COLOUR

[Koyaanisqatsi]

You seem to have taken Palmer's words out of context.

So, I'm wrong AND your own source (Maunde) is wrong.

As I cannot just copy and paste, I took a screenshot of the section in question. Note also what is written about "color space" and the subjective experience of surface color:

 

[Politesse]

The question is as insipid as asking where the “love” is when you send a text saying “I love you” to your spouse via your phone.

That question not only has an answer, it has the same, obvious answer as does Ruby's: "it's in your head".

AND it's in the text AND it's in the sender's head. It isn't JUST in the receiver's head. Those are not binary, mutually exclusive propositions. It's not either/or.

So, ONCE AGAIN, the question as to the objective condition can only be answered via inference based on the evidence. Why did we evolve rods and cones? Where did the wavelength categorization come from? Are they copying an objective condition?

Etc., etc., etc.

No, "love" is not in the text. It really does exist as a cognitive construct. In response to sensory information, yes. But your perception is ultimately your own. It would be absurd to say that I must be in love with someone because they wrote me a love letter, for instance. Our perception exists in response to external stimuli, but it is a complex phenomenon and is not in a direct one-for-one relationship with said data. Your own semiotic network is univque, built over a lifetime on the basis of an encyclopedic array of experience and communication.

If I see a wolf, and I get afraid, the wolf is objectively real, as is the fear itself, but the fear is not "in the wolf", it's in my head, and would not be there at all unless I had been previously taught to fear giant canids by instruction or experience.

 

[ruby sparks]

The question is as insipid as asking where the “love” is when you send a text saying “I love you” to your spouse via your phone.

That question not only has an answer, it has the same, obvious answer as does Ruby's: "it's in your head".

AND it's in the text AND it's in the sender's head. It isn't JUST in the receiver's head. Those are not binary, mutually exclusive propositions. It's not either/or.

So, ONCE AGAIN, the question as to the objective condition can only be answered via inference based on the evidence. Why did we evolve rods and cones? Where did the wavelength categorization come from? Are they copying an objective condition?

Etc., etc., etc.

Yes. The rods and cones are OBVIOUSLY responding to objective conditions. This has been said over and over. Rods and cones respond to wavelengths (or photons).

This has become completely ridiculous.

Colours have no location?

Love is in the text?
(no one said it was in the receiver’s head by the way).

What Next, ‘Love is in the air’ by John Paul Young?

Sorry. I’m having trouble taking you seriously now. You can’t say you haven’t asked for it. You’re being a complete twit for some reason.

 

[ruby sparks]

If I see a wolf, and I get afraid, the wolf is objectively real, as is the fear itself, but the fear is not "in the wolf", it's in my head, and would not be there at all unless I had been previously taught to fear giant canids by instruction or experience.

Good example.

Although as has been previously said, colour might or might not be like fear (or pain, or love). It could exist outside brains. I can’t think of a way that could be verified.

 

[skepticalbip]

If I see a wolf, and I get afraid, the wolf is objectively real, as is the fear itself, but the fear is not "in the wolf", it's in my head, and would not be there at all unless I had been previously taught to fear giant canids by instruction or experience.

Good example.

Although as has been previously said, colour might or might not be like fear (or pain, or love). It could exist outside brains. I can’t think of a way that could be verified.

I would say that color is only an artifact of our detection system, not something inherent to the electromagnetic energy we are detecting. Humans only detect a very narrow slice of the electromagnetic spectrum unless we use external detection equipment. We can detect wavelengths of around 500 nanometers visually but need a radio to detect wavelengths of around 3 meters and a gamma ray detector to detect wavelengths of less than 10 picometers.

Color would be no more an inherent property of the visible spectrum than the dial deflection of the monitor would be for gamma rays or the music we hear when we tune into a FM radio station.

 

[ruby sparks]

If I see a wolf, and I get afraid, the wolf is objectively real, as is the fear itself, but the fear is not "in the wolf", it's in my head, and would not be there at all unless I had been previously taught to fear giant canids by instruction or experience.

Good example.

Although as has been previously said, colour might or might not be like fear (or pain, or love). It could exist outside brains. I can’t think of a way that could be verified.

I would say that color is only an artifact of our detection system, not something inherent to the electromagnetic energy we are detecting. Humans only detect a very narrow slice of the electromagnetic spectrum unless we use external detection equipment. We can detect wavelengths of around 500 nanometers visually but need a radio to detect wavelengths of around 3 meters and a gamma ray detector to detect wavelengths of less than 10 picometers.

