This is how I am able to make sense of coloured dreams and hallucinations, synesthesia... — Michael
Naive realism
1. Our ordinary conception of colours is that of sui generis, simple, intrinsic, qualitative, non-relational, non-reducible properties ... not micro-structural properties or reflectances.
2. These sui generis properties are mind-independent properties of distal objects
Dispositionalism
3. Our ordinary conception of colours is that of micro-structural properties or reflectances.
4. These micro-structural properties are mind-independent properties of distal objects — Michael
It talks about "different individuals view[ing] the same image ... reported it to be widely different colors" and "different individuals experienc[ing] different percepts when observing the same image of the dress".
Different percepts entail different reported colours because color nouns ordinarily refer to those percepts, not the light emitted by the computer screen.
It is a fact that I see white and gold and others see black and blue because it is a fact that I experience white and gold percepts and others experience black and blue percepts. — Michael
You're saying that when I experience black, I'm experiencing an example of black. Everybody who has ever experienced seeing black has had their turn with this same thing: black percept. Right? It's something that transcends the individual? — frank
Ask the same question about pleasure and pain. — Michael
Well, as a nominalist I don't buy into universals — Michael
What's your view of that? — frank
there are both colours-as-percepts and colours-as-dispositions. My only claim is that the former is our ordinary, everyday conception of colours, not the latter. — Michael
One of the major problems with color has to do with fitting what we seem to know about colors into what science (not only physics but the science of color vision) tells us about physical bodies and their qualities. It is this problem that historically has led the major physicists who have thought about color, to hold the view that physical objects do not actually have the colors we ordinarily and naturally take objects to possess. Oceans and skies are not blue in the way that we naively think, nor are apples red (nor green). Colors of that kind, it is believed, have no place in the physical account of the world that has developed from the sixteenth century to this century.
Not only does the scientific mainstream tradition conflict with the common-sense understanding of color in this way, but as well, the scientific tradition contains a very counter-intuitive conception of color. There is, to illustrate, the celebrated remark by David Hume:
"Sounds, colors, heat and cold, according to modern philosophy are not qualities in objects, but perceptions in the mind. (Hume 1738: Bk III, part I, Sect. 1, [1911: 177]; Bk I, IV, IV, [1911: 216])"
Physicists who have subscribed to this doctrine include the luminaries: Galileo, Boyle, Descartes, Newton, Thomas Young, Maxwell and Hermann von Helmholtz. Maxwell, for example, wrote:
"It seems almost a truism to say that color is a sensation; and yet Young, by honestly recognizing this elementary truth, established the first consistent theory of color. (Maxwell 1871: 13 [1970: 75])"
This combination of eliminativism—the view that physical objects do not have colors, at least in a crucial sense—and subjectivism—the view that color is a subjective quality—is not merely of historical interest. It is held by many contemporary experts and authorities on color, e.g., Zeki 1983, Land 1983, and Kuehni 1997. Palmer, a leading psychologist and cognitive scientist, writes:
"People universally believe that objects look colored because they are colored, just as we experience them. The sky looks blue because it is blue, grass looks green because it is green, and blood looks red because it is red. As surprising as it may seem, these beliefs are fundamentally mistaken. Neither objects nor lights are actually “colored” in anything like the way we experience them. Rather, color is a psychological property of our visual experiences when we look at objects and lights, not a physical property of those objects or lights. The colors we see are based on physical properties of objects and lights that cause us to see them as colored, to be sure, but these physical properties are different in important ways from the colors we perceive. (Palmer 1999: 95)"
This quote, however, needs unpacking. Palmer is obviously challenging our ordinary common-sense beliefs about colors. Specifically, he is denying that objects and lights have colors in the sense of colors-as-we-experience-them (or colors as we see them), As far as this goes, it is compatible with objects and lights having colors in some other sense, e.g., colors, as defined for scientific purposes. Secondly, he is saying that color (i.e., color-as-we-experience it) is a psychological property, which in turn, might be interpreted in different ways.
don't think the OP, for example, is asking if atoms reflecting light is mind-independent. He's referring to the mental percept and asking if it's a mental percept or (as the naive colour primitivist believes) something mind-independent. — Michael
It is strange to ask if mental percept are mind-independent — Richard B
Problem with this is you are no longer talking about mind dependent concepts but mind independent (brain neurons etc I would think you would call mind independent). — Richard B
The "common-sense" naive view falsely posits that colours-as-we-experience-them are mind-independent properties of objects, but the science shows us that they are not; they are mental percepts related to neural activity in the visual cortex. — Michael
The “common-sense” naive view truly posits that colors are mind independent properties of objects because when I change the color of my room’s wall and get another bucket of paint with a different color, not a different mental percept. — Richard B
It is. — Michael
quoting the SEP article again. I believe this summary is correct: — Michael
Yet it is more plausible to believe that it is the addition of a substance that causes the variation. There is no good reason to believe that the variation occurs without the added substance. — jkop
For example, you claim that the colour variation in the dress is caused by the brain. — jkop
A summary of what? The article contains many different sections and summaries, and you picked one that partly (debatable) suits one or two of your single-minded assertions. :roll: — jkop
So to make this simple, here are two sets of claims:
Naive realism
1. Our ordinary conception of colours is that of sui generis, simple, intrinsic, qualitative, non-relational, non-reducible properties.
2. These sui generis properties are mind-independent.
Dispositionalism
3. Our ordinary conception of colours is that of micro-structural properties or reflectances.
4. These micro-structural properties are mind-independent.
I agree with (1) and (4) and disagree with (2) and (3). — Michael
Sure. The relevance of that distinction here, however, escapes me. In both cases we would most simply parse "red" as a predicate: "There is a red ball" becoming "There is an x such that x is a ball and x is red". We can treat these both extensionally, as simply that the bunch of things in the class"red" and the class Ball" is not empty.You are back to using the adjective "red". I am talking about the nouns "red" and "colour". Do you understand the distinction between an adjective and a noun? — Michael
I agree. You somewhat missed the point, again. Why should there be a singular thing to which the noun "colour" refers, and which must therefore be either in your head or in your hand? Why shouldn't the word refer to various different things? Indeed, that's how it is used.That certainly doesn't make much sense at all. — Michael
If we agree that colour is neither completely mind-dependent nor completely mind-independent, then we have made some progress.I've already agreed with this. — Michael
Being red is possession of the quality plus reference to the word 'red'. The quality is for example a pigment that systematically reflects or scatters wavelength components around 700 nm under ordinary conditions. — jkop
, and . If you have a red pen in your hand, you can pass the red pen to me. If you have a pain in your hand, you cannot pass the pain to me.Pain is like color. — frank
you cannot pass the pain to me. — Banno
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