I'm allowed to be critical. Whatever. :sad: — Wheatley

Indeed. :up:

I'm missing the point I guess, because if 750nm=red, you're fundamentally saying red is red.

It being a wavelength makes no difference if it's being a wavelength describes nothing. There are other wavelengths that aren't red, and I doubt one could intuit the direct perception of the color red by knowing the regularity of its frequencies.

Of course one garners new knowledge from seeing 750nm (or red.)

Sure, you can argue red is "just" a wavelength, but you haven't thereby established that wavelengths aren't "special" or "possessing esoteric magical qualia."

Given that her theories are concise, Mary learns 1 thing, true red(and possibly a multitude of other things about why other colours look the way they do/blend. Such as, how yellow is made).

She would also be able to distinguish red from other colours without any retrospective cognition, now having experienced true red. This however isn't learning but application.

If you disagree I wonder, do we learn how to experience? No. Distinguishing red without retrospective cognition is now fortified.

Red is light with a wavelength of 750 nm. This is not equivalent to saying red is red. The definition isn't circular as some seem to be claiming.

Point to note here is I'm trying to establish a connection between language (specifically the constant informational content when translations are done) and perception.

Like words in natural language are abstractions, the 750 nm (for red) is too. So, when I read/hear/feel the word "feather", the idea of feathers is what I have in my mind.

Similarly, when I see the color red (red is simply a word in eye dialect), I'm actually thinking of 750 (nm). I know this is contrary to experience but imagine now that your brain speaks the lingo of eyes - it wouldn't need to translate redness into 750 (nm), it would simply see red. If you were fluent in Arabic and English, you wouldn't need to translate a conversation in Arabic into English or vice versa.

Seeing red is like reading 750 (nm) in eye tongue. It would be odd to say that one gained extra knowledge/information just because you used a different language. Reading "sifr" (0) in Persian doesn't give me additional knowledge than reading "zero" (0) in English.

Red is light with a wavelength of 750 nm. — TheMadFool

Fill in the blank. White is light with a wavelength of ___ nm.

Fill in the blank. White is light with a wavelength of ___ nm. — InPitzotl

White. White is a mixture of, at the very least, red, blue, and green. Each has a specific wavelength.

White is a mixture of, at the very least, red, blue, and green. Each has a specific wavelength. — TheMadFool

How is that minimal? You can make white by mixing two wavelengths; you're using three, a whole extra wavelength beyond the requirement! Also, didn't you just say red was 750nm light? When you mix 750nm light with something, you still have 750nm light. Is such white red then?

Mary has to have a word with you. Your definition of red is wrong. If you program a robot to be sensitive to 750nm light, and have it use that to show you what is and isn't red, it will give you wrong answers constantly.

It would be odd to say that one gained extra knowledge/information just because you used a different language. — TheMadFool

Language is expressive, so ultimately the knowledge lies in knowing what was meant with the expression.

Experiments on monkeys kept in a monochrome environment showed that they were unable to see colour when later exposed to it. Their eyes and brain had not developed the capacity.

Mary could not see red.

Except over the interminable threads about her on the internet.

Experiments on monkeys kept in a monochrome environment showed that they were unable to see colour when later exposed to it. Their eyes and brain had not developed the capacity. — Banno

Interesting.

Do you have an article you could share on the topic?

I can see the idea of equating language with perception, language being the method of human communication, perception being the method of bodily communication. I do believe that perception is of a higher order than language though. That is to say, I think they are comparable but not equivalent.

In fact, if we consider the content of information that we may relay through communication as a representation of physical and mental phenomena - then perception is a necessity for something like language to develop at all. Perception is a biological fact. Language is culturally developed.

I would consider perception as our personal representation of the world and language as our personal representation of perception. They both take the same form in the sense of being a representation - but they're both a class to their own.

Likely for Mary, it's one thing to have experienced red in language and it's another to experience red through perception.

What is red? It's the eye's way of perceiving 750 (nm). It's like a way of looking at something, a perspective if you will. The ears perceive of 750 (Hz) differently. Translations, back and forth, between languages (of the senses — TheMadFool

If I translate the word red as rouge or rojo, what am I doing? I am taking a presumably equivalent meaning and changing the syntax. Of course, one has to be careful here , because there are any number of senses of a word like red. If i use it metaphorically or idiomatically I may have to translate it according to the specific sense of the idiom. The point is , one translates between close
semantic equivalencies. The presumed semantic equivalence of color here, or one we can agree on for the sake of argument, is 750 nm of light directed toward a person who is consciously paying attention it and processes it perceptually in a certain way. that we call red. This is the semantic meaning that is being translated from red to rojo to rouge. Notice that the translation preserves this complex structure involving interaction between wavelength emission and conscious perceptual processing. But look how different this act of translation is from comparing my thinking about a wavelength of 750 nm in itself and the complex process I described above. There is clearly much more here than a simple change of syntax. ‘Red’ is only a translation of 750 nm once I abstract away from the meaning of red its most immediate semantic association. For most people this immediate sense will not involve wavelengths at all but a qualitative feel ( or any number of other things).
Red only translates directly to 750 nm when one is taught specifically to associate the two. But then one has changed the sense of the word ‘red’. You could just as well use a made up word here becuase you have taken ‘red’ far away from its common usages.

