COLOUR

[ruby sparks]

That is NOT what you have been repeatedly claiming for the past dozen or so threads! You have been stating over and over and over again that color is ONLY a psychological phenomenon. That is NOT offering one "possible explanation;" it is categorically declaring that there is ONLY one explanation for it!

That colour is only in the brain is one possible (and to me very interesting) explanation, certainly not a particularly uncommon one, post-Newton, and currently my preferred one, for reasons given, albeit the matter is, in the end, unresolved (and sometimes the concepts are merely subject to definitional variations and/or conventions).

Great! Then we're done.

Ok. Thanks for the stimulating discussion.

 

[ruby sparks]

I have searched in vain for a text that compares and contrasts colour with something like pain as regards the OP topic. Often, the two phenomena are treated as if they were on a par at least in some ways and, by indirect implication not in others, via-a-vis the particular internalist/externalist issue here, although often they are treated separately, or direct comparison or contrast is avoided.

So we are stuck with the situation where it is often more readily accepted that some psychological phenomena are mimics, approximations or representations of external phenomena (eg the psychological experience of dimension, form or shape) and some aren't (pain, fear, etc) with the latter often being accepted as 'mental only' (even if partly due to external causes by other properties that are not themselves fear or pain). There are papers on how colour experiences are tied into shape experiences, or how colour and sound are related, but not as far as I can see any on colour versus pain, in the OP sense.

Perhaps there is no productive way to investigate, but I would be surprised if it was not something that had been attempted.

This difference as regards intuitions is interesting. One (eg pain) is more readily understood as actually being only a psychological phenomenon, but the idea of colour being likewise seems to present us with intuitive problems. Colour intuitively feels as if it should be in the same category as shape, and not in the same category as pain. It is at least very interesting that this is often the case.

It strikes me that the experience of colour 'feels' different to the experience of pain, because the latter is intermittent, and is noticed coming and going, whereas the former is 'just there' for most humans, and possibly 'taken for granted' as a sensation.

Perhaps if we were blind, either temporarily or from birth, and became suddenly cured (or hypothetically cured in an intermittent way, so that we experienced only brief moments of seeing, for example) the experience of colour would 'feel' more like an 'impinging sensation' in the way that pain does, or indeed its opposite, pleasant sensations such as being caressed, since we experience both, and most especially in our most sensitive areas, such as those related to sexual arousal.

On the other hand, that explanation for differences in my/our intuitions (constancy versus intermittency) does not seem to work so well for other 'deemed to be internal only' experiences (eg thoughts or consciousness) which are also 'just there' in an ongoing way (at least while we are awake) and do not necessarily seem to be proximally caused by some impingement in particular (the way pain does). Even when we naturally/automatically wake up in the morning or after a nap, we may not register the onset of consciousness or thoughts as 'impinging sensations' (caused by a particular stimulus) the way we might do for pain (including pain deemed to be in or coming from another part of our bodily interior). Although if we paid more attention to the experience of waking, maybe we would or should register it more like that.

I'm just brainfarting here, trying to find an interesting aspect of the topic. I am totally good with discussing the issue and exploring the model (here, specifically, from a 'colour is like pain and not like shape' angle) on a 'if the model were to be correct, then....' basis to see where it goes, or even in a 'the model is untenable because....' way. Naturally, I will be at least somewhat biased towards defending the model.

 

[fromderinside]

A starting point? At least on the science-of side.

Dependence of Nociceptive Detection Thresholds on Physiological Parameters and Capsaicin-Induced Neuroplasticity: A Computational Study https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4879143/

Abstract: Physiological properties of peripheral and central nociceptive subsystems can be altered over time due to medical interventions. The effective change for the whole nociceptive system can be reflected in changes of psychophysical characteristics, e.g., detection thresholds. However, it is challenging to separate contributions of distinct altered mechanisms with measurements of thresholds only. Here, we aim to understand how these alterations affect Aδ-fiber-mediated nociceptive detection of electrocutaneous stimuli. First, with a neurophysiology-based model, we study the effects of single-model parameters on detection thresholds. Second, we derive an expression of model parameters determining the functional relationship between detection thresholds and the interpulse interval for double-pulse stimuli. Third, in a case study with topical capsaicin treatment, we translate neuroplasticity into plausible changes of model parameters. Model simulations qualitatively agree with changes in experimental detection thresholds. The simulations with individual forms of neuroplasticity confirm that nerve degeneration is the dominant mechanism for capsaicin-induced increases in detection thresholds. In addition, our study suggests that capsaicin-induced central plasticity may last at least 1 month.

