The pen has the property of causing the experience of red under certain conditions.

Say that a coloring agent is added to a clear pen in order to make it red. Different agents can be added to different pens in order to add different color to the plastic of the pen. Pigments and coloring agents exist out there, in the pen, independent of the mind. I can’t see the color anywhere else, whether beside it, in front of it, or somewhere behind my eyes.

This leads me to believe the color, which is the coloring agent itself, mixed as it is in the plastic in order to produce a singular result, a red pen, is why the color is in the pen.

In scientific terms: the properties of the material in the pen determine the wavelength and efficiency of light absorption, and therefor the color. My question is: what properties in the “color percept”, whether added, removed, or changed, can explain why the pen is red? — NOS4A2

Colour sensations occur when there is neural activity in the visual cortex. These explain dreams, hallucinations, variations in colour perception, and allow for visual cortical prostheses. They also occur in ordinary, everyday experiences, caused by electromagnetism stimulating the eyes. This has all been experimentally verified.

And that is all there is to our ordinary, everyday understanding of colour.

Using the term "colour" in other ways, e.g. as an adjective to describe pens that reflect certain wavelengths of light, or as another term for a colouring agent, does not refute any of the above, and is certainly not the use that is relevant to either the OP's question or the philosophy of colour in general. See for example the SEP summary quoted here.

I’m wondering how this view accounts for the change of color, or the differentiation between colors. Mind independent things change color because their properties change. We can do this by adding pigments, dyes, etc. This accounts for the change in the color, which I think means the color is in the mind independent thing.

What mind-dependent things or properties change according to your view?

What is the purpose of saying "The pen is red"? Why is that useful to say? — Harry Hindu

You are reporting upon what you see. Maybe you want to be provided the red pen

Does a red apple and red pen have the same constitution? Could we mean more than one thing in saying "the apple is red" vs. "the pen is red"? — Harry Hindu

The noumena isn't known.

Neural representations of perceptual color experience in the human ventral visual pathway:

There is no color in light. Color is in the perceiver, not the physical stimulus. This distinction is critical for understanding neural representations, which must transition from a representation of a physical retinal image to a mental construct for what we see. Here, we dissociated the physical stimulus from the color seen by using an approach that causes changes in color without altering the light stimulus. We found a transition from a neural representation for retinal light stimulation, in early stages of the visual pathway (V1 and V2), to a representation corresponding to the color experienced at higher levels (V4 and VO1). The distinction between these two different neural representations advances our understanding of visual neural coding.

So colour experiences change when the neural activity in V4 and VO1 changes.

There is no red "in" the pen. The pen just has a surface layer of atoms that reflects light with a wavelength of ~700nm. When light stimulates the eyes it causes the neurological activity responsible for colour percepts, and we name the colour percept ordinarily caused by 700nm light "red". — Michael

You are presupposing that "red" denotes the "color percept" and not the "surface layer of atoms..." Why do you make such a presupposition? When people talk about the redness of some object they certainly don't seem to be talking about their own perceptions qua perceptions.

Physics and the neuroscience of perception have proven this naive realism false. — Michael

Physics and neuroscience seem to have confused you something fierce. They certainly haven't proved that colors denote only "qualia."

The "common sense" view, before any scientific study, is naive realism:

Naive realism
1. Colours, as ordinarily understood, are sui generis, simple, intrinsic, qualitative, non-relational, non-reducible properties
2. These sui generis properties are mind-independent.

This view contrasts with something like dispositionalism:

Dispositionalism
3. Colours, as ordinarily understood, are micro-structural properties or reflectances.
4. These micro-structural properties are mind-independent.

(1) and (4) are true, (2) and (3) are false.

The fact that people talk about redness as if it is mind-independent does not entail that they are talking about redness as if (3) is true. People tend to talk about redness as if both (1) and (2) are true. People don't tend to think about (3) at all. I suspect many people, especially children, wouldn't even understand (3); but they understand colours.

Those sui generis properties that we ordinarily think about when we think about colours are, in fact, mental phenomena, and not mind-independent properties of pens as some believe.

3. Colours, as ordinarily understood, are micro-structural properties or reflectances.
4. These micro-structural properties are mind-independent.

