I can distinguish shades of red. — Michael

Without looking at your sample, identity each of those shades in this picture... without any words.

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. — Michael

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?

Frank, how do you know that we do have "similar experiences of redness and pain"? — Banno

Commonly believed, no reason to doubt it.

If there cannot be global agreement to tax the rich, individual countries can impose taxes through tariffs. It might be argued that this puts the burden on those who are not wealthy, but if a company is going to pass on costs to the consumer it will do so whether that tax is in the form of a tariff or not. — Fooloso4

Placing tariffs causes tariff wars. That's partly how the Great Depression started. That did redistribute wealth, but not for long.

What gives our words stability is their place in our common, shared talk of what is around us. — Banno

In the case of sensation, it's that common biology gives us similar experiences of redness and pain.

Tariffs?

What is to be done: global agreement to tax the rich. — Fooloso4

I used to think in those terms too: property tax on the wealthy. Now I'd say there's just no way to do that. I'm presently reading a book about the early Iron Age. Time goes by, revolutions happen pretty regularly, either from external or internal events. Our world will be the same

Looks like she has a good chance of winning. Whodda thunk it?

Cool, but I meant someone who doesn't need a color sample to create a particular hue, like China red.

If Ukraine advances all the way to Moscow, all the Russians will disappear into the wilderness. That's what usually happens.

A sample of red exemplifies the colour and it's various looks — jkop

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.

we are all solipsists, in a way. — Manuel

In other words, I'm the king of the universe. I knew it!!

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. — Manuel

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 don't think "Is my red your red?" can make much sense, since the experiences are localized occurrences, a bit like "Is my apple digestion your apple digestion?" also is a weird question.
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. — jorndoe

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?

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. — Manuel

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.

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." — Hanover

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.

I'm of the position that the pen is an amalgamation of sensate properties, underwritten by noumena. — Hanover

This is Hume's phenomenalism, and I agree with it. There's nothing in the visual field that says: tree. Tree is an idea.

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. — Manuel

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.

Okey dokey

Well, as a nominalist I don't buy into universals — 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?

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.

The cause of the percept "transcends" the individual, sure. And we all agree that stubbing one's toe is painful. But pain is nonetheless a mental percept, not a mind-independent property of toes or the table leg. — Michael

You don't want to talk about the black percept? Why not?

Ask the same question about pleasure and pain. — Michael

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.

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. — Michael

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?

Walz speaks Mandarin. I guess that will be handy. Still wish it was Shapiro, tho

I love my black job.

It's been 12 minutes for God's sake. How much time do you need? — Hanover

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.

I'll have to think about this for a while.

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 Material–Light Interaction. — Michael

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.

The word "experiences" refers to experiences, so why can't the word "colours" refer to a subset of experiences? — Michael

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.

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? — 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.

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 words refers to these colour experiences. — Michael

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?

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. — Michael

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 don't understand what you mean. Is there a "standard" pain? A "standard" pleasure? A "standard" sour taste? — Michael

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?

it stands to reason that our colour experiences are broadly similar in most cases. — Michael

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 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.

That is literally all i have read about the guy - he's hypocritical and incredibly biased in (essentially) bigoted ways; that he is incapable of carrying the mantle of VP or P as a result of his political leanings and inability to reach/speak to/engage with Women, POC and other Minorities. Every article that has come across any of my SM or non-social media has been either a comedic attack or a "He's going to be the end of America" type of nonsense.
And definitely some of those earlier claims are true - his PR skills are terrible. But to take all of this serious to judge him as a human being, based on this source of information, is bizarre. The film, btw, has been universally panned by all non-right-wing media for roughly these reasons (you can tell, because Close and at times Adams are praised as "despite" the film lol which might be fitting). — AmadeusD

I haven't seen any of that. I mostly get info from the NYT, the WSJ, and Politico. I'd say narrow down input to only sources that at least try to present an unbiased account. You usually have to pay for that.

Well no, this is the unchartiable, childish and ultimately misleading version of things the media likes to put out. His claim isn't "democrats don't have children" anymore than "deplorables" was an actual claim to be applied to every Republican or MAGA-adjacent person. It clearly wasn't, and Hilary unfairly suffered for her lack of precision imo. I wouldn't call the current situation 'unfair' because you're right, he's had several chances to even back out of that thing - but the same mechanisms are at play. They want you angry and incredulous. I'm not really defending him, to be clear. I don't know him. I'm aware he's an awful politician and it's a shame he's running with Trump, amongst all else to deplore there. But it truly is bizarre to see the exact same industry being treated completely differently when they spin different sides of the same coin (i,e two-party politics/politicians) - particularly when I know most of the posters here are far, far more intelligent than to allow what is clearly, and inarguably an industry which does not thrive on accuracy, truth or verdicality but clicks and views. — AmadeusD

As I said, I'd back far away from new sources that want to play on your emotions. Just junk all that wholesale.

By, i would imagine, being much more than shallow, biased, media-driven versions of his personality and life presented to you. — AmadeusD

The media hasn't presented him as shallow and biased. Neither his book nor the movie in which his grandmother is played by Glenn Close give the that impression, so I don't know what you're talking about. I think he's a moron because he's had an abundance of opportunities to turn the "catlady" thing around and he won't do it. This is the hill he's willing to die on: Democrats don't have children. In other words, he's no where near as bright as we expected him to be when he was chosen.

If Vance actually graduated, what's curious to me is how the hell did his dumbass get out of Yale? — 180 Proof

Exactly.

It turns out Vance is a moron. How did he get into Yale?

I should be the one to apologize, I just meant to add some rhetorical flourish, not impune anything. — Count Timothy von Icarus

:smile: :up:

Funny enough, I've been working on a novel that involves people stuck in an infinite house. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Does the infinite house symbolize something? I never see all of the second house in my dreams.

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." — Count Timothy von Icarus

I agree with that.

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." — 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.

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.