaged eye, brain injury, spectral inversion, colour blindness, hallucination, illusion etc. may impair one's ability to see things as they are, but an impaired ability won't change what there is to see: a coloured world of pigments, shapes, varying behaviour of light.
From Plato's Allegory of the Cave.
After exiting the cave, and "seeing the light", the philosopher returns to the cave, with the intent of teaching others what has been revealed to him.
Not sure what you mean by "pigments" here, but it's usually things like stars and torches and lightbulbs and fire that emit photons, not powder.
Yet I don't know of any good arguments against nsive realism, so perhaps it's worth investigating (but in a separate thread) :cool:
There are no arguments against naive realism; there is experimental evidence against it. Physics and neuroscience disproved it a long time ago.
I'm not talking about stars, torches, nor lightbulbs. but pigments. Pigmented surfaces exposed to light emit light, unlike glossy surfaces that reflect light.
A pigmented surface is uneven, incoming photons bounce and scatter on it according to the wave-like behaviour of light. That's why a rough plastered wall, for instance, emits/spreads more light on its surroundings than a smooth glossy wall which instead reflects incoming light.
Walls of plaster, wood, stone etc may both emit and reflect light in various degrees, but that's because their pigmented surfaces (which emit light in the above sense) can be grinded or treated or covered with glossy materials (reflecting light).
I think the term you're looking for is "fluorescent", not "pigmented". If we're talking about the powder, conventional pigments don't emit light (although there is such a thing as fluorescent pigments).
Not sure how any of this is relevant to the topic though.
No, I'm not looking for a term, and plaster walls are not fluorescent..
But plaster walls don't emit (visible) photons, which is why I can't see them at night when I close the curtains and turn off the light. Like most other things they just reflect the (visible) light from some other source.
Yes. That's also part of phil of sci.
They do in the sense I describe above.
Quoting Michael
..which is not the sense I describe above.
Makes me think of the many revelatory ideologies (freudian, marxist, individualist, religious etc), categorically assuming underlying biases, power relations etc. no matter what. They just "know' that what one says or writes is a function of one's biases, not of the meanings of the words.
You could hardly be recognized as biased if your expressions were meaningless.
One does not even have to speak. They have already diagnosed whatever one says as a function of identity, sexual phobias, privileges, self interest, inherited sin etc. Thus any criticism can be dismissed as biased, regardless of the truth of the words.
The bolded portion needs unpacked.
The physical retinal image does not come from within the perceiver. It is not that image being recorded. Rather the physical retinal image is the recording. Color perception is being recorded.
Color requires both, colorful things(things capable of being seen as colorful by a creature so capable) and a creature so capable.
One could say they no longer need the artist. One could say that because the music is being experienced via using an ipod that the music is in the ipod and not the world...
One could say...
I'm not okay with that, because rainbows and visible spectrums are colorful. They may not exist without being looked at, which is fine, but they most certainly do while they are.
There are all sorts of things within one's experience that are not located just in the head. Color is one.
I miss Isaac in these discussions.
:up: :100:
That's just begging the question.
Rainbows are just refracted light, with longer wavelengths at the top and shorter wavelengths at the bottom. It's an incidental fact about human physiology that retinal stimulation by light causes colour experiences, with different wavelengths being responsible for different colours.
That's why Newton said "For the Rays to speak properly are not coloured" and why Maxwell said "colour is a sensation". You might not be "okay" with this, but them's the facts.
And here's an image that you might find enlightening:
There's that vicious circularity again.
Quoting Michael
Sure, all that. Have a look at How To Speak Of The Colors, by yet another expat from downunder, with a leaning towards Kripke. It begins with the very wise thought:
This goes towards explaining the intransigence exhibited hereabouts - we might all be right...
So there is some conceptual work to be done, some plumbing to be set in order, if we are to understand colour.
Hence the need for armchairs.
Then is there a way in which @Michael is right, that without the creature capable of seeing colour, there are no colours? Well, yes, but it's quite difficult to articulate this; put the green tomatoes in one box and the red tomatoes in another, and close them in - are the tomatoes in that box still red, despite being unobserved? Of course.
Some might have us believe that what is before us are patches "dense and yellowish in colour... composed of chalk, lead white, ochre and very little black..." with "bone black, weld (luteolin, Reseda luteola), chalk, small amounts of red ochre, and indigo" and "ochres, natural ultramarine, bone black, charcoal black and lead white". This is the description of "Girl with a pearl earring" from Wikipedia. If someone were to claim that there is nothing more to the painting than this list of compounds, they would in a sense be right, but also very wrong.
This is closely related to and in another thread:
Quoting cherryorchard
When Michael says that colors are percepts or that we only ever see percepts and never colors, he is in a very real sense committing himself to the position that we only ever see colors indirectly.
That makes sense.
Quoting Richard B
Here is an example where Aquinas is considering the question of whether the impression is related to the intellect as that which is understood or that by which it understands. The Bad Argument would reflect the idea that understanding terminates in the impression. In terms of this thread we would ask whether the percept is what is seen, or whether the percept is that by which we see:
Quoting Thomas Aquinas, ST Ia.Q85.A2 - Whether the intelligible species abstracted from the phantasm is related to our intellect as that which is understood?
I would say Michael, and others, are committed to a particular metaphysical worldview I like to call The Private Theater. In this worldview, they imagine they are in a theater where they alone are watching a series of images being projected onto a screen. Based on their memory, they have been in this theater all their lives. With time they have learned to use language and logic from rather useful pedagogical images. Fortunately, or unfortunately, this language and logic has revealed a rather uncertain existence. Ideas of cause and effect have made them realize that these projected images have some kind of cause of some unknown nature. What could be these images really be like they wonder. If only their scientific laws could remove this doubt, but unfortunately no matter how many times they predict future images, the next one could undermine everything. Doubt creeps in again. But if one thing they can gain comfort in is the certainly that what appears to them in the theater is always certain.
It's not circular, just as noting that the predicate "is painful" is used to describe things which cause pain mental percepts is not circular.
The fact that we say "is red" rather than something like "is redful" seems to have you confused.
Naive colour realism certainly isn't true. Even the paper you quoted seems to agree with that:
The science is clear that with respect to these phenomenal qualities, eliminativism and subjectivism are correct.
We see colours "directly", just as we feel pain "directly".
I'm not committed to any metaphysics. I'm only committed to physics, and as the SEP article on colour explains, "the major physicists who have thought about color ... hold the view that physical objects do not actually have the colors we ordinarily and naturally take objects to possess", which is why such luminaries as James Clerk Maxwell, the scientist who first developed the theory of light as electromagnetism, said "colour is a sensation".
That's it. You are reading something into my words that just isn't there.
:rofl:
Coming from one who assumes what's in question and admittedly does not have an argument.
Well, I am agreeing with "without the creature capable of seeing color; there are no colors". Colored things are also necessary. Searle seems to say much the same thing.
Michael's not right. He's said there's no colored things aside from mental percepts.
They are inherently capable of being seen as red by a creature so capable. They do not look red unless they are capable of being seen as red by a creature so capable and they're being looked at.
If there's nothing more to being red than being capable of being seen as red by a creature so capable, then they are always red, regardless of whether or not they're being looked at. I think that's where Searle is on that. What's below seems to support this. I'm fairly certain that I've listened to that series of lectures on more than one occasion. Many thanks to UC Berkeley...
Quoting Richard B
If being red requires looking red, or being seen as red, then unobserved things that are capable of being seen as red are not red unless they're being observed. I think that's where I am.
:lol:
We see our color percepts?
Yup. There's the Cartesian theatre. Homunculus lives on...
Why do you enjoy running into the hard wall of the hard problem?
You keep posting scientific studies while ignoring the science of quantum physics with the observer effect and state "collapse". Maybe neurobiologists and quantum physicists should start sharing notes.
It all reeks of a misuse of language. Where is the "we" relative to our colors? What use is the word, "directly" here? How does it help us understand the process?