Color would be no more an inherent property of the visible spectrum than the dial deflection of the monitor would be for gamma rays or the music we hear when we tune into a FM radio station.

Yes, it would seem to work well as an explanation.

Compare it to length though, extension in space. We have internal brain experiences about that (and illusions are quite common) but it seems easier, for a variety of reasons, (including that we can check it with other methods, via other senses, such as touch, when we for example span around an object such as a tree trunk with our arms) to believe that it’s not ONLY in our brains.

In other respects the brain experience is still a brain experience, and comes about by similar means (including initial transductions at our boundaries, all of which share certain common biological processes).

So perhaps we could say that there is more evidence, from more sources, that some phenomena that are experienced (eg forms) also do exist outside brains.

But I cannot think of a way to reliably tell if colour is like pain (or fear), or like tree trunks (or even just their texture).

Earlier, treedbear suggested that even forms were only brain experiences, and I had difficulty accepting that.

I get the suggestion that if a tree falls in a forest and there is no one or nothing around to detect it, there is no sound, but to me it would be odd to say that the tree does not fall just because there is no one or nothing around to have the experience of witnessing it.

 

[Koyaanisqatsi]

AND it's in the text AND it's in the sender's head. It isn't JUST in the receiver's head. Those are not binary, mutually exclusive propositions. It's not either/or.

So, ONCE AGAIN, the question as to the objective condition can only be answered via inference based on the evidence. Why did we evolve rods and cones? Where did the wavelength categorization come from? Are they copying an objective condition?

Etc., etc., etc.

No, "love" is not in the text. It really does exist as a cognitive construct.

Wrong. It exists in the text; in the encoding and transmittal of the text; in the decoding and display of the text on the other end; in the sender of the text; and in the receiver of the text, just all in different ways. That's why it's dangerous to use equivocal language.

But your perception is ultimately your own.

No shit. As has been pointed out ad nauseam already, the question ISN'T about subjective experience. Literally everything is subjective as a brute fact of our physical makeup. That does NOT preclude an objective condition. Those are not mutually exclusive propositions.

 

[Politesse]

Wrong. It exists in the text; in the encoding and transmittal of the text; in the decoding and display of the text on the other end; in the sender of the text; and in the receiver of the text, just all in different ways. That's why it's dangerous to use equivocal language.

But your perception is ultimately your own.

No shit. As has been pointed out ad nauseam already, the question ISN'T about subjective experience. Literally everything is subjective as a brute fact of our physical makeup. That does NOT preclude an objective condition. Those are not mutually exclusive propositions.

I didn't claim that objective conditions do not exist. I literally said the opposite of that.

 

[fromderinside]

If I see a wolf, and I get afraid, the wolf is objectively real, as is the fear itself, but the fear is not "in the wolf", it's in my head, and would not be there at all unless I had been previously taught to fear giant canids by instruction or experience.

Good example.

Although as has been previously said, colour might or might not be like fear (or pain, or love). It could exist outside brains. I can’t think of a way that could be verified.

You could determine to what frequencies and intensities the blue-green receptor responds.

You then could project the result on a white background and and ask what the observer sees.

Then measure the result presented via a color detecting instrument.

You might be surprised if you looked for this experiment and read the result. It should take you a long way to understanding how we process light. You might even understand why we tend to report with color rather than energy or frequency and why color is operationally the only way humans can understand the substance of what we see.

 

[ruby sparks]

Said the person who claimed pain is in electricity or temperature.

Wow, the universe before life existed must have had so much pain, with all that cosmic stuff crashing and whizzing around the place. It hurts just to think about it. Literally.

Or to put it another way, what does your operationalism have to do directly with the OP question anyway, which is primarily about whether something is only in brains or also in the world outside them? Nothing. Whether there is or isn't a set or sets of operations (to measure or describe that something) is arguably somewhat away from the main point here (and given that at least two completely different methods of measurement are used, operationalism wouldn't even tell us if we were measuring the same thing). So if you want to do the OP at some time instead of something else, feel free to do so. Hint: it's about location (or locations to be exact). What does your operationalism tell you about that? Because if it doesn't contribute to trying to answer that question, then it's mostly irrelevant here.

