COLOUR

[ruby sparks]

Sorry. I'm using real = material

Ok.

Then what you said would amount to:

"We are only interested in resolving whether color is real before the nervous system processes it, to make our point that color is real before the nervous system processes it".

 

[ruby sparks]

The series would be first a light source (the sun or other source), then a separating and isolation of the a narrow band of frequencies (the strawberry absorbing most of the frequencies and reflecting a narrow band), this narrow band of frequencies striking a photoreceptor (the cones), the photoreceptor being triggered and sending a bioelectric signal to the optic nerve, a chain of nerves in the optic nerve firing when excited by that signal and exciting the next nerve in the chain, that signal firing specific neurons in the brain, the mind interpreting that firing as color. There is no color at any step along the process, only after a completion of all steps when the mind experiences the result is there color. A break anywhere along this series and there is no color.

I would go along with that.

And also, as you probably already appreciate, there is another very important part of the process. To some extent we see (ie in the OP model, our brain creates) the particular colours our brain expects/predicts, not the colours that would (without the expectations) result from the processes you just described. This is one offered explanation for why the 'brown square' on the 'near, vertical face' of the colour cube illusion is created as orange in our heads. The brain seems to have learned certain things and they are, it seems, brought into play during brain processing. These include factoring in what appear to be shadows, and also shapes (that a banana shape is usually associated with yellow will slightly bias us to see it as yellow in different light conditions, and also when the banana goes through stages of ripeness, from appearing green through appearing dark brown, in an interesting phenomenon called colour constancy, and sometimes specifically related to what is known as the Land Effect, named after Edwin H. Land).

It seems to be the case that many parts of the brain are involved in colour, including parts that are associated with learning, shape recognition, memory and prediction.

And just while we're on strawberries, there are apparently no (what are conventionally called) red pixels in either of the images below:



Note: the processes by which the 'strawberries' on the left (an experimental image made by psychologist Matt Lieberman) result in red in our brain, and by which the 'strawberries' on the right (in an image by psychologist Akiyoshi Kitaoka) do similar to a lesser extent, and by which the colours in the colour 'cube' are brown & orange, may not be identical processes and I think it's fair to say that no one knows for sure what the processes are or why the visual results occur. But the bottom line is that the brain is not like a passive camera, that it is actively creative and predictive, and that colour does not result only from inputs in a particular situation. It's at least a two-way, interactive process, and probably much more complicated than that.

And as you say, the input, in a particular situation, doesn't have to involve or include light at all. Though that is not conclusive, I don't think, because it could be that the neuronal processes have evolved to represent actual, external colour, but can also be stimulated to do similar in a number of other ways too. But I would still suggest that the brain not needing light to create colour is more like evidence that points towards the OP model rather than away from it.

 

[fromderinside]

Sorry. I'm using real = material

Ok.

Then what you said would amount to:

"We are only interested in resolving whether color is real before the nervous system processes it, to make our point that color is real before the nervous system processes it".

I see nothing wrong with the above. There are two points of view. It's is what an empirically based demonstration would resolve. It's spoken from the POV of the one making the demonstration. In this case the demonstration is a presentation of a set of published experiments which, to him, are already known facts.

 

[skepticalbip]

And as you say, the input, in a particular situation, doesn't have to involve or include light at all. Though that is not conclusive, I don't think, because it could be that the neuronal processes have evolved to represent actual, external colour, but can also be stimulated to do similar in a number of other ways too. But I would still suggest that the brain not needing light to create colour is more like evidence that points towards the OP model rather than away from it.

The phrase, "actual, external color" would seem to be an anthropocentric projection. If "color" is an artifact of our sensory perception then whatever property the perceived object has that we interpret as color could be completely unrelated to anything we think of as color. This is sorta why I use something like a bat's "sonic image" for perspective. The bat could (just a guess) image that mosquito it is chasing as sorta a solidification of tone with the fluttering wings as a halo of solidified warble. None of which we using our "site image" would recognize as a mosquito.

