Imagine for a second that red actually exists outside of our subjective view. What would happen if I called ‘blue’ what is typically named 'red' by most people? 
You would answer: Colour vision deficiency (CVD), right?
But why does this happen? Can I see something red without realising it is red? How can I experience the reddish?

Colours are biological phenomena that arise when we and many other organisms interact with our visible environment. When you ask whether a red colour exists outside our view, as something unseen, the question obviously doesn't refer to the colour perception but to conditions in the environment from which it can emerge. There's little reason to doubt the existence of a spectrum of electromagnetic radiation that we by convention label 'red' .

There's little reason to doubt the existence of a spectrum of electromagnetic radiation that we by convention label 'red' . — jkop

If you can be assured there is radiation, why can't you be sure there's red?

If you can be assured there is radiation, why can't you be sure there's red? — Hanover

I'm sure there's red. Do you know of a good reason to doubt colour realism?

Does the color “red” exist outside of the subjective mind that conceptually designates the concept of “red?” — Mp202020

The concept of red and the property of redness belong to the whole community. You can speak of them either subjectively or objectively. When you say you've had the experience of seeing red, that terminology is subjective. If I say you need to stop at the red sign, now I'm speaking in objective terms.

We don't really know how consciousness works. Does it only exist on this one little planet? Or is it an aspect of everything? Who knows?

Colours are biological phenomena that arise when we and many other organisms interact with our visible environment. — jkop

I'm sure there's red. Do you know of a good reason to doubt colour realism? — jkop

You describe environment X that interacts with perceiver Y and the perceiver has the subjective state of seeing red.

Without Y, what can be said of X? How do you know it exists and what are its properties?

When you say you've had the experience of seeing red, — frank

I would pay for experiencing that experience. How would it be? Like the sweetness of a candy or the sharp odour of non-drinking water?

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We naturally see the world in colors. just naming something red is a social convention. that this shade is red. basically it's physics. All colors are reflected, and only one color is moved by the object - red. optical phenomenon. wavelength. and the retina in the eye sends the message to the brain, which processes and evaluates it. I have a color vision disorder, so when there are several colors together, I have trouble distinguishing them from each other.. ️ ️

I would pay for experiencing that experience. How would it be? Like the sweetness of a candy or the sharp odour of non-drinking water? — javi2541997

Red is Arizona, driving toward Phoenix. It smells like burning Juniper.

So you perceive hot weather when you think in red. Interesting because when I think in red, I am reminded of the deliciousness of apples.

But could we experience the red colour itself?

But could we experience the red colour itself? — javi2541997

Sort of. I could ask an artist if she's familiar with true Prussian blue, and if she is, ask her to create it with paint. In this case, Prussian blue isn't the property of any particular object, although the name is attached to a unique synthetic chemical. The artist and I are talking about the color itself.

So the experience of seeing the color itself involves ignoring the medium. I'm not saying everyone can do that. I don't know.

I would refute by stating that we have agreed to call a specific light frequency as “red” however the subjective experience of this “red” that others actually experience is entirely unknown to you except your own perception of “red.” For all you know, what you see as “blue” may be what another person actually sees, however we’ve been conditioned to all agree this specific wavelength is “red” and we’d be none the wiser that what we’re actually perceiving is entirely different.

That's a good example. :up:

You remove the perceiver yet ask how does he know that his perception exists? :roll:

Or do you mean that you remove all perceivers so that the biological phenomenon no longer exists, yet ask how does one know that it exists? Your question makes no sense.

For example, a colour blind person who doesn't see red can still know that there exists such a phenomenon by studying those who can see red, study colour tables, spectrometers etc and find out which of them one is unable to perceive. Being colour blind does not mean that there is a problem in colour science.

How do we know that mantis shrimp see ultraviolet when it's beyond our own visible spectrum? By hypothetical deduction, photography etc.

If there is no mind to experience and conceptually designate “red” does red ever aquire an inherent existence independent of a third party mind? — Mp202020

What is more fascinating is that anyone understands what one is referring to with regards to a supposedly private object that no one has access to but we feel the idea about shared judgments on a common public property of an object is somehow found wanting.

That supposedly private object of a colour perception doesn't exist (disregarding hallucinations and manipulation of the perceptual apparatus).

Pigments and light, however, exist, and they are disposed to cause colour perceptions systematically enough to warrant the public labels that they have.

One might add that what exists subjectively (i.e. only for the one who sees the colour) is the seeing, but the object that one sees is the pigment or the reflected bundle of light rays.The seeing is private but the object that is seen is public.

I would refute by stating that we have agreed to call a specific light frequency as “red” — Mp202020

Just as a data point, colour perception is much more complicated. See colour constancy for a start. What we "see" is the world as we imagine it in a good strong "white" light.

And then what we "see" as red is more about what we have determined to be the contrast of being "not green". See opponent channel processing.

