How so?

What do you mean by "physical phenomena"?

If you mean the stuff physicists study, then yes, they are. Optics is a thing, as the lac-a-beards say.

What thread were you posting in?

That is correct. I won't be saying much. But there's already so much stuff about "physical" as opposed to mental or opposed to consciousness, that this little bit, is already something. Particularly when strands of physicalism claim that our experience is an illusion, not real. — Manuel

Ah, I see. You're suggesting that the universe is alive and conscious of itself, at least some of the debris on the surface of this planet is. Pretty provocative. I'm all for it.

Different as are the properties of sensation and thought, from such as are usually ascribed to matter, they may, nevertheless, inhere in the same substance, unless we can shew them to be absolutely incompatible with one another.”... this argument, from our not being able to conceive how a thing can be, equally affects the immaterial system: for we have no more conception how the powers of sensation and thought can inhere in an immaterial, than in a material substance..." — Manuel

Interesting. The physical-mental divide has its roots in medicine where it distinguishes broken bones from lunacy. When scientists started realizing that some mental ailments have a physical basis, it marked a great advancement that requires the very insight expressed there.

The "What's Your Ontology Thread" that I started. Specifically the 3rd post on the second page. I just don't want to paste the entire thing.

By physical phenomena, I mean the story I teach my 6th graders: light hits the back of the eye, a signal is sent to the brain, and the brain interprets the data as "seeing". And, of course, it's taken to understand that eyes, brains, photons, and nerves are things that are outside the mind.

If that's what you're proposing, then I'm going to demand proof that there exists anything outside the mind, and of course you won't be able to provide any, and I'll assert that the only thing we know for sure is that at least one conscious mind exists and the rest is speculation. But I'm curious: why are you so sure physicalism is true? Because that's the way the world appears? What do you think is physicalism's strongest argument? It's predictive accuracy?

Ah, I see. You're suggesting that the universe is alive and conscious of itself, at least some of the debris on the surface of this planet is. Pretty provocative. I'm all for it. — frank

I'm no panpsychist if that's what you mean.

Look. My sense of what a color is changes in subtle ways in relation to my own previous perception of it all the time , in response to changing contexts of experience , both social-linguistic and private. If I am an artist, the meaning for me of red may be extraordinarily differentiated , and change in all kinds of ways as a result of different projects I engage in. I am constant evaluating and attempting to validate
my previous understanding and use of the sense of all of my perceptions, so my own use of words for color and sound and touch that I use for my own purposes shifts subtly all the time.

In similar fashion, the words we share with others for color undergo all kinds of changes in sense, both those that members of a group agree on and those they don’t. Straws on babbles on about evolutionary and genetic determinants of color perception, but what matters for
the social consensus concerning the meaning of a color word is what sense of color is being meant and how we go about validating whether others are meaning a similar sense not. So for instance ,the word red can be used to pick out an object against a background.
For this task it is irrelevant whether my perceived red is the same as yours. All that matters is that we both consistently pick out the same object. Then there can be an aesthetic use of the word red. If my red is fiery hot, aggressive, angry and yours is the opposite, then the word red in this context isn’t very useful in capturing a shared understanding.

Strawson’s reminder that we may be meaning different things with the use of the same color word is sort of beside the point. First of all, how would we even know this unless we established some situation
to validate it? If we normally don’t force our shared use of words like red to undergo validation its because our pragmatic involvement with it doesn’t present difficulties. The word is doing what we need it to do.

If it came to be that an important shared understanding of a word sense began to unravel, that is, if it became apparent that each user of the word could no longer depend on other users to behave in previously anticipated ways in response to the use of the word, the. it would likely cease to be practical in its present form.

Everything I said about the social validation of color concepts applies to the interpersonal establishment of objective science. This is the point of a phenomenological analysis. Strawson is doing a kind of rudimentary phenomenology when he shows how shared concepts are built from intercorrelations across individual perceptual systems that transcend subordinate differences

I have not presented a philosophical outlook — Fooloso4

Sorry, I misunderstood. I thought you were drawing an unspoken conclusion based on the notion that we might be secretly wired differently.

m no panpsychist if that's what you mean. — Manuel

I wasn't suggesting that.

Interesting. The physical-mental divide has its roots in medicine where it distinguishes broken bones from lunacy. When scientists started realizing that some mental ailments have a physical basis, it marked a great advancement that requires the very insight expressed there. — frank

Ah, did not know that. I'd be interested in reading up on some of that literature actually.

Your position is a lot like property dualism.

... we might be secretly wired differently. — frank

Shhh. I want to keep my secret wiring a secret.

Yeah. I don't see a way around it. I'd like to if possible, but so far it's the best I've been able to come up with.

If that's what you're proposing, then I'm going to demand proof that there exists anything outside the mind, and of course you won't be able to provide any, and I'll assert that the only thing we know for sure is that at least one conscious mind exists and the rest is speculation. — RogueAI

See On Certainty.

