If that was true, then you could make the blind see by merely stimulating parts of their brains.
— jkop

We're working on it. — Michael

It means that the colour ain't in the head. That's why you need to add a prothesis, so that the brain can begin to develop neural connections corresponding to the information recieved from the the prothesis whose sensors are exposed to light reflected from pigments etc.

Given that the prothesis translates the information in the right way, the visual system is reconstructed, and the blind may experience colours. But it's improbable that an artificial prosthesis can do what nature does at the level of cells, neurons, synapses interacting with photons or on a quantum level even.

What you'll get is not a duplication of colour vision, but a replacement of it, like echolocation, morse code etc. But then it's no longer colour-vision, or ia meaningless use of the term (as Putnam proved way back in 1976 in his famous brain-in-a-vat-argument).

You asked me for a red pen. I hand you a pen which is covered by a red label and says: 'red ink pen'. You start to use the pen, but it turns out that the pen writes with blue ink. What happened here? — javi2541997

The label is obviously wrong, but it could be worse, say, if the pen was red at one moment and blue the next, and labelled 'bled', or 'reue'.

the colours they see are mental percepts, whether they recognise them as colour percepts or not. — Michael

If that was true, then you could make the blind see by merely stimulating parts of their brains.

But since their brains have never recieved the right stimulation (e.g. from the eyes via the optic nerve), then the right neural connections for colour-vision have not been developed,.

The function of those connections (neural firings) is constitutive for seeing (i.e. having the experience), but without that functionality, there will be no experience, i.e. the blind won't even recognise the artificial stimulation of their brains. (or it might have other unforeseen effects, e.g. a tickle, raised arm, since the brain adapts to available stimulation).

philosophically possible. — kindred

An imaginary community run by philosopher-kings?

What would Joy feel like without pain — kindred

Joy, because it is not necessary to have or risk pain in order to feel joy. There's no such connection, which is good, e.g. you can use your ability to feel joy in otherwise painful situations as a means to survive. But it can also be misused and result in disaster, such as in Chicken Run

Some thoughts on the neurology...

Consider the fact that neural connections are constantly formed and changed as you experience things. Thus you acquire a personalised network of neural connections in your brain. Red colours that you saw as a child provoked your brain to establish a set of neural connections as an adaptation to be used next time you see red colours, and eventually there's an existing network of connections waiting to fire away as soon as the right wavelength hits the photoreceptor cells in your eyes. This means that you can also hallucinate the colour, and neurologists or drugs can artificially evoke the colour-experience without anything seen.

But that's just the colour-experience. Without a colour to see the experience would be blind, and the connections in the brain that were waiting for the right stimulation dissolve or get used for other tasks.

Colours are not subjective, but when you see a colour the seeing is ontologically subjective, and your opinions about the colour, e.g. that it's pretty, is epistemically subjective.

But you can also acquire epistemically objective knowledge about it, because the colour that you see is open to view,. So, for example, you can study what it looks like under varying conditions, its interplay with other colours, measure its hue and saturation, compare your observations with others etc.

Your colour-experience is subjective in the sense that the brain-event that is constitutive for your colour-experience exists only for you when you see the colour. The colour that you see, however, is open to view.

Many confuse the ontological and epistemic senses of subjectivity. Like they confuse colour-experience and colour.

..someone who doesn't need a color sample to create a particular hue, like China red. — frank

Sure, some people have "photographic" memory, others remember what it feels like to see particular colours. With practice you can get better at it. Colour samples make it easier to work with colours, and unlike memories, samples are open to view..

Maybe the same is true of color — frank

Tetrachromacy is suspected to exist in a small percentage of the population. They might be able to distinguish between colours that to the rest of us appear identical.

So long as a medium exists which allows us to agree on “red” then the similarity/difference between that experience of red holds no value — Mp202020

Depends on what kind of medium we use. A group of blind speakers can use the word 'red' and speak successfully about the colour, its conventional or symbolic meanings etc. Experiences of the colour are not necessary in verbal languages. AI's use colour codes and don' t need to experience anything in order to be useful in graphic applications.