So unlike red, rojo and rouge , red as 750 nm is not a translation in the sense of a minor variation in what is otherwise a near identical semantic meaning. But doesn’t the eye translate light energy into color? No, it transforms
light energy into patterns of firing that are a long way away from ‘color’. By the time
one has perceived a color, a complex series of processing stages are involved. Sseing red is the product of the relation between the figure and its background, not just pure wavelength. Red can appear orange depending on the brightness and color of the background. The important point is that, unlike a ‘translation’ , there is nothing of the meaning of 750 nm in the perception of red. 750 nm is an abstraction we learn as we get older and then we apply it retroactively to the color ‘red’ Ony then does it make sense to say we translate from 750’nm to ‘red’. Red is to 750 nm as light is to photosynthesis. In case we have an organism dependent on light energy to create something new. In the case of photosynthesis light energy is transformed into chemical energy, in the case of red, light wavelength begins a process that ends in a perceptual
performance.

So in answer to the question as to whether the woman in the room learns something new, the answer is she learns a wholly new sense of the word red. It becomes
essentially a completely new word for her.

Whether or not you accept that red is 750nm light (I think it is true, in a sense), Mary learns what it is like to experience red. Just as you can learn different words that mean 0.

Is it not that simple?

Mary learns what it is like to experience red. — hypericin

Is it not that simple? — hypericin

Not really. Let's define 750nm monochromatic light as red (monochromatic is key in the definition; and what we really mean is that only 750nm light is there in the visual spectrum; it's okay if 540am is broadcasting in your area).

Let's furthermore suppose that Jane has an inverted spectrum wrt you; and Joe is a protanope. Then by definition, you, Jane, and Joe all see red when you look at 750nm. But your experience is quite different than Jane's and Joe's; and Joe cannot see that big of a difference between 750nm and 550nm. So what exactly is "what it is like to experience red"? We might could talk about what it's like for you when you see red, and what it's like for Jane when Jane sees red, and what it's like for Joe when Joe sees red, but it's not so clear there is a generic "what it's like to see red". We could hypothesize that there probably is, but only fuzzily, and we can't actually use that unless we have some way to test it. Best we can say is that Jane and you distinguish colors the same way, and agree on what things are red enough to apply a label to it. And whether or not Joe "sees red" depends on what you mean; he certainly sees a 750nm diode emitting light.

that's fine, I have no problem accepting that. Maybe perception is uniform across people, maybe spectrum s can be inverted or swapped around, maybe humanity is split into dozens of gene lines, each with color perceptions incomparable and inconceivable to the others.

But at minimum, Mary learns what it's like for her to experience red.

But at minimum, Mary learns what it's like for her to experience red. — hypericin

Sure, probably. But another possibility would be that Mary doesn't so much "learn" what it's like for her to see red, as she "develops a way for her to see red" and learns what that developed way is... the difference being there's no "what it's like for Mary to see red" until she develops the ability to do so.

...just mentioning that to cover bases.

also plausible. Then the minimum claim is, "Mary learns a way to experience red".

Let's furthermore suppose that Jane has an inverted spectrum wrt you; and Joe is a protanope. Then by definition, you, Jane, and Joe all see red when you look at 750nm. But your experience is quite different than Jane's and Joe's; and Joe cannot see that big of a difference between 750nm and 550nm. So what exactly is "what it is like to experience red"? — InPitzotl

And this is just the beginning. Color perception depends on a lot more than just rods and cones at the outermost level of neural receptivity to the environment. Like all perception color is the product of layers of processing that integrates feedback from body movement with sensory activity. Color implies a surface , and surfaces need to be constructed developmentally along with self-persisting objects. So color is no more a direct response to 750 nm than C sharp is the direct product of a sound wave.

To All

There are two important things to consider:

1. Red as what it truly is. 750 nm? [objective, constant]
2. Red, the color, as it is perceived. [subjective, varies]

We can have knowledge of both the objective and subjective aspects of red - we can know that red is 750 nm (as Mary does when she's confined to her monochromatic quarters) and also know what red, the color, looks like (Mary when she actually sees red)

What I've been trying to point out is that Mary doesn't learn anything new in the objective sense. Whatever, Mary perceives when she sees red for the first time, red will still have the wavelength 750 nm.