According to Bridgman, temperature can be defined as 'the reading on a thermometer constructed and used in a particular way'. Fine, as far as it goes (there looms the tangled issue of whether temperature measured in another way is measuring the same phenomenon or something else or whether there are as many phenomena as ways to measure them) but more to the point here, where, according to Bridgman, is the temperature? It's not just anywhere, is it? It has a location (namely, the place the measurement is taken from).

As you say, we report colour. Are we (however unreliably) reporting a brain event? Yes. Good so far, I hope.

Next, is the colour also part of the objects or the light? Possibly. But it does not seem to be necessary for explanations.

Are there other, different properties of the light or the objects (that could cause colour in brains) that we merely name colour because we have the colour experiences in the first place or because of naming conventions? Imo, likely yes. Under the OP model, it's a conflation, an illusion of projection. With the caveat that this is not the correct model, but it seems to be an internally coherent one, without apparent inconsistency.

And if we ran with it, and explored the implications, we might hit an inconsistency or a contradiction. Is there something about saying that not only are there no colours out there, but no brightness, smells, sounds or tastes either, that means we can say, hang on, that bit can't be right, because if it were....etc.

Though I have a feeling there will be no way to say that. So imo the model stands, at least as one viable (and imo very interesting) option that potentially tells us something amazing (albeit not fully understood) and possibly unique about something brains do, and about what the world outside brains might really be like.

 

[fromderinside]

As you say, we report colour. Are we (however unreliably) reporting a brain event? Yes. Good so far, I hope.

Not good at all. As you may note we came in to a world that was already pretty much defined and evolving as a working thing. We came into a particular world rather than the world as it is. Yet we were part of the larger world. So we are stuck with having to operate in that greater world with what tools we can use to evolve to use in our particular world. Definitely not ideal.

Next, is the colour also part of the objects or the light? Possibly. But it does not seem to be necessary for explanations.

It is necessary for us since we only have limited capacities as made available through biological evolution in a particular place. Being evolving things, we were designed by responding to what is there to the extent necessary for us to continue to be. That should have become clear when we sought to go to the moon. Can't exist in space without a certain type of atmosphere, the one of earth on which we evolved, is all I need say here.

Our existence is not explained by some necessity for explanations. Light is as it is because it is light evolved as a product of the world cooling. Indirectly, as part of the world, so to are we. Color is inherent in light else we would not have evolved to use it.

The above Result of two truths. The universe exists as it does as a system as it cools. Humans exist in the universe as a system that makes use of what it can of the universe as life evolves. No living thing ever had access to what makes the universe what it is, it only has what it needs to continue existing there.

Are there other, different properties of the light or the objects (that could cause colour in brains) that we merely name colour because we have the colour experiences in the first place or because of naming conventions? Imo, likely yes. Under the OP model, it's a conflation, an illusion of projection. With the caveat that this is not the correct model, but it seems to be an internally coherent one, without apparent inconsistency.

We don't need to know because we operate quite well, thank you, using color. We use color because we can't detect frequencies or specific energies so we use what we can of light to operate. That happens to be be color which is permitted both by being some range of energy and some range of frequency of light which we can and do process and use. So humans, and to some extent other living things, use light by advantaging access to some of it's properties. It is obvious that other animals that have cones and rods also see this way. In fact my explanation extends to all living things on earth that access sunlight.

All your hand wringing about properties of light fail to take into account that living things have no physics, just Evolution, to provide them with tools for getting about. As for color being in the brain/mind at a certain level since receptors are considered part of the nervous system color is in the brain. However it is not some internal process arising from some special place. It is just a consequence of what works getting information into the nervous system so it can be exploited for living.

In conclusion color is a property of light to living things who can access it. It is inherent in whatever the being using it requires to survive. Just turning the bowl back over so it is more than a decoration. The world was not designed as a perfect thing for life to exploit. Itis up to life to exploit what it can from the world to survive. (shit I said that a few times didn't I)

 

[ruby sparks]

Not good at all. As you may note we came in to a world that was already pretty much defined and evolving as a working thing. We came into a particular world rather than the world as it is. Yet we were part of the larger world. So we are stuck with having to operate in that greater world with what tools we can use to evolve to use in our particular world. Definitely not ideal.

I meant good as in hopefully we agree (that we are 'good' that reports of colour are reports of brain events) not good as in the opposite of bad, or not ideal.

It is necessary for us since we only have limited capacities as made available through biological evolution in a particular place. Being evolving things, we were designed by responding to what is there to the extent necessary for us to continue to be. That should have become clear when we sought to go to the moon. Can't exist in space without a certain type of atmosphere, the one of earth on which we evolved, is all I need say here.