We build our "site image" from perception of light which may or may not accurately represent the objective properties of some object. The bat builds its "sonic image" from perception of sound which may or may not accurately represent the objective properties of some object. We are conditioned to assign color as a property of objects and I would assume that bats are conditioned to assign something like tone as a property of objects.

 

[fromderinside]

What defines what makes up of the nervous system is determined by what drives the being who evolves one. If discriminating between edible things and obstacle things is important one develops a nervous system that provides that capability within the bounds of material possibility presently encapsulated in the Standard Model of Physics. One does not start at mind or experience. What I've resented fits within those bounds.

What you describe requires something else. Something I call a capability to discover need from within to make sense of what sense provides.

That's just plain upside down.

If one can't discriminate food one dies. If one can't discriminate danger from safety one dies. If the necessary information is available from visual sources one over time develops a visual system to provide such information of dies. If what one discriminates includes differences EM energy one develops capability to process that energy or one dies. If it takes an opsin to provide such information one exploits it or one dies.

If certainly doesn't then take a capability of the brain experiencing color because that's what processing using opsins provides. How does one develop an ability to experience color if color isn't already in the information being processed through the sense organs. Most assuredly color is represented in the nervous system as the result of a sensory layout faithful to that of the receptor system.

Its not a sensory layout of the receptor system faithful to the design of the brain. If that were so one would expect analogs in the receptor akin to thalamus, brainstem and cortex.

Like I said. Upside down.

One should never start from the tip of the pin to discover why a pin. It's what is the need and how can that need be realized. The way you are going at it you'd wind up with an anvil maybe a city of them.

 

[fromderinside]

We build our "site image" from perception of light which may or may not accurately represent the objective properties of some object. The bat builds its "sonic image" from perception of sound which may or may not accurately represent the objective properties of some object. We are conditioned to assign color as a property of objects and I would assume that bats are conditioned to assign something like tone as a property of objects.

So explain how insects who use color and also use opsins perceive. There must be some original perceptual explanations available for you here. You know, with their two neural complexes per segment brains and all.

Not necessary. nuf sed.

 

[skepticalbip]

We build our "site image" from perception of light which may or may not accurately represent the objective properties of some object. The bat builds its "sonic image" from perception of sound which may or may not accurately represent the objective properties of some object. We are conditioned to assign color as a property of objects and I would assume that bats are conditioned to assign something like tone as a property of objects.

So explain how insects who use color and also use opsins perceive. There must be some original perceptual explanations available for you here. You know, with their two neural complexes per segment brains and all.

Not necessary. nuf sed.

Your questions makes no sense to me. I have no idea what you are asking. If it is supposed to be a response to my post then it seems to be a non sequitur.

But, since you are pretending to be responding to my post, precisely what is it about my post that you disagree with? Or is it that you agree with it?

 

[ruby sparks]

This is rectangular area labelled 'a' enlarged:




This is rectangular area labelled 'b' enlarged:



So is the 'red' in the object, or in the light? It does not seem so in either case.

Which I think leaves two main options, the post-transduction optical nerve, and/or the brain.

Imo, the latter makes much more sense.

"Ah", someone might say, "there is actually no red object or light in this case, only the 'illusion of red' has been accomplished".

Fine. Even if that was all it was, the suggestion in principle that red can be created internally when it is not in fact a property of the external input appears to have been supported.

 

[skepticalbip]

^ ^
To make your case a bit stronger, we only have three types of cones. One type is triggered by a frequency we call red, one type triggered by a frequency we call green, and one type triggered by a frequency we call blue. We don't have cones triggered by yellow or the other colors we perceive and yet the mind creates a full spectrum colors.

 

[ruby sparks]

^ ^
To make your case a bit stronger, we only have three types of cones. One type is triggered by a frequency we call red, one type triggered by a frequency we call green, and one type triggered by a frequency we call blue. We don't have cones triggered by yellow or the other colors we perceive and yet the mind creates a full spectrum colors.

