Yes, colour is something we experience. It doesn’t exist apart from a mind’s experience of it.

You say brain phenomena are identical to experiences. If you have an experience of redness, and your experiences are identical to brain phenomena, then your brain phenomenon must simply be redness. If that sounds nonsensical to you, then you get my point.

Please learn to spot a paraphrase. “Signals” = brain phenomena.

So what, the colour red enters the brain and we experience it? Does the brain not interpret the light entering the eyes and produce whatever signals? Are these signals red? They must be if that’s what we experience, and the signals and the experience are the same.

It seems obvious that the redness appears only in the mind, and not in the brain. The brain produces signals, which generate images in the mind. Therefore the brain and the mind must be separate.

The brain phenomenon of someone experiencing the colour red is not itself red. How then are the brain phenomenon and the experience the same thing?

How is the experience of redness identical to particles that are not themselves red?

We’re able to observe brain phenomena. The person whose brain we observe has experiences based on those brain phenomena. How then are the experiences and the phenomena identical?

I know you’re not. I am. When I say “material basis for colour” I mean light refraction. I’m not introducing anything new, or anything you haven’t been saying, by saying “material basis for colour”.

Right. So how is it that the experience of colour is generated in something purely material? In something that is only light refracting particles?

I’m saying there is a material basis for our experience. I’m saying the material basis and our experience are distinct. I’m saying there is a distinction between the material basis for colour and our experience of it.

You say the material basis (light refraction) for red is the colour red. But the material basis for red does not look like red unless someone looks at it, because it’s simply particles, bouncing around. The redness appears only in our minds.

I’m saying experience and the material basis for it are distinct. In what sense is the light refraction for red a colour if no one experiences it?

In what sense is it the colour red if it isn’t experienced?

It what sense is light refraction corresponding to the colour red a colour if no one experiences it? Why is it not simply particles, bouncing around?

You said this:

It refracts light a certain way" is what color is.

Light refraction is the material basis for colour, but is not itself a colour, which is a thing we experience in our minds.

You’re saying instead that the material basis for colour is the same as the experience of it. This is patently false. It’s like saying the material basis for pain is the same as the experience of it. We know this is untrue because we can observe the material basis for pain in others without ourselves experiencing it. Also we can understand the material basis for colour without experiencing it.

You’re saying this:

"It refracts light a certain way" is what color is.

I’m saying light refraction is only colour when it’s experienced in the mind, and that otherwise it’s simply particles bouncing around.

It seems to me that you’re the one conflating. You’re conflating the material basis for our experience of colour with our experience of it.

It’s only colour once someone experiences it, in their mind. Otherwise it’s just particles bouncing around.

Its colour is what we experience, in our minds. In purely material terms there is no colour, only light refraction.

A brain in and of itself has no colour. It refracts light a certain way. This refraction is experienced in the mind as colour. How can something that has no colour as we experience it experience colour?

Does it? The brain is colourless, odourless, meaningless matter, yet the mind experiences and assigns these things. It seems to be obviously the case that the mind and brain are different.

But regardless of that, if it is objectively the case that something exists, which it must be, then there must be objective truth that we are capable of knowing, right?

Sure, I’m just going to leave you to your thoughts now. I’m out.

No it doesn’t.

Irrelevant to my case.

I’m about done with this argument now, so may just stop replying.

Well look, from my end it feels like I’m explaining the obvious all the time and no one ever gets it. And I don’t know what you’re asking about a contract.

I’m saying a human being’s life starts at its conception, and that it should be valued and not ended simply because it is unwanted. I see that as an undesirable “freedom” to have in a society. I take it as a particularly nasty manifestation of selfism, and a society where people behave less selfishly, it seems to me, is a better one.

Mate, you’re just being a pedant. I could be referring either to all cellular life in the human body, or in particular to a new human being there, and there is no reason why it should be the former; remember this thread is about abortion. But look, if that’s the straw you want, then grasp away.

My argument in this thread has simply been this: If we’re going to value the lives of our fellow human beings at all, then we must do so from the beginning. Otherwise people, when it suits them, will come up with arbitrary reasons we’re allowed to end life, as they do.

Why on earth would I be referring to all human cellular life there, as opposed to the life of a new human being? You’re being a pedant.

If you take a child to be the offspring of parents then of course it’s a child in there, right from the very start.

Perhaps you should quote me the remark you’re referring to.

Well no, because as I’ve said previously in this thread, a sperm is not a human being and neither is an egg cell. Once an egg cell is fertilised a human life is conceived, by which I mean something that, if not interrupted, will become a fully developed human being. This is not the case with a sperm or an egg cell; the human embryo is precisely that, an embryonic human being.

Settle down. I’m not outraged, I’m amused at your blunder. Read my response again, I’ve answered your objection.

Are you suggesting that life might begin before it is conceived? Or after?

“Life begins at conception” is a truism, you numpty. It’s just to say it begins when it is begun, and it begins once an egg cell has been fertilised.

If I have a stack of wood, a saw, and a set of plans, do I have a table? — Hanover

No, for the same reason a sperm and an egg when separate don’t give you a human being. If it was the case that putting those things in a pile caused them to form themselves, then yes, you’d have an embryonic table, and eventually a fully developed table.

Here’s a short clip of Hitchens on abortion: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Apt4iR6axnY

And I don’t suppose that, which is my whole point.

Don’t really know what you’re struggling with. Human life begins from its conception, from what other point can you say it begins? If it is going to be valued, it should be so from then for the reason I gave.

But you're dancing around the question. What is a human being? Why is a sperm attached to an egg a person and a fingernail not? — Hanover

You’re being obtuse. You are a human being; you have been one from the moment you began to develop. You did not develop from a sperm cell, you did not develop from an egg cell, you have never been a liver cell, you have never been a fingernail. The combination of the former two was your conception and beginning; the latter two are simply a part of you.

I don’t know. But what I’m saying is that if human life is to be valued, it must be from the moment of its conception. Otherwise people will begin taking opportunities to kill it when it suits them to, as currently happens.

For some reason I was having to explain what a human being is, and that it is neither a sperm, an egg nor a single cell. I don’t know what you’re getting at with the oak tree analogy.

You’ll have to quote me on what I said was worthless.

A liver is not a human being. Neither, as far as I’m aware, is it made of a single cell. A human being is one of us, from the point at which we begin to develop, which is the moment of conception, right?

A sperm, an egg or a random cell are not human beings. Left to themselves they do not become anything more than what they are.

It seems to me that you either maintain that life matters from the moment of conception, or it matters from some other, entirely arbitrary, point in a human being’s development. That arbitrariness indicates that the pro-abortion view is part of the usual selfism that appears to govern the beliefs and actions of most people. Those who favour it do so because they have taken, or can see themselves taking, advantage of such a freedom. Those possessed of stronger self-awareness and moral imagination are more inclined to oppose it.

And it’s probably worth adding that Christopher Hitchens opposed abortion, so clearly the view isn’t always religiously motivated.

Again, it’s an emotive issue mate, and requires a modicum of moral intelligence to consider properly. But as I said, believe what you want.