In aesthetic practices, however, we use samples or colour charts when words or descriptions are insufficient. The right use of a sample is to experience it, and the value of the similarity/difference between that experience becomes evident in our tastes, preferences, traditions etc.

A sample of red exemplifies the colour and it's various looks.

Colour codes are attempts to systematise manufacturing and communication about colours. Yet between a pair of colours referred to by the codes of a colour system there is a third possible colour. Moreover, there's no way to systematise colours with their looks. Hence It's better to experience an actual sample.

..the former being called "red things" and the latter being "things that look red". Sounds fine to me.

This seems to be what @Michael is fussing about in talking of nouns and adjectives.

I'm not seeing how it answers the OP. — Banno

In the OP @Mp202020 asks: "Does the color “red” exist outside of the subjective mind..."

I replied it's outside, but might add that it's outside because I don't see my own seeing of a colour. I see the colour, which exists outside the seeing of it.

Same goes for other sensory modalities.

Also entirely mental experiences, such as imagining what a colour looks like. I don't imagine what my own imagining is like or looks like, I imagine the colour.

It is. — 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.

Previously your "only claim" was the claim that ordinary everyday conception of colours refer to mental percepts, but that's obviously false as was shown. But that was not your only claim.

For example, you claim that the colour variation in the dress is caused by the brain. I've so fat given you two reasonable counter arguments against the plausibility, and you evade/ignore both.

quoting the SEP article again. I believe this summary is correct: — Michael

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:

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

It's neither. The ordinary everyday conception is described in dictionaries, and dictionaries don't say much about the nature of colour, nor the science. I looked up Cambridge dictionary, and there's no mention of percepts, nor dispositions. It says colour is an appearance or substance of paint, dye, make-up, clothes, eyes, flowers etc. That's compatible with naive realism.

Counter-arguments against naive realism are typically based on selective or manipulated or extraordinary conditions of observation (e.g. illusions, hallucinations). In that photo of the striped dress we see not only its colours but how differences in the fabric of the stripes reflect light in different ways depending on daylight or nightlight. One could add fluorescent colours to some of the stripes, show it at night, and falsely claim that the reason we see different colours is to be found in the brain, ignoring the addition of fluorescent colours. Arguments from illusion are that bad.

This is how I am able to make sense of coloured dreams and hallucinations, synesthesia... — Michael

Those are not so ordinary, and although they are experiences, they are unlike ordinary experiences evoked by the brain's empathic ability to memorize or imagine or hallucinate what things look like or feel like or sound like etc. That's why we call them dreams or hallucinations or synaesthetic experiences.

For example, when we dream of seeing a turtle, it's colours and shapes, we don't see anything. Instead we just feel or imagine it. Dreaming is radically different from actually seeing the turtle.

On your subjectivist account, all experiences are muddled up as "mental percepts" because of a simple but fatally ambiguous use of the word 'perception' (or 'appearance' etc) in two different senses, like Bertrand Russell did in the beginning of the 1900s. We should know better.

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

Those definitions are way too simple. I defend naive realism and dispositionalism. The ontological status of a disposition is open for discussion, but I think dispositions are real.

My point is only that when we ordinarily think about and talk about colours we are thinking about and talking about the mental percept, not a surface layer of atoms that reflects various wavelengths of light. — Michael

We don't ordinarily use neurology when we want to change or add a new colour to the kitchen wall etc. Ordinarily we use paint that reflects the desired wavelengths of light. Neither paint nor light is located inside the head.

What's inside the head when we perceive colours and shapes is the perceiving, i.e. a biological phenomenon that is constitutive for perceiving things, while the things that we perceive are located outside the head.

One does not perceive the neurological event of one's own perception (nor radiation, nor word use) but the colour or shape.

The red of a sports car and of a rose and of a face are all very different. — Banno

Sure, some are red while others are not red yet look red or turn red temporarily. Being red is different from looking red.

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.

A red looking rose leaf or a face however may not possess such pigments, yet they can look red because of coloured lights from the environment or behaviour of blood vessels that temporarily make a face turn red etc.