Having a true understanding of the human condition would come first and from that extrapolate whether our actions are free or determined. I don't want to steer to far off-topic but what is meant by "free" in "free will"? It seems to me that the more options you have the more free your will appears to be, but it would be illogical to believe that you would have made a different choice given the options (information) you had at that moment - as if the same causes (options and circumstances) would produce a different effect (decision).
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
What else would a true understanding consist of if not an understanding of how things actually are?
Feel free to keep your grammatical fiction, it may serve you well.
Yes, this captures it well. It's not an indirect seeing of color; it's an inability to see beyond percepts.
Feeling pain does not entail a "Cartesian theatre" or a homunculus, even though pain is a sensation, and seeing colours does not entail a "Cartesian theatre" or a homunculus, even though colour is a sensation.
You're arguing against a strawman.
I don't know what you're talking about. This has nothing to do grammar. This has to do with physics and physiology. Maxwell knew better than you about how the world works, especially when it comes to light. As he says, colour is a sensation.
Not quite. I'm saying that colour and pain are percepts. We can still talk about tomatoes being colourful and stubbing one's toe being painful; we just have to interpret such talk according to something like dispositionalism, whereas you seem to be interpreting tomatoes being colourful according to something like naive realism, and it this naive realist interpretation that the science has disproven.
It is not the case that colour is a property of tomatoes but only that tomatoes have a surface that reflects ~700nm light, and this light happens to cause red percepts in most humans, with different organisms possibly having different colour percepts in response to that same light, e.g. see the difference between the visible spectrum for humans and dogs, or even the dress that some see to be white and gold and others as black and blue.
Science studies stuff like brains, nerves, cells, molecules, etc Not sensations and mental percepts. But scientists certainly are free to talk about sensations and mental percepts, anyone can be a philosopher.
With regards to grammatical fiction, this is one of Wittgenstein ideas he expressed in PI 307,
Are you not really a behaviorist in disguise? Arent you at the bottom really saying that everything except human behavior is a fiction? - If I do speak of a fiction, then it is of a grammatical fiction.
And what does that have to do with anything I have said here, in particular that comment that you replied to? I am simply reporting that "the major physicists who have thought about color ... hold the view that physical objects do not actually have the colors we ordinarily and naturally take objects to possess" and that Maxwell has said "colour is a sensation".
Are you saying that Maxwell and most major physicists are wrong? Are you suggesting that somehow Wittgenstein's analysis of language can tell us about the physics of tomatoes and the physiology of visual experience, including colour experience?
Quoting Richard B
Neural representations of perceptual color experience in the human ventral visual pathway
This is really very meaningless. It's like saying that a good act is one capable of being seen as good by a creature so capable. Notice, you take something purely subjective, a creature's capacity for discernment, and create the illusion that the discernment "red" is a property of the thing, rather than being the judgement produced by the subject.
You do this by saying that the thing itself is "inherently capable of being seen as red". However, if you think about this statement, we could say it about anything. Anything in the universe, whatsoever, has the capacity to been seen as red, by a creature which is capable of seeing it as red. And so the statement is completely meaningless.
Yep, is color in a perceiver? Well, sure if you open the skull to see the brain, it may appear grayish. But I suspect they are saying something rather metaphysical here, unverifiable. And now we are in the Private Theater realm. Imagining all sort things we wish we can describe with a private language. But I will agree they are talking about physical stimulus, neurons, and reports of color, a scientific way to describe how a human experiences color.
No, what they're saying is that the subject sees colours when there is activity in the V4 and VO1 areas of the visual cortex. Normally these areas are active in response to retinal stimulation by light, but that's incidental to seeing colours.
Quoting Michael
Am I?
Quoting Michael
Percepts are in the head.
Yup, and good points.
You've misunderstood.
Color experience requires both, colorful things(things capable of being seen as colorful by a creature so capable) and a creature so capable.
Things capable of being seen as red are those with physical surfaces reflecting the appropriate wavelengths of the visible spectrum. A capable creature is one capable of detecting and/or distinguishing those wavelengths.
I would say something else as well. A human community who has a general consensus in color judgment. Without this general consensus, there is no language game of colors.
No, that doesn't make any sense. Obviously, having a true understanding of the human condition requires knowing about free will, as a part of the human condition.
Quoting Harry Hindu
What is meant by it, is irrelevant to this point. Since it is commonly said that human beings have free will, then we need to know what is being referred to in order to understand the human condition, of which free will is said to be a part of.
Quoting creativesoul
This doesn't affect the point I made. "Things capable of being seen as colourful by a creature so capable" is really a meaningless statement. Different creatures could see different things as colourful. And when you consider that absolutely anything could be seen as colourful, you will start to understand that the "thing capable of being seen" is not even necessary for the experience of colour. That's what Descartes demonstrated in his "evil demon" thought experiment, which is now commonly presented as "brain in a vat". The reality of dreams and hallucinations demonstrates that your stated condition is really not required.
Quoting creativesoul
That's only by your definition of "seeing red". But that definition is clearly debatable, so who knows what range of experiences could be known by other creatures as "seeing red".
I've already addressed this. I'm neither inclined nor required to go over it again. It's a matter of existential dependency and elemental constituency. Dreams and hallucinations are existentially dependent upon veridical perception. To the rest...
Of course it depends on the sense of the terms I'm using. As if that counts as a problem.
That is an unwarranted assumption. It is quite possible, and even likely I would say, that dreams are prior to sense perception.
You're assuming that free will is part of the human condition. I'm saying that it likely isn't.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
It is commonly said that God exists too, but I'm sure you are aware that there some contention on this issue. It was once commonly said the Earth was flat. The fact that something is commonly said does not necessarily imply that what is said is a fact. This is an argumentum ad populum.
What you believe about "free will" is irrelevant. We do have the capacity to choose, and we all know and accept this. Some call this 'free will", if you want to just call it "the capacity to choose", that's fine. Whatever, way that you describe it, or try to understand it, it's part of the human condition which we need to understand in order to adequately understand the human condition. The fact that some people say we have free will, and others do not, is very strong evidence that the human condition is not understood, and we need to know the truth about this matter before it will be understood.
Quoting Harry Hindu
That is exactly the point I am making. We need to know the truth about these things before we can claim to have an understanding of the human condition. If we knew the truth about free will, then we'd have a much better basis for a claim about understanding the human condition. Since we do not know the truth about this, we cannot claim to have an understanding of the human condition.
I have some thoughts on perception that i wanted to post, so here it goes. It seems to me that there has to be a core ability/principle in man that turns raw sensation into perception. If colors are all in the head then an object doesn't "look like" anything. But then our eyes, perhaps the greatest organ, does not know reality. Does it see shape at least? In combination with touch, perhaps. But colors are just as much "there in front of us" as the solidity on which the colors lie. Things wouldn't even be black and white or translucent on there own. "In themselves" no sight could see them. So it seems to me that that there must be a soul in man that sees through the eyes and touches the object of vision in ocular activity. Science says all we see is light and that the objects are images in the brain (the world is in the brain?). George Berkeley was key in the development of this. But when I say soul I
Do not necessarily mean something spiritual. It could be a core principle that is more than spiritual (actually divine) or it could be a material principle (stemming from QM?) which is even more truly material than the world we are trying to know. That there is something unique in man in this way (although unique only as special and foundational, for animals may have it too) can be shown by how children learn language. We all know that if we come across ancient scrolls on which is written a language unlike any we know, we could never translate it. Yet this is the very situation a child is in. If i show a toddler a ball and say "ball", how does the child know that the word ball refers to that object instead of only to its extension, firure, solidity, or number. If i say to him "you jumped", how does he know the word "you" doesn't apply to the jumping? Of course this all happens in a complex context over time, but i still believe everyone would be autistic so to say without a natural core principle uniting our minds to each other. Even if a child is resting on the mother's breast and she says "love" as the child is feeling love, could not the word love mean rather "mother" instead of the act of love itself. Without a place to start we could never have common communication with each other. So I believe and think that we all have bodies that have all kind of natural intelligences in them, and the that mind is a limitless faculty that is designed to know people and the world itself. If we can't know the world, how can we know other people?