My linguistic analogy of translations not affecting meaning is meant to convey that particular fact about objective red (750 nm). The color red itself being simply the eyes' way of interpreting 750 nm or something like that.

However, subjectively speaking, Mary does learn something new. Never having seen red and then seeing red gives Mary the sensation of redness; Mary gets to know what red looks like when seen.

However, subjectively speaking, Mary does learn something new. Never having seen red and then seeing red gives Mary the sensation of redness; Mary gets to know what red looks like when seen. — TheMadFool

This would seem to suggest that there is more than objective facts about color. Which is why we can't say what a bat experiences when using sonar, but we can describe the physics of sonar just fine, and carry out investigations of bat physiology.

I wonder how the Mary thought experiment would have gone down if brown had been used in instead of red, since brown is a related color and only seen in the presence of lighter colors, so you you can't just associate with 600nm of wavelength.

I also wonder if the thought experiment is modified so that right before leaving the room, Mary's brain is stimulated to induce a hallucination of seeing something red. Does that change things at all? Or what if Mary is exposed to an optical illusion so that she sees a color that isn't there?



At any rate, we do end up with the uncomfortable conclusion for physicalists that there is some experience of color not captured in the physical description of color perception.

This would seem to suggest that there is more than objective facts about color. Which is why we can't say what a bat experiences when using sonar, but we can describe the physics of sonar just fine, and carry out investigations of bat physiology. — Marchesk

Yes, I think so. I can't seem to find the thought experiment that asks the question "is my red the same as your red?" It looks like it's about the subjective aspect of color (red).

Too, I'm puzzled as to why we can see color in the first place. According to best science, color and other nuances of perception are receptor-dependent. In other words, if no receptors for color (cones), no color perception. There's nothing about the brain or the nerves that connect the cones to the visual center and nor anything in the signals (electrical action potentials) themselves that are, well, colorful.

It's like having a light detector connected to a computer with a system that has nothing to do with light. How does the computer (the brain) then detect light? I'm out of my depths at this point.

I wonder how the Mary thought experiment would have gone down if brown had been used in instead of red, since brown is a related color and only seen in the presence of lighter colors, so you you can't just associate with 600nm of wavelength. — Marchesk

I wonder too. As far as I can tell, we needn't worry about that too much. Suffice it to say that there's an objective aspect to sense data that won't change and knowing that is possible only through our higher faculties (reason/rationality). As for the subjective part, that, it seems, needs to be experienced directly. There being no two ways about it.

I also wonder if the thought experiment is modified so that right before leaving the room, Mary's brain is stimulated to induce a hallucination of seeing something red. Does that change things at all? Or what if Mary is exposed to an optical illusion so that she sees a color that isn't there? — Marchesk

You need to read what I wrote in the first paragraph - there doesn't seem to be anything colorful about the brain or the optic nerves or the signals that pass through them. Could Mary hallucinate color, red or otherwise, then?

At any rate, we do end up with the uncomfortable conclusion for physicalists that there is some experience of color not captured in the physical description of color perception. — Marchesk

The jury is still out. I can neither confirm nor deny.

The jury is still out. I can neither confirm nor deny. — TheMadFool

I can confirm that it's colorful in my visual field, and my dreams, and to a lesser extent, my imagination.

I agree that it's rather mysterious, and all attempts to make it go away have been less than convincing.

Does Mary learn anything new when she actually sees red? — TheMadFool

Yes, certainly. She either may or may not learn something new about the external reality...what I like to call "the universe", but at the same time, she definitely learns something new about herself. The questions here appear to be: is "knowledge" equivalent to "perception", and is "learning" the equivalent of "experience"? The answers seem to be "no", since learning and knowledge cannot impart similar personal understanding, or elicit the same type of emotional content as can experiential perception. Learning about, and so gaining knowledge about something yields an intellectual response, while experiencing the same thing yields both intellectual and emotional responses.

Every football coach knows that, no matter how thorough the preparation and the resultant game plan is, the experience of the game is going to teach something new to everybody on the field. This is the basis of Vince Lombardi's famous saying that (I paraphrase) "any team can beat any other team on a given Sunday". Mike Tyson, not a philosopher, understood this intuitively, and as a result of his own personal experiences; his comment, made during the period of his incredible dominance of the boxing world (most of his victories by knockout in the first or second round), upon being confronted with the assertion that one of his opponents had a solid plan of how to beat him in their upcoming match is one of my all-time favorites, particularly for drawing the distinction between knowledge and experience: "Everybody has a plan until they get a punch in the mouth." In other words, knowledge does not prepare one fully for experience. The boxer who gets a solid punch in the jaw quickly learns many things about himself, things physical and things non-physical.