So the step from the physical reality to the cognitive modelling is a slippery one, most especially with colour experience.

That being of course why colour perception becomes the paradigmatic example of folk wanting to argue for an idealist position on phenomenal experience. The science becomes too twisty for the average physicalist to chase them all the way up to that redoubt. The ineffable redness of red seems so detached from the reality that it is meant to represent that cognitive representationalism must be wrong.

Which it is. But cognitive science has moved away from representationalism itself in recent times, thankfully. A more suitably enactive or embodied approach is being taken again.

Does the color “red” exist outside of the subjective mind that conceptually designates the concept of “red?” — Mp202020

If "red" is just in your mind, when you ask for a red pen, how is it that the person you are asking hands you what you want?

But cognitive science has moved away from representationalism itself in recent times, thankfully. A more suitably enactive or embodied approach is being taken again. — apokrisis

Is there an article in Nature about the that?

Bang on, imo

If "red" is just in your mind, when you ask for a red pen, how is it that the person you are asking hands you what you want? — Banno

Sometimes, they don't. Or, they are wrong.

Is there an article in Nature about the that? — frank

You mean like this? - https://www.nature.com/articles/nrn2787

"Surprise rests on predictions about sensations, which depend on an internal generative model
of the world."

"Perception optimizes predictions by minimizing free energy with respect to synaptic activity (perceptual inference), efficacy (learning and memory) and gain (attention and salience). This furnishes Bayes-optimal (probabilistic) representations of what caused sensations (providing a link to the Bayesian brain hypothesis)."

BBH is a representational hypothesis. I think we must be talking about two different embodied approaches. The one I'm familiar with is a descendant of Heidegger. It's not something a scientist would know what to do with.

The one I'm familiar with is a descendant of Heidegger. It's not something a scientist would know what to do with. — frank

Where is yours defined? What theory are you talking about?

It's in the SEP article on embodied cognition. Look at the paragraph on phenomenology. I guess it's an extreme version of the idea?

It is arguing the same point. Cartesian representationalism is the approach that creates all its own problems. Embodied cognition is saying something different. The question then is how to bottle that as natural philosophy or science.

So when you call Friston “more representationalism”, I would say no, it is different. It has the triadic structure of a semiotic modelling relation.

Sure the mind is a model. But representationalism treats that as meaning a mechanics of “mental display”. To say the mind is instead a modelling relation leads us to the opposite of that. It becomes instead a tale of accumulating “unconscious” habits of action.

You don’t want the nervous system flooding the brain with all this news about the world. Bayesianism is about instead making that news so boringly already predicted that the whole business of “displaying” it can be avoided. The world can be forgotten as quickly as it happens as you have already moved on.

Of course, there must still be the higher level process of attention to mop up the information that couldn’t be automatically assimilated. But that becomes more of the same - still embodied, just over a longer timescale.

We might have to turn our heads, prod with our fingers, shift to one side. We might have to explore to unravel what was unfamiliar or otherwise a momentary source of uncertainty in our world.

But even in half a second, a way to compress the uncertainty and turn it into another forgettable certitude can be achieved by a Bayesian Brain.

So the flip from Cartesian display to the Pragmatic modelling relation is this one. First rule is don’t even display to the degree you can habituate. Then when forced to briefly poke around and figure it out, add that learning to your stock of embodied automaticisms and get back to functioning as “unconsciously” as you can.

What use is awareness after the fact? That is too late. Minds need to be always ahead of the game by doing the Bayesian thing of minimising “surprisal”.

I think we just have a terminology issue. For you, the word "representation" means Descartes. That's confusing to me because most theories about cognition are representational, but not Cartesian.

The telephone system is an example of that. When you speak into a phone, an electric signal is generated by the microphone. That signal is sampled to create a digital stream. That stream is transmitted and then used to generate an audio signal that's sent to a speaker. This is a representational system, in fact it involves three different representations, but there's nothing Cartesian about it. See what I mean?

That's confusing to me because most theories about cognition are representational, but not Cartesian. — frank

Descartes argued for a separation of hardware and software - a dyadic separation of that kind. And computer science claimed that separability as what technology could then implement and so create AI.

This is a tradition of thought we are talking about. And it led to “global workspace” type models of brain function. There was always this thought the data must be displayed somewhere, and thus also always the homuncular regress this implied. Tactics like eliminativism or supervenience were employed to shut the critics up.

This is a representational system, in fact it involves three different representations, but there's nothing Cartesian about it. See what I mean? — frank

Surely you can see what a bad example that is. When is information actually information in any normal sense? When it is in the post or when it is being written and read?

Surely you can see what a bad example that is. When is information actually information in any normal sense? When it is in the post or when it is being written and read? — apokrisis

? The telephone system is run by a computer. What I described is the way representation is understood in the computational theory of mind.