Capsaicin https://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/compound/Capsaicin

Capsaicin evokes numerous biological effects and thus has been the target of extensive. , investigations since its initial identification in 1919. One of the most recognized physiological properties of capsaicin is its selective effects on the peripheral part of the sensory nervous system, particularly on the primary afferent neurons.

Aδ-fibres https://link.springer.com/referenceworkentry/10.1007/3-540-29832-0_29#howtocite

Aδ-fibres are small diameter myelinated afferent fibres. As part of the pain sensory system they are present in nerves that innervate the skin and deep somatic and visceral structures.

Chapter 6: Pain Principles
https://nba.uth.tmc.edu/neuroscience/m/s2/chapter06.html

Pain ReceptorsPain is termed nociceptive (nocer – to injure or to hurt in Latin), and nociceptive means sensitive to noxious stimuli. Noxious stimuli are stimuli that elicit tissue damage and activate nociceptors.


Nociceptors are sensory receptors that detect signals from damaged tissue or the threat of damage and indirectly also respond to chemicals released from the damaged tissue. Nociceptors are free (bare) nerve endings found in the skin (Figure 6.2), muscle, joints, bone and viscera. Recently, it was found that nerve endings contain transient receptor potential (TRP) channels that sense and detect damage. The TRP channels are similar to voltage-gated potassium channels or nucleotide-gated channels, having 6 transmembrane domains with a pore between domains 5 and 6. They transduce a variety of noxious stimuli into receptor potentials, which in turn initiate action potential in the pain nerve fibers. This action potential is transmitted to the spinal cord and makes a synaptic connection in lamina I and/or II. The cell bodies of nociceptors are mainly in the dorsal root and trigeminal ganglia. No nociceptors are found inside the CNS.

(go to article to see figures and animations)

Skin Nociceptors. Skin nociceptors may be divided into four categories based on function. The first type is termed high threshold mechanonociceptors or specific nociceptors. These nociceptors respond only to intense mechanical stimulation such as pinching, cutting or stretching. The second type is the thermal nociceptors, which respond to the above stimuli as well as to thermal stimuli. The third type is chemical nociceptors, which respond only to chemical substances (Figure 6.2). A fourth type is known as polymodal nociceptors, which respond to high intensity stimuli such as mechanical, thermal and to chemical substances like the previous three types. A characteristic feature of nociceptors is their tendency to be sensitized by prolonged stimulation, making them respond to other sensations as well.

Joint Nociceptors. The joint capsules and ligaments contain high-threshold mechanoreceptors, polymodal nociceptors, and "silent" nociceptors. Many of the fibers innervating these endings in the joint capsule contain neuropeptides, such as substance P (SP) and calcitonin gene-related peptide (CGRP). Liberation of such peptides is believed to play a role in the development of inflammatory arthritis.

Visceral Nociceptors. Visceral organs contain mechanical pressure, temperature, chemical and silent nociceptors. The visceral nociceptors are scattered, with several millimeters between them, and in some organs, there are several centimeters between each nociceptor

 

[ruby sparks]

Thanks, and extremely interesting of itself I have no doubt, but unless there is something about the physical processes involved in pain perception and colour perception respectively that helps to indicate that the former are 'brain sensations (aka psychological phenomena) only' while the latter are not, then that's not what I'm after. Maybe what I'm after can't be found. Maybe it doesn't matter much in practical terms, but it's what I'm mainly interested in here in this particular thread.

 

[ruby sparks]

Further thoughts/brainfarts/mental doodling (I'm working, and popping in and out):

Having mentioned constancy versus intermittency (and not come to any conclusions about whether it's relevant) I could also consider intensity.

To most people (eg those who aren't for example synesthesics of some sort) the experience of shape, form, dimension and indeed colour, do not seem to be as intense, or....pronounced...... as for example, pain, fear, pleasure and so on. Is this something that may point to colour being of the former type?