He doesn't conflate. ... — Michael

He conflates (1) an "apparent distribution of colors" and (2) a "distribution of colors" that appears in various ways when he moves, or when other people see it.

That's two different senses of 'distribution of colours' of which 2 is not apparent but a distribution of colours that appears in various ways. Russell conflates these senses as if both were apparent, and concludes that none of them is better or more real than any other. That's a fallacy of ambiguity.

He makes the same mistake in his analysis of shapes. As if the recognizable physical shape of an object is not "better" than what it looks like from odd angles, or through a microscope or as a dot seen from far away etc.

To quote Bertrand Russell "naive realism leads to physics, and physics, if true, shows that naive realism is false". — Michael

Russell conflates the colour (seen under ordinary conditions) and what that colour may look like (seen under other conditions). Hilary Putnam writes about that in his blog here.

Yep. Folk assume that colour words must refer, and that there must be a thing to which they refer, then get themselves all befuddled inventing things for them to refer to - "mental percepts" or "frequencies". — Banno

Sometimes words refer to things and states of affairs.

Unlike talk of "mental percepts" or "frequencies", talk of "dispositions" seems compatible with both ordinary language and science.

'Red' refers to an object's disposition to cause certain colour experiences. Its disposition is both ostensively and physically different from that referred to by 'green', for instance.

This led him to argue that evolution has developed sensory systems in organisms that have high fitness but don't offer a correct perception of reality. — Wikipedia

Organism and environment coevolve. So what increases the organism's fitness the most is arguably the ability to sense things as they are, not only the parts that happens to increase one's fitness relative to one's current environment. Hence perception of reality evolves towards being correct.

It's not even a philosophical issue; it's a scientific issue. — Michael

Yeah right :roll:

Your explanation of what causes variations in colour perception is not relevant to the claim I am making. — Michael

The relevant philosophical issue is whether percepts exist, and if there are more plausible explanations of colour. Hence my explanation, yet you show little interest in the philosophy when you repeatedly assert that colour terms refer to percepts. My reference to the SEP article (that you also ignored) is at least descriptive while the article that you refer to unsurprisingly assumes percepts. :roll:

See the dress. ...
See also variations in colour perception.
. — Michael

Now you ignore my reply and explanation of those variations, how rude :sad:

So questions about perception are best first addressed in ecological terms. What is a “mind” even for?

If there is anything “philosophical” left unaddressed after that, at least the discussion will be usefully focused. And not another re-run of idealism vs realism. — apokrisis

Did for example JJ Gibson's research get rid of the metaphysical, epistemological and semantic issues? It seems fairly clear, I think, that these issues are inextricably connected. Hence the reruns of idealism vs realism etc.

We look at the same distal object (the pixels on the screen), our eyes react to the same proximal stimulus (the light), and yet we see different colours. — Michael

No, you fail to distinguish the pixels of the image and the conditions of observation such as the pixels of different screens on which the image is displayed. Two observers looking at the same photo but on different screens see different colours (that's why screens need to be calibrated).

Also when different observers in the same room see the photo on the same screen they may discover that they identify different colours depending on whether their eyes have been exposed to the same light conditions prior seeing the photo. It can take around 20 minutes for an aircraft pilot to adjust his or her vision from bright cabin light to the weak light conditions in a cockpit during night flight.

Since it takes time for the eyes to adjust, different observers can mistake one colour for another, especially bleached, or blended colours under weak light conditions, st dusk or dawn etc that can make it difficult to identify the colour of a pigment or light source.

Notice that regardless of the colours of the dress in the famous photo, they are kind of bleached or unsaturated, hence particularity susceptible to being influenced by the various conditions under which the photo is observed. It is disingenuous to exploit these selective or manipulated conditions of observation as "arguments" for subjectivism.

n the case of colour there is no such thing as veridical. — Michael

That's plainly false. Red paint really reflects wavelengths of 700 nm, and to experience it as red is to have a veridical experience of it (unlike experiencing 700 nm as gray (if colorblind) or as any colour, sound, smell etc. (if hallucinating).

