I don’t need words to see that there are lighter and darker — Michael

Yea, but you could do what you claimed, distinguish between the different shades, if you had words, like burgundy, cadmium red, cadmium red light, etc.. Or you might need to hold the sample up to the picture to tell the difference. Both of those would demonstrate color externalism.

Both of those would demonstrate color externalism. — frank

No it wouldn’t. We’d just have words that refer to individual hue percepts.

This obsession that you and others have with Wittgenstein and language is a hopeless confusion. Colour experiences, like other experiences, concerns sensory percepts, and often the sense organs and stimuli that they react to. It doesn’t concern speech or writing.

Colour experiences, like other experiences, concerns sensory percepts, and often the sense organs and stimuli that they react to. It doesn’t concern speech or writing. — Michael

You just demonstrated that it's both. You see the shades of red, but you can't distinguish between them without an external crutch.

You see the shades of red, but you can't distinguish between them without an external crutch. — frank

I can distinguish between them. That’s how I can see 5 hues in that first image. It’s not just a single hue like the second image.

I can distinguish between them — Michael

If that was true you would have easily been able to pick them out in the apple picture. You need an external crutch to distinguish between them.

If that was true you would have easily been able to pick them out in the apple picture. You need an external crutch to distinguish between them. — frank

I don’t even understand what you’re asking. What do you mean by “pick out”? Are you asking me to name each hue without using words? Obviously I can’t do that because your request is nonsensical.

But I can visually see that the apple has a gradient of hues ranging from lighter to darker to lighter, and isn’t just a single solid hue like the second rectangle I posted. And I can see this despite not having individual names for each hue, proving my point and refuting yours.

And I can see this despite not having individual names for each hue, proving my point and refuting yours. — Michael

My point is that you need both internal and external data to distinguish between colors. That's pretty easy to demonstrate. By the way, the picture you posted doesn't show different hues. It was all the same hue, just different shades of it. Different hues would be like cadmium red versus magenta.

My point is that you need both internal and external data to distinguish between colors. — frank

Which is wrong, because I don't (except insofar as an external stimulus is causally responsible for the sensation).

All I need is visually distinguishable percepts (whatever their cause). Animals can distinguish between the poisonous red frog and the non-poisonous brown frog without having to converse with one another.

You really need to move past this language-first approach to biology.

I suppose a point could be made that without an external example, we wouldn't be able to know we're using the term "red" consistently over time (and then only maybe), but the suggestion we couldn't distinguish colors without words is ridiculous.

Which is wrong, because I don't (except insofar as an external stimulus is causally responsible for the sensation). — Michael

You're overlooking the very active role the mind plays in creating experience. You literally can't see the things your mind isn't prepared to see.

A fair amount of the stimulus your CNS receives is filtered out as irrelevant. Neuroscience speculates that experience is the result of applying filters to the data you receive so it can be compared to models. This is the reason you can't distinguish between shades and hues in a practical way. You haven't develop the modeling necessary to do it. Artists can do it because their minds are prepared to do it

All I need is visually distinguishable percepts (whatever their cause — Michael

As described above, this is not in keeping with the present scientific view.

Language is irrelevant. — Michael

This is very clearly not the case. Language plays a very important role in everything you experience.

Animals can distinguish between the poisonous red frog and the non-poisonous brown frog without having to converse with one another. — Michael

This is behaviorism. You could do with trying to understand what your opponent is actually saying. I don't see you doing that.

Language plays a very important role in everything you experience. — frank

How do you know how I experience?

I'm telling you there are plenty of experiences I have that language plays no role in. How do you know that to be false?

As described above, this is not in keeping with the present scientific view. — frank

The present scientific view is that colour percepts exist, and do so when there is neurological activity in the visual cortex. This is what explains dreams, hallucinations, and variations in colour perception, and allows for visual cortical prostheses.

And it is these percepts, not a surface layer of atoms reflecting various wavelengths of light, that constitute our ordinary, everyday understanding of colours (even if we naively and mistakingly think these percepts to be or resemble some mind-independent property).

See the SEP summary I posted .