A pain is, to me, definitely a feeling. Looking at the shape of an object not so much at all. Quite different in fact. The latter does not 'arouse a sensation' in me to any great extent and I say that as someone who is an artist and an architect, so I would hope my appreciation of and visual sensitivity to forms should (one would hope) be quite well developed, if only by having a lifelong personal interest and training in it. I'm also very interested indeed in film and music (as a viewer and listener) although I would not say I had a 'good ear' (or a discerning palate when it comes to eating or drinking).

But, someone may reply, that is too weak a consideration. The fact that certain experiences are generally more subtle is no indication of anything relevant to the OP one way or the other.

Furthermore, there are subtle forms of experience for things like pressure, friction and temperature, they do not necessarily have to be intense enough to cause pain. But, having said that, I have just now very lightly indeed touched my nose, and I would still say it feels like a more real and tangible, definite experience/feeling than merely looking at what is in front of me (ie this laptop) or even out the window (it's a nice day, and we have a lovely view across open countryside, but it doesn't strongly or obviously feel a lot like anything to look at it, in the same way that touching my nose did). In short, the nature of my response seems somehow different for one sort of thing compared to the other sort of thing.

I suppose a counter-example would be a vague thought that doesn't seem to fully surface into consciousness. That's as subtle as heck, but I have no trouble believing it to be an 'in the brain only' phenomenon, even if it was so weak and subtle that it didn't surface into consciousness at all.

I'm thinking this 'out loud' this largely for myself.

And anyone philosophically interested. Would anyone disagree with the above or say that it is not the case for them?

This may be a blind alley, a dead end in the maze, obviously. In fact, I'm starting to think it is.

Provisional conclusion: neither subtlety/intensity nor constancy/intermittence are considerations that point psychological experiences one way or the other vis-a-vis the OP distinction.

 

[Koyaanisqatsi]

That colour is only in the brain is one possible (and to me very interesting) explanation

That does not actually explain much about the true nature of color (indeed, it raises more questions than it answers, which you never addressed) and, except for the “only” qualifier, merely reiterates the already well-established brute fact of the subjective nature of our existence.

albeit the matter is, in the end, unresolved (and sometimes the concepts are merely subject to definitional variations and/or conventions).

Iow, you do not know what color is.

Thanks for the stimulating discussion.

A discussion is usually an advancement, not a constant shifting of goalposts and other disingenuous tactics to avoid addressing salient failings in one’s assumptions and arguments, but it did lead me to a personal interaction with Palmer, so I thank you for that at least.

 

[skepticalbip]

Further thoughts/brainfarts/mental doodling (I'm working, and popping in and out):

Having mentioned constancy versus intermittency (and not come to any conclusions about whether it's relevant) I could also consider intensity.

To most people (eg those who aren't for example synesthesics of some sort) the experience of shape, form, dimension and indeed colour, do not seem to be as intense, or....pronounced...... as for example, pain, fear, pleasure and so on. Is this something that may point to colour being of the former type?

A pain is, to me, definitely a feeling. Looking at the shape of an object not so much at all. Quite different in fact. The latter does not 'arouse a sensation' in me to any great extent and I say that as someone who is an artist and an architect, so I would hope my appreciation of and visual sensitivity to forms should (one would hope) be quite well developed, if only by having a lifelong personal interest and training in it. I'm also very interested indeed in film and music (as a viewer and listener) although I would not say I had a 'good ear' (or a discerning palate when it comes to eating or drinking).

But, someone may reply, that is too weak a consideration. The fact that certain experiences are generally more subtle is no indication of anything relevant to the OP one way or the other.

Furthermore, there are subtle forms of experience for things like pressure, friction and temperature, they do not necessarily have to be intense enough to cause pain. But, having said that, I have just now very lightly indeed touched my nose, and I would still say it feels like a more real and tangible, definite experience/feeling than merely looking at what is in front of me (ie this laptop) or even out the window (it's a nice day, and we have a lovely view across open countryside, but it doesn't strongly or obviously feel a lot like anything to look at it, in the same way that touching my nose did). In short, the nature of my response seems somehow different for one sort of thing compared to the other sort of thing.