We can use colour terms however we like, but when we ordinarily use them we are referring to colour percepts, not an object’s disposition to reflect a certain wavelength of light. — Michael

That's also false, because the use of language is conventional, and evidently we refer to different things: you to an alleged "percept" inside the head, and I to the disposition of pigments and light. Most speakers use colour terms pragmatically or ostensively without commitment to philosophical subjectivism or dispositionalism etc.

..I look at the photo of the dress and describe its colours as white and gold.... ..someone else looks at that same photo and describes its colours as black and blue... — Michael

The colours in the photograph are susceptible to blend and interfere with changing light conditions on different screens and environments where the photo is displayed. Basically we don't just see the colours of the dress, but a blend of its colours with the colours from different environments or screens, and that's why different observers tend to see different colours.

But this isn’t colour. — Michael

I didn't say that. I said that the pigment and the light have the disposition to systematically cause the experience of colour. This means that the colour experience arises when an animal that has the ability sees the pigment or light, while the colour is a property of the pigment or light in the form of a disposition.

See the SEP-article on color, in particular on color-dispostionalism.

If you don't distinguish between experience (i.e. event in your brain) and colour (i.e. object of the experience), then you can't distinguish between veridical experiences and hallucinations. How could any animal have survived on this planet if they were only hallucinating and never saw objects and states of affairs? Arguments from illusion or hallucination suck.

Or, are they just allowing us to see the colors the fruit had all the time.
— Richard B

This makes no sense. Colours aren't mind-independent properties. — Michael

It makes sense: a colour is the disposition of a pigment or light to systematically cause the experience of the colour.

The experience exists in the mind, but the colour that you experience exists regardless of being experienced.

Hence the world is coloured even when no-one is there to experience it.

So not like dawn or dusk? — apokrisis

Sorry for late reply, I'm travelling.

At dawn or dusk, a red coin may appear unsaturated, perhaps blended with other colours from the sky etc. That's what its red colour looks like under weak, blended light conditions. Moreover, its circular shape appears oval, or rectangular even, depending on the angle of view.

From these variations it doesn't follow that the red and the circular are figments of the mind, neurological processes, or conventions of language.

From a neuroscience view, the point of colour vision is not because the world is coloured. — apokrisis

Colours might seem insignificant in neuroscience, or conventions in fashion, but that's not a failure to be real in biology.

Colour vision is an adaption to way the physical world is.

How does an animal know that it is seeing a colour? — javi2541997

By seeing it or knowing its conditions of satisfaction.

That game demonstrates how colour is arbitrary. — javi2541997

No, it demonstrates colour vision under selective conditions of observation. Not the same under ordinary conditions in which colour vision evolved.

Are you referring to the light that reflects those colours right? — javi2541997

I'm referring to the biological evolution of colour vision.

because the amount of cone cells in the electromagnetic spectrum and the colour wheel differs. — javi2541997

Huh?

The "natural sign" is the light not the colours. — javi2541997

Why would you want to get rid of the colours?

Objects and materials reflect, scatter, or absorb light in different ways depending on their physical and chemical properties. Several hundred million years ago organisms adapted and began to use the behaviour of light for seeing objects, materials, nutrients etc.

What matters for an animal is what it sees, e.g. a flower, not the light nor the mechanism that together enable the seeing.

Our eyes are tricky. — javi2541997

The eyes of a mantis shrimp are way trickier.

Let's play the following classic illusion game: — javi2541997

Why? Arguments from illusion suck.

Colour vision and the use of colours evolved millions of years before dogs, humans, and socially biased conventions. Colours are used as natural signs for fresh food, nutrients, fertility, health, camouflage etc.

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.

What if we watch the brain activity looking at a painting of a red pen? The painting itself is not a real pen, but it still conveys the idea of “redness” and “pen” to anyone who views it. — Kizzy

Empathy is the ability to experience what someone else is experiencing. Since someone elses experience is not open to view, we must access it indirectly via languages, verbal, pictorial, interpretation of gestures etc

That's basically how a painting conveys experiences. In the late 1800s and early 1900s empathy theory was used for explaining works of art and architecture.

