It is hard to know how ideas are constructed, in brains and beyond. — Jack Cummins

It seems fairly clear that the brain constructs conscious awareness, which in turn, can be about ideas, regardless of whether they're constructed, discovered, mind-dependent or independent, subjective, objective, intersubjective etc.

I don't know of a good reason to believe that there's a dependency relation between the brain and the ideas that one thinks of (disregarding the obsessive etc).

There is inner and outer aspects of experience and the interface between this is important. — Jack Cummins

The assumption that there are inner and outer aspects of experience is what makes it seem hard. Berkeley understood correctly that there is no way to make sense of such a relation. Therefore, he ditched the outer aspect of experience. Kant tried to reconcile the two within an ontology of conceptual schemes.

Naive realism, however, is the assumption that experiences are direct. Problem solved!

Are ideas mind-dependent, subjective, objective or intersubjective constructs in human semantics? — Jack Cummins

It takes a mind to think about ideas, but the ideas are not necessarily mind-dependent. Some ideas are constructed naturally or socially, others are discovered individually or by different minds independent of each other.

Yeah, those three (or closely related varieties of each) are the essential components of all successful structural designs. Also known as the Vitruvian Triad.

When the sciences divorced the humanities, many intellectuals (e.g. Schopenhauer) became reluctant to see architecture as an art. It just seemed too pragmatic, concerned with functions etc.

They failed to see the bigger picture, and so did many architects who arbitrarily began to reinterpret the meanings of the Vitruvian components to fit their special interests, e.g. by assuming that the beauty of what's practical is an invisible kind of beauty that can replace the Vitruvian component.

But invisible beauty doesn't interact with anything, so the architecture gets entirely determined by what's practical, or sustainable. The architecture became one-sided, brutal, or bland. But the counter-movements became equally one-sided when they prioritized beauty or sustainability at the expense of what's practical.

A building is not a machine to live in, nor a humanistic work of art, but the interplay of both. This is old ancient knowledge relevant today and forever.

Does such a causal relation exist? — ucarr

Yes, in the sense that architecture causally emerges from the building's practical, aesthetical, and sustainable qualities.

The use of an aesthetic that makes an unsustainable building appear sustainable won't make it sustainable, the causal relation is not satisfied. Likewise, minimalists used an auster practical looking aesthetic that was not so practical, often overly complicated and expensive to achieve.

There are fields that are an tightly meshed combination of both, such as architecture. A good number of architectural rules have been experimentally tested for safety. Still, subjective aesthetics have always been a major consideration in the construction of new buildings. The same can be said about the design of cars or any consumer product. — Tarskian

That's right.

For millennia, humans have understood that buildings should be practical, beautiful, and sustainable, because if any of these qualities are omitted or prioritized the buildings become practical but not beautiful, or beautiful but unsustainable, or sustainable but regardless of how.

Yet the modern functionalists systematically disregarded the beautiful (or reinterpreted it as a function) as they prioritized practical qualities of planning, engineering, economy, service etc.

Other architects did the converse, became aesthetes or humanists with an interest in anthropology, sociology, ecology etc.

Nowadays many architects are neither engineers nor humanists but coordinators or sales people who use the aesthetic features of engineering or humanistic declarations for symbolic advertising purposes.

The relation between the practical, the aesthetic, and the sustainable is detached.

For example, some postmodern buildings are designed to appear sustainable (e.g. covered in solar panels, roof gardens etc.) despite being less sustainable than conventional or retrofitted buildings. There's no causal relation between the aesthetics and the sustainability and the practical reason for solar panels.

I really think everyone is over-thinking my initial thought. — Mp202020

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.

The sciences are concerned with “what,” whereas the humanities are concerned with “how.”

Write an elaboration of what you think this means. — ucarr

The wedge between sciences and humanities was socially constructed after the industrial revolution and rapid development of natural sciences evoked an exaggerated belief in the methods of natural science, followed by an equally exaggerated defensive response within other areas of intellectual life.

In the Renaissance there was the science of art, and the art of science.

