What is making that image white? Is it that "it reflects xxxx under normal circumstances"? If so, normativity is doing a lot of work there, and it also does not describe what we're trying to describe in any way. I find this a real problem. — AmadeusD
But I am not a Kantian. I do not believe we can know about things that we cannot know (noumena). — Leontiskos
But even here your example fails, because just as there are distinguishing properties of red and white pens, so too are there distinguishing properties of red and white images, and also distinguishing properties of the two sets of code that generates those different images. — Leontiskos
my mind creates a red experience for me in response to a(in this case, a very specific) frequency of light reflected of a cooked sugar surface. It isn't in the Skittle. — AmadeusD
The mistaken assumption that the statement is somehow reducible is leading to strange inferences in light of scientific findings. — Leontiskos
We can, and do, use the phrase "red part of the visible spectrum" to mean "620-750nm light". Pens do reflect 620-750nm light, and so we can, and do, say that pens reflect the red part of the visible spectrum of light.
But this isn't our ordinary conception of the colour red. Our ordinary conception of the colour red is that of the mental percept that 620-750nm light ordinarily causes to occur. This is how we can make sense of coloured dreams and hallucinations, of synesthesia, of variations in colour perception (such as the dress), and of scientific studies like this. — Michael
Rather than claim that the pen is reflecting the red part of the visible spectrum causing us to see red, you'd rather say that there is no red part of the visible spectrum, rather there are certain ranges that cause us to see red. — creativesoul
If red is just a part of the light spectrum (x to x frequencies) that's fine — AmadeusD
We can, and do, use the phrase "red part of the visible spectrum" to mean "620-750nm light". Pens do reflect 620-750nm light, and so we can, and do, say that pens reflect the red part of the visible spectrum of light. — Michael
Well. If red is part of the light spectrum, and certain things reflect that range, and we're capable of detecting that range, that's how we see redthings.light — creativesoul
They would be reflecting that range even if we were not looking. — creativesoul
I presume you're in agreement with his view as shared here in this thread. — creativesoul
Sure seeing a red pen is not equivalent to a red pen. Moreover, seeing red is not equivalent to red. <-----that's a problem as well. — creativesoul
The red is what you perceive in your mind. It is that phenomenal state. — Hanover
That there is an object X that causes you to see red and an object Y that causes you to see white doesn't mean that X is red and Y is white. — Hanover
It's for that reason we don't say my fingers moving are the word "red." — Hanover
If you want to say that X and Y are different to the extent one makes you see red and one white, that's fine, but that doesn't mean X is red, where "is" means "to be." — Hanover
X is a bunch of electronic impulses in the computer code example and it doesn't look red. It looks like code, or maybe just computer parts. — Hanover
The problem is when someone argues for something like naive colour realism/realist colour primitivism, or that there is a "correct" way for an object that reflects 620-750nm light to look. These views do not accept that the percept is a percept, instead thinking it a mind-independent property of the pen (or at least to resemble such a property). And these views are contradicted by physics and the neuroscience of perception. — Michael
Agreed. But the semiotic position would be that "red" is reducible to some kind of sign relation we have with the world. — apokrisis
This ought to help clarify the stakes. The brain evolved to make sense or its world in terms that increased a species fitness. So there is no reason to think red exists as part of some wavelength frequency detection device. — apokrisis
But given that the brain's colour centre is sited right in the shape and contour decoding path of the object recognition region area, there is reason to believe that hue discrimination is all about the ecologically-relevant function of making shaped objects pop out of their confused surroundings. — apokrisis
Red is a useful sign that here is an object that now sticks out like a sore thumb as it is covered by a surface with a rather narrow reflectance bandwidth. Everything around it is kind of green, because well that is a sign that plants have their own evolutionarily optimal setting for the photopigments used in photosynthesis. And then red is the natural contrast that plants would used to signal the ripe fruit they want dispersing. — apokrisis
So all qualia ought to be reducible in this ecologically semiotic fashion. The logic should be clear from the environments we evolve in. Organisms are engaged in sign relations with each other, with other organisms, and with a world in terms of all its pressing threats and urgings.
This is why physics doesn't answer the crucial question. And nor does treating the signs as world-independently real – actual idealistic qualia. — apokrisis
And here is my initial answer:Does the color “red” exist outside of the subjective mind that conceptually designates the concept of “red?” — Mp202020
and then: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
I've since added that there is nothing in the physiological accounts offered hereabouts that is contrary to this, apart from the conclusion "Color is in the perceiver..." (Kim et al)If you ask for a red pen and are indeed usually handed a red pen, then red is not just in your mind; at the least it is also in the mind of the other person.
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
What is being rejected here is not the physiology. What is being rejected is a reduction of colour to mere percept, because doing so fails to account for the use of colour terms in our everyday lives. — Banno
I want to say that the person devoted to some variety of Scientism labors under a strong fact-value distinction and claims that any sort of normative or value-laden predication must be false, and that the phenomena in question are then ultimately arbitrary. — Leontiskos
Ecological and evolutionary arguments can show why things like color are not arbitrary. But then as a theist I hold to a more fundamental teleological reality, which also points towards a diverse and multifaceted world. — Leontiskos
What is being rejected is a reduction of colour to mere percept, because doing so fails to account for the use of colour terms in our everyday lives. — Banno
What's the difference between seeing red and the mental percept that 620-750nm light ordinarily causes to occur? — creativesoul
What is being rejected here is not the physiology. What is being rejected is a reduction of colour to mere percept, because doing so fails to account for the use of colour terms in our everyday lives. — Banno
What's the difference between seeing red and the mental percept that 620-750nm light ordinarily causes to occur?
— creativesoul
Nothing — Michael
I understand what intentionality is. ...
Experience might be about (or of) some distal object, but the properties of the experience are not the properties of the distal object. — Michael
And what's the difference between hallucinating red and the mental percept that 620-750nm light ordinarily causes to occur?
Or between dreaming red and the mental percept that 620-750nm light ordinarily causes to occur? — creativesoul
The intentionality of perception means that there's a difference between the experience that you have, and what that experience is about. — jkop
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