What about them? If I could look at the world through the eyes of a cat, I wouldn't expect to experience trichromatic vision. Just the same as I wouldn't through the eyes of a colour blind human. — apokrisis
They might look at the same wavelength energy in some sense, but we know that there is no counterfactual sensory judgement taking place, such that they see red and not green. And my argument is that experience is nothing but a concatenation of such base level acts of discrimination. Physical values have to be converted to symbolic values in which an antagonistic switching off a neural response is as telling as switching that response on. Now both 1 and 0 have meaning. Absence means as much as presence, whereas back in the real world, there is only the presence. — apokrisis
You are advocating Panpsychism it appears. For some reason the right wiring of a complex brain adds something different. The complexity of the patterns being woven lines up all the protoconsciousness to create not just bare mentality but mental content.
Yet that is still a mystical tale as the protoconsiousness remains itself rationally unexplained and beyond empirical demonstration. From a theory point of view, it is a hypothesis is not even wrong. — apokrisis
I certainly agree that the self-conscious human mind is socially contructed. The ability to introspect in an egocentric way, rationalise in an explictly logical fashion, reconstruct an autobiographical past, etc, are language-based skills that we learn because they are expected of us by the cultures we get born into.
So that is part of the semiotic story. Adding a new level of code - words on top of the neurons and genes - allows for a whole new level of developmental complexity.
Qualia are perceptual qualities and so are a biological level of symbolisation. Even a chimp will experience red due to a similarity of the circuits. But only humans have the culture and language that makes it routine to be able to introspect and note the redness of redness. We can treat our brain responses as a running display which we then take a detached view of. Culture teaches us to see ourselves as selves...having ideas and impressions.
So the point then about the red strawberries is that there is also still the actual biological response that can't be changed just by talking about it differently. And this shows that the biological brain itself is already a kind of rationalising filter. We never see the physical energies of the world in any direct sense. The world has been transformed into some yes/no set of perceptual judgements from the outset. It is already a play of signs. And so the feeling of what it is like to be seeing red is somehow just as much a sign relatiion as the word "red" we might use to talk about it with other people.
If you are a physicalist, you want to somehow make redness a mental substance - a psychic ink. And if we are talking about colour speech, we are quite happy that this is simply a referential way of coordinating social activity or group understanding. The leap is to see perceptual level experience as also sign activity - a concatenation of judgements - not some faux material stuff. — apokrisis
The mind is a modelling relation with the world. And after all, it should feel like something to be in that kind of intimate functional relation, right?
Something I'm not quite following here is how you escape the charge of representationalism. — Moliere
I'm saying that the intent is not to re-present reality to the self - display sensory data so it can become the subject of experience. Instead the intent is to form a pragmatic modelling relarion with the world. So signs might mediate that, but the implied need for realism, completeness, faithfulness, etc, drops out. — apokrisis
So, the intent of your whole account is not to represent reality? Has the " implied need for realism, completeness, faithfulness. etc." "dropped out' of it? — John
So what should drop out of a science of the mind, or even a metaphysics of the mind, is this obsession with discovering what the "mind" really is. — apokrisis
I think we're miscommunicating a bit here. To be fair, your argument was a google search. What I mean by 'drops out of the explanation' is that all that is said is we have reality on one side, and appearance on the other, and two claims about both. When asked how reality becomes appearance, the answer is 'the brain did it, just like it does with other objects to keep the color constant under different light conditions' where the main example was a blue sky.
My question is -- what does the brain do to reality to make the appearance? But the answer is "it makes the appearance appear like the appearance appears, different from reality" -- which just masks the mechanism I'm asking after. — Moliere
I'm grouping these just as a side note, because it will take us pretty far astray.
A basic view of science:
Science is little more than a collection of arguments about certain topics. There are established procedures in place for certain sorts of questions, there are established beliefs due to said process, but in the end it's a collection of arguments about certain topics on what is true with respect to those topics.
At least, as I see it. We don't science it -- we make an argument. An argument, in this context, can of course include experimental evidence. But said evidence must, itself, be interpreted to make sense.
So really I'm just asking after the arguments in play. What does the scientist say to make his case convincing to yourself? What convinced you? — Moliere
I mean that when Newton placed prisms to diffract light from the sun into a spectrum that the red part of the spectrum which came out of the prism was called 'red' not because it was had a larger wavelength and such was proven, but rather because the light was red. — Moliere
No, that makes sense to me. — Moliere
Though if all the parts are made of wood, and some parts are painted green while others are painted yellow, then it wouldn't make sense to say that the chair is green. :D — Moliere
In fact, what if the chair had a sticky reprint of the pixel-image we're discussing? Just to make it closer. Then, what color would the chair be? — Moliere
I'm thinking this is probably where we diverge the most, then. We seem to be in agreement on both the fallacy of composition and whether or not it has merit depends on the circumstances. If, in fact, the image is gray and appears red then certainly I am wrong.