The capacity to choose isn't just a human condition. Other animals make choices too. Computers make choices by running software with IF-THEN-ELSE statements which are options given some set of circumstances. When you make choices, you do the same thing. You measure your options against the current circumstances and ultimately choose the one that best fits the circumstances. Logically, you will always make the same choice given the same set of circumstances and the same set of options, just like a computer. And just like a computer, you choices can become predictable.
So the question isn't, "do we have the capacity to choose". It's "do we have the capacity to choose freely", whatever that means. Hopefully you can enlighten me.
You're still make irrelevant comments. The fact that human beings are animals is an essential aspect of the human condition. So, presenting the fact that other animals make choices, as do human beings, does nothing to suggest that this is not a part of the human condition. Neither does the fact that human beings make machines which also appear to be making choices.
Quoting Harry Hindu
I believe this proposition is fundamentally flawed. There is no such thing as two distinct instances of "the same set of circumstances". That is a fundamental aspect of reality, and also of the human condition, ensured by the nature of time. Any set of circumstance is unique, and not repeatable as "the same". Do you disagree with this?
Quoting Harry Hindu
You seem to be willfully ignoring what I am saying. We do not understand the capacity to choose. Therefore we do not understand the human condition. In order to understand the human condition we need to first understand the capacity to choose. "We" includes I. Therefore I cannot "enlighten" you on this matter.
...which is what I was doing in suggesting that we look at how other animals make decisions. If how animals make decisions is similar to how humans make decisions then that can shed some light on the human condition. This is why we use animals as test subjects to get at some aspect of the human condition without harming humans.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I'm not willfully ignoring anything. It is you that is ignoring my request for you to explain what you mean by free will. If free will simply entails making decisions and I have shown that computers can make decisions does that mean computers have free will? You either agree that it does and we can then settle the case as one of where you use different words than I do to explain the same process, or disagree and you would have to come up with a better explanation as to what free will is. The ball is in your court.
Let me just add that if you want to say that a computer doesn't actually have choices or make decisions then I would expect you to then define what you mean by "choices".
But we still don't know how animals make choices. And, it's doubtful that selections made by other animals can even qualify as decisions. To choose, and to decide, have very different meanings.
Quoting Harry Hindu
I answered this. It's the capacity to make choices. Some say it's free will, others do not. That there is not agreement on this indicates that we do not understand it.
Quoting Harry Hindu
Computers do not make decisions. To decide is to come to a resolution as the result of consideration. Computers are incapable of consideration. Computers do not even choose, they simply follow algorithms. To choose is to select from a multitude of options. There are no options for a computer, it must follow its rules. Even a so-called random number generator is a case of following a set of rules, and not a true choice
It appears like you just like to throw words around willy nilly, pretending that you can argue logically by giving the same word different meanings. That's known as equivocation. You can say that a computer "decides" if you want, and we say that a human being "decides", but obviously what is referred to by that word in each of these two cases, is completely different. So to say that the computer's activity is relevant to what we are discussing, would be equivocation.
That's a weird assertion considering that the definition of "choose" is to decide, according to Merriam-Webster:
https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/choose
So the ball is in your court again to explain YOUR distinction between what it means to choose as opposed to decide because I have no idea what you're talking about.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
MOST people do not say that is free will. Most people define free will as "The capacity to make choices that are neither determined by natural causality nor predestined by fate or divine will." So "free will" isn't just making choices as there are choices that are forced and those that are not. You seem to be saying that "free will" entails both forced and unforced choices.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
You also said,
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
So if we do not understand the capacity to choose how can you say whether or not a computer makes choices or not? I asked you to define what you mean by "choose". If I can learn to predict what you will choose does that no imply that you are following some predictable pattern (algorithm) in making your decisions? Give me an example of one instance where you made a decision and tell me what it was like for you. Explain the process that you used in making your decision.
This discussion has strayed too far off topic.
Yep. And understanding the order of events is paramount. The role that language can and cannot play in our lives; particularly early on. That seems crucial to me.
We are picking out color - to the exclusion of all else - each and every time we gather red things. We even use the same biologically activated structures(brain areas). Such activities go hand in hand - so to speak - with correctly, appropriately, and hence sensibly... uttering "red". There are other ways to use the word.
We are not picking one or the other. We are connecting them. All red things share that in common, even if the common denominator boils down to being capable of causing those capable of having subjective color experiences of red to do so.
I think Searle would distinguish between the subjective and objective aspects of experience.
Red things are not in the head even if they do not look red unless their being viewed.
:up: Right, how could it be sensible to say anything looks like anything outside the context of being seen?
I'm amazed that some in this thread seem to think there is a fact of the matter concerning whether unseen things are coloured. Of course in ordinary parlance it is said they are, but that doesn't mean that what is being claimed is that unseen objects look red or any other colour.
An unseen tomato is not invisible per se. An unseen tomato does not look red it is red.
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=8066898573347962
Did anyone mention RGB? The screens of modern phones, tablets, computers, TVs etc use three colour channels: red, green, blue. There's no yellow light emitted from these screens, yet they can depict yellow objects, and we see them as yellow. But the truth is that those are faint green colours looking as yellow.
Try this. Open a picture of a yellow colour swatch on your phone, zoom in so that the colour covers the entire screen. Then go into a dark room or closet, and let the light from the screen shine on a (white) wall. The light on the wall does not look so yellow. It's faint green.
Well, whether youre convinced by it is irrelevant. What matters is that both a) I see a can of red Coke and b) the photo does not emit 620-750nm light are true. So ones account of seeing the colour red cannot depend on 620-750nm light.
The factual explanation is that the colours we see are determined by what the brain is doing.
Unless having already seen red is necessary for the illusion to work.
Quoting Michael
In part.
By this do you mean that 620-750nm light must have stimulated my eyes for me to see the colour red? Why do you think that? Whats the relationship between 650-720nm light and the colour red?
Must have already in past...
That's how gestalts work.
They're both elements for the emergence of red experience(s).
Sure, like getting stabbed or burnt or whatever are elements for the emergence of pain experience(s). But pain is nonetheless the experience. My claim is only that these colour experiences are our ordinary and everyday understanding of colours. When I think about the colour red I'm not thinking about atoms and electrons and photons or anything like that; I'm thinking about the experience.
Although re-reading this, maybe I've misunderstood you. Are you saying that these are three distinct things?
1. 650-720nm light
2. The colour red
3. Red experiences
Well, they're different sets of meaningful marks(names). For me, the last two are inseparable, whereas they are both existentially dependent on the first.
I agree, if by "is red" we mean is capable of causing red experience in those capable of having them.
a) is false. You don't see red. One colour, or a bundle of colours, can look like another colour. For example, at dusk, dawn, under coloured lights, in pointilistic paintings, RGB screens etc.
Quoting Michael
That's also false. The blind can't see anything no matter what their brains are doing.
Colour is the look, not a wavelength of light (which you seem to be saying here). There is usually a correspondence between the two, but dreams, hallucinations, illusions, and cases such as the dress show that this correspondence doesn't always hold.
Quoting jkop
See cortical visual prostheses.
The blind can see if their brains are directly stimulated.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phosphene
Similarly, the profoundly deaf can hear using direct stimulation methods.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cochlear_implant
This is due to the uncontroversial scientific fact that perception is created by the brain regardless of whether the stimulus enters the brain through the normal means of sensory organs or whether it is hot wired directly through a probe.
One might perceive that he is running while in fact he is dreaming. In that case it would be an error to say he is running. Its the same with sight and hearing. So while one might perceive that he is seeing or hearing with direct stimulation of some part of his brain, it is in fact untrue that he is. The environmental stimulus and the means with which it interacts with a fully-functioning sensory organ is a large part of acts such as seeing and hearing, and ought not be confused with some other stimulus. Stimulating a brain with some of the methods indicated is just an artificial way to illicit some of the biological effects of an actual, natural stimulus, but is in fact not the same act.