You should be able to articulate your position in your own words. I'm not reading 55 pages of Wittgenstein.

I could, and have, but Josh and Manuel have provided more interesting fodder.

Shhh. I want to keep my secret wiring a secret. — Fooloso4

:razz:

Imagine believing that people see the color red the same!

There are many reasons why this is not the case, but let's just consider some of the obvious physical ones. Let's take a control wavelength of visible red light to be 700nm. The source that emits this light is is subject to a variety of media that will alter this light (atmosphere, pre-corneal tear film, cornea, aqueous, lens, and vitreous). Everybody has a different make-up of the previously mentioned media, therefore the 700nm wavelength light source is going to undergo changes (various aberrations) accordingly.

Once the photons (waves?) reach the retina, there are all kinds of changes that take place which nobody has any clue about (as there are eight layers of the retina). Once the photoreceptors transmit through the ganglion cell layer axons which accumulate as the optic nerve, there are many unknown processes that take place along the optic tract until the nerves synapse in Brodmann area 7 of the cerrebral cortex.

You folks are chatting about something that nobody has the faintest idea about. The interesting thing is that whereas its fairly easy to imagine the complexity of the visual process, this applies to all things, no matter how simple they may appear. Nobody has any clue about anything...thank God for small favors!

Grey strawberries:

I think we pre-theoretically inhabit a shared world of coloured objects. To the left of me is a red box of crackers. The red is not "my red", nor it is "your red" (this is nonsensical) - it is the cracker box that is red. If you don't believe me, look for yourself. Yes, there are cases of colour blindness where one can look for themselves and not in fact see red, but this doesn't mean we each have an internal, private red we individually perceive, but rather one of us was born with a deficiency in colour perception.

If there's a "my red" and "your red", then why not also a "my box" and "your box"? But then your body too would be my, 'your body', and now the whole too, as it is all perceived by me, would be 'my world'. But then my body with its sense organs are also part of this world perceived - so then, my senses cause their own existence? Or perhaps the world, my body, and everything I've ever known is some sort of on-board self/world model within an actual, physical human body (see: Thomas Metzinger)?

I think at this point the box of red crackers is just getting thrown at your head.

Reason rhymes,
Luck loses.
Risky business.
Are the stars really there?

Are the stars really there? — ghostlycutter

Ask Nelson Goodman. He has a few things to say about that.

Colors are not physical phenomena, they are perceptual phenomena, and as such are the achievement of a constructive process. They are intentional acts , and like all acts, they produce a change of sense. Colors may not present ‘intrinsic’ properties on the order of qualia, but they do present us with the experience of a transformative construction. For instance, the perceptual act of color constitution is created primoridally as a black shape either emerging out of or receding into a dark background. You can demonstrate this yourself. Cut out a white cardboard circle, paint one half black , and then draw a series of black lines following the curvature of the circle on either side of the disk emerging from the black half. Then attach it to a fan and watch the appearance of red and blue. — Joshs

So I thought about it, and I think you have a point, but it's more complicated. there's three parts to it:
1) Object and Lighting Properties
2) Visual Processing
3) Color Associations


1) Object and Lighting Properties

As you observe, apparent colors change, but it does not need such a sophisticated experiment as moving objects. It happens all the time. A white balloon outside looks 'white' most of the day, but if I carry it into shadow, it looks grey. At sunrise and sunset, it looks red. Color is an object's absorptive and emissive spectra COMBINED WITH its reflective, specular, and translucent properties, MODIFIED BY the color of the light falling on it.


2) Visual Processing


An object's apparent color is FURTHER MODIFIED BY internal processing we perform to modify brightness, detect edges, and detect movement in the visual pre-cortex. Our irises dilate and contract to adjust the light intensity to our optimal detection processing. Muscles distort the eyeball's curvature to focus on different distances. Early processing compensates for these artefactual contraptions. And we know some of the further processing by dissecting the ocular pre-cortex nerve structures. There is a 'crossover network very early in the nerve chain to enhance edges, for example. At some point in the visual processing, the effects of changes to the eye for different lighting and focal length are 'canceled out' so we are not normally aware of them. We make so many internal modifications in our brains depending on our lighting conditions that are so innate, you may not have consciously realized them, lol.

Most people don't. Van Gogh, who actually had very bad vision and wore glasses, painted stars with rings around them because that's what he saw through his glasses (he liked to paint when it was raining, or he was in a smoky room). Most people don't realize 'Starry Night' is Van Gogh trying to paint what he actually saw. Here's another Van Gogh example.



People who wear glasses, or sunglasses, adjust after a few days and stop noticing the artifacts. Another obvious example is that the image on the inside of the eye is actually upside down. People can wear glasses that make the image upside down before it reaches the eye, and adjust to it, and don't notice it after a few hours. That is to say, the processing is innate, but it is not completely hard-wired. We can learn to turn parts of it on and off.