So really it seems we're more in disagreement on determining which color is the real color, and which color is the apparent color. — Moliere
Cool. This is much closer to what I'm asking after.
I think this condition: " if we're talking about colour in terms of wavelength or some related scientific description,"
is likely the culprit of disagreement. Electromagnetic waves are real, as far as anything in science goes. But neither photons, nor atoms, have any color whatsoever. This is not an attribute of the individual parts of what we are saying causes the perception of color. Certain (regular, obviously, as you note about gray not being a regular wave) wavelengths of light correspond with our color-perceptions. But the color is not the electromagnetic radiation.
Color is -- to use your terminology -- subjective. I'd prefer to call it a first-person attribute not attributable to our physics of light, which is a third-person description of the phenomena of light rather than objective/subjective, myself. — Moliere
I don't think we need to get caught up in the hard problem either. I wasn't really trying to go there, but it does seem related to the topic at hand. But it seems like we've managed to pair down our disagreement to one of "how to determine such and such", so there's no need to get into it. — Moliere
Honestly, while brains are certainly a part of the picture of human consciousness -- I wouldn't dispute this -- we just don't know how we become conscious. Either there is no such thing in the first place, in which case there is nothing to explain, or if there is such a thing then we don't know how or why it's there. — Moliere
I think this is covered at this point. Let me know if you disagree. — Moliere
Sapientia: I would say that the general point to recognise concerning such discrepancies of personal experience among individuals regarding their interpretation of sensorially perceived phenomena - typically as reported in this thread - is that such phenomena, by definition, do not exist objectively but in reality are merely the product of the interplay necessarily occurring between elements external to the observer and the internal neural processes by which his interpretation is effected. — Robert Lockhart
In that context then the question, “What is an objects’ ‘real’ colour” is surely a contradiction in terms in that only the wave lengths of the light emitted by an object can have an objective existence, 'its colour' being an attribute not of the object itself but a product of the observer's neural processes. It's merely the innate similarity of the neural processes by which perception is enabled existing among individuals that enables a pragmatically useful consistency of agreement between them regarding their interpretation of any given sensorially perceived phenomena. -Alien beings for example could in principle be characterised by neural processes relevant to sensorial perception effectively inimical to our own – thus rendering mutually consistent interpretation impossible! — Robert Lockhart
The point to recognise – not one of the more difficult concepts in philosophy perhaps - is that sensorial experience must necessarily be a product of the neural processes mediating between the observer and those elements external to him, the idea that such experience is objective being, understandably, just a popularly received illusion! — Robert Lockhart
An objective description of the mechanisms of such mediation (I think personally btw) is likely an excercise more relevant to the methodology of science than the byzantine speculations of metaphysics - the sometimes arcane complexities tending to be introduced into this problem by the latter discipline being borne perhaps of its origin in an age ignorant of the idea of 'cause and effect' type relationships, as these were envisaged by subsequent ages to occur between phenomena, and found capable of effectively describing, in ultimately a comparatively simple manner, types of phenomena such as this! — Robert Lockhart
And my question is: why do you ask, and why isn't that answer good enough for you? You could go and ask a neuroscientist who could probably give you a more detailed answer, although my guess is that you still wouldn't be satisfied. But why should I care? We only know what we know, and what we know enables us to answer the question in the way that I have done, which is good enough for the sake of this problem of perception, but perhaps not for some other problem that you seem to have introduced into the discussion. But this is a discussion about the former, and it need not digress into a discussion about the so-called hard problem to which you seem to be alluding. — Sapientia
I didn't elaborate because I didn't think it necessary. You already know about this, don't you? And even if you don't, others in this discussion have gone into detail on this. There is an established means of categorising colour based on range of wavelength. That's what I was referring to, and you can look it up yourself if need be. This is what I'm appealing to when I make the claim that the strawberries are not red, and I do so because I think that it makes for a better explanation than the alternative which claims that they are red. I don't really want to go into further detail than that, since I've already done so in previous comments, and I stand by those comments. I'd rather you just address what I've already said on the matter, rather than reiterate from the starting point of this discussion. — Sapientia
And the whole point with the picture of the strawberries is that the wavelengths of light do not in this case correspond to our colour-perception! Our Colour-perception is red, but the wavelengths do not correspond! — Sapientia
It's not about waves, photons, atoms, radiation, or whatever, "having" colour, as such. It's about wavelengths of light according with an established colour categorisation, and it's about how useful this colour categorisation is. It is useful when trying to explain what happens with certain optical illusions, for example.
Colour is not subjective, unless by colour, you just mean colour-perception. But it was you yourself who introduced that latter term, so clearly the distinction is useful, yes?