I suppose a counter-example would be a vague thought that doesn't seem to fully surface into consciousness. That's as subtle as heck, but I have no trouble believing it to be an 'in the brain only' phenomenon, even if it was so weak and subtle that it didn't surface into consciousness at all.

I'm thinking this 'out loud' this largely for myself.

And anyone philosophically interested. Would anyone disagree with the above or say that it is not the case for them?

This may be a blind alley, a dead end in the maze, obviously. In fact, I'm starting to think it is.

Provisional conclusion: neither subtlety/intensity nor constancy/intermittence are considerations that point psychological experiences one way or the other vis-a-vis the OP distinction.

Interesting, human perception is far from anything I have any training to deal with. However the nature of reality is something that has long interested me and the reason I ended up majoring in physics. I dropped out of my second major in philosophy after a couple years after realizing it was more involved in mental masturbation than in a search for reality.

I certainly can't claim to know but am happy to share my thoughts.

First, a broad perspective; It is fairly certain that there is an 'outer reality'. We have evolved sense organs that inform us of various aspects of that reality. How accurately the information from our sense organs reflects the environment we can't really know. At least I can’t think of any tests (in the physics sense) that could disprove or verify any of the thoughts I have about our sensory perceptions.

For perspective, I like to consider how other species may perceive the environment. While the primates (humans included) primarily depend on sight to understand our environment, whales, dolphins, and bats rely on sound perception. Dogs seem to rely on scent and sight. An interesting experiment I once saw was the difference between how a monkey and a dog reacted to a mirror. The experiment was supposedly to test relative intelligence but I think it more shows how different species sense the environment. The monkey saw his reflection and spent a fair amount of time investigating the mirror and behind the mirror trying to find the monkey he saw. The dog saw his reflection, walked up to the mirror, smelled it and quickly determining that it wasn’t a real dog, walked away. I can understand the monkey’s confusion because I too rely heavily on sight to understand reality. I have to wonder what kind of ‘smell image’ the dog has that so quickly allowed him to determine that his ‘visual image’ wasn’t reality.

Now the bat’s ‘sonic image’ of the environment is interesting because it seems to be as detailed as a human’s ‘sight image’. They can navigate a maze of pillars, posts, walls, etc. to catch a flying insect in a totally dark arena. Obviously their ‘sonic image’ is much, much more elaborate and nuanced than our hearing. I have to assume that maybe they internally enhance slight variations in the return echo perhaps analogous to our internally adding color to our visual perception. Both would be selected for since they enhance our survivability by giving us sharper details even though those details may not be faithful reproductions of reality – there is no reason to believe that there ‘coloricles’ on strawberries or ‘sweeticles’ in honey or ‘sonicles’ on whatever object the bat has created sonic image of.

An example of adding color to enhance details would be the TV weatherman. A weather map can have national temperatures shown in blues, greens, yellows, and reds or precipitation in such colors. These colors are not an accurate representation of reality but they give us instant recognition of weather conditions across the country. I see no reason that our color sense couldn’t be a similar sense evolved because it enhances our survivability.

I would think that 'color' would be better described as categorically like 'taste'. In both we sense the environment through a sense organ responding to external stimuli and creating a mental ‘map’ to represent the stimuli. I think a sense like pain would be categorically different, not sensing external reality but internal monitoring that it has evolved to be much sharper because failure of immediate response could take a person out of the gene pool.

 

[fromderinside]

First, you're asking of scientists investigate a philosophical/feeling perspective when them have plenty of material issues to reslove is not reasonable.

Second, Given you've already dismissed established material evidence that color is relevant. You have not offered reason why they should conclude otherwise unless they accept your definitions of what is brain and what is world. Having shown no reason for that insistence reasonable persons, much less a scientists, would reject your venue.

So having put your 'problem' on impossible ground you may keep your impossible view.

Over, just about out.

 

[skepticalbip]

First, you're asking of scientists investigate a philosophical/feeling perspective when them have plenty of material issues to reslove is not reasonable.

And yet there are scientists currently involved in doing exactly that.

https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=scientific+research+into+human+perception&hl=en&as_sdt=0&as_vis=1&oi=scholart

Second, Given you've already dismissed established material evidence that color is relevant. You have not offered reason why they should conclude otherwise unless they accept your definitions of what is brain and what is world. Having shown no reason for that insistence reasonable persons, much less a scientists, would reject your venue.