Even when the experience is not so...um..."forthright" as a punch in the mouth, it can teach us much about ourselves which a foreknowledge of the event could not. A rather simple example: I am, have always been, an inveterate star gazer and amateur astronomer, and a great lover of the night sky. Clear, dark, moonless nights will often find me out in the yard looking up, or looking through the telescope. At various times in my life, I had been told how the night sky looked when you were well away from alot of light pollution, way out in the country. Of course, I live in the northeastern U.S., within the great urban corridor that runs from Washington in the south to Boston in the north (particularly in between Boston and New York), so light pollution is a constant fact of life for me. I had, upon occasion, had fully described to me what it was like to be able to fully see the Milky Way. This in no way prepared me for my experience of seeing the night sky when I served with the U.S. Army in Kuwait and Iraq. I was involved in the so-called "Left Hook" action during the "Gulf War", which took me fairly far west into the desert of Iraq, well to the west-southwest of Basrah (which itself was fairly blacked out for the occasion of the war). There was very little, if any, light pollution, and no buildings or trees to obscure the dome of the sky. When I looked up into the night sky, I definitely learned something new about myself...I learned of my own capacity for awe.

:ok:

So, she (Mary) learns something new. We're on the same page then. She experiences redness/color for the first time as she ventures out of her monochromatic room. What she learns is how her eyes interpret light of wavelength 750 nm and now she gains a skil - without measuring the wavelength of light, Mary can identify 750 nm and engage in activities like matching her dress with her shoes.

The eyes, despite some differences, are at the end of the day detectors/instruments. They, as far as we can tell, seem to be the cause for color perception (the rest of the optic pathways right up to the occipital lobe possessing nothing that could be described as colored).

Now, take a ammeter (current detector). Does the ammeter too have a subjective sense of electrical current? It is an instrument and the eyes too are. The subjective aspect of vision (color) is a receptor-dependent.

. Does the ammeter too have a subjective sense of electrical current? — TheMadFool

A rhetorical question, but let's spell it out, nonetheless. The ammeter, not possessing a brain, and so without a mind, can have neither intellectual nor emotional response to the electric current running through it. A better question in this case, is whether said electric current amounts to an "experience" for the ammeter, given the fact that the ammeter has no awareness of the event (here we go into semantics again...'ts why math is so beautiful...no messy semantic ambiguities to obscure the real problems).

A rhetorical question, but let's spell it out, nonetheless. The ammeter, not possessing a brain, and so without a mind, can have neither intellectual nor emotional response to the electric current running through it. — Michael Zwingli

Note that im the case of vision, specifically color, there really is nothing in the optic nerves, nor in the signals that travel through these nerves and get processed in the visual center that's colorful - everything color is in the receptors (the cones). If color is a qualia, the current doing its thing on the ammeter (a detector) too is one.

I'm rather uncertain whether color is an appropriate property to study qualia.

'Didn't know' implies some sort of choice mechanism, I believe the intellectual terminology is 'unaware of'.

I went to the doctor's, he presented a paper with a diagnosis... I didn't know it.

Are you familiar with Wilfred Sellars’ Myth of the Given? That would seem to apply to your OP. It states that:

“Sellars contends that our first-order awareness of such sensible qualities as Lewis’s “redness or loudness,” however immediate, always already embodies an implicit categorial ontology, whether this be (the particular list here is not important): (a) a “manifest” naïve realism that represents such qualities as constituent-characters of physical objects (as Sellars argues is in effect the case with our evolutionarily inherited, “innate” way of (partially mis-)representing the world); or (b) such qualities or qualia or tropes as might be claimed to be reflectively isolated in a philosophical sense-datum theory; or (c) in the form of intrinsically recognizable Lewisian nonconceptual qualia-repeatables; or (d) in a nominalist “pure process” metaphysical recategorization of such repeatables (cf. Sellars 1981b, FMPP II); or (e) in a scientific-metaphysical recategorization and “relocation” of such sensible qualities as adverbial states of sensing in the perceiver’s central nervous system; and so on. Sellars’s contention is that Lewis’s ostensibly categorially neutral account of the nonconceptual sensuous qualia-given, which officially abstracts from all conceptual interpretation, has in fact implicitly categorized such allegedly intrinsically recognized repeatables in a way that itself represents a categorial choice among such alternatives as those just mentioned.“

In simpler terms, one can isolate no concept-independent features of the environment ( pure stimulus) that are not already pre-interpreted conceptually.