How do you know how I experience?

I'm telling you there are plenty of experiences I have that language plays no role in. How do you know that to be false? — Hanover

I'm guessing you're like me. You use ideas, like tree to organize your sensations into something meaningful. Ideas usually go by names which you learn. You probably have an innate capacity for using ideas in this way, but it's developed and heavily influenced by your language and culture.

You very well may have nonverbal experience. I do. If I talk all day, I'll eventually become exhausted and nonverbal. It's not actually a whole lot of fun.

And it is these percepts, not a surface layer of atoms reflecting various wavelengths of light, that constitute our ordinary, everyday understanding of colours. — Michael

Yea, I don't think that's the whole story.

Your question was, as I understood it, that you get how we can doubt the redness of the ball is part of the ball but we can't doubt the roundness is part of the ball.

Is that a correct restatement? — Hanover

If we really wanted, we could really doubt anything. I am okay with that. My post was specifically in reply to your disagreement to separating properties in different categories.

I used the example of the ball to highlight that, while colour may be completely in our heads and each person has a different experience and no problem ensues in communication because the experiences are consistent between one another, the shape of something might also be in our head, but the fact that we are able to tell each other to grab an object by its corners without issues at least gives us reason to think that, though the experience is in our head, the experience of different people as to the shape of something seems to be the same.

If it were different, and one person saw a ball where one saw a cube, communication would break down, as we can't possibly imagine how to grab a ball by its corners.

This commonality of experience, shown by effective and reliable communication, seems to suggest that there are outside objects that produce the same experience to different minds. There is nothing prima facie however that suggests a commonality of experience of colours, I at least can't think of anything. So it seems that there is merit to the idea of colours being a property in a way that shape is not and vice versa.

Why must there be a direct link from what is "out there" to what is in your experience when it comes to touch but not vision. — Hanover

To restate the post above, I wouldn't say there must be direct link, but that it is not spurious to divide this link (direct or indirect) into different categories — be them secondary/primary property or another division.

If it is, my response is to ask what you're relying upon other than your senses to distinguish primary qualities (the roundness) from secondary ones (the redness). — Hanover

Also to restate it, we could say we are also relying on some necessary a priori synthetic propositions (a ball has no corners).

I'm guessing you're like me. — frank

And I think I'm guessing I'm like you, which is that if I walk in drenched, with an angry look on my face, and with a broken umbrella, you recognize I got caught in the rain, my umbrella broke, and I'm angry about it. Do you really say all those things internally in words prior to arriving at your conclusion?

I'll trust you if you say you do, but I don't, which is why I find much of this language based metaphysics contrived. You have to buy into facts that are just false, and the facts are non-empirical, but entirely internal, so there's no evidence that can be pointed to to prove these critical facts needed to support the linguistic theory.

To sum it up, both shape and colour are experiences that I have and presumably that others have too. We use those words to communicate. There are some necessary synthetic a priori statements that we can make about square objects and round objects, some of those facts have consequences, such as how it rolls and so on. When it comes to the colour red, there aren't any necessary synthetic a priori statements we can make about it, are there? It seems that any synthetic statement about red has to be contigent.

Edit: my usage of "necessary synthetic a priori" might be unfortunate. I am trying to express the idea in some known philosophical jargon. The bottomline is that there must be something in common about different minds' experience of some shapes, otherwise communication would break down, while in the case of colours there doesn't seem to be any such necessity. The "necessary synthetic a priori" there is what I think is the reason behind such distinction.

I'll trust you if you say you do, but I don't — Hanover

Sometimes I find that some people really do. Some people seem to have a language-dominated thinking, while others don't. Some don't have an inner monologue, some don't have a mind's eye, some have both and others none. Perhaps there is a real psychological difference at play. Nevertheless, I still cannot conceive that someone would see me red with an angry face and have to subvocalise "He is angry" before forming that belief — it seems evolutionarily impossible too.

Honestly, I think your attitude is more about posters on this forum than about language philosophy. The damnedest interpretations of Wittgenstein show up here.