Why does that matter? It is still normal to describe someone with a cochlear implant as hearing things, and the same for those with an auditory brainstem implant.
If you only want to use the words see and hear for those with normally functioning sense organs then you do you, but its not wrong for the rest of us to be more inclusive with such language.
If I have a cochlear implant and perceive you say "hello" through my "artificial" means, and I say "Nos said 'hello,'" my statement is true under both correspondence and coherence theories of truth. That is, my saying you said hello corresponds to what actually happened and my use of language is consistent with your own.
We would have a different result if I hallucinated you saying "hello. "
None of this demands a direct realism. To demand a direct realism forces a definition of "artificial" to simply mean "other than typically human, " which in no way can be assumed to be more accurate than other methods. To call one method artificial assumes there is an otherwise natural and correct way, but that assumption is the entirety of this debate. That is, what is contested is whether the world as it appears is as it is or whether it has been artificially manipulated by the internal processes.
My position is that all perception is "artificial" if that term means it is an unaltered representation of reality.
This is equivocation on "seeing." For example, a blind person does not see when they dream, as your verbiage would have it. Sleeping pills are not a cure for blindness.
Quoting Hanover
This is an equivocation on "created." There is a lot of equivocation going on between you and Michael.
In sight the brain processes external signals, it does not create images. In that case the images require both the brain and the external stimulus. In hallucination the brain does create images, for in that case the images require no external stimulus. Your whole facade requires equivocation between these two very different cases. If there were no difference between seeing the wolf and hallucinating the wolf, then you would be right. In that case we would not even have two different words, "seeing" and "hallucinating."
Yep. :up:
It's odd that we even have to have these sorts of conversations.
I don't think telling the blind that they can see is a great idea. Mimicking such function is obviously helpful, offering a better quality of life, but it is because the facts are apparentthe blind have trouble seeingthat they were able to get the help in the first place.
The question is not whether I said "hello" but whether you heard me say "hello". But hearing me say "hello" and recognizing the signals from a mechanical device stimulating your auditory nerve are two different acts. Evidence of this is that one has to relearn how to "hear" using such a device.
By "artificial" I am speaking of the mechanism, for instance the cochlear implant. It was designed, built, and inserted by a human being, whereas the organs were not. In any case, the only things manipulated by internal processes, whether artificial or natural, are internal processes. That's the only extent to which internal processes can manipulate the world.
The deaf can't hear without a cochlear implant but can hear with one. It's quite simple.
Of everyone with a brain, there are some blind and deaf people who can be helped by aids to sight or hearing, and others who cannot. To understand the difference between the two is to understand why sight and hearing are not reducible to the brain. If they were reducible to the brain then everyone with a brain would be able to see and hear, and everyone who is blind or deaf would be helped by brain-based aids.
The question isn't whether seeing via an electrode, through glasses, through your screen window, or through your naked eye are different. They all obviously are. The question is whether there is an ontological difference that impacts the truth value of the judgment that requires differing descriptive words.
What distinguishes the dream with the electrode example is the claim "there is a chair" does not correspond with reality in the dream, but it does with the electrode.
If you wish to preserve the term "see" only for those instances where it is visualized through the naked eye, then why stop there, but instead create 1000s of gradients of the word "see" to preserve each type of corrective lens or optic surgery someone might have?
That is, to say "I 'see' the chair" with my thick eyeglasses and you to say you "see" the same through your cataracts, then that too would equivocate the term "see" as you're arguing it.
It's not equivocation to say that the schizoprenic hears voices. That's just the ordinary way of describing the phenomenon.
Verbs like "to see" and "to hear" don't just refer to so-called "veridical" perception.
If they can hear, why do they have a cochlear implant?
Does the "electrode" result in sight or a hallucination? (And why is this question important?)
That doesn't follow.
They hear because of the cochlear implant, much like I can see the words on the screen because of my glasses.
No, "hears voices" is a euphemism for "hallucinates." You are confusing yourself.
No one is arguing brains can hear without input of any sort. The argument is that no can hear without a brain.
But who is arguing that persons can hear without brains?
I'm not confusing myself because I haven't claim that "hearing voices" isn't a euphemism for "hallucinate".
I am simply saying that it is ordinary in English to use the verbs "to see" and "to hear" in a much more inclusive manner than the more restricted sense that you and NOS4A2 insist on.
You've claimed that the "hears" in "hears voices" is just like the "hears" in ordinary predications about hearing, which is false, because "hears voices" is a euphemism for hallucination.
No I haven't.
Indeed. The question is whether or not there is an ontological difference between veridical perception, dreaming, and hallucinating.
The difference is the things. In the first, they are always included. In the second and third, they are never included. Seeing rainbows always includes rainbows. Dreaming and hallucinating rainbows never does.
Pretty simple.
Same with hearing voices, hallucinating voices, or dreaming them. The voice is absent in the latter two, but always present in the first.
So when the blind dream are they seeing? They are obviously interacting with percepts, and you think percepts are seeing, so apparently the blind are seeing when they sleep.
Quoting Leontiskos
They are seeing in the sense of having a visual experience but not seeing in the sense of responding to and being made aware of some appropriate external stimulus by way of their eyes, much like the schizophrenic is hearing in the sense of having an auditory experience but not hearing in the sense of responding to and being made aware of some appropriate external stimulus by way of their ears.
You can see the words on the screen because your eyes still function enough to be able to see. No amount of glasses can help the those with total blindness see, however.
But other mechanisms such as a cortical visual prosthesis can help (or will be able to help in a few decades). Much like a cochlear implant helps where an ear trumpet can't.
Okay good, and this is true even if their percepts are identical, yes? Therefore to see an external object is not merely a matter of percepts, yes?
There are cases where nothing will help. Again:
Quoting Leontiskos
It will definitely help and will improve the quality of life of those who cannot see. But if seeing is using the eyes to perceive the environment, that isnt sight. Thats all Im saying.
All that is required to have a visual experience is for there to be the appropriate neural activity in the visual cortex, and all that is required to have an auditory experience is for there to be the appropriate neural activity in the auditory cortex.
Most of the time this neural activity is a response to sensory stimulation of biological sense organs, but sometimes it is a response to other things, whether those be artificial sensory aids, drugs, sleep, or mental illness.
And as I've said, you're welcome to only use the verb "to see" in that sense if you like, but there's nothing wrong with the rest of us being more inclusive in how we use such language.
Quoting Leontiskos
Note that just as one can have a visual experience of an object without seeing an external object, so too one can have a visual experience of a colored object without seeing an external colored object. I can hallucinate a horse and I can hallucinate the horse's brownness, and this is different from seeing a real horse and seeing its real brownness. The distinction you are making applies equally well to color.
Absolutely. I have no qualms with people using those verbs. Philosophically speaking, however, my concern is only if it is true or false, and the use of those verbs falls under one category and not the other.
Does the same hold of color?
--
The reason color is not a percept is because humans know that there are things which alter our percepts without altering the external objects of our percepts, and because of this the most common use of the word 'color' has a super-perceptual referent. For example:
Quoting Leontiskos
When a shadow falls over a ball we do not say that the color of the ball has changed, because we differentiate our visual perception of the ball from the ball's color. We know that things like paint change the ball's color whereas shadows do not. This is just like the indirect realism argument regarding perspective (i.e. the way that distant objects appear smaller).
"Color is a percept" is a false statement, just as, "Objects are percepts" is a false statement. Nevertheless, there is a manner in which color is more "perceptual"/subjective than shape. Color is more one-dimensional than shape given that it cannot be perceived by any other sense, and it is interpreted by the brain in a more idiosyncratic manner than shape is (i.e. it is more dependent on the particularly human cognitive apparatus than something like shape). But it is incorrect to take these subtle differences and turn them into crass statements like, "Science has proved that color does not exist!"
The bolded word is where Michael oversteps. Things in the word, and the people around us, also have a say in what colours we see. The brain is not the sole determiner colour.
Does a baby see color?
