They can be seen with thermal imaging goggles.

When you look through thermal imaging goggles, are you seeing the cat or a thermal image of the cat...?

...eliminative materialism...

Folk suppose that if they can't sensibly talk about qualia then the eliminative materialists have won.

But that ain't so.

, "All cats look grey in the dark". No disagreement from me.

However that use is derivative from situations where we observe an object in normal lighting which is where color distinctions are originally made. That's the reference point in the world. — Andrew M

For colors, the looking and the being are dentical. An apple that receives no light cannot absorb part of the visible spectrum and reflect the other. It has the pigments to do so but not the light that would be playing with the pigments.

There's more: in the absence of light, maturing apples will become pallish, not red. So apples need to sense some light in order to even bother producing pigments to color that light. The same apply to leaves: if kept in the dark for a while, they will lose their green chlorophyll and turn white.

Depends on how nuanced we wish to get with language. We are seeing the cat via thermal imaging, but it's not what we normally see. Black cats don't usually look like glowing shades of red.

A question for you: Is the cat really black, or is it reddish? IOW, what makes our normal vision privileged?

Events, dear boys etc., events.

Are what we order into colours, pitches and timbres. Objects, only derivatively and more roughly speaking.

...eliminative materialism...

Folk suppose that if they can't sensibly talk about qualia then the eliminative materialists have won.

But that ain't so. — Banno

So we don’t eliminate red, but red is not a property of either the objects we see, or the properties used in explanations given for vision. So where does the red come from?

And by red, I mean the color we see, not the word, lest anyone be confused by talk of language.

Folk suppose that if they can't sensibly talk about qualia then the eliminative materialists have won. — Banno

LOL. Talk for yourself, Banno. You can of course contend that you personally cannot make sense of the concept. But don't deny other people's use of it. I for one will use the word whether you can understand it or not. I'm not going to ask you for permission...

As for eliminative materialism, isn't that the theory that no true theory can possibly exist? It eliminates itself....

Is the cat really black, or is it reddish? — Marchesk

I'm no expert on color, but I think there are ways of asking this question that make sense. For instance, I heard an explanation once of the difference between the reds we observe in nature and the blues and greens: the reds are produced by actual pigments, whereas the blues and greens are not, they are a sort of a side effect of the molecular structure, more like a filter than a pigment. (Not inserting wikipedia links. We all know how to google.) You might say the same sort of thing about the purplish sheen of a blackbird's wing or, I think, of the various colors that play across the carapace of some beetles, where the effect is produced by translucence or refraction and so on. Thus you might say that green leaves are not green in the same way that the red berries next to them are red. And that's interesting. It's next door to finding out that giant pandas are not bears in the now standard sense of the word "bear", because there's a clear sense in which that bear isn't really a bear.

But there's a general, philosophical way of asking, is that red ball really red? You might as well also ask, is that red ball really a ball? I don't see much hope for sense there.

Folk suppose that if they can't sensibly talk about qualia then the eliminative materialists have won. — Banno

Aye. This is back to the first 10 pages or so.

(1) There are no qualia as they are commonly theorised or intuited.
(2) People do not have minds, sensations, feelings.

(1) does not imply (2), but (2) does imply (1).

But there's a general, philosophical way of asking, is that red ball really red? — Srap Tasmaner

It's asking whether the red ball is red in the way it looks red to us. Which is different from whether red is the result of a pigmentation instead of reflective surfaces, which is interesting, but a separate matter.

If the answer is no, then we're looking at some sort of subjective account of redness, and the difficult question arises as to how to account for that.

Wittgenstein was railing against the idea of private meaning/language, not private experience: — Luke

In music, there are microtones: notes between the named notes (e.g. between C and C#). I'm not sure whether these "extra" notes also have names, but I doubt that all of them do. Think of a trombone player continuously sliding up a continuum of notes. The same could be said of colours. It seems likely that we see more shades of colour than those we have names for. This is before any consideration of how these things may be seen or heard. Lots of folks are making this about language instead of conscious experience.

(1) There are no qualia as they are commonly theorised or intuited.
(2) People do not have minds, sensations, feelings.

(1) does not imply (2), but (2) does imply (1). — fdrake

Trouble is,

(3) There are no minds, sensations, feelings as they are commonly theorised or intuited..

Aye. That is the rub.