Our existence is not explained by some necessity for explanations. Light is as it is because it is light evolved as a product of the world cooling. Indirectly, as part of the world, so to are we. Color is inherent in light else we would not have evolved to use it.

The above Result of two truths. The universe exists as it does as a system as it cools. Humans exist in the universe as a system that makes use of what it can of the universe as life evolves. No living thing ever had access to what makes the universe what it is, it only has what it needs to continue existing there.

Are there other, different properties of the light or the objects (that could cause colour in brains) that we merely name colour because we have the colour experiences in the first place or because of naming conventions? Imo, likely yes. Under the OP model, it's a conflation, an illusion of projection. With the caveat that this is not the correct model, but it seems to be an internally coherent one, without apparent inconsistency.

We don't need to know because we operate quite well, thank you, using color. We use color because we can't detect frequencies or specific energies so we use what we can of light to operate. That happens to be be color which is permitted both by being some range of energy and some range of frequency of light which we can and do process and use. So humans, and to some extent other living things, use light by advantaging access to some of it's properties. It is obvious that other animals that have cones and rods also see this way. In fact my explanation extends to all living things on earth that access sunlight.

All your hand wringing about properties of light fail to take into account that living things have no physics, just Evolution, to provide them with tools for getting about. As for color being in the brain/mind at a certain level since receptors are considered part of the nervous system color is in the brain. However it is not some internal process arising from some special place. It is just a consequence of what works getting information into the nervous system so it can be exploited for living.

In conclusion color is a property of light to living things who can access it. It is inherent in whatever the being using it requires to survive. Just turning the bowl back over so it is more than a decoration. The world was not designed as a perfect thing for life to exploit. Itis up to life to exploit what it can from the world to survive. (shit I said that a few times didn't I)

This is getting boring. None of that requires objects or light to be coloured.

If you want to have a proper go, explain why you think pain and fear are only brain experiences and not properties of the external stimuli themselves, and colour is. Or alternatively, repeat your claim that pain (or fear) is/are a property of the external stimuli. I dare you to.

'Pain (or fear) and colour are not the same sorts of phenomena' will not suffice, as it will already be obvious that they are not the same. However, some specific difference(s) between them, differences that mean, or explain why, one is (or needs to be) out there and the other isn't (or doesn't), would be useful. I ask for that more in hope than expectation, because I doubt such things can be cited.

For my part, I can't show you why colour isn't out there, because I've accepted that it might be. Since the issue is unresolved, there is more than one possible model.

Although there is always an arguably more parsimonious one, such as one that does not posit an unnecessary extra property in objects or light.

 

[fromderinside]

If I were in the philosophy of physics I might accept your notion that color is not parsimonious. I'm not. I'm in the business of the philosophy of physics as it relates to living things. Since you are also human I expect you are trying to understand the same kind of things. However you are willing to invent things for humans to make them resolve with physics which leaves you in a quandary.

Your problem is you assume physical ideals just as they are presented to you to physicists. Unfortunately physical ideals restricted to physics have not yet taken in to account how humans got here.

My cue.

I just presented to you my view of how humans got here with the equipment they possess. It includes cutting light up into colors because we can't parse energy nor frequency sufficiently to use them directly. My same criticism goes for pain and fear which can be broken down the same way ... left for you as an exercise.

The ergo from that situation is that for humans, and other color seeing organisms, color is a property of light. However doing so does not require a new category of perceiving, it just requires accomodation in interpreting what already has been defined. Physicists can examine light without accommodating color except they may need it when they come to resolve the duality of particle and wave. I'm still waiting on that one. An explanation of physics that requires an observer for actualization is pretty spooky don't you think?

Anywho if a property is a necessary determinant then, for humans, color is a necessary determinant of light, a property. I'm just not going down that rabbit hole of inventing something in the brain that actualizes color. What we process via our receptors is all we have to process and understand visual inputs. What those receptors provide are segments of energy and frequency as units. We name those units color. It turns out that if physicists substitute color for energy and frequency, physicists get pretty much the same result as they do for either frequency or energy. Turning the paradigm on it's head we don't need frequency or energy to understand light if we understand and use color.