So having put your 'problem' on impossible ground you may keep your impossible view.

You need to read a little more carefully then.

Over, just about out.

Roger. Read you five by five.

 

[fromderinside]

And yet there are scientists currently involved in doing exactly that.

https://scholar.google.com/scholar?...erception&hl=en&as_sdt=0&as_vis=1&oi=scholart

Oh yes, I'm going there. First reference on citation list is some criminal justice failure article.

Puleez

You need to read a little more carefully then.

Of course. So she extended the nervous system to optical nerve except rods and cones, where light transduction to color takes place, are not part of the optic nerve.

I don't think I'm the one who needs instruction on reading or evasion.

I understand humans are part of the physical universe. I know that doesn't mean does they are necessarily responsive to the universe' properties directly. That doesn't mean because they aren't responsive to properties directly they must invent within their nervous system responses that work in the material world. That would be akin to moving the world without a fulcrum and lever.

I presented a simpler explanation. That is the human sensory system institutes compromises whereby it can process light information in meaningful ways by using chunks of energy rather than individual photons, in this case.

Ever wonder why the Helmholtz-Maxwell Tri-Color Theory has held up so well even after we found that photons ware what light used as transport. And why did someone get a Nobel for finding molecules responsible for transducing light. Of course, because the brain makes up color.

No. The the cones and rods transduce light to color and the brain processes that information to make sense of the visual world. Inventions not sold here.

Caught you out on limb. Sawed off same.

 

[ruby sparks]

Caught you out on limb. Sawed off same.

As with all your 'gotchas' so far, I think not.

Look, if you're now saying "light transduction to color" (which you now have, a few times) then you appear to have at least sometimes disagreed with the claim that light is colour (or that colour is in light).

But where do you then have colour created? At the transducers? After the transducers (in the optical nerve)? If so, then your objections in principle to invention/creation don't stack up. You've merely located that event somewhere else.

And to be consistent, I think you should not have said, "The cones and rods transduce light to color and the brain processes that information..." because it's using two words in the same short sentence to refer (via the word 'that') to the same thing.

Either, "The cones and rods transduce light to color and the brain processes that colour.." or "The cones and rods transduce light to information and the brain processes that information.." would have been more consistent. Unless you are saying that colour = information, which you haven't yet.

Imo, you are having trouble with the 'where is colour' thing precisely because for some odd reason the idea that it is created in the brain is not something you are prepared to consider. And yet it is plausibly the most obvious place, because it is the place that the arguably most complex processes in the human body occur.

 

[ruby sparks]

Interesting, human perception is far from anything I have any training to deal with. However the nature of reality is something that has long interested me and the reason I ended up majoring in physics. I dropped out of my second major in philosophy after a couple years after realizing it was more involved in mental masturbation than in a search for reality.

I certainly can't claim to know but am happy to share my thoughts.

First, a broad perspective; It is fairly certain that there is an 'outer reality'. We have evolved sense organs that inform us of various aspects of that reality. How accurately the information from our sense organs reflects the environment we can't really know. At least I can’t think of any tests (in the physics sense) that could disprove or verify any of the thoughts I have about our sensory perceptions.

For perspective, I like to consider how other species may perceive the environment. While the primates (humans included) primarily depend on sight to understand our environment, whales, dolphins, and bats rely on sound perception. Dogs seem to rely on scent and sight. An interesting experiment I once saw was the difference between how a monkey and a dog reacted to a mirror. The experiment was supposedly to test relative intelligence but I think it more shows how different species sense the environment. The monkey saw his reflection and spent a fair amount of time investigating the mirror and behind the mirror trying to find the monkey he saw. The dog saw his reflection, walked up to the mirror, smelled it and quickly determining that it wasn’t a real dog, walked away. I can understand the monkey’s confusion because I too rely heavily on sight to understand reality. I have to wonder what kind of ‘smell image’ the dog has that so quickly allowed him to determine that his ‘visual image’ wasn’t reality.

