But I am saying that the Red is not something that we can categorize as Matter, Energy, or Space. It is something different. It is a Conscious thing. So in that sense what can you say about where the Red is? I know that if I say that the Red is outside of normal Physics you could interpret that as a positional thing. But when I say outside I just mean it is something different than normal Physics. Of course I am a Dualist. Who wouldn't be?You seem to be thinking of space as something "out there", and because science tells you that redness is not out there is the world you are denying that it exists in "physical space". But this is dualistic thinking. 'Out there" and "in here" are relative to the boundaries of the body, and in that sense, because seeing red is an interaction between physical process external to the body and physical processes internal to the body the seeing of red is both out there and in here.
But the internal processes of the body are also in physical space, there is no reason to believe there is anything that is really, as opposed to merely from a certain viewpoint seeming to be, 'outside of space". The very idea is absurd and incoherent, when you think about it. — Janus
robots can experience — tom
So, the idea of information (or prehension) is not "diluted" as long as distinctions between the kinds and complexities of information (or prehension) are maintained; in fact information or prehension are conceptions that unify the whole of nature, including the human, and thereby avoid the mistake that it was the central focus of Whitehead's whole project to circumvent: namely the "bifurcation of nature". — Janus
'There are in the mind no objects or events - no pigs, no coconut palms, and no mothers. The mind contains only transforms, percepts, images, etc....It is nonsense to say that a man was frightened by a lion, because a lion is not an idea. The man makes an idea of the lion' (Bateson 1972: 271).
According to Gregory Bateson information is based on difference. A sensory end organ is a comparator, a device which responds to difference. While reading this, for instance, your eyes do not respond to the ink, but to the multiple differences between the ink and the paper. The number of potential differences in our surroundings, however, is infinite.
Therefore, for differences to become information they must first be selected by some kind of 'mind', the recipient system. Information, then, is difference which makes a difference (to that mind):
'Try to descibe a leaf or, still better, try to describe the difference between two leaves of the same plant, or between the second and the third walking appendages (the "leg") of a single, particular crab. You will discover that that which you must specify is everywhere in the leaf or in the crab's leg. It will be, in fact, impossible to decide upon any general statement that will be a premise to all the details, and utterly impossible to deal with the details one by one' (Bateson and Bateson 1987:164).
What enters the mind as information always depends on a selection, and this selection is mostly unconcious. In this sense one should not speak about 'getting' information, rather information is something we 'create'. — Hoffmeyer & Emmeche. (1991). Code Duality and the Semiotics of Nature.
Well said.
The reason I dislike Bateson's definition of information so much is because it only pertains to information created by a mind. — Galuchat
Types of information correspond to types of data (form) which correspond to types of ideas and objects. — Galuchat
Since nobody knows what the Redness is, it could be as you say or as I say. But it seems to me that because Science has not been able to figure out what it is after a hundred years of trying, that it is more sensible at this time to say that it must be something other than Matter, Energy, or Space.I would say that redness is information; and information is an inherent aspect of matter, energy and space, not something substantially different such as to warrant a belief in fundamental dualism. — Janus
When you say why should we worry I guess you are saying that you just don't care about the problem of the Conscious perception of Red. That's ok for you, because there are many different things to think about with Consciousness. I choose to study the Human Visual system. The input is Physical Light and the output is Conscious Light in your Conscious Mind. I am fascinated by the Conscious Visual Image that is embedded in the front of our faces showing us what is in the scene we are looking at. Red is one component of that Image. I think it is best to pick an aspect of Consciousness and stick with it. I think that when someone finally figures out what Red actually is then they will have solved the larger Consciousness Problem.It seems to me that you are manufacturing false problems. You say no one "knows what the redness is"; which seems to be a question as to what it "ultimately is". Then I would say no one knows what anything is in this kind of demanding sense. We do know that redness is information. The question as to the location of that information seems to be a malformed one, so why should we worry about it? — Janus
I don't think it is common knowledge, more like common jumping to conclusions. The picture you go on to paint in the subsequent part of your response seems like it might be based on the kind of conceptual confusion that this blog article hints at and that @Janus also seem to have had in mind in his earlier remarks. Take visible features like colour and shape out of the world in which objects like brains and retinas and snooker balls exist and it becomes impossible to say anything coherent about that world at all.All you have to do is rub your eyes and you can see Lights. So we know that even that very external mechanical stimulation of the Visual system can create a Visual effect. Stands to reason that more direct probing inside the Brain will produce all kinds of Auditory, Visual, and Memory experiences. I thought this was realized by Science decades ago and is pretty much common knowledge by now.
↪SteveKlinko
All you have to do is rub your eyes and you can see Lights. So we know that even that very external mechanical stimulation of the Visual system can create a Visual effect. Stands to reason that more direct probing inside the Brain will produce all kinds of Auditory, Visual, and Memory experiences. I thought this was realized by Science decades ago and is pretty much common knowledge by now.
I don't think it is common knowledge, more like common jumping to conclusions. The picture you go on to paint in the subsequent part of your response seems like it might be based on the kind of conceptual confusion that this blog article hints at and that Janus also seem to have had in mind in his earlier remarks. Take visible features like colour and shape out of the world in which objects like brains and retinas and snooker balls exist and it becomes impossible to say anything coherent about that world at all. — jkg20
Take visible features like colour and shape out of the world in which objects like brains and retinas and snooker balls exist and it becomes impossible to say anything coherent about that world at all. — jkg20
Agreed, but it is not the experience of seeing colour that the kind of account of vision SteveKlinko sketches threatens to remove from the world, but colour itself. Help yourself to whatever surface feature of objects you want to identify with colour - in your post you identify it as a certain kind of reflectiveness - if I insist that experiencing an instance of the colour red and experiencing an instance of that kind of reflectiveness are one and the same thing, any argument that removes instances of the colour red from the world removes instances of that kind of reflectiveness from the world as well, and the blog post I linked to argues - at least as I understand it - that that would be an incoherent idea.To take the experience of seeing colour out of the world, and into the viewer's mind (where it belongs) is not the same as taking colour out of the world.