The real thing is just about how language influences what you perceive. People who suggest that sensation has nothing to do with perception are, as you said, just being ridiculous.

Thanks for the response. You seem to be pretty much agreeing with what I've said.

Where do you see the agreement exactly? I mean, nice try....

What does Wittgenstein's private language argument have to do with anything we're discussing here? — Michael

Quite a bit. If your "mental percepts" are individual, in your mind only and unsharable, then they are tantamount to the private sensation "S" used by Wittgenstein. You might now be calling "red" the percept you yesterday called "green"; you have no way of checking except your own memory.

But of course that is not what happens. You can check the colour of the box over there by looking at the box and by asking your collaborator. The box and the collaborator provide an anchor for your use of the word "red". An anchor that would be unavailable were red no more than something in your mind.

And pain works somewhat differently to colour. There is no equivalent to the box, no something that is available for us both to examine. So we develop pain scales and note the various difficulties they involve.

Take case that the argument here is not, as you suggest, "to prove that colours are not a type of sensation, comparable in kind to pain." Colours can be considered sensations, but not just sensations. The way we talk about colours and pains are different. They involve, in Wittgenstein's terms, different grammars.

...your reasoning seems to amount to nothing more than "pens are red, pens are mind-independent, therefore red is mind-independent." — Michael

Not quite. The argument is more that you and I can both choose the red pen from a container of various other colours, and hence that we agree as to which pen is red, and that hence being red is different to being black or blue - and that this is a difference in the pens, not just or only in your mind. We agree as to which pen is red and so being red involves pens as well as sensations.

I think Witt's point would be that cognition is heavily influenced by language, which in turn reflects history, culture, and biology. — frank

I agree with this, mostly. It is important to keep in mind that it's not language alone, but use that is relevant here. A male bower bird will collect blue things to decorate its bower because the female has a preference for blue items. The male collects blue things in order to get laid. The use is there without the need for language.

Michael might well be able to see different shades of red without having names for them, and demonstrate this by matching colour swatches. But having names for the swatches is also useful.

But the view that all this involves is sensations is oddly passive. One demonstrates this capacity by acting - sorting apples, choosing paints and so on. Seeing colour involves doing things in the world.

colour percepts exist — Michael

All this means is that scientists use that term to talk about seeing colours.

Yea, I don't think that's the whole story. — frank

Yep.

Quite a bit. If your "mental percepts" are individual, in your mind only and unsharable, then they are tantamount to the private sensation "S" used by Wittgenstein. You might now be calling "red" the percept you yesterday called "green"; you have no way of checking except your own memory. — Banno

My memory is sufficient. I have every reason to believe that today's headache is much like last yesterday’s headache. I don't need some other person to talk to at all.

The way we talk about colours and pains are different. They involve, in Wittgenstein's terms, different grammars. — Banno

English grammar does not determine what's true and what's false. That we talk about colours as if they are mind-independent does not entail that they are mind-independent. Physics and the neuroscience of perception have proven that our presuppositions are wrong.

And pain works somewhat differently to colour. There is no equivalent to the box, no something that is available for us both to examine. — Banno

And yet we can, and do, talk about pain, which you seem to admit is a private sensation. If you admit of private sensations that our words can refer to then your private language argument fails.

Not quite. The argument is more that you and I can both choose the red pen from a container of various other colours, and hence that we agree as to which pen is red, and that hence being red is different to being black or blue - and that this is a difference in the pens, not just or only in your mind. We agree as to which pen is red and so being red involves pens as well as sensations. — Banno

And you're back to using "red" as an adjective. That pens are red and that pens are mind-independent is not that colours are mind-independent. You continue to repeat the same non sequitur.

All this means is that scientists use that term to talk about seeing colours. — Banno

Which can occur without some "appropriate" distal object reflecting light into our eyes. Seeing colours occurs when the visual cortex is active, and these colours seen are not mind-independent properties of pens. These percepts constitute our ordinary, everyday conception of colours (and even if we're naive realists who mistake them for being something else).

The difference here is that we have a relatively easy way to "share" color (pointing at some colored object) but not for pain. But this is merely a practical restriction. If you could accurately measure neuron firings in your hand, you could also "share" that pain. — Echarmion

Ok, let's follow through on this.