I am speaking solely on the subjective experience of “redness.” — Mp202020

Any experience is subjective in the sense that it exists only for the one who is having it. But there is ambiguity in talk of 'subjective' and 'experience of redness'.

First, the experience cannot solely be an experience of redness unless it is the seeing of something red, say a patch of red paint. Or else it would be an hallucination.

The quality of the paint and the conditions under which it is seen fix its visible appearance..That's what there is to see for any observer, and to see its redness, hue, saturation etc. is an epistemically objective experience. The redness of the paint is measurable even with a colour meter.

So, although the experience of redness is ontologically subjective (as it exists only for the one who is having it) it is also epistemically objective as the redness of the paint is open to view!

Observers may have different abilities, habits, interests, backgrounds etc. that influence their experiences of the paint. These are epistemically subjective features of experience that might result in disagreements. Yet there is seldom disagreement about what there is to see when it's open to see and investigate, e.g. whether the paint is red, whether one patch is darker or lighter or more saturated than another etc.

what if the concept of a “red pen” exists within the realm of every subjective mind’s ideas? — Kizzy

Is a red pen not enough?

That supposedly private object of a colour perception doesn't exist (disregarding hallucinations and manipulation of the perceptual apparatus).

Pigments and light, however, exist, and they are disposed to cause colour perceptions systematically enough to warrant the public labels that they have.

One might add that what exists subjectively (i.e. only for the one who sees the colour) is the seeing, but the object that one sees is the pigment or the reflected bundle of light rays.The seeing is private but the object that is seen is public.

How do we know that mantis shrimp see ultraviolet when it's beyond our own visible spectrum? By hypothetical deduction, photography etc.

You remove the perceiver yet ask how does he know that his perception exists? :roll:

Or do you mean that you remove all perceivers so that the biological phenomenon no longer exists, yet ask how does one know that it exists? Your question makes no sense.

For example, a colour blind person who doesn't see red can still know that there exists such a phenomenon by studying those who can see red, study colour tables, spectrometers etc and find out which of them one is unable to perceive. Being colour blind does not mean that there is a problem in colour science.

If you can be assured there is radiation, why can't you be sure there's red? — Hanover

I'm sure there's red. Do you know of a good reason to doubt colour realism?

Colours are biological phenomena that arise when we and many other organisms interact with our visible environment. When you ask whether a red colour exists outside our view, as something unseen, the question obviously doesn't refer to the colour perception but to conditions in the environment from which it can emerge. There's little reason to doubt the existence of a spectrum of electromagnetic radiation that we by convention label 'red' .

By nature men are alike. Through practice they have become far apart. — Confucius

Men are alike as men, but different by nature. Through practice men become far apart in some respects, but also alike as we have shared interests, cooperate, trade etc. That's how conventions and languages arise. Hence men are alike as men. But also conventions differ and cultures arise that maintain some of the differences.

how under an “in re” realism metaphysic a seemingly new idea (or concept) could come into existence. — Mark Sparks

Realism is the assumption that some things exist independent of us. For example, molecules exist regardless of our discoveries or ways of organizing things.

It does not exclude things whose existence depend on us. For example, money is just as real as molecules but exists only as long as we agree to believe that it exists.

Real things can have different modes of existing, e.g. natural, social, phenomenal. Conscious states, e.g. perceptions and beliefs, are real biological phenomena, and unlike molecules and money they exist only for the ones who have them.

Many ideas exist as conscious states. They come into existence as we use our abilities to think, imagine, perceive etc.

Abstract ideas, e.g. mathematical or logical, seem to have an independent mode of existing as they are discovered and rediscovered by different minds. How do such ideas come into existence? Some things are brute facts, or tautologies, that do not require further explanations.

Is the real world fair and just? — Gnomon

Partly, because the real world includes varying life conditions. We discover what's fair and what isn't, and respond accordingly, e.g. suffer, enjoy, form judgements and complain or praise the particular conditions in which we live. It takes discipline to remain indifferent to the reality of fairness.