That's broadly in line with what I quoted from Erwin Schrodinger's observations about yellow on page 1 (he was interested in colour theory and wrote articles about it):

"We may further ask: Is radiation in the neighbourhood of wave-length 590 nanometres the only one to produce the sensation of yellow? The answer is: Not at all. If waves of 760 nanometres, which by themselves produce the sensation of red, are mixed in a definite proportion with waves of 535 nanometres, which by themselves produce the sensation of green, this mixture produces a yellow that is indistinguishable from the one produced by 590 nanometres. Two adjacent fields illuminated, one by the mixture, the other by the single spectral light, look exactly alike, you cannot tell which is which. Could this be foretold from the wave-lengths - is there a numerical connection with these physical, objective characteristics of the waves? No."

 

[fromderinside]

Ah but there is a numerical connection. Different frequencies added or subtracted produce different hues.

Checkout  Additive color,  Subtractive color

Both require multiple colors to achieve results.

Human cones have near blue, near green, nearar orange-red... from  Color vision

I believe the red you mention is rod opsin, which may play a part.

The thing is the seed colors are provided at the retina and not in the brain. As I wrote earlier neural processing requires input information which can be used to carry out cominational tasks.

I believe this is where you guys get all mixed up with other, perceptual, processes and their effects on resulting color experience. At the root of color vision is information sensed and arranged IAC to visual space and hue. That humans can recognize 600 to 4000 colors is testament to the importance of information processing in humans. But such is true with every sense. One doesn't get a sense of a sort unless one receives that sort of information via receptors.

Cone type	Name	Range	Peak wavelength[10][11]
S	β	400–500 nm	420–440 nm
M	γ	450–630 nm	534–555 nm
L	ρ	500–700 nm	564–580 nm

By the by I recently wrote about doppler effect processing as another property which the acoustic organ provides the nervous system. This popped up during my analysis of our moving sound source research data from experiments we conducted in the mid seventies.

 

[ruby sparks]

I don't fully understand what Schrodinger was saying, but it seems to me to be that considering light as wavelengths, mixing two different but regular/simple (sinusoidal?) waves (eg those associated with blue and green) should not produce a regular/simple (sinusoidal?) wave that is of intermediary wavelength (eg that associated with yellow), because of constructive and destructive interference. As below:



Or perhaps there is a way for two regular/simple/sinusoidal waves of different wavelengths to produce a regular/simple/sinusoidal wave that has an intermediate wavelength (by for example varying the amplitudes, or something else, so that the sums at each point did add or subtract to produce a simple/regular/sinusoidal wave), I do not know enough physics to say. But if there is, was Schrodinger wrong?

In any case, the same might not be said of mixing particles, where it might be readily possible to produce an intermediate (eg hot and cold water mixed produces warm water).

So Schrodinger might only have been making an observation about light that produced an oddity when considering or describing it as waves, but not particles?

That is my layman's brainfart.

And my googling turned up this (below). It's an answer to a question posed at an online forum. I'm not vouching for the correctness of it, and I'm not saying it necessarily sheds any direct, er, light, on the OP issue, but it's where I got the analogy with water of different temperatures, and it has some interesting comparisons between vision, audition and gustatory taste. It also deploys the word 'unfaithful' but possibly not in the way I tried to use it:



https://physics.stackexchange.com/q...e-a-mixture-of-blue-and-yellow-paint-as-green

 

[ruby sparks]

Whoops: no, not gustatory taste. Smell.

 

[ruby sparks]

The thing is the seed colors are provided at the retina and not in the brain.

Let me see if I get this straight:

Objects actually have colour. Light doesn't, it only has information about the object's colour. Actual colour turns up again (as 'seed' colour) at the retina. Then it's back to information in the optic nerve, and then to the brain where the information travelling along the optic nerve is processed into something that is not actual colour, but merely some sort of mental representation of either (a) the object's actual colour or (b) the actual seed colour at the retina, or both (assuming they are the same).