As for your unnecessary bit how does one explain what a human sees if one tries to resort to frequency or energy. The result is a group of frequencies or a chunks of energy comes to take on meaning when it is references human perception unless one wants to intervene something inside the human to tarnslate from frequency and energy to chunks of frequency and energy to explain human perception. You can't win.

Yes I am referencing from human perspective. However I am doing so to unite biological evolution into and with physical evolution in my philosophy as a human.

Oh S---! there is still the physics side.... oh well, at least I don't have to hand wave with complexity theory to justify non-existent emergence.

 

[skepticalbip]

... snip ...

The ergo from that situation is that for humans, and other color seeing organisms, color is a property of light.

Actually, "for humans, and other color seeing organisms" color is naively assumed to be a property of the object that is reflecting or emitting the light. To assume that it is a property of light would be a feeble and misguided attempt at making a scientific evaluation.

However doing so does not require a new category of perceiving, it just requires accomodation in interpreting what already has been defined. Physicists can examine light without accommodating color except they may need it when they come to resolve the duality of particle and wave. I'm still waiting on that one.

Why would physicists need color to "resolve" particle/wave duality?

An explanation of physics that requires an observer for actualization is pretty spooky don't you think?

Actually most physicists do not accept the Copenhagen interpretation though philosophers seem to love it. There are several physics interpretations to 'explain' quantum events that do not require an observer.

 

[fromderinside]

Actually, "for humans, and other color seeing organisms" color is naively assumed to be a property of the object that is reflecting or emitting the light. To assume that it is a property of light would be a feeble and misguided attempt at making a scientific evaluation.

I've just provided a basis for humans processing by segments of frequency range or several photic energy packets or whatever. Humans don't naively assume anything of the sort. They are stuck with chunks of light to process. They have no reference of energy unit or specific frequency independent of instrumentation.

Imposing on them the need to consult a machine to decide on form of representation is asking a bit much. The point is humans aren't creating anything with their minds beyond what is sensed. One can get to frequency or energy via analysis of color. So I just turned the discussion on it's head by suggesting color be that which humans sense is a property of light from the perspective of the instrument, the sense.

As for "why would physicists ...." I have no idea except it parallels the arguments counter to what we process which is neither wave nor energy packets.

Look. Philosophy is in the business of finding reality through rational analysis. What is rational about imposing a requirement on an evolving system that it treat the world as a physical entity when the being is not capable of sensing that physical structure.

From what I've seen on this thread is there is no lack of invention of intervening variable for reconciling human experience with physical fact. Humans are somehow capable of inventing internal events from what they sense. Hello homunculus. Wow.

I'm a fan of statistics so I don't give a damn. If randomness is then statistics are.

Thanks for the fresh perspective.

 

[Koyaanisqatsi]

Wrong. It exists in the text; in the encoding and transmittal of the text; in the decoding and display of the text on the other end; in the sender of the text; and in the receiver of the text, just all in different ways. That's why it's dangerous to use equivocal language.

But your perception is ultimately your own.

No shit. As has been pointed out ad nauseam already, the question ISN'T about subjective experience. Literally everything is subjective as a brute fact of our physical makeup. That does NOT preclude an objective condition. Those are not mutually exclusive propositions.

I didn't claim that objective conditions do not exist.

Just as I didn't claim you claimed that.

Back to the point, which is that it exists in the text; in the encoding and transmittal of the text; in the decoding and display of the text on the other end; in the sender of the text; and in the receiver of the text, just all in different ways. That's why it's dangerous to use equivocal language.

 

[Koyaanisqatsi]

Rods and cones respond to wavelengths (or photons).

The word "wavelength" is another way of saying "color."

This has become completely ridiculous.

Due exclusively to your inability to comprehend what it is you're posting, or what Palmer was arguing.

Colours have no location?

You just asked, "Wavelengths have no location?" So what we have are two questions:

1) Are wavelengths a subjective experience? Yes.
2) Are wavelengths an objective condition? Yes.

Those are not mutually exclusive propositions. These then lead to:

1) Are subjective experiences located in the brain? Yes.
2) Are objective conditions external to the brain? Yes.

Love is in the text?

You can't possibly be this dense, yet, here we are, so I'll just repeat that it exists in the text; in the encoding and transmittal of the text; in the decoding and display of the text on the other end; in the sender of the text; and in the receiver of the text, just all in different ways. That's why it's dangerous to use equivocal language.

You’re being a complete twit for some reason.

You can't say you haven't asked for it.