I assume babies can't see color because "Things in the word, and the people around us, also have a say in what colours we see." Since babies don't know words and words determine what we see, babies can't see, color or otherwise.
This seems like the same equivocation between determination and influence that Banno pointed out to begin the exchange.
The claim seems to be that things in the world influence what we see, and our linguistic community influences the names of what we see and the aspects we pay attention to. It does not follow from this that babies do not see.
Kinda where we came in.
Because red was defined in the example as certain wavelengths.
Do they see red?
Do cats see red even without words?
You made an argument, I pointed out why it was a bad argument, and then instead of responding you asked a question. Was your argument a good argument or a bad argument? Does your conclusion follow?
Yup. My reply was "in part"...
You indicated language was a necessary element in the formulation of a perception and I offered an example of perception occurring without language.
You didn't relent with my example, so I asked why my example was inapplicable, and you said "whatever."
Is what you're saying simply that sometimes language affects our perception and sometimes it doesn't?
Where did I indicate that? This thread has been running on poor reasoning for dozens of pages, so I think it's time to address the reasoning itself. Where did I say or imply that language is a necessary element for perception? Where is your reasoning coming from?
Quoting Hanover
Where do you believe you did that?
The question here is how you interpreted Banno's claim in order to impute to Banno the conclusion that, "babies can't see, color or otherwise." What sort of strawman is intervening to produce such an incredible conclusion? If it doesn't follow from what Banno said, then what is happening, here?
I thought that that 'issue' had been long since resolved. Seeing. Dreaming. Hallucinating. The former always includes some thing, whereas the latter two never do.
But, with this thread, evidently not.
Edit: And it looks as if the conversation will continue. That's how threads such as this function, with folk who know the one, true answer talking past each other.
'Things in the word, and the people around us, also have a say in what colours we see."
Yes, and I gave my interpretation of Banno's statement here, which included a critique of your interpretation:
Quoting Leontiskos
You responded with a question. Would it help if I added that it neither follows from this that babies do not see color?
How do you get from Banno's statement to your inference that, "babies can't see, color or otherwise"? What is your reasoning?
If that is not the reasoning that takes you from Banno's statement to your inference, then what is the reasoning that takes you from Banno's statement to your inference?
Is the dispute just over the word "necessary" in conclusion #2?
If it is, then that's sort of obvious. Why would I demand that language not be a factor in how we interpret the world? My position has always been that perceptions are indirect interpretations of reality, which would include how we rationally assess them. It's obvious sometimes we think linguistically. It's also obvious sometimes we don't.
Define "precepts" how you're using it here. That's not a term I've used or argued for.
Okay, well I have no idea how (2) is supposed to follow from (1).
Quoting Hanover
No one has said you would. The question is why you think (2) follows from (1).
As to Banno's statement, you fully ignored the heart of it, "Things in the world [...] also have a say in what colours we see."
At this point it seems like you are trying to continue agreeing with Michael despite not agreeing with him on much of anything.
I think the reason Michael's threads never get fully resolved is because Michael refuses the transparency that is a prerequisite for such resolution. In this thread the refusal was in place from the start: instead of making arguments for his position he would only ultimately make arguments from authority from "the science." He was never willing to try to explain how his conclusions followed from "the science." If you don't set out your argument you cannot be critiqued, and if you cannot be critiqued then you can never be wrong.
You are not following what I've said. My point is only that perception is a mental construct.Quoting Leontiskos
When did I adopt Michael's position? It seems you're conflating my position with his.
We specifically disagreed regarding the relevance of this discussion, with him clarifying his sole objective was in identifying the scientific position on perception.
The ball just has a surface layer of atoms with an electron configuration that absorbs and re-emits particular wavelengths of light; these wavelengths being causally responsible for the behaviour of the eye and in turn the brain and so the colour experienced.
Physics and neuroscience has been clear on this for a long time.
We might talk about the ball as having a colour but that's a fiction brought on by the brain's projection and the resulting (mistaken) naive colour realist view of the world.
I haven't claimed otherwise. I have explicitly stated that ~700nm light is the usual cause of red colour experiences (because it is the usual cause of the brain activity that corresponds to red colour experiences).
I have simply quoted what the scientists have said about colour. I'll do it again for you:
[quote=James Clerk Maxwell]Colour is a sensation.[/quote]
[quote=Isaac Newton]For the Rays to speak properly are not coloured. In them there is nothing else than a certain power and disposition to stir up a sensation of this or that Colour.[/quote]
[quote=Stephen Palmer]Color is a psychological property of our visual experiences when we look at objects and lights, not a physical property of those objects or lights.[/quote]
As the SEP article on colour explains:
If you disagree with the science then simply say so, but don't pretend that the science isn't saying what the science is saying. How much more explicit does the above need to be for you?
Quoting Leontiskos
Yes, because the scientists are the ones who have carried out the experiments to figure out how the world works, so they better know what they are talking about. You can't determine what colours are just by sitting in your room and using a priori reasoning.
As @Michael argues, color is not within the external object, but it is within brain. That I am agreeing with. If you limit the term percept (which was what I was trying to understand by asking for a definition) to those perceptions you receive solely from your senses, then I suppose I do disagree with Michael to the extent that I allow that some of my interpretation of the external data might arise from language (and all sorts of other mental processes).
That Michael might allow interpretation of the external object by the sense organs alone and not allow it to also be interpreted by language just seems an odd limitation (if that's at all what he's even saying, as that doesn't seem correct). I see no need to limit how the interpretation occurs, whether it be by language or otherwise.
That is, what seems critical here in response to the OP (and we can't lose sight of the fact that the OP asks the question in this thread, regardless of how meandering the conversation might have become) which is:
Quoting Mp202020
To that question, the answer is that the color red does NOT exist outside the subjective mind if the color is entirely caused by the senses OR if it is caused by language. An admission therefore that language causes us to perceive red in a way peculiar to our language lands red as a subjective entity.
That was the question, not whether red is in its entirety mitigated only by the sense organs. It can be affected by language as well, and that would result in the same answer to the OP.
All I am saying is that a deaf illiterate mute can see the difference between a red box and a blue box. That visual distinction has nothing to do with language and everything to do with what the brain does (in response to what the eyes do in response to what the light does in response to what the box does).
Or for a more self-evident example, I can see the difference between two shades of red despite not having an individual name for each shade.
All this talk of language is utterly irrelevant.
I agree with that, but whether I'd foreclose the role of language in the perception of all things, I don't know I'd go so far and I don't know it matters for the purposes of the OP.
My hesitation is in defining the phenomenal state in terms of just raw images in one's brain. It's not like I just see red in a vacuum, but there are all other sorts of things going on in mind, many of which I'm interpreting as I see the thing.
That is, if I see a cardinal, I don't just see the red of the bird, but I see the whole bird and I also have all sorts of thoughts about what that thing can do and what it is at the same time. I don't just get a raw feed of red.
But to say that I must have language to see a bird is equally wrong. Babies see birds. Why the fetish with language as a particular influencer of reality, I don't really know.
Sure, but I don't think all that other stuff has anything to do with the colour, and the discussion is about colour.
But I don't think phenomenal states of a single ingredient exist. The perception is complex, but to the extent you want to hypothesize a perception of red devoid of any other mental activity, then I guess it could exist without language, although I don't think such a thing could exist at all.
We see a red box and a blue box. The colour is the relevant visual difference between the two. I don't think that this visual difference has anything to do with language. The difference is entirely in how the boxes reflect light and then how our body responds to that light.
Specifically it would be our neuronal response to the stimulus that determines how we see the color. I'm trying to understand why it matters in this discussion whether our neuronal response to light is altered by our language skills. I admit that it is doubtful the language bone is connected to the seeing bone, but what would the philosophical import be if it was?
As with hearing, for example, I hear someone say "hello" and I would expect that would elicit my language skills despite the word being just air waves. Whether my mind is so constructed to reduce visual inputs into symbols or representations as well so that they're in some way linguistic in the most general sense, I don't know or see what it matters here. That is, maybe I see red and it makes me mad, or happy, or it reminds me of the time I cut my finger and its visualization is imbued with subjective representations.