There are no minds, sensations, feelings as they are commonly theorised or intuited.. — bongo fury

So you are going to tell all about how minds, sensations, feelings are uncommonly but properly theorised or intuited? 'Cause the other guys ain't telling... :-)

The good news is that there are sound events and illumination events as they are commonly theorised and intuited: the sound of this instrument played on by this finger like this on that occasion, the colour of this dress played on by this light on that other occasion. And there is matching and non-matching of such events, and equally intuitive ordering comparisons, and hence equivalence classes (more or less culturally stable) and hence pitches and colours, in a perfectly adequate construal of ordinary aesthetic talk. :smile:

It's asking whether the red ball is red in the way it looks red to us. — Marchesk

Paul Grice tells a story about a college at Oxford offering a position to a young man who unfortunately owned a dog, and dogs were forbidden, so the fellowship committee "deemed" the dog a cat.

It's a question of framework: within one framework, the animal is "really" a dog, and within another it is "really" a cat.

If you ask whether a ball is really red outside all frameworks, then you ensure that the question cannot be answered.

Or do you expect an answer within a framework that includes "red" but nothing about how things look to human beings? What framework would that be?

Regarding the temporal order of emergence, elemental constituency, and thus existential dependency, I suspect we're largely in agreement. When it comes to thought and belief about red, naming things that consistently reflect/emit certain frequencies of light "red" happens first. In our own linguistically/conceptually mediated ways of making sense of the world(which includes ourselves) we begin/began making sense of red things by virtue of picking out things that consistently reflect/emit the frequencies of light that we've named "red". Those things are red things. We first picked out the things reflecting/emitting those particular frequencies, called them "red".

Put more simply:Red things reflect/emit certain frequencies of light. We first named red things. We then further described red things in terms of properties/attributes/qualities. We then began to wonder if red things really are red or if they just appear red to us as a result of our physiological sensory apparatus(is your red the same as mine, etc.). Then came talk of "redness" as a so called private directly/immediately apprehensible property of subjective conscious experience.

Talk of "redness" is existentially dependent upon language use. Reflecting the frequencies we've named "red" does not. Which is basic, raw, and fundamental to consciousness? Surely not talking about it. — creativesoul

To put a finer point on this...

Talk of "redness" is existentially dependent upon language use, but not just language use, per se. Talk of "redness" as a property of subjective, private, directly perceptible, immediately apprehensible conscious experience is a metacognitive endeavor. That is to think about pre-existing thought, belief, and statements thereof as a subject matter in their own right. Metacognition requires common language use. This holds true of all "qualia" talk, as well as all talk about "consciousness", and "what it's like". They are all metacognitive endeavors, and as such they are all existentially dependent upon simpler thought and belief about red things.

The question here is whether or not the referents of our naming and descriptive practices are themselves existentially dependent upon metacognition, or do they consist of and/or emerge from mere simpler language use(linguistically constituted thought and belief) that is not metacognitive in it's constitution?

Red things reflect/emit certain frequencies of light. Reflecting light is a process that does not require language use in any way whatsoever. The raw/brute perception of reflected light does not either. So the raw, basic, fundamental, private, ineffable perception that language less creatures have of red things does not require language use. Would it make any sense to call that "conscious experience"? Only if the detection/perception alone of certain frequencies of light counts as conscious experience.

Some red things are not themselves existentially dependent upon language use, but others are. Red balls made of rubber via some human mechanical technology are. Red cups are. Red tulips, completely untouched by human hands, are not. Learning how to use the term "red" to pick out red balls, cups, and tulips does not require thinking about one's own thought and belief. It does require language use. Talking in terms of whether or not the 'redness' is inherent to the balls, cups, and tulips or inherent to our perception of them, or some combination thereof does require metacognition. It is metacognition at work. Talking about our own conscious experience of red balls, cups, and tulips most certainly does/is. Claiming that redness is a property of subjective conscious experience most certainly does/is. In each of these cases, we're talking about that which is existentially dependent upon our prior own use of "red"(thought and belief involving the terminological use).

Simply put...

Immediately apprehending and/or understanding the property of redness requires already knowing how to use "red", and is metacognitive in it's constitution. Already knowing how to use the term "red" to talk about red things is thought and belief that is linguistic in it's constitution but not metacognitive. So, it is either the case that raw, basic, fundamental, private, ineffable immediately apprehensible conscious experience involving red cups, balls, and tulips does not include the property of redness, or raw, basic, fundamental, private, ineffable conscious experience requires metacognition. Not all conscious experience involving red cups, balls, and tulips requires language. All metacognition does. So, the property of redness is disqualified(pun intended).

