It is astonishing, I do agree! I could go on and on and on and on about all the potential and power in/of/from our abilities to do many things BUT no.the mind could be trained to use ideas or visions from past memories or brain activity patterns? — Kizzy
Our ability to remember and imagine and dream is astonishing. It's fairly easy to imagine what a red pen might look like, or a floroucent pen that glows red in the dark etc. Past memories might help, but with basic language skills one can compose infinitely many descriptions of what a red pen looks like, or might look like, in real or fictional worlds etc.
However, I don't know how to imagine what it might be like to see something invisible, or a pen that is red yet green in the same respect. It's easy to write or say, but not so easy to imagine. — jkop
Colours are used as natural signs — jkop
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
Without Y, what can be said of X? How do you know it exists and what are its properties? — Hanover
Are you referring to the light that reflects those colours right? — javi2541997
because the amount of cone cells in the electromagnetic spectrum and the colour wheel differs. — javi2541997
The "natural sign" is the light not the colours. — javi2541997
Our eyes are tricky. — javi2541997
Let's play the following classic illusion game: — javi2541997
I'm referring to the biological evolution of colour vision. — jkop
What matters for an animal is what it sees, e.g. a flower, not the light nor the mechanism that together enable the seeing. — jkop
The eyes of a mantis shrimp are way trickier. — jkop
Why? Arguments from illusion suck. — jkop
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? — Banno
But also, the red pen satisfies both you and your helper. We agree that the pen is red, so "red" belongs to pens as well as to minds.
So there is something odd about claiming red is no more than a perception. — Banno
How does an animal know that it is seeing a colour? — javi2541997
That game demonstrates how colour is arbitrary. — javi2541997
No, it demonstrates colour vision under selective conditions of observation. — jkop
By seeing it or knowing its conditions of satisfaction. — jkop
No, it demonstrates colour vision under selective conditions of observation. — jkop
If we’ve all been conditioned to say something giving off the same wavelength is “red,” then we would all be able to agree on what red is. — Mp202020
A regularity between a cause and the perception — Lionino
It is at least the case with colour-blind people, who will often still give you the right pen, even though we know they don't see the same as we do, as the shade of brown of red is a bit different than the shade of brown of green. — Lionino
Bang. What reason is there to think that red is more than a word we use for certain purposes?What is red but a word we’ve agreed to call something that looks red? — Mp202020
Even if this is so, "red" can't mean "Light with a frequency of around 430 terahertz"...From a materialistic perspective, red is a specific light wavelength. This is universal. — Mp202020
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