Now the bat’s ‘sonic image’ of the environment is interesting because it seems to be as detailed as a human’s ‘sight image’. They can navigate a maze of pillars, posts, walls, etc. to catch a flying insect in a totally dark arena. Obviously their ‘sonic image’ is much, much more elaborate and nuanced than our hearing. I have to assume that maybe they internally enhance slight variations in the return echo perhaps analogous to our internally adding color to our visual perception. Both would be selected for since they enhance our survivability by giving us sharper details even though those details may not be faithful reproductions of reality – there is no reason to believe that there ‘coloricles’ on strawberries or ‘sweeticles’ in honey or ‘sonicles’ on whatever object the bat has created sonic image of.

An example of adding color to enhance details would be the TV weatherman. A weather map can have national temperatures shown in blues, greens, yellows, and reds or precipitation in such colors. These colors are not an accurate representation of reality but they give us instant recognition of weather conditions across the country. I see no reason that our color sense couldn’t be a similar sense evolved because it enhances our survivability.

Lots of interesting ruminations there. I will just pick up on a few.

Regarding 'what it feels like to be a bat' (to cite the name of a famous philosophical paper by Thomas Nagel) or indeed a dog, or perhaps even a monkey, I personally tend to favour the scenario that the brains of none of them create the sort of conscious experiences that ours do. As such, I tend to take it that they might not have the vivid psychological phenomena that we do (be it for audition, or vision, or smell or radar, or in some species for electricity). But I do agree with you that coloricles, sweeticles, sonicles, redons etc being properties of objects seems very unlikely, as does photons actually changing colour just because they oscillate at a slightly different speed.

Nice analogy with weather maps. Yes, I think it's quite well accepted that the capacity to experience different inputs as different colours is very useful, and it can be demonstrated. I'll attach a video below.

I would think that 'color' would be better described as categorically like 'taste'. In both we sense the environment through a sense organ responding to external stimuli and creating a mental ‘map’ to represent the stimuli. I think a sense like pain would be categorically different, not sensing external reality but internal monitoring that it has evolved to be much sharper because failure of immediate response could take a person out of the gene pool.

By the same token, not attending to (by not seeing) a predator about to pounce (see video below) could take an organism out of the gene pool just as immediately.

I think your point about pain being more about internal monitoring than external perception is worth thinking about.

But would we then categorise fear along with pain, even though the former is not about internal monitoring?

I have a feeling that there may be nothing about the sensations/experiences themselves which can tell us which of them are 'brain only' instead of 'brain and external', if indeed there even are any of the latter at all. Although there surely must be, I think. Or perhaps not.

Anyhows, here is the video I mentioned (it's a TED Talk):

[YOUTUBE]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mf5otGNbkuc[/YOUTUBE]

The demonstration I referred to (regarding the usefulness of seeing in colour) starts at about 2:00 and lasts for about 30 seconds.

 

[fromderinside]

Caught you out on limb. Sawed off same.

As with all your 'gotchas' so far, I think not.

Look, if you're now saying "light transduction to color" (which you now have, a few times) then you appear to have at least sometimes disagreed with the claim that light is colour (or that colour is in light).

But where do you then have colour created? At the transducers? After the transducers (in the optical nerve)? If so, then your objections in principle to invention/creation don't stack up. You've merely located that event somewhere else.

And to be consistent, I think you should not have said, "The cones and rods transduce light to color and the brain processes that information..." because it's using two words in the same short sentence to refer (via the word 'that') to the same thing.

Either, "The cones and rods transduce light to color and the brain processes that colour.." or "The cones and rods transduce light to information and the brain processes that information.." would have been more consistent. Unless you are saying that colour = information, which you haven't yet.

First, my rejection of the brain producing color is in what a brain can do without knowledge of of the species it is considering. If you accept that rods and cones provide bits of spectral information as substance for the nervous system to process then you've said the nervous system uses color information to make sense of the visual world.

It must be really hard defending a point only to have to retreat each time to another questionable question. Gollie. Can't get from small chunks of spectrum to color. Life must be very difficult for you. I didn't ask for a giant leap from you. All I asked was you infer that small segments of spectrum as produced by cones and rods from received light via a spectrum sensitive bio-chemical transactions are color.

However, just to bring peace I'll give you that.

 

[skepticalbip]

No. The the cones and rods transduce light to color and the brain processes that information to make sense of the visual world. Inventions not sold here.