Or maybe I'm overthinking this and the point of this discussion is just to tell the Wittgensteinians that their assumptions regarding language are non-scientific horseshit?
Maybe that's true, but I'm more arguing against those who seem to be saying that because we say such things as "the box is red" then it must be that the colour red is a property of the box and not a property of our bodies.
That's my issue as well.
What I actually think linguistic philosophy holds is simply that "the box is red" means the "box" is "red." That is, they're never actually talking about boxes or redness as a metaphysical entity, but they're instead just talking about how we define words and use words. Under this framework, when @Banno says the box is red, his comment is deflationary, meaning to claim "the box is red is true" is meaningfully indistinct from saying "the box is red." All you can do is define your terms and agree on usage.
When you say the box is red and that it's a product of the mind, that attempts to establish a subjective metaphysical reality to the redness, whereas, from the best I follow, Banno attempts to say "the box is red" just means the box is red as defined and distinguishing which part is subjective and which is objective is folly.
The correspondence theory of truth holds no value in this way of thinking, and so the talking around each other follows.
If this weren't the case, then the obviousness of the brain's role in determining perceptions would be conceeded, but the fact it isn't means there's a larger refusal to even consider the underlying metaphysical structure of objects.
All we have are words in this world, which is an interesting puzzle to construct and sort of admire, but it's largely horseshit as far as it is true.
Of course the experience or the appearance of colour is not within the object. So it all comes down to what you mean by saying that colour is or is not in the object.
So I'll go along with an analysis that says that red is a property of most ripe tomatoes, depending on variety.
Some folk claim properties must in some way inhere in the individual in question, and so suppose that while the tomato might be round and firm, it is not red. That strikes me as unneeded philosophical theorising.
I'll also say things such as that this is a closed box of red tomatoes. Some philosophers will claim that such knowledge is impossible. I find their accounts unconvincing.
All this by way of pointing out that while being red involves the firing of certain neurones in an individual brain, there are in addition an assortment of other issues. Colours are more than individual mental percepts.
46 pages. Even @Mp202020 gave up long ago.
Yup. Red balls cause color experience.
Quoting Michael
Not "a" as in singular, but rather 'a' as in a two sided fiction. One side claims color is in visible objects. The other side claims color is in the brain.
They are both half-ways right, and completely wrong. Color - as we know it - is within color experience. Veridical color experience includes red balls. The 'scientific' account in the above quote is commensurate with that.
Hallucinating red balls is one kind of color experience that never includes red balls. The 'scientific' report in the above quote does not take that into account. According to that report, hallucinating and or dreaming about a red ball is not a color experience. There is no surface layer of red ball atoms within one's dream. There are no red balls in hallucinations thereof.
What you've put forth in support of your own claims stands in direct contradiction to them.
THis alone should be sufficient to show Michael's error. The ball is red.
Isn't that like: we may talk about the sun rising, but that's a fiction?
I guess so. We say the sun rises in the east when it's really that the earth is spinning. We say the ball is red when redness is really a product of the brain.
Well, yes. It is true that the sun rises in the East; and we say it is true that the ball is red. What is "really" doing there? Prioritising one narrative over another?
Quoting Hanover
If everything is the product of the brain, then what simulates the brain is the product of the brain. Your narrative leaves you unable to interact with the world. But of course for you the world is just a product of the brain.
You built yourself a self-consistent self deception. Solipsism.
Yes. We have the common figures of speech and then the narratives that help out in the areas of science and engineering, plus aesthetics: the statue is beautiful, but beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
If you squash them together you get directly opposing truths.
Yeah, and I think it's clear that my use of the term "everything" references perceptions, which is all you experience, not all that there is , as it's clear I've distinguished between the brain and the stimulus, which means I've admitted to something other than the brain, thus denying solipsism.
I'm not a mind monist. There are bodies. Yours and mine.
Speaking of deception and all things Descartes, which many blame for this whole mess anyway. You are aware that the positing of the great evil deceiver did not lead Descartes to solipsism?
Yes. And you can say the statue is beautiful while knowing that beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
Don't ask me. I'm just a word in your game, constructed from usage without metaphysical composition.
I do thank you for speaking my name so that I come into existence.
Yep. Although the two are not exactly analogous. We can agree the fork is on my right while still maintaining that it is on your left. We can agree that the statue is beautiful for you while I find it only curious. If we swap places, we will swap what we say about the forks, but not what we say about the statue. If subjective and objective mean anything, this is a case in point.
Quoting Hanover
Language games do not involve only words. They are locked into the world by what we do. So fortunately or unfortunately, you are not mere words.
What we do is "debate." What debating is how we use the term. Nothing more. Nothing less.
Hanover is ""Hanover" iff Hanover is "Hanover." What be Hanover without "Hanover"?
Silence!
Aesthetics starts with the way the world makes us feel. We're capable of discussing rules of aesthetics because we tend to feel the same about lines of grace and symmetry.
The reason our little notes on perception always center around red is that it's associated with a close to universal feeling: it's hot. Red comes from mind meeting world.
That's wise.
Another 'theory' is that we relate oranges and reds to ripe fruit. I have no idea how far this has been tested though. On the surface it seems like a reasonable assumption ... but they can be wrong of course.
And stubbing one's toe is painful, but pain is still a sensation. We've been over this so many times. Your reasoning is a non sequitur.
Quoting Michael
Sorry - is your claim now that pain is also a fiction? :chin:
No, and nor is my claim that colour is a fiction. My claim is that pain and colour are sensations, and the fiction is that colour is not a sensation but a property of the ball.
And much like "stubbing one's toe is painful therefore pain is not a sensation" is a non sequitur, so too is "the ball is red therefore colour is not a sensation".
Meh. So so.
Is the world outside your head without color in your view?
Perhaps we would be able to numb the sensation of color like we could the sensation of pain, and see the world how it really looks.
Not sure what you mean by "how it really looks", just as I wouldn't be sure what you'd mean by "how it really smells" or "how it really tastes".
Quoting NOS4A2
Yes, and without smell and taste and pain.
I just mean seeing it without the sensation of color. What do you suppose it looks like?
I don't even know what a colourless visual sensation could be, and so I think without colour sensations you'd just be blind.
I would say that you are not following what you are doing, for your <post> in question is obviously not primarily about the thesis that perception is a mental construct. Instead of standing by your interpretation of Banno's claim and answering for it you've retreated back into your motte. I don't intend to keep chasing you back and forth.
People with complete achromatopsia are not blind.
I wonder if someone with achromatopsia views the world more accurately given that it is without color.
Achromatopsia tends to come with other visual problems, so generally probably no.
Although if someone had complete achromatopsia without other visual problems, I suppose there would be special cases where there might be some advantage to achromatopsia. However, there's a lot of visual detail available to those with normal color vision that would not be available to someone with achromatopsia.
For example, is the grey of a ripe tomato distinguishable from the grey of an unripe tomato? I don't know, but it would surely be more difficult than distinguishing a red tomato from a green tomato.
Hmm. Hesperus and Phosphorous. Evening Star. Morning Star. Venus over time.
Those who see red and green as grey ARE picking between the same apples. The red apples look grey to some. So do the green ones. I agree that distinguishing between shades of grey could be more difficult than distinguishing between a red apple and a green one, unless you see red and green as grey. Then you are distinguishing between the same apples. The red apple is also grey.
The apple is ontologically objective. The color of it, not so much. The color of it causes the subjective color experience of the creature capable of having color experience. Color has to be meaningful to the candidate under consideration. This demands a theory of meaning that is capable of taking that into proper account.
Evolutionary progression is key. We have to be able to at least outline the color experience of language less creatures and ourselves alike and we must do so by acquiring understanding of how things become meaningful to language less creatures.
I'm not sure what you are saying here. I'm picturing a scenario where there are multiple different fruit, some of which would be seen as green (unripe) and others as red (ripe), by people with normal color vision. Unripe fruit aren't the same as ripe fruit, so I don't know what you mean by "the same" here.