ETA: Here is Palmer posing a relevant thought experiment:

Suppose we were to create a working “color machine” that actually processes information from light in the same way that people do and that responds as people typically do. This is a reasonable goal. Figure 6 illustrates one way to construct the “front end” of such a machine. It analyzes incoming light using prisms, cardboard masks, photometers, electronic adding and subtracting circuits, and so forth to process color information according to the principles of color perception as they are currently understood. The details of how we now believe receptor outputs are integrated to compute the dimensional values of color space may be wrong, of course, but the crucial issue is whether substituting the right computations would result in the machine having color experiences.

For such a machine to respond behaviorally to light patches, it would have to be extended by adding processes to produce basic color terms for the colors it is shown, to analyze the composition of colors into their compositions in terms of the Hering primaries, to make color-similarity ratings, and so forth. Moreover, it would have to do all this in a way that is behaviorally and computationally equivalent to the way in which people perform these tasks. Supposing that such a machine could be constructed – and it would not be very difficult to do – it seems almost bizarre to claim that, because it derived the correct coordinates in color space for, say, unique red, named it “red,” judged it more like orange than green, agreed that it was a “warm” rather than a “cool” color, and so on, it necessarily had an experience of intense redness. Rather, the machine appears to simulate color experiences without actually having them. This difference between having and simulating experience underlies Searle’s (1980) distinction between “weak AI” and “strong AI.”

Even so, it is surprisingly difficult to prove that this machine fails to have color experiences. A card-carrying functionalist would claim that such a machine does have color experiences purely by virtue of the computations it performs. That may seem unlikely to readers not in the grip of functionalism, but can it be refuted? The underlying difficulty is the “problem of other minds.” Because we do not have access to the experiences of any other entity – be it a person, animal, or machine – how can we tell whether the color machine actually has color experiences as a result of performing these computations? There seems to be a logical possibility that it might, but Searle (1980) has argued that it cannot. Let us therefore consider an adaptation of his argument to the present topic of color experience.
...
Consider a system that takes as input the quantum catches of the three different types of receptors responsible for color vision (the cones sensitive to short, medium, and long wavelengths) and gives as output the name or description of the color in some language. The claim of strong AI is that such a system must be having color experiences rather than just simulating them. This is a form of functionalism, because the claim is that if the machine’s internal color states and processes are causally isomorphic to people’s color states and processes, then the machine literally has the analogous mental states, including any experiential component.

Why do I bring that up? To underscore--once again--that there is a difference between wavelength (i.e., "blue") and the experience of wavelengths (i.e., "the experience of blueness"). Palmer--being a psychologist--has consistently been interested in the latter, not the former, yet at the same time explicitly acknowledges the former in regard to it not being very difficult to construct such a machine.

Hence:

First, we consider the nature of the input information, which is light as a physicist would describe it. Next, we consider the output information, which is the experience of color as a psychologist would describe it. Then we examine the nature of the relation between the two: how the physical domain of light maps onto the psychological domain of color experience.

He is VERY clearly making a distinction between how a physicist would describe light and how a psychologist would describe light (i.e, “the experience of”). Yes, I am deliberately using the word “light” in both places because you can’t seem to stop yourself from equating “blue” the wavelength with “the experience of blueness” just as you were evidently incapable of understanding that “love” the feeling and “love” the word were both within the text (and “in” the coder and “in” the decoder, etc).

There is the physical act of typing the words “I love you”—which contains the word “love” at the same time that it conveys the feelings associated with the word love—that “exists” in my typing it, my feeling it, my communicating it and in the transmittal of the words and in the decoding of the words as you read them, you feeling them, you acknowledging the communication of the feeling, etc., etc.,etc.

ALL OF THAT is packed into such an otherwise seemingly simple act. So it’s obviously important to distinguish the message from the message maker; the medium from the message; the message from the message receiver.

To say “where is love located” is therefore meaningless unless and until you have clarified terms.

Palmer even makes it painfully clear that there is the “input” information and the “output” information, ffs!

When HE uses the word “color” he is referring to the psychological experience the wavelength triggers. He then further delineates between color that is emitted by a light source (like a TV or computer monitor) and color that is reflected.

Blue as opposed to the experience of blueness.

 

[ruby sparks]

He is VERY clearly making a distinction between how a physicist would describe light and how a psychologist would describe light (i.e, “the experience of”).

That is an often-made distinction, but Palmer is not making it. He explicitly removed the word colour from the physical description of the input. And there is of course the physicist in the first video animation I posted.