Now that is a weird idea. So it is your contention that the rods and cones transduce photons directly into distinct 'colorons' that then travel along the optic nerve like through a fiber-optic cable and are dumped into the brain where the brain 'sees' them?

Now explain these 'colorons". How do these greenons, redons, blueons, etc. travel through the optic nerve? How does the brain 'see' them?

 

[fromderinside]

Look, if you're now saying "light transduction to color" (which you now have, a few times) then you appear to have at least sometimes disagreed with the claim that light is colour (or that colour is in light).

But where do you then have colour created? At the transducers? After the transducers (in the optical nerve)? If so, then your objections in principle to invention/creation don't stack up. You've merely located that event somewhere else.

And to be consistent, I think you should not have said, "The cones and rods transduce light to color and the brain processes that information..." because it's using two words in the same short sentence to refer (via the word 'that') to the same thing.

Either, "The cones and rods transduce light to color and the brain processes that colour.." or "The cones and rods transduce light to information and the brain processes that information.." would have been more consistent. Unless you are saying that colour = information, which you haven't yet.

Imo, you are having trouble with the 'where is colour' thing precisely because for some odd reason the idea that it is created in the brain is not something you are prepared to consider. And yet it is plausibly the most obvious place, because it is the place that the arguably most complex processes in the human body occur.

What I've said was as follows regardless of which of my 'quotes' you mine. We know that light can be broken down by frequency as coherent light to individual frequencies which can be seen and visualized as a particular color which is light at a particular frequency

Generically Color is a bit of light spectrum.

We can process that unit of light, frequencies, photons, with what we have available to us, frequency segment sensitive rods and cones. So what we process are small segments of spectrum which can be termed color. We accomplish that transduction via receptors in our retina.

I pointed out rods and cones produce these small spectral segment outputs. Ergo rods and cones produce color. The nervous system makes use of (processes) these bits of light (color) via use of neural information encoding mechanisms, action potentials, to produce a perceived world of light, dark, and color.

However with my wording I'll give you 'that'.

As for the brain, it has no information other than action potentials aided by visual-toptical and color-topical organization with which to process what is provided from the eyes. It would be pretty high goal, I say impossible, for one to hope to create color from that. If one has no clue about what one is trying to realize how would one evolve the processes necessary to analyze information one had accomplish to preform the tasks?

I prefer transducers as the locus of color sense. Makes understanding so much easier.

 

[ruby sparks]

First, my rejection of the brain producing color is in what a brain can do without knowledge of of the species it is considering.

I don't understand that.

If you accept that rods and cones provide bits of spectral information as substance for the nervous system to process then you've said the nervous system uses color information to make sense of the visual world.

We haven't really been exploring the concept of information much. I offered several remarks about it earlier in the thread, including about whether information about something is the something itself and whether any information in light is specific to colour or not. I'm sure that discussing the topic in terms of information would be interesting, but probably complicated, given the wide variety of forms and concepts involved.

It must be really hard defending a point only to have to retreat each time to another questionable question. Gollie. Can't get from small chunks of spectrum to color. Life must be very difficult for you. I didn't ask for a giant leap from you. All I asked was you infer that small segments of spectrum as produced by cones and rods from received light via a spectrum sensitive bio-chemical transactions are color.

And you think I strongly disagreed?

 

[ruby sparks]

Regarding 'what it feels like to be a bat' (to cite the name of a famous philosophical paper by Thomas Nagel) or indeed a dog, or perhaps even a monkey, I personally tend to favour the scenario that the brains of none of them create the sort of conscious experiences that ours do. As such, I tend to take it that they might not have the vivid psychological phenomena that we do..

Correction. They may have the vivid experiences (better to say, the vivid experiences may be happening) but they may not know that they are having them.

I'm guessing, obviously. But I think an organism would need a robust (conscious) sense of self for the latter. In other words there might be 'action taking place on their stage' (ie mentally, in their brain) but unlike us there's 'no one in the audience'.

Something like that, maybe.

 

[ruby sparks]

It is fairly certain that there is an 'outer reality'. We have evolved sense organs that inform us of various aspects of that reality. How accurately the information from our sense organs reflects the environment we can't really know. At least I can’t think of any tests (in the physics sense) that could disprove or verify any of the thoughts I have about our sensory perceptions.