(1) and (4) are true, (2) and (3) are false. — Michael

How's that? If I put 4 and not 3 together, it looks as if you believe that there are mind-independent micro-structural properties that are not responsible for colour...

Then what makes the pen red? Why do you and I both choose the same word for the same pen, if nothing of the pen has anything to do with its colour?

Of course the pen being red is dependent on its chemical structure and the light falling on it. And of course it is dependent on the mind seeing it. And of course it is dependent on "red" being a part of our share culture. It seems that you want only to look at one of the multiple ingredients that go into the pen's being red.

You see red in your dreams and conclude that there is no red while you are awake. That's muddled.

You're forever caught up in language games and not metaphysics — Hanover

Most of metaphysics is word play.

As if saying "(red) is not a property of the pen itself" were not word-play. What does "itself" do here, if not to invoke the muddled Kantian mode of talking about the "noumenal"? All you are doing is saying "don't play that word game, play my word game".

And yet the pen is red.

I cannot be sure that the subjective color people see is the same either. — Echarmion

I want to take this a step further. I suspect we will agree that you can be sure, at least sometimes, that we can be confident the colour people see is the same. Like when we both choose the red pen. But when we prefix the word "subjective", that colour becomes uncertain.

Why not avoid using the word "subjective", and keep your confidence?

That is, perhaps the notion of a subjective colour is a misapplication, and colours are not subjective.

The property of the pen itself is noumenal. — Hanover

yet

The noumena isn't known. — Hanover

It follows that we don't know any of the properties of the pen.

But we do know the properties of the pen. We know it is plastic, cylindrical, has a nib and an ink reservoir, is half empty and is red.

Hence the conclusion that talk of the noumenal is inept.

Maybe you think the pen is actually red, but I don't. — Hanover

So you want to say something like "the pen is red, but not actually red". This is enough to convince me that your account is mistaken. And shows well the sorts of word games you will play in your metaphysics.

As I said in previous pages of this thread, asking for a red or blue pen is picky. — javi2541997

Especially now we all use keyboards anyway.

It's a shame that we can't type in red here.

The "common sense" view, before any scientific study, is naive realism: — Michael

So you say.

The fact that people talk about redness as if it is mind-independent does not entail that they are talking about redness as if (3) is true. People tend to talk about redness as if both (1) and (2) are true. — Michael

Let's go back to your claim:

There is no red "in" the pen. The pen just has a surface layer of atoms that reflects light with a wavelength of ~700nm. When light stimulates the eyes it causes the neurological activity responsible for colour percepts, and we name the colour percept ordinarily caused by 700nm light "red". — Michael

If the pen has a surface layer of atoms that reflect light at with a wavelength of ~700nm then there is both red in the pen and the pen is red. If by saying that the pen is red we were saying that the pen is or has a color percept, then we would be committing a category error, but we do not do that when we say the pen is red.

The common person does not know how the surface of the pen is seen by the eye. So what? Doesn't everyone agree that the pen has a property that corresponds to our communal predicate 'red'? It seems quite wrong to me to simply insist that 'red' means a color percept and not a property of the pen. It would seem to make little difference whether the property of the pen is fully understood. I agree with Banno that this is Kantianism run amok.

The fact that people talk about redness as if it is mind-independent does not entail that they are talking about redness as if (3) is true. — Michael

But you are splitting hairs, for it also does not entail that they are talking as if (3) is false. If you ask them how the eye perceives the red in the pen, they will simply tell you that they don't know.

-

Here is an argument for you.

1. If the black and white colors on TPF did not exist, then I would not be able to read posts.
2. But I can read posts.
3. Therefore, the black and white colors on TPF do exist.

My eyes and my mind allow me to see colors, and because of this to read text. If there were no color on the website then there would be no color in my mind, and I would not be able to read posts.

Good luck stimulating blind eyes with electricity in order to cause them to suddenly see the world despite not having properly functioning biological structures. I hope doctors don't get their patients' hopes up quite yet.

So, for the past few days I've been working on a special presentation box. The wood species and cuts are such that there is a remarkable iridescence emanating from the piece. This is more or less noticeable depending upon the amount of light it is bathed in. The contrasting dark and light tiger striped pattern switches back and forth. They're switching on the face of the box. That's where the pattern is located. The stripes are not in my head. They consist entirely of reflected light. Those reflections do not require being perceived. You can, however, look for yourself.