As an aside, I decided to look up the spectral sensitivity of rod cells (which would be the only functional photoreceptive cells for someone with complete achromatopsia).
Because rod cells have little to no sensitivity to the red part of the spectrum, a red fruit would appear much darker shade of grey than a green fruit, to someone with complete achromatopsia.
Right. I'm just reinforcing the idea that red apples can also be grey apples for the appearance of color totally depends on both, the biological structures(biological machinery) of the observer as well as the physical properties of distal objects.
The red apples are the exact same apples as the grey ones, for the appearance of color is inherent in neither, the distal object nor the observer. Consider this: "That's a red apple" and "That's a grey apple" are both perfectly true when spoken by two people. All it takes is one with the condition you've put forth, and another more commonly/typically functioning individual asserting those claims while ostensively pointing at the exact same apple. The atypically sighted person would have to be informed that what they see is called "grey" by normally sighted individuals, but I've labored this point enough. Save that, and they may call it by the same color name.
There is no correct way to see color. There are typical ways. There are ways that most normally functioning adult humans see colors. Because the same objective physical properties combined with the same outside circumstances/conditions can result in the exact same objects appearing to be different colors to different people at the same time, from the same vantage point, we can know that color does not belong to objects and objects alone. The power to cause color experience in a creature so capable does.
I don't think anything I've claimed is incommensurate with our current scientific knowledge base. Although it may contradict some ancients who believed in things like ether, sensations, and what have you.
Uncle Harry.
I'm gullible. They all coulda been pullin my leg.
Like Aristotle? Putnam? Searle? McDowell? To ascribe child-like ignorance to those who defend naive realism is not so educated.
In the philosophy of perception, 'naive realism' is the name for the idea that the relation between observer and object is direct.
I still like the term naive realism. I think it is apt since it's not doing justice to any adequate theory of realism. An adequate theory of realism would have to treat the perceiver as a genuine agent, not an entirely passive recipient of a purely objective world in all its glory.
Hence, why I think critical realism and new realism are better positions since they're seeking a better understanding of what it even means for something to be real. A realist account of perception will have to consider what the agent themselves brings to the encounter in terms of subjectivity, context, history, affordance, cultural sediment etc.
What are you saying, that "direct realism" is better terminology? I suppose it's better because the word "direct" clearly exposes the faults. Obviously, there is a medium between the supposed "thing" which is seen, and the perception of it. People here are describing that medium in terms of wavelengths, so we might imagine that the visual aspect of "the real" consists of waves.
Quoting Bodhy
Yes, this is a much better starting point. Instead of thinking of the subject as being passively subjected to a world of activity, therefore producing an effect from that causation, it is much better to think of the agent as actively causing the world, as perceived. Then we can look at the way that the supposed external world of activity affects, or has an effect on, the perceived world which the agent creates for itself.
I'm not seeing how the latter is better. It sounds solipsistic to me.
I'd think it better to recognize that neither of those options is very realistic, or the only options.
Yep.
Seems to me that physical events cause mental events and mental events cause physical events. Not one or the other. Both.
Searle fills that bill nicely.
Have you read any of the above mentioned philosophers on perception? Try this.
Quoting Bodhy
They're better, because they're better at satisfying what you already assume? :roll:
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
No, 'direct' is equally misunderstood by uncharitable opponents. I think 'naive' is fine, because in the philosophy of perception it does not refer to ignorance.
Considering the color fictionalism position, if the world is without color then I suppose a scene of greys is what it must look like. And the implications are crazy. We must have evolved into beings who paint the world with color, and somehow were able to stay within the lines this whole time. In fact we must have invented color at some point. Of course its all untenable.
You seem to be under the impression that theres a way things look distinct from the way things look to us. That makes as much sense as saying that theres a way things taste and smell and feel distinct from the way things taste and smell and feel to us.
Vision isnt special.
I don't take credit for that analogy.
No, just that it is possible to see thing more accurately, for instance if the world is without color, maybe it would better to see it without color. Why would a species need color?
There are plenty of species that don't need vision at all. Why is there a question of a species needing color?
There are species that have color vision because for those species it was adaptive to have color vision, and via biological evolution such sensory capacities evolved.
What does it refer to then?
The is a question of a species needing color because, from the perspective of color fictionalism, color is a fiction. Im just not sure why a species would adapt to a fictional view of its surroundings.
Versions of direct perceptual realism (e.g. McDowell's disjunctivism, or Searle's non-disjunctivism).
Compare it with indirect perceptual realism, which is sometimes called 'scientific' despite the fact that it does not refer to science per se but the philosophical assumption that perception is indirect since scientists can manipulate the conditions of observation and evoke non-veridical experiences or hallucinations. But from artificially evoked experiences or hallucinations it doesn't follow that all experiences are hallucinations, nor that we never directly experience objects and states of affairs.
In both of these cases the words 'naive' and 'scientific' are used metaphorically (or rethorically), not literally.
Is it possible to smell and taste things more accurately? Does the world contain smell and taste even when we're not smelling and tasting things?
I'd think it would make more sense to be dubious towards the color fictionalism theory one has in mind.
Light comes in a spectrum of wavelengths. Objects reflect some of those wavelengths more completely than other wavelengths. Our visual systems are able to capture some of the detail of how white light interacts with objects, and it provides an adaptive advantage that our visual systems do so. However, we might say that our visual systems do so crudely.
We might imagine a species with 'superior' color vision, in which each photoreceptive cell in the retina is a spectrophotometer, and can transmit to the brain lots of high accuracy data about the intensity of each spectral component of the light landing on each photoreceptor. There would be an information overload problem though. Such a species would need much thicker optic nerves than we have, in order to transmit such highly detailed visual information to the brain. Furthermore, the brain of this imagined species would need to be much bigger than ours, in order to make use of all the highly detailed data coming in via those thick optic nerves. Brain is metabolically expensive (and in the case of humans, already verging on too big to pass through a birth canal) so although we can imagine such a species it isn't a plausible outcome of biological evolution.
Instead we have visual systems that allow us to gather a useful amount of data about the optical environment while retaining the ability to run away from things that want to eat our brains.
I guess I just don't see the metaphor here, and the use appears to me to be literal.
Well, yes, dogs have better hearing and smell.
I was strictly speaking about colors, though. If color is a fiction, why are we adding fiction to whatever it is were adding the color to?
The eagle has 20/5 eyesight, more rods and cones, and see much better. According to color factionalism they invent color, too, and somehow paint the images with their brain, but why would animals with such great sight distort their sight with color?
It's clearly useful to visually distinguish objects which reflect 400nm light and objects which reflect 700nm light. Colour sensations is how we do that.
Take this for example:
It's not that either humans or dogs (or neither) is seeing the "correct" (mind-independent) colour when looking at an object that reflects 500nm light; it's just the case that 500nm light causes different colour sensations for humans and dogs.
I don't see how it is useful to distort the picture with a fiction.
A fiction is something invented or untrue. Color is a fiction. So it follows that the less color the less fiction, and therefor more accurate. Given that the dog sees a less variety of color according to your spectrums, and color is a fiction, it follows that the dog sees less fiction. Isn't that so?
My opinion is the opposite: that the dog is less-equipped to see the world, not only because it has only a fraction of the cones we do, but because it sees less of the world as a result.
I don't think color is a sensation because sensations occur within the body, while colored objects occur outside the body in a space independent of the mind.
Objects outside the body just reflect different wavelengths of light. This light causes one type of colour sensation in humans and another type of colour sensation in dogs.
Quoting NOS4A2
No its not, it just isn't what you claim it to be.
Quoting NOS4A2
Your reasoning is akin to arguing that because pain is not a mind-independent property of fire then it is not useful and a distortion and a fiction to feel pain when we put our hands in the fire.
1. the apple is red means the apple reflects ~700nm light
2. The apple is red because it reflects ~700nm light
3. The apple reflects ~700nm light because it is red
But dogs can see in the dark. They forfeit one advantage for the sake of another.