More brainfarts:

Let's agree that there's an objective external reality, and that our senses inform us of various aspects of it.

'How accurately' might be different from 'how faithfully'. What I mean is, we could ask (and perhaps find half-decent answers to) the question of accuracy, but in the case of vision we might be measuring accuracy of information, energy, wavelengths or photons, or whatever, but not colour, if, as per the OP, something uniquely mental (in this case colour) has been created in the brain. And to me it seems likely that there must be a good deal of accuracy involved because natural selection would presumably have honed it. But the brain representation may not be faithful (in property terms) to what's out there if, again, something unique has been created in the brain that is not a property of the external world, as with pain, where again we might be able to measure accuracy, but it wouldn't be a measure of a pain property of the stimulus.

So what about the brain representations that are (it seems) not unique to the brain, which in other words (we are saying, for the purposes of considering the two possible OP categories) are 'also out there'? Well, clearly, what is out there is not the same in property terms as what is represented in the brain and vice versa (what is experienced is not the same in property terms as what is out there). But a mental image of a 4-legged table includes four (mental) legs, which is the same number (we assume) as the real, 3-dimensional (4-legged) table. So some mental representations are not only accurate (to some extent) but faithful to some of the actual properties of the original, it would seem. In that sense we could say that some actual properties are preserved, or at least faithfully recreated in another 'media', in the mental representation*.

So then one question might be, 'why does the brain need (or why has it evolved) to create uniquely mental phenomena for some properties but not others' or conversely 'what is it about some external properties that means they (and not others) are able to be (or have evolved to be) faithfully preserved in the representation'?

I guess one general set of possible answers might be that it is either more difficult, or less useful, or more expensive/wasteful (in resource terms), or not possible, for this to happen for some properties. Or just an accident (although my intuitive guess is that natural selection is a bit too competitively ruthless for that).









*That comes with the general caveat that there might not actually be 3-dimensional objects with four legs.

For example I have read that some models suggest that the universe is a 2-D hologram, or that it consists of information, not objects. Then there is the less uncommon model which has it that there are only forces, or energy, and I think I can get my head around that one (because my understanding of physics goes that far), that there is actually no 'table object' (other than as an arrangement of forces I mean), that 'solidity' (eg what wood or steel seem to have) is just an array of 'stronger forces' (which the array of forces which seem to be your hand can't easily pass through).

 

[skepticalbip]

Regarding 'what it feels like to be a bat' (to cite the name of a famous philosophical paper by Thomas Nagel) or indeed a dog, or perhaps even a monkey, I personally tend to favour the scenario that the brains of none of them create the sort of conscious experiences that ours do. As such, I tend to take it that they might not have the vivid psychological phenomena that we do..

Correction. They may have the vivid experiences (better to say, the vivid experiences may be happening) but they may not know that they are having them.

I'm guessing, obviously. But I think an organism would need a robust (conscious) sense of self for the latter. In other words there might be 'action taking place on their stage' (ie mentally, in their brain) but unlike us there's 'no one in the audience'.

Something like that, maybe.

I wasn't implying that bats consider and think about their 'sonic images' of the environment trying to reason how close to reality those 'sonic images' are. But rather that they obviously rely on their ability to navigate and catch prey using that ability. Considering that they are able to flawlessly flit through trees and branches, zero in on a flying mosquito and catch it all in the dark implies to me that their 'sonic imaging' must be quiet refined and precise... sorta like our ability to use our 'visual imaging' to navigate our environment.

 

[fromderinside]

No. The the cones and rods transduce light to color and the brain processes that information to make sense of the visual world. Inventions not sold here.

Now that is a weird idea. So it is your contention that the rods and cones transduce photons directly into distinct 'colorons' that then travel along the optic nerve like through a fiber-optic cable and are dumped into the brain where the brain 'sees' them?

Now explain these 'colorons". How do these greenons, redons, blueons, etc. travel through the optic nerve? How does the brain 'see' them?

As Koyaanisqatsi points out light frequency is color which I insist can be demonstrated by generating a color from a laser emitting a single light frequency. No need for colorons. We already have frequency as a property of light.

The essence of any sense is not directly passed up the nervous system. Light is transduced to color at the visual receptor by a frequency range sensitive substance thence passed through the NS as action potentials (bio-chemical impulses).