We call those frequencies "red". It's the properties, features, and/or characteristics of red things interacting with light that make them reflect the frequencies we've named "red".
— creativesoul

Can’t be true. Red can’t indicate a certain frequency or wavelength. Or else the word “red” would have only been conceived of after we were able to measure frequencies and after we figured out light was a wave. — khaled

False dichotomy.

The term "red" was used to pick out certain frequencies of light before we knew that.

What framework would that be? — Srap Tasmaner

Dennett’s

Immediately apprehending and/or understanding the property of redness requires already knowing how to use "red", and is metacognitive in it's constitution. Already knowing how to use the term "red" to talk about red things is thought and belief that is linguistic in it's constitution but not metacognitive. So, it is either the case that raw, basic, fundamental, private, ineffable immediately apprehensible conscious experience involving red cups, balls, and tulips does not include the property of redness, or raw, basic, fundamental, private, ineffable conscious experience requires metacognition. Not all conscious experience involving red cups, balls, and tulips requires language. All metacognition does. So, the property of redness is disqualified(pun intended). — creativesoul

I doubt this is true. Yes, to know that it is called red, to talk to someone else about its redness, one must have language. But to know that this red ball is different to the blue ball, and to know that there is something in common between the red ball and the red cup that is not in common between the red ball and the blue ball, does not require language, not the kind of verbal language you mean anyway. The word 'red' is not important, nor is any other word.

In fact, I'd say the exact opposite is true: in order to have a meaningful word to describe the colour property of a red thing, we must first be able to distinguish between that red thing and an otherwise identical blue thing. A great many animals can do this perfectly well without being able to describe it.

Indeed. Animals with color vision don’t need language to tell colors apart.

I do not think that you understood the argument given. Merely distinguishing between red and blue is inadequate for understanding and/or immediately apprehending redness as a property of conscious experience.

Immediately apprehending [...] the property of redness requires already knowing how to use "red"...

...Not all conscious experience involving red cups, balls, and tulips requires language. — creativesoul

Is this not contradictory?

It would be if all conscious experience involving red cups, balls, and tulips required immediately apprehending redness(as a property). It doesn't.

You’re saying that conscious experience involving red objects is not necessarily conscious experience of red objects (or of the redness of those objects)? Why isn’t it?

All conscious experience is meaningful to the creature having it. <-----That is a consideration that has been left sorely unattended...

All conscious experience consists of things that exist in their entirety prior to becoming meaningful to the creature. Red cups can become a meaningful part of a language-less color blind creature's experience, but not as a red cup to the creature. Red cups full of Maxwell House coffee become a meaningful part of conscious experience by virtue of becoming part of a correlation drawn by the creature between the red cup full of Maxwell House coffee and other things.

A tiny rodent is being chased by my cat. It hides behind the red cup full of Maxwell House coffee. The red cup full of Maxwell House coffee becomes meaningful to the rodent when it hides behind it. It becomes a place to hide. The red cup full of Maxwell House coffee becomes meaningful to the cat when the cat expects and/or otherwise believes that the rodent is on the other side of the red cup full of Maxwell House coffee, despite the rodent being unseen. Prior to becoming a part of that correlation, the red cup full of Maxwell House coffee exists in it's entirety as a red cup full of Maxwell House coffee, but it is utterly meaningless to the cat. Afterwards, it becomes an obstacle, it becomes something to be navigated around in search of the rodent. The red cup is definitely an irrevocable necessary elemental constituent of the chase experience, to both rodent and cat, however it is not experienced as a red cup by either.

Does that answer your question? It's not a matter of "why", it's a matter of "how"?

Your point is that humans and animals can both perceive or consciously experience red, but it requires language to identify the colour as “red”?

...to know that there is something in common between the red ball and the red cup that is not in common between the red ball and the blue ball, does not require language, not the kind of verbal language you mean anyway. — Kenosha Kid

This needs argued for.

Red cups and red balls have something in common:They're both red. They both reflect/emit the same or similar enough frequencies of light. Knowing that red things have that in common requires isolating and focusing upon the fact that the same frequencies are emitted/reflected by different things.

How is it possible to compare/contrast between different things arriving at the thought and belief(knowing) that different things are the same color, if there is no placeholder, proxy, and/or name for the frequency/color?

Your point is that humans and animals can both perceive or consciously experience red, but it requires language to identify the colour as “red”? — Luke

No.

The point is that immediately understanding and/or apprehending redness as a property of conscious experience requires metacognition. Basic rudimentary conscious experience does not.