One possibility would be to recreate the neural pattern in the hand of the victim in your hand. But that could be described as copying the pain from one hand to another - making a new pain. Another possibility might be to connect your nervous system to that of the victim in such a way that you felt the pain in their hand. But consider this carefully. How would you know that you had connected the neurones correctly, so that the level of pain you felt was the same as the level of pain felt by the victim? How could you know you had dialled the pain up or down sufficiently to match their pain? Even if you exactly matched the "neural firings", how could you be sure that the "subjective" result was the same?

In any case, we already compare pains, develop pain scales, say "I feel your pain", and there are empaths who apparently actually feel pain seen in others.

What I think salient is that the way we talk about pain (pleasure, joy...) is different to the way we talk about colour. You can buy a chair of a particular colour but not a chair of a particular pleasure.

My memory is sufficient. — Michael

. How do you know your memory is sufficient? Because you remember? Somewhat circular, don't you think?

English grammar does not determine what's true and what's false. — Michael

You know Wittgenstein used the term "grammar" more broadly than do grammarians.

And yet we can, and do, talk about pain, which you seem to admit is a private sensation. — Michael

Sure we talk about pain, and so far as we do it is not private.

And you're back to using "red" as an adjective. That pens are red and that pens are mind-independent is not that colours are mind-independent. — Michael

That's not the argument I gave. If we agree that this pen is red, and the others are not, then we agree to something about this pen, and not to something that is only in your mind.

Again, the argument is not that colours are mind-independent. It's that thinking about it in terms of things being mind-dependent or mind-independent is muddled, and can best be replaces by thinking about the actions of embodied people in a shared world.

Michael might well be able to see different shades of red without having names for them, and demonstrate this by matching colour swatches. — Banno

I mentioned that. Matching the swatch is using an external standard to pick out the shade. That he would require that, and I think he would, seems to undermine his claim that lone percepts are the source of knowledge about color.

Yep.

I think his idea derives from opposing subjective and objective, something that isn't all that helpful.

How do you know your memory is sufficient? Because you remember? Somewhat circular, don't you think? — Banno

Perhaps, but sufficient nonetheless. I know that today’s headache is much like yesterday’s headache and that I hid my toys under the floorboards of my childhood home. I don’t need verification from other people to trust that I remember correctly.

Sure we talk about pain, and so far as we do it is not private. — Banno

Then insofar as we talk about our colour percepts they are not private; but they are nonetheless percepts and not mind-independent properties of pens.

If we agree that this pen is red, and the others are not, then we agree to something about this pen, and not to something that is only in your mind. — Banno

And if we agree that stubbing one’s toe is painful and that hugs are not then we agree to something about stubbing one’s toe; but pain is still a mental percept.

So once again, the fact that pens are red simply does not entail that colours are mind-independent.

It's that thinking about it in terms of things being mind-dependent or mind-independent is muddled, and can best be replaces by thinking about the actions of embodied people in a shared world. — Banno

Some things are neurological phenomena, some things aren’t. Pain is a neurological phenomenon, smells and tastes are neurological phenomena, and colours are neurological phenomena. Pens may have atoms that reflect light, but this physical phenomenon simply isn’t what we think or talk about when we think and talk about colours. We may mistakenly believe that colours are properties of pens, and talk about them as if they are, but we would simply be wrong. The science is clear on this, and no deferment to Wittgenstein can show otherwise.

There is no external red. At best, there is an external object that elicits a phenomenal state of red. Just like pain. There is no external pain. At best, there is an external object that elicits pain.

Do unto you what was done unto me to determine if my sensation is like yours.

If you want to know if my pain is like your pain, I can stick you with the same pin I stick myself.

Pin | Pain || Apple | Red.

Pin is to pain as apple is to red. There is nothing philosophically special about the sense of touch that distinguishes it from the sense of vision.

If you want to know if my pain is like your pain, I can stick you with the same pin I stick myself. — Hanover

Can you wipe it with alcohol first?