As I wrote earlier neural processing requires input information which can be used to carry out cominational tasks.

I believe this is where you guys get all mixed up with other, perceptual, processes and their effects on resulting color experience. At the root of color vision is information sensed and arranged IAC to visual space and hue. That humans can recognize 600 to 4000 colors is testament to the importance of information processing in humans. But such is true with every sense. One doesn't get a sense of a sort unless one receives that sort of information via receptors.

Right, and for the hundredth time, no one disagrees about that (apart from the caveat that it's not all about the input).

So do you not understand what is being suggested? You mustn't, or you would not keep saying things that no one disagrees with.

 

[fromderinside]

Whoops, not particle, wave, er, wave, particle, er, oh never mind, both, er, now this then that, er,
 Quantum field theory
,

I mean  Wave-particle duality

 EM wave

 Mechanical wave

Any kind of wave (mechanical or electromagnetic) has a certain energy.

Mechanical waves can be produced only in media which possess elasticity and inertia. A mechanical wave requires an initial energy input. Once this initial energy is added, the wave travels through the medium until all its energy is transferred. In contrast, electromagnetic waves require no medium, but can still travel through one.

Let me see if I get this straight:

Objects actually have colour. Light doesn't, it only has information about the object's colour. Actual colour turns up again (as 'seed' colour) at the retina. Then it's back to information in the optic nerve, and then to the brain where the information travelling along the optic nerve is processed into something that is not actual colour, but merely some sort of mental representation of either (a) the object's actual colour or (b) the actual seed colour at the retina, or both (assuming they are the same).

No. Frequency is color. Yes frequency is information about color. Humans can't process frequency directly so humans process bits of the light spectrum via use of opsins in receptors. Plants reflect what light they don't absorb. Humans receive that light. Opsins in receptors produce transmitter substance which is received by nervous tissue and converted into light (color) information which useable by the nervous system as color (frequency) information. What is processed by the nervous system is information about light color (frequency). Mental representation is an output from the nervous system about the color information processed.

It's information about the world in the form of light (frequency/quanta) received and transduced, with some loss of information, into neural information which is realized as mental content by internal (nervous system) processes.

You sure get confused by your presumptions ruby sparkes.

It's not back to anything. It's information in light, frequencies, which humans can process via use of opsins in receptors into information in action potentials processed by the nervous system.

As you say we should all know this. So why do you keep mucking it up? To keep a pet belief perhaps? All things go down hill from illumination to experience in steps that must be accomplished if we are to experience.

 

[ruby sparks]

No. Frequency is color. Yes frequency is information about color.

I think just about sums it up. You've hardly stuck with saying the same thing about colour in two consecutive posts and now you're apparently saying two different things in a row about it in the same post. I've lost track of the number of different things you've said are colour or places you've said colour is.

Unless you meant to type, "No, frequency is not color. Yes, frequency is information about color", in which case have you checked to see if anyone would disagree?

Because frequency = colour (and/or wavelength = colour) has been clearly asserted in the thread, perhaps not by you, I'm not sure, possibly it was koy, but I don't recall you disagreeing. Because being colour and being information about colour are not necessarily the same things. The signals that travel along the optic nerve, for instance, might be described as the latter but not the former.

 

[fromderinside]

Because frequency = colour (and/or wavelength = colour) has been clearly asserted in the thread, perhaps not by you, I'm not sure, possibly it was koy, but I don't recall you disagreeing. Because being colour and being information about colour are not necessarily the same things. The signals that travel along the optic nerve, for instance, might be described as the latter but not the former.

Yes it was Koyaanisqatsi who made that observation.

Frequency and color, two different perspectives arising from a single source of energy, is information when it is being used in communication. It's obvious what is happening in vision system is communication between source (actual source or object illuminated by source) and receiver. In humans with the world about them it is a bit complicated. However those complications must not be thought of as impediments to what is being transmitted and received.