...it is not the experience of seeing colour that the kind of account of vision SteveKlinko sketches threatens to remove from the world, but colour itself. Help yourself to whatever surface feature of objects you want to identify with colour - in your post you identify it as a certain kind of reflectiveness - if I insist that experiencing an instance of the colour red and experiencing an instance of that kind of reflectiveness are one and the same thing, any argument that removes instances of the colour red from the world removes instances of that kind of reflectiveness from the world as well, and the blog post I linked to argues - at least as I understand it - that that would be an incoherent idea. — jkg20
The issue is what do I, as a human being, see when I see an instance of redness. I certainly do not see electromagnetic radiation. — jkg20
You earlier equated redness with a kind of reflectance property of the surface of objects — jkg20
...redness is right out there in the world, not inside my head. At least, no one has yet provided any argument on this thread to establish otherwise, just a bunch of assumptions. — jkg20
Redness is being used to describe the human experience of seeing something that is red.
To prove that Mental Imagery and Dreams exist would be to solve the problem of Consciousness itself. You are asking for the Answer before you even start thinking about the Problem. For now we have to assume these things exist or we will get nowhere. We only have our own inner experiences to work with. I have Conscious Visual Imagery experiences when I am awake and also when I Dream. Nobody can prove to you that those experiences exist. What are those experiences?↪SteveKlinko The blog site is specifically targetted at the account of colour vision you sketched out and does not deal with dreams at all. As regards dreaming, the claim that anyone sees anything in a dream needs arguing for, not just assuming. Dreaming might involve mental imagery, sure, but it remains an unargued assumption that seeing involves mental imagery. After all, I can have mental images of things far distant when I am looking at things standing right in front of me. — jkg20
For now we have to assume these things exist or we will get nowhere.
Since the Red we experience with all 3 of these things is the same or at least similar, it is completely sensible to think that there has to be something common in the production of all three. Why would you not first investigate the common properties (Redness)? If investigation shows that there is no connection then that is ok. If you assume different causes at the front end of the study then what do you have to work with? It's the commonness of the Red that gives us something to ponder.Let me have one last stab at explaining myself, although I thought my last reply to Pattern-chaser put it as clearly as possible. Consider the following three phenomena:
1) Having a mental image of a red snooker ball.
2) Having a dream of a red snooker ball.
3) Seeing a red snooker ball.
I am in no way shape or form denying that such phenomena as these exist: people engage in mental imagery, people dream and people see. The specific assumption (and an assumption is all that it is at the moment) I am bringing into the spotlight and challenging is that those three phenomena share a common factor over and above the bare fact that they are about a red snooker ball. You and Pattern-chaser appear to believe that there is such a common factor, but have provided no arguments for agreeing with you. Furthermore, you both also appear to be suggesting (again, suggesting and not arguing) that redness is really only a feature of this supposed common factor. Why should anyone join you in so assuming if doing so at best just leads to problems that can be otherwise avoided, and at worst involves the kind of incoherence that the blog page I linked to indicates? — jkg20
You are kind of missing jkg20's point I think. You seem to imply that in all three cases that there is an instance of redness that we are aware of. That might be the case for (3), but is it for (2) and (1)? What are you going to say to someone like jkg20 who denies (or at least appears to be denying) that any instance of redness is involved in cases of (1) and (2), and that it is only in case (3) that we have a genuine instance of redness, and it is the redness of the snooker ball?Since the Red we experience with all 3 of these things is the same or at least similar, it is completely sensible to think that there has to be something common in the production of all three.
At one and the same time you imply that "something is red" (i.e. the something I might see in the world around me) and on the other that the experience (of seeing something that is red) is red. — jkg20
For me the Redness of the Red is just as Red in 2 and 3. With 1 the sensation of Redness is more vague but the Redness is there nevertheless. It's impossible for me to show anyone else what my own internal Conscious experiences are. If someone truly cannot have a Red Mental Imagery experience then I would have to believe them. But for the purpose of advancing the study we can only assume that our Conscious experiences are more similar than they are different.↪SteveKlinko
Since the Red we experience with all 3 of these things is the same or at least similar, it is completely sensible to think that there has to be something common in the production of all three.
You are kind of missing jkg20's point I think. You seem to imply that in all three cases that there is an instance of redness that we are aware of. That might be the case for (3), but is it for (2) and (1)? What are you going to say to someone like jkg20 who denies (or at least appears to be denying) that any instance of redness is involved in cases of (1) and (2), and that it is only in case (3) that we have a genuine instance of redness, and it is the redness of the snooker ball? — MetaphysicsNow
That is the source of your confusion I think - the scientific perspective you are trying to adopt is incoherent. It requires on the one hand that red actually be a visible surface property of objects in the world that provide the basis for all empirical evidence (how would a world of colourless objects provide us with any visual evidence for any scientific hypothesis?) and on the other that red is only a feature of electromagnetic radiation (and thus something that is not a visible feature of surfaces of objects).I've been trying to understand this sub-thread by adopting the (scientific) perspective of an objectivist philosopher.
So now red itself can be red? Can it also be yellow or blue?For me the Redness of the Red is just as Red in 2 and 3.
↪SteveKlinko
For me the Redness of the Red is just as Red in 2 and 3.
So now red itself can be red? Can it also be yellow or blue? — jkg20
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