Claiming that they do not "really" have these colours is a misunderstanding of the nature of colour. — Banno
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.
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.
There is no color in light. Color is in the perceiver, not the physical stimulus. This distinction is critical for understanding neural representations, which must transition from a representation of a physical retinal image to a mental construct for what we see. Here, we dissociated the physical stimulus from the color seen by using an approach that causes changes in color without altering the light stimulus. We found a transition from a neural representation for retinal light stimulation, in early stages of the visual pathway (V1 and V2), to a representation corresponding to the color experienced at higher levels (V4 and VO1).
The homogeneal Light and Rays which appear red, or rather make Objects appear so, I call Rubrifick or Red-making; those which make Objects appear yellow, green, blue, and violet, I call Yellow-making, Green-making, Blue-making, Violet-making, and so of the rest. And if at any time I speak of Light and Rays as coloured or endued with Colours, I would be understood to speak not philosophically and properly, but grossly, and accordingly to such Conceptions as vulgar People in seeing all these Experiments would be apt to frame. For the Rays to speak properly are not coloured. In them there is nothing else than a certain Power and Disposition to stir up a Sensation of this or that Colour.
The tomatoes are red. — Banno
Claiming that they do not "really" have these colours is a misunderstanding of the nature of colour.
— Banno
No, claiming that they really have these colours is a misunderstanding of the nature of colour. — Michael
The question isn't "are tomatoes red?". The question is "do objects like tomatoes, strawberries and radishes really have the distinctive property that they do appear to have?" — Michael
Not I. I'm using it the way it has been used since well before recent developments in physiology. If you hang your argument on the difference between "Is the tomato red?" and "is the tomato really red?" then you are going to have to explain how red tomatoes are not really red, and end up looking a bit silly.you are then using this to equivocate — Michael
The science proves otherwise. — Michael
Yep. Red is not the surface layer of atoms, and it's also not your mental percept.They have a surface layer of atoms that reflect various wavelengths of light, but no colour, because colour is something else entirely. — Michael
the science is wrong. — Banno
But that's not what I have done. I have not "dismissed the scientific evidence". I accept it wholly. Have done, repeatedly, all the way through this thread, explicitly and repeatedly.Well, if you're just going to dismiss the scientific evidence because it disagrees with Wittgenstein's nonsense story about a beetle then we're never going to agree. — Michael
"...the red mental percept..."I have only claimed that the red mental percept is our ordinary, everyday understanding of red — Michael
It's unclear what electrons are when you take them out of the context of the scientific papers that talk about them. — Michael
There are lots of percepts, many of the same type. Every pain is a percept, every pleasure is a percept, every sour is a percept, every red is a percept. — Michael
You're asking me which percepts the word "red" refers to. I can only answer such a question by using a word that refers to these percepts, and given that there is no appropriate synonym for "red", all I can do is reuse the word "red". — Michael
Yep. So you have not explained red by equating it with a red percept. — Banno
I'm sure you will be able to explain your account without sending us off to such a text. It can't be that hard.Try Vision Science – Photons to Phenomenolgy if you want to know more. — Michael
If you don't understand what pain percepts are then read some neuroscience and stab yourself in the foot. — Michael
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