Yes, I disagree if you do. That is, I stand by my claim that optical illusions like the picture of the strawberries emphasise the fallibility of what we normally do, viz. jump to the conclusion that the strawberries are red because they appear red, and so if you disagree with that, then I disagree with your disagreement. — Sapientia
We are, but that's the point. It emphasises the fallibility in what we normally do. — Sapientia
Well, the question was "What colour are the strawberries?" -- and your answer is that they are gray, in reality, but red, in appearance. My answer is that the strawberries are red, while the pixels are gray. — Moliere
Your answer seems to rely upon some kind of mechanism which the brain does, no? So, we can tell the strawberries are really gray because the brain does such and such. — Moliere
It seems a natural enough question to ask what it is that the brain does to make it appear as such and such when in reality it is this or that. Or, at the very least, how it is you determined this, and why we might want to determine things differently in this case than in other cases. — Moliere
I'd think you would care for the answer because it would explain your belief here. I suppose you don't have to care though. You could certainly just believe it's true because a scientist says it's true. — Moliere
If the explanation boils down to the brain does stuff here like elsewhere that's not exactly persuasive when we have a perfectly reliable method for determining color, I'd say. — Moliere
If we don't have a mechanism, then the explanation really does amount to about the same thing as magic. It's like all the neuro- talk you see in the papers everywhere meant to explain everything -- and the explanation boils down to the same: "The brain made you do it" — Moliere
Here, at least, there's this notion of color constancy, so there's a bit more than this -- but not much. — Moliere
I'd suggest that we could at least admit that we don't know the mechanism, but presume that the strawberries are really gray because the pixels are gray, and it seems like this brain-thing does stuff with perception so we believe that it might have something to do with it. — Moliere
At least, we could say that maybe someone with more knowledge than ourselves -- of which I am certainly not the most knowledgeable on the subject, I hardly even qualify as a hobbyist -- might know, but we ourselves don't understand the process, and so it would be unwise to claim we know in the first place. — Moliere
But if that were the case, then I'd also suggest that it is quite reasonable to believe the strawberries are red, since we determine the color of images and things by looking at them -- and that it is the one who is claiming to know the real reality that should explain themselves in light of this. — Moliere
As far as I can tell no one here or elsewhere has actually verified this. We have extracted colors of pixels through a color picker, but no one has used a spectrometer or anything. — Moliere
If we were able to shoot the light through a prism, I betcha we'd get some red. — Moliere
Colour is colour-perception, yes. — Moliere
I just mean that I think we've found where our disagreement lies. You believe that this normal way of determining color is fallible in this case. This is what I'm contending is not the case -- that the method of using a color picker on the picture to determine the color of a pixel is not a good way for determining the color of the strawberries, that our looking at the image of the strawberries is adaquate for telling us the color of the strawberries in most cases, and that it is so in this case as well. — Moliere
At the weakest I'm claiming that to continue in this belief without some kind of argument about the nature of color, the brain, and reality (in the case of this image) is rational.
So what I mean is that I believe we've honed down where our disagreement is. Not that we don't disagree. — Moliere
It also, in contrast to my answer, lacks plausibility when it comes to accounting for optical illusions - at least those relating to colour and perception in a similar way to that of the picture of the strawberries. — Sapientia
That in combination with what I've said about colour categorisation. And so does yours, does it not? Don't you similarly think that we can tell that the strawberries are red because the brain does such-and-such? — Sapientia
Ha! Perfectly reliable? You might have gotten away with that if it wasn't for those meddling scientists, who came along and discovered that colour is inextricably related to light emissions, and that particular ranges of wavelength in normal circumstances cause us to perceive particular colours - and were thus categorised accordingly - almost without exception. Then exceptions were discovered, and this is one of them. Hence the grey coloured strawberries appearing red, hence the unreliability of your method. — Sapientia
We do have an explanation. The brain is the mechanism — Sapientia
One doesn't need to elucidate a mechanism within a mechanism within a mechanism ad infinitum or until you're satisfied, if that's even possible. — Sapientia
So it's unwise to claim to know something in light of what the experts know, when we don't know it in the way that they do? — Sapientia
No, that's not quite reasonable, because an explanation has already been given, just apparently not to your satisfaction. — Sapientia
No need. This has most likely been verified by scientists before we were even aware of it. The work has most likely already been done, and we can appeal to these authorities. Or we could harbour unreasonable doubt. Perhaps it's all just a joke or a conspiracy! Yeah, I don't think so. In this case, it is valid to appeal to authority and to make certain reasonable assumptions about what was done to verify the hypothesis. — Sapientia
Some red isn't red though, is it? We're talking about grey, which, as we know, contains some red. But if you conclude that it's red on that basis, you'd also have to conclude that it's yellow, and that it's blue, and so on. Which is just nonsense. It's grey. — Sapientia
And you've focussed a lot on the brain - too much, perhaps - but don't forget about the established colour categorisation, and that whether or not something corresponds accordingly doesn't matter one iota about the brain. The brain has to do with why we perceive it a certain way, not why it is the colour that it is. — Sapientia
↪Moliere ↪Sapientia Doesn't the distinction between spectral colour and perceptual colour resolve your dispute? — jamalrob
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