Look, I get that there is a general convention to call objects and light coloured. I get that. I'm saying that to 'speak properly' and not be 'vulgar', as someone once put it, the rays and objects are not in fact coloured. It's the naming conventions which arguably equivocate. They perpetuate the notion that the light and the objects are actually coloured.

They used to say the moon looked as it if was made of cheese, so I guess if that observation held up under inspection, we could have called what the moon is made of 'scientific cheese'.

The word "wavelength" is another way of saying "color."

Ok. I don't even think those who embrace the naming conventions for colour would say that, given that there are wavelengths in all sorts of things, including air, but if you think it about light wavelenghths specifically, you go ahead and call wavelengths of light coloured. I will be using a different model, at least for the purposes of exploring the subject 'properly'. I will probably need to revert to naming conventions a lot of the time in my daily life, possibly even if I was a physicist, if only to talk to others also using the conventions.

Regarding the text with the word love in it, I think you have a point there. There is (I would say) information about love in the text, just as there may be information about colour in the light (without the light itself being coloured). Whether it's the same sort of information or not I don't know. Linguistics is odd. We could be taking about subjective tokens. But I accept that it's a possible analogy.

But for example, sunlight contributes to making vitamin D in the human body. Is there information about vitamin D in sunlight? Perhaps. We would surely at least not say that there was any vitamin D in the sunlight, only that the sunlight helps to make it. In other words, the information in the sunlight is not about vitamin D specifically, because being part of the process of making vitamin D in humans is only one thing that sunlight does. So the information seems to be unspecific. Sunlight can also cause skin pain, for example. So now sunlight has information about colour, and pain, and vitamin D. We could go on.

In addition to that aspect of non-specifity, there is the reverse way of looking at it. We tend to think that colour specifically has to do with light, but not only does light cause other things, but colour can arise from a number of other processes in the complete absence of light (in complete darkness). Lots of other things cause colour in the brain [electricity, mechanical pressure on the eyeball, heat, magnetism, sound, odours, chemicals (whether medications or psychedelic drugs), a blow on the head, low or high blood pressure, migraine headache, epileptic seizures, etc]. Are we to say that they are all coloured, or even that they all have specific colour information? Chemicals and mechanical pressure have colour information?

Their common denominator (other than perhaps information) seems to be energy (even the low blood pressure, which apparently results in a lack of oxygen to fuel neuronal ion pumps). Different sorts of energy are causal components in colour production. Different sorts of energy are causal components in pain production. Pain is produced in other ways, as is colour. Sunlight helps to make vitamin D. And so on. And those same forms of energy also play a causal role in lots of other processes and outcomes, because they are non-specific, in that they are part of a range of roles in different processes, and by the same token and in the other direction, a particular outcome can be achieved via different forms of energy.

 

[ruby sparks]

Palmer's colour machine hypothetical is interesting. I was thinking of something similar.

Suppose there is a machine that makes colour, even if we don't know how. It's wired up to your brain. But to get it to make blue (in your brain), we have to crank the machine handle at a certain precise speed. In order to make red, we have to crank at a different speed.

Is there information about colour in cranking, even in different speeds of cranking? Perhaps it's just an energy stimulus that the production of colour needs as one input. Presumably we could make a machine that could make colour by running on electricity, at different voltages to make different colours, or with different chemical mixtures.

In any case, I would not say that either energy or information were themselves coloured, but that they can be part of processes which cause colour. And that happens in brains. Colour is like a cake baked in a brain oven. Cakes can be baked in several ways, using different ingredients. An individual ingredient may have information in it that is useful for baking chocolate cakes, yes, but the same ingredient could be used to make a bomb to blow up a building.

 

[ruby sparks]

He is VERY clearly making a distinction between how a physicist would describe light and how a psychologist would describe light (i.e, “the experience of”).

Just on this, you're mixing two things up. Palmer's psychologist is describing colour, not light.

To you (and many others perhaps), 'colour' is a valid common descriptor for certain properties of light, and objects (though that one is much less used) and also for the properties of certain brain experiences. Fine. I get that. I understand the distinction you are making and your labelling and that you are not saying they are the same properties in each case. But don't project it onto Palmer, because he is embracing a different model (and set of descriptors) to you, at least for the purposes of his discussion. My guess is he might still say 'what a lovely blue sky today' to his wife when they're on holiday.