3) Color Associations

There is an associative element to the 'meaning' of color. This may form at an early age. Suppose we are waiting in a dark room as a baby, and our mother comes in and turns the light on, then feeds us. Then when she leaves she turns the light off. This makes an association in our minds that bright light is good, and shadows are bad.

I believe such associations at a very early age explain much of what we personally 'feel' about color. As we grow older, we form more associations, which are more direct, such as red being 'danger' because of traffic lights and blood. But even those learned associations with world phenomena at later ages are already 'tinted' by our earliest perceptions when little meant sense to us at all, and that's what makes color such an intensely personal experience.

Colors are not physical phenomena, they are perceptual phenomena, and as such are the achievement of a constructive process — Joshs

I think the grey strawberries illusion demonstrates that.

The color red, all colors in fact, is through and through subjective i.e. it can't be brought out of, extracted from, the mind for display, a requirment to answer the OP's question in a meaningful way.

Nevertheless, we can't ignore the fact our sense organs are generic i.e. there seems to be no difference, at least in any obvious way, in re our sensory apparatus. Ergo, that my red is identical to your or other people's red isn't going to be as controversial as it should be for your question to be interesting at all.

Nevertheless, we can't ignore the fact our sense organs are generic i.e. there seems to be no difference, at least in any obvious way, in re our sensory apparatus. — TheMadFool

That's an absurd statement. You need to study the human body.

That's an absurd statement. You need to study the human body. — synthesis

Really? Are you reading this sentence?

Yes, I am reading the sentence. What does that tell you?

Most people don't realize 'Starry Night' is Van Gogh trying to paint what he actually saw. — ernest meyer

If you look at the painting Starry Night you’ll notice that Van Gogh didnt just paint rings around lights, he painting a veritable network of streaming movement that includes not only points of light but integrated the lights with the blank sky and clouds. This complex river of movement was intended as a subjective spiritual and emotive statement, not simply a copy of external reality.

the processing is innate, but it is not completely hard-wired. — ernest meyer

Only the capacity to process perceptual relations is innate, the actual constructive process is entirely a process of perceptual learning , which is why sensory deprivation at a crucial juncture in development can cause permanent deficits in sight or other sense modality.

Suppose we are waiting in a dark room as a baby, and our mother comes in and turns the light on, then feeds us. Then when she leaves she turns the light off. This makes an association in our minds that bright light is good, and shadows are bad.

I believe such associations at a very early age explain much of what we personally 'feel' about color. As we grow older, we form more associations, which are more direct, such as red being 'danger' because of traffic lights and blood — ernest meyer

I think there are more interesting and more explanatory models of perception than those which make use of basic stimulus response reinforcement.

Newer approaches think of perception as a form of normative and goal oriented interaction with the world. not simply the processing of data but embodied sensory-motor interaction with environment. The model of blind arbitrary associative reinforcement has been replaced by the idea that perception is anticipative and oriented toward fulfillment of expectations. It doesn’t like surprise or loss of what was anticipated. Thus, what is reinforced isnt simply what is causally associated with a surge of pleasure , but fulfillment of anticipation , completion of pattern, consistency of appearance, a relative match between what we see and what we expect to see. In short , perception is patterned sense making , not causal association shaped by simple reinforcement It prefers coherence over incoherence and chaos.

In this regard, the change from light to darkness that ensues when we turn off a light represents a loss that is intrinsically negative. Of course, we can say we love the dark , but that involves secondary positive features that emerge for us after the immediate change from light to dark. Similarly , I think colors have intrinsic hedonic ‘feel’ to them prior to secondary meanings that are shaped though more complex social interactions, and this feel , like light vs dark , is linked to what I described as their ‘popping out toward us vs receding away from us’. Linking the expression ‘Having the blues’ with the color doesn’t require complex social associations of the color blue but can be directly related to the recessionary character of the basic perception. One can compare these recognized felt qualities of color to the way temporal arrangements of musical
notes provideds us with a feeling vocabulary of music independent of our varying reactions to particular musical pieces. We all recognize that when an octave scale is played it constitutes a subject and predicate. The first 4 notes constitute a completed ‘subject’ phrase and the second 4 are the predicate.Put together as a song , patterns of notes connote beginnings, endings, sadness adm joys, and all variants of moods. How does it manage to do this in such a way that we all recognize the basic feeling elements of music even when we disagree on how good or bad a particular song is ? Through consonances and dissonances that remind us of the rhythms of fulfillment’s and lack of fulfillment’s that perception and cognition in general present us with.
Don’t make the mistake of assuming that this capacity to recognize feeling in music is either ‘innate’ or just a concatenation of reinforcement contingencies.