Sciences and humanities are not mutually exclusive, and both are concerned with "what" and "how" in their respective areas of interest.

I don't see how that suggests that color of the pen is part of the pen and not the person's perception. — Hanover

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.

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. — 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.

The fact that we know that phenomenal states can exist without external stimuli and that phenomenal states can be manipulated to provide varying perceptions of the same external stimuli forecloses direct realism as a viable option. Yet it persists. — Hanover

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.

I see colours when I dream and hallucinate. — Michael

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

I know. And colours, as ordinarily understood, are properties of the experience, — Michael

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 understand what intentionality is. ...
Experience might be about (or of) some distal object, but the properties of the experience are not the properties of the distal object. — Michael

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.

I'm not sure what "aboutness" has to do with anything being discussed here. — Michael

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

What is the individual to the collective? If it has been collectively decided to aim for happiness on an collective level, then what meaning could individual happiness mean to anyone? — Shawn

The individual is a member (or outcast) given obligations and rights. The individual can both be obliged to maintain collective happiness and have the right to maintain individual happiness. I suppose that problematic cases, were an obligation is incompatible with a right, can be solved pragmatically depending on context.

Is arguing about semantics that interesting? — Lionino

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

I'm going to believe what these scientists say over what you say. — Michael

Selective references to authority are unscientific.

colour perception is all about neuroscience
— jkop

Are you suggesting that the science of vision doesn't explain Red? — AmadeusD

No, are you trolling?

when seen under ordinary conditions
— jkop

I smell Tuna... — 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?

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? — AmadeusD

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.

But for a science-buff like you they're all "percepts"
— jkop

Yes, that’s what neuroscience shows. — Michael

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.

Do you deny that dreams and hallucinations have colour? — Michael

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:

And some of those things, like colour and pain, aren't. — Michael

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.

It means that the colour ain't in the head.
— jkop

No it doesn't. — Michael

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.

If that was true, then you could make the blind see by merely stimulating parts of their brains.
— jkop

We're working on it. — Michael

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).

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? — 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'.

the colours they see are mental percepts, whether they recognise them as colour percepts or not. — Michael

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).

philosophically possible. — kindred

An imaginary community run by philosopher-kings?

What would Joy feel like without pain — kindred

Joy, because it is not necessary to have or risk pain in order to feel joy. There's no such connection, which is good, e.g. you can use your ability to feel joy in otherwise painful situations as a means to survive. But it can also be misused and result in disaster, such as in Chicken Run

Some thoughts on the neurology...

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.

Colours are not subjective, but when you see a colour the seeing is ontologically subjective, and your opinions about the colour, e.g. that it's pretty, is epistemically subjective.

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.

..someone who doesn't need a color sample to create a particular hue, like China red. — frank

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..

Maybe the same is true of color — frank

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.

So long as a medium exists which allows us to agree on “red” then the similarity/difference between that experience of red holds no value — Mp202020

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.

..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. — Banno

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.

It is. — Michael

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 the SEP article again. I believe this summary is correct: — 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:

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. — Michael

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.

This is how I am able to make sense of coloured dreams and hallucinations, synesthesia... — Michael

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.

Naive realism
1. Our ordinary conception of colours is that of sui generis, simple, intrinsic, qualitative, non-relational, non-reducible properties ... not micro-structural properties or reflectances.
2. These sui generis properties are mind-independent properties of distal objects

Dispositionalism
3. Our ordinary conception of colours is that of micro-structural properties or reflectances.
4. These micro-structural properties are mind-independent properties of distal objects — 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.

My point is only that when we ordinarily think about and talk about colours we are thinking about and talking about the mental percept, not a surface layer of atoms that reflects various wavelengths of light. — Michael

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.

The red of a sports car and of a rose and of a face are all very different. — Banno

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.

He doesn't conflate. ... — Michael

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.

To quote Bertrand Russell "naive realism leads to physics, and physics, if true, shows that naive realism is false". — Michael

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.

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". — Banno

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.