But their location suggests that the color is outside the body, not inside. What we do with paints, phosphors, pigments, suggest that the color is out there among the surfaces of the objects these adjectives are meant to describe. On the other hand, there is no indication color sensations exist.
It sure looks like it is. Yours neither looks like it is nor makes any sense.
But I'm speaking about vision. Pain is no doubt located in the body, but it isn't clear that color is. So it is a false analogy. We'll stick to color since that's what the thread is about.
We just use those things to change the way an objects surface reflects light. That does not suggest that colour is a mind-independent property of the objects surface.
Perhaps you could explain which (if any) of these you believe:
1. the apple is red means the apple reflects ~700nm light
2. The apple is red because it reflects ~700nm light
3. The apple reflects ~700nm light because it is red
Quoting NOS4A2
Yes there is. Dreams, hallucinations, variations in colour perception (e.g. the dress), and studies such as this. This is why James Clerk Maxwell in On Colour Vision (1871) said "it seems almost a truism to say that color is a sensation".
And as the SEP article on colour explains:
Why would we need to change the properties of the object if color is not a property of the object?
I don't know the correct answer but all of them seem good enough for me.
Very few examples and most if not all of them are the result of a body in a state of sleep, deprivation, or hallucination. The body is no doubt fascinating but its just not enough for me to doubt common sense, personally.
Besides, sensations arent red any more than the word red is. Sensations or experiences do not have any properties to begin with. If we are to abandon common sense and the world for pseudo-objects and things without properties we're going to need much more than that.
We need to change how the object reflects light because the wavelength of the light that stimulates the eyes is what determines the type of colour sensation elicited.
Pain is a sensation, it hurts to put my hand in very hot water, I add cold water to reduce the temperature, and so I no longer feel pain when I put my hand in.
Quoting NOS4A2
I don't understand what you're trying to say here. Do you accept that pain is a sensation? Do you accept that a bitter taste is a sensation? I am simply pointing out that colour is another type of sensation, specifically a visual sensation. This may not be "common sense", but common sense does not determine the facts, and in this case common sense conflicts with the scientific evidence. I trust the scientific evidence.
If you want to reject the scientific evidence in favour of common sense then go ahead, but it's the less rational position to take.
Im trying to figure it out I just dont understand how a sensation can have the property color. It isnt clear what if anything were talking about with the phrase color sensation. We cant point to it, examine it, or even think about whether it is the kind of object that is able to have such properties in the first place. So how can one verify whether such a thing even exists?
I think of sensations as events in the body, but colored object appear outside of it. Ive never seen or felt or tasted a colored sensation before.
I know common sense isnt its own argument, but I dont know how to deny that the colorful things outside my brain are not colored. And I am presented with evidence every moment of my waking life that objects, not sensations, have the property color. I dont think believing what one is told or accepting an argument from authority is particularly rational, so Ill go ahead and continue to believe what I do.
And this is where you're making a mistake. Visual sensations are events in the body (specifically events in the visual cortex). Depth is a characteristic of visual sensations, and so it seems as if there are coloured objects outside the body. But this is as misleading as phantom limbs.
You appear to be under the impression that visual perception is fundamentally different to other modes of perception, such as pain, smell, and taste. It really isn't. Each perceptual system simply involves different organs responding to different stimuli eliciting different types of sensations.
Quoting NOS4A2
Believing what scientists say about what their scientific studies have determined about the world (including perception) is rational. It is rational to believe in the Big Bang, evolution, atoms, electromagnetism, superposition, and so on, even if any of it conflicts with "common sense", and even if one hasn't carried out the experiments oneself.
In quantum physics reflection is actually an interaction between light and electrons, explained as simultaneous absorption and emission of photons. Each photon of light interacts with all the electrons at the surface of the reflecting object, but there is a time difference depending on how far away the part of the surface is from the source of the photon. The frequency of photon emitted from the electron depends on the energy level of the electron. It's very complex, but something like that.
Do you believe the colored objects themselves are events in your body? Or just the color?
No, I think color and pain are fundamentally different. You seem to think they are fundamentally the same.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8903786/
That's nuts.
I know. Now we've got to start over this whole thread now that we learn you don't need eyes or a brain to see.
:grimace:
Those of us who are plants?
They can start their own thread.
I would add, that an indepth understanding of the science behind perception brings perspective about our ability to work around the limits of our perceptual capabilities. A result of such understanding for me, is that time spent arguing over direct or indirect realism seems like time that might be better spent developing an understanding of the relevant science, and humanity's ability to work around our perceptual limitations.
But then I'm inclined to say things like, "I looked at it on the [oscillo]scope and saw that the amplifier was clipping.", with confidence that the person I would say that too wouldn't have much trouble understanding what I mean. So perhaps I speak nonsense?
From the indirect realism thread, we have a similar perspective on this topic.
Yet part of what confuses these threads is that there really are colored objects outside the body, in the sense that there are really objects which reflect light in ways that allow them to be discriminated. Moreover they really do look the way they do: appearing this way (to humans) is a stable, mind independent property (just not independent of all minds, it is like a social reality)
There is no good reason to believe this. It's just like what atheists say about people who believe in God, you just believe this because it makes you feel more comfortable.
If by "coloured objects" you just mean "objects which reflect light which cause colour sensations" then sure. But that's dispositionalism, not naive colour realism.
Quoting hypericin
Yes, and stubbing one's toe really is painful. But pain is still a sensation.
Rather than "objects which reflect light", it might be better to say that we distinguish through our eyes, the energy levels of groups of electrons responding to their environmental conditions. I believe it is important to notice that we attribute mass to "an object", and electrons have very little, if any, mass. Since the mass of an object is attributed to the nucleus of the atoms, it is very important to understand this revelation of modern science, the fact that we do not see the massive "object". The eyes are sensing something else completely, and presenting that to the conscious mind as the appearance of a coloured object. This is the way that the senses are said to deceive us, through the creation of what we call "appearances".
Rather not. The micro scale is just one scale, one perspective, not more or less privileged than the human, planetary, or cosmic. What scale we talk in depends on context. On our human scale, there are not just protons and electrons, but vast assemblages of them which behave in the ways that are meaningful and relevant to us.
Quoting Michael
Sure, but I feel people conflate two or all three of these different senses in which there really are colored objects out there (one of which is false), which contributes to the endless frustration of these discussions.
That's the problem. Depending on which "scale" we "look" at things from, what we "see" is vastly different. The terms "look" and "see" are meant in the sense of looking and seeing with the intellect, rather than with the eyes. The sense of sight provides us with the way that things "appear" from a very specific "scale", or perspective, and since we rely heavily on that sense, we are deceived into thinking that this is the "correct" way that things "look". But as you now correctly point out, from different scales, things "look" vastly different, so we need to resolve all the inconsistencies between the various different "looks", before we can claim to know how things really "look".
That's why I objected to your post claiming that things really do "look" the way we perceive them to look, through the sense of sight.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Of course, I didn't say that.
Quoting hypericin
Read more carefully before knee-jerk replying.
I stand by my interpretation. This is what you said:
Quoting hypericin
This is what I said:
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Notice, you made a statement about what there really is, or specifically "there really are...". And you said "...they really do look the way they do...". That is what I objected to. In my last post I explained why we cannot truthfully make assertions about the way things really are, or how things "really look". And that is exactly what you did.
You are confusing the chronology. This is what you said in reply to your quote of me:
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
There is no good reason to believe objects really selectively reflect light? Or that objects really appear the way they do to us?
There is no "true" way objects look, I agree with you. This is due not just to scale, but to the multitudinous perspectives one can have on an object (scale is just one dimension of these perspectives). Perception itself is radically perspectival, the redness of red, and the spherical appearance of a ball, is a perspective, and a co-creation between you and the ball. That is how perception to conscious beings necessarily works, in a world where there is no such thing as how things "truly" appear (to any of the senses).
What is the difference between the colour "red", and the concept of "red"?