They go from being the darker stripes in the pattern to being the lighter ones, and vice versa. It is a mesmerizing shift in perception. Captivating. That change does require an observer(at a bare minimum a changing vantage point) It is a change in how the box reflects light according to the gradual change in the vantage point of the observer relative to the location of the box and the light source; how it looks from a gradually changing vantage point.

One can rest the piece in direct light, change the vantage point from which one observes the box by slowly walking around the box, and see for themselves just how the pattern on the box changes as described above. The cause of this change is largely due to the biological structures of the wood itself.

That is not entirely mental.

I agree with Banno that this is Kantianism run amok. — Leontiskos

Cheers...

Sounds like you are living well.

Cheers. That's what I do for living. Fortunate enough to be able to choose something I love to do. I am living well in that regard.

I hope you are as well!

:smile:

Down to one cat, the wrong one. Otherwise, chooks are well and wife prospers. Coming out of winter now, starting to see the flowers. Grew capsicums and tomatoes in the greenhouse over winter for the first time.

The joy of small things.

Sounds peaceful to me. The wrong cat, huh? I've been fortunate enough to have never owned the wrong one. He no like you, or you no like him?

:wink:

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.

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.

I have not given a great deal of thought to the philosophy of color. Like much of contemporary philosophy, it doesn't seem like it would be a great use of my time. My basic view is something like the idea that color exists in the world in the way that radio stations exist, and the human eye is like a receiver for those radio stations.*

Now there are probably people who understand that eyes are needed to see colors, and yet do not appreciate the complexity of the receiver. Lording this over them would amount to little more than, "The receiver is more complicated than you realize!" Doing this seems like making a mountain out of a molehill. Doing so via the claim that color is entirely in the mind and not at all in reality seems to be such an exaggeration as to be simply false.

* Although this is not to say that a differently constituted receiver could not interpret the signal differently.

I have not given a great deal of thought to the philosophy of color. — Leontiskos

The SEP article on colour is worth a read.

It's a shame that we can't type in red here. — Banno

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. — jkop

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?

TA-DA.

It is fascinating how humans are choosy about trifles. Colours were stamped on flags, and they caused endless problems and wars all over the world.

it looks as if you believe that there are mind-independent micro-structural properties that are not responsible for colour — Banno

Then you are not reading what I am writing. So I'll refer you back to the previous post that was directed at you:

The pen just has a surface layer of atoms that reflects light with a wavelength of ~700nm. When light stimulates the eyes it causes the neurological activity responsible for colour percepts, and we name the colour percept ordinarily caused by 700nm light "red".

Your claim that there is red "in" the pen is the naive realist view that science has disproven.

If the pen has a surface layer of atoms that reflect light at with a wavelength of ~700nm then there is both red in the pen and the pen is red. — Leontiskos

Except when we say that the pen is red we are not (ordinarily) saying that the pen has a surface layer of atoms that reflects light with a wavelength of ~700nm.

e.g. when we explain variations in colour perception, such that some see a white and gold dress and some see a black and blue dress, we are not explaining that different people are seeing different objects reflecting different wavelengths of light. They are all looking at the same object reflecting the same wavelengths of light but see different colours. The colours they see, and that we are talking about, are not micro-structural properties or reflectances of the computer screen; the colours they see are mental percepts, whether they recognise them as colour percepts or not.

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).

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'.

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

We're working on it.

See a narrative review of cortical visual prosthesis systems: the latest progress and significance of nanotechnology for the future.

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,. — jkop

That may also be true, but does not refute anything I have said. It certainly does not entail that colours are mind-independent properties of pens.

What is the purpose of saying "The pen is red"? Why is that useful to say?
— Harry Hindu

You are reporting upon what you see. Maybe you want to be provided the red pen — Hanover

Why is it useful to report what you see?

The noumena isn't known. — Hanover

In reporting what you see, you seem to know there are other people with other minds that can perceive what you do, in the way that you do, or else what is the point of reporting what you see? Why use language at all?