What is being communicated is information, specific information yes, but information nevertheless. In this case the information need be transduced into a form the receiver can process. Transduction in this case is going from EM to neurobiological in the form of action potential (bits) usable by nervous processes.

This communication also uses channels where specific source quality is preserved. That is green frequencies are processed from the receptor isolated from red frequencies in some fashion all the way to cortex. In fact this channel notion is what makes it possible for the nervous system to build a full color model. Does the above explanation make my statement about color information more meaningful?

The receiver, through nervous system processes uses information about light/color to act upon some aspect that has been transmitted or what it illuminated. Humans respond, usually acting with respect to or on what was communicated changing things. We are talking two way communication. Intelligent communication.

Too much?

 

[ruby sparks]

Because frequency = colour (and/or wavelength = colour) has been clearly asserted in the thread, perhaps not by you, I'm not sure, possibly it was koy, but I don't recall you disagreeing. Because being colour and being information about colour are not necessarily the same things. The signals that travel along the optic nerve, for instance, might be described as the latter but not the former.

Yes it was Koyaanisqatsi who made that observation.

Frequency and color, two different perspectives arising from a single source of energy, is information when it is being used in communication. It's obvious what is happening in vision system is communication between source (actual source or object illuminated by source) and receiver. In humans with the world about them it is a bit complicated. However those complications must not be thought of as impediments to what is being transmitted and received.

What is being communicated is information, specific information yes, but information nevertheless. In this case the information need be transduced into a form the receiver can process. Transduction in this case is going from EM to neurobiological in the form of action potential (bits) usable by nervous processes.

This communication also uses channels where specific source quality is preserved. That is green frequencies are processed from the receptor isolated from red frequencies in some fashion all the way to cortex. In fact this channel notion is what makes it possible for the nervous system to build a full color model. Does the above explanation make my statement about color information more meaningful?

The receiver, through nervous system processes uses information about light/color to act upon some aspect that has been transmitted or what it illuminated. Humans respond, usually acting with respect to or on what was communicated changing things. We are talking two way communication. Intelligent communication.

Too much?

There’s not much there I’d disagree with. I might have put inverted commas around “green” for the term ‘green light’ (and ditto for ‘red frequencies’) but I accept that those are accepted conventions.

Other than that I agree. And I think that talking in terms of information potentially resolves several of the differences between various models.

That said, I think an ‘information model’ is not necessarily a simple one when you dig into it. I personally don’t understand information theory sufficiently.

And then there is the option of saying light = energy, which could be a slightly different statement. For both that and light = information to be true, am I right in saying that we would have to also say energy = information?

 

[ruby sparks]

Sorry. Let me attempt a clarification.

I perhaps should not have said that light = information.

Would it have been better to say that light contains (is a media for the transportation of) information? On reflection I think so, and perhaps this is all that was being said by others. My mistake.

So, if that’s a better way to put it, what information does natural light contain?

I would say it contains information about frequencies, and in the case of reflected light, about the frequencies of light that those objects reflect rather than absorb.

Light can also contain other information, if that is deliberately encoded into it, as in what is transmitted through fibre optic cables, so I am only talking about natural light.

 

[fromderinside]

First I was saying that frequency of light was the information being encoded, transduced, and transmitted. Now there is a near blue channel, green channel, and a red and/or yellow channel in the brain brought about by the transduction and faithful transport of frequency information independently up the several neural channels to the cortex.

As for light it is information. Simply by there the existence of light and absence of light information is available. Considering energy aspect light includes the previous and others like warmth and coolness of light. That pairing works for reflected light as well. Information is inherent in most anything.

There need not be light energy ongoing to provide light information. If a channel, like a neural pathway that periodically passes light information is not presently passing information (active) information about that frequency(s) of light is being passed via those channels.

As for energy = information yes you would.

 Entropy in thermodynamics and information theory