I think your point is reasonable, but you are ignoring that 'see' is part of a system of concepts. — green flag
The fact that we need language to talk about the colours we see is irrelevant to this discussion. — Michael
Seeing is a type of experience. Babies can see, non-linguistic animals can see, the illiterate deaf mute raised by wolves in the jungle can see. — Michael
It is not that we don't have private experience but the language to articulate, like we do in the public sphere. — Richard B
I can see five different reds here. — Michael
I don't "reach" for five different words to describe what I see. — Michael
That I see five different reds has nothing to do with language — Michael
... everything to do with the raw subjective quality of my experience. — Michael
We have sensory inputs, we have behavioural responses, we have post hoc self reports. — Isaac
No. You can see five different colours there. That they are all shades of 'red' is something you were taught by the culture you grew up in. — Isaac
This is nonsense. You might as well say "you don't see five different colours; you see five different things. That they are all 'colours' is something you were taught in the culture you grew up in".
Or maybe "you don't see; you [something]. That it is 'seeing' is something you were taught in the culture you grew up in".
Or maybe "you don't get taught in a culture you grew up in; that it is 'being taught in the culture you grew up in' is ... [unintelligible rubbish]". — Michael
Again, you seem to fail to understand the use-mention distinction. — Michael
But this isn't the main point. The main point is that seeing colours has nothing to do with "reaching" for some word or other. — Michael
We have consciousness. We're not just input-output machines. I have a first person experience when I'm sitting still, in silence, watching and hearing and feeling the things going on around me. I don't need to say, or think, "I'm in pain" to be in pain. I just feel it. — Michael
why should he believe the impressions that led him to consider indirectness in the first place? — frank
Does anyone really want to argue that without a language with colour words such as "red", "green", and "blue", then we would just see a single (non-coloured?) circle, and not a coloured circle surrounded by a differently coloured ring surrounded by yet another differently coloured ring — Michael
The second point I want to make is, even if two differences are detectable between colours, for example 2 different shades of green, at what point do we determine when green is no longer a shade of green but a shade of blue.
Some argue turquoise is a tone of blue. Some argue it is a tone of green. Others say its its own unique colour.
There is a tribe in Africa, swahili I believe, where blue and green are but shades of the same colour. Are they any less correct in believing so verses our distinction?
In a spectrum of colour where changes are seamless, fluid and graduating, placing borders to define categories is more or less arbitrary to a point and you could place 100 borders or 20 or 8. — Benj96
What matters is that we do see colours, and that seeing colours and talking about colours are two completely different things. I do the former even without the latter. — Michael
On the grounds that babies and non-human animals and illiterate deaf mutes raised by wolves in the jungle can see colours. — Michael
First-person empirical evidence. — Michael
I think that that's an extraordinary claim, inconsistent with common sense, and that the burden is on you to prove it, not on me to disprove it. — Michael
I don't care what words one uses to refer to the colours one sees. — Michael
When Hume suggested a human with otherwise correct vision can install a missing shade of blue, he has already granted that the name of the color doesn’t reflect the capacity. Could have been any gap in the spectrum, which makes the name of it irrelevant. — Mww
Exactly. By their responses. Not their private experiences. — Isaac
Why would your personal conclusions about the function of your brain (or mind, even) be treated with any more authority that your first person feelings about gravity, or electromagnetism, or evolution? — Isaac
You want to say that distinction consists in different 'experiences'.
I'm claiming there's no evidence for that. All there's evidence for is that the distinction consists in a different response, of which 'reaching for the word 'red'' is an example specific to 'red'. — Isaac
Why would your personal conclusions about the function of your brain (or mind, even) be treated with any more authority that your first person feelings about gravity, or electromagnetism, or evolution? — Isaac
Again, you seem to fail to understand the use-mention distinction.
But this isn't the main point. — Michael
I will have to come up with five more pictures that excludes at least a third of the picture of the "ngoe" being green and excludes "ngoe" being an odd number. — RussellA
Get involved in philosophical discussions about knowledge, truth, language, consciousness, science, politics, religion, logic and mathematics, art, history, and lots more. No ads, no clutter, and very little agreement — just fascinating conversations.