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COLOUR

Now you try defining color and trace its travel from the source to your consciousness using your definition throughout since you do not accept that color is a creation of the mind.

How many goddamned times do I have to affirm that I fully and completely accept that color is a creation of the brain? What is an open question, however, is whether or not it is ONLY a creation of the brain. Those are NOT MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVE PROPOSITIONS.

Let's take your journey:

Some light source (the sun) emits a broad spectrum of EM frequencies. The strawberry absorbs most of the energy at most of the frequencies but not so much a certain frequency. This frequency of EM radiation enters the eye and excites the cells in the retina to transmit an electrical signal to the optic nerve.

In your "quite simple" process, you've left out crucial components in the above. To be more accurate, it should read:

A "certain frequency...excites the cells in the retina in a certain consistent way--across (at least) all humans and many other animals--to transmit the same augmented signal made by the rods and cones."

And then we have:

This electrical signal travels along the optic nerve to specific neurons in the brain which fire. This firing is interpreted by the mind as a color.

Isn't that handy? It just does that for no reason in your "simple process." Funny, because you just fiated the central question. WHY does it interpret the signal as a "color." Where did the brain--across our species--get "blue" or "red" or any other color as an "interpretation"? Why did we evolve rods and cones in the first place such that they "interpret" color? What is it interpreting, if not an objective condition? Like ruby, earlier, are you arguing that it's just blue ex nihilo?

Color is created in the mind.

Again, not in question. What is in question is whether or not color is ONLY created in the brain.

Are you finally up to speed now?
 
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How many goddamned times do I have affirm that I fully and completely accept that color is a creation of the brain? What is an open question, however, is whether or not it ONLY is a creation of the brain.

Let's take your journey:



In your "quite simple" process, you've left out crucial components in the above. To be more accurate, it should read:

A "certain frequency...excites the cells in the retina in a certain consistent way--across (at least) all humans and many other animals--to transmit the same augmented signal made by the rods and cones."

And then we have:

This electrical signal travels along the optic nerve to specific neurons in the brain which fire. This firing is interpreted by the mind as a color.

Isn't that handy. It just does that for no reason in your "simple process." Funny, because you just fiated the central question. WHY does it interpret the signal as a "color." Where did the brain--across our species--get "blue" or "red" or any other color as an "interpretation"? Like ruby, earlier, are you arguing that it's just blue ex nihilo? What is it interpreting, if not an objective condition?

Color is created in the mind.

That is not in question. What is in question is whether or not color is ONLY created in the brain?

Are you finally up to speed now?

I've been 'up to speed' using my definition of color. You still haven't defined your "color" specifically and described how, by your unchanging definition, those "coloricles" (that you refuse to define) are integral to and unchanged throughout the process from the sun to your consciousness.

There are several events in the process of our normal 'seeing' of color. At each event there is a stimulus that creates a different stimulus. Explain how although the stimuli are different they are still color.
 
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I've been 'up to speed' using my definition of color.

You most certainly have not defined "color." You simply stated that the brain interprets signals as "color." That's not a definition.

Nor is this:

At each event there is a stimulus that creates a different stimulus.

First of all, incorrect. There is a particular stimulus that evidently creates the same "different" stimulus that is evidently universal across our species and others. So much so, in fact, that we can actually replicate it with technology.

So, WHY is the central question, not how.

Iow, where is the brain (or more accurately, the rods and cones) getting that information if it's not from the signal (or object) itself?
 
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I've been 'up to speed' using my definition of color.

You most certainly have not defined "color." You simply stated that the brain interprets signals as "color." That's not a definition.

Nor is this:

At each event there is a stimulus that creates a different stimulus.
So you can't describe what the fuck you think color is and how we sense it? The fact that you can't should give you a clue.

My definition of color is that it is a mental impression (immaterial) like many things we sense such as taste, etc.
 
Like ruby, earlier, are you arguing that it's just blue ex nihilo?

Excuse me. :)

Did I say it was blue ex-nilho?

I don't think I quite did. To me ex-nilho would be created out of nothing. Blue isn't that.

That said, it is not, imo, created out of blue in another form. Where was pain before there was anything to experience it? Where were thoughts before brains existed? Where was life before there were living things. Etc.

There is obviously no requirement for new or emerging properties or phenomena to have pre-existed in another form before they occur for the first time.
 
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My definition of color is that it is a mental impression (immaterial) like many things we sense such as taste, etc.

Personally, I would rather say that colour, along with many other psychological phenomena, have material properties that are so different to how we are used to thinking about such things that immaterial feels like quite a good word to describe them. I would shy away from calling anything actually immaterial. That said, I wouldn't rule it out.

My definition might restrict itself to location. I don't think we fully know what colour is or how it occurs. Whatever it is, it's definitely in the brain. Whatever's in light is probably something else. Calling it colour is a candidate for being a misnomer, a conflation error arising out of an intuitive illusion of location, imo. In the model I'm currently going with. Heck, it was an error to think it was in objects, so it's not a big stretch to say we're still potentially prone to illusions about where it is.
 
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So you can't describe what the fuck you think color is and how we sense it?

I can and have previously in great fucking detail that you evidently missed in your zeal to shit the bed.

You, otoh, have not defined it OR detailed how we sense it. To whit:

My definition of color is that it is a mental impression (immaterial) like many things we sense such as taste, etc.

That isn't a definition nor does it serve to explain anything. An "impression" of what? An "impression" implies replication/copying, not making shit up randomly.
 
My definition of color is that it is a mental impression (immaterial) like many things we sense such as taste, etc.

Personally, I would rather say that colour, along with many other psychological phenomena, have material properties that are so different to how we are used to thinking about such things that immaterial feels like quite a good word to describe them. I would shy away from calling anything actually immaterial. That said, I wouldn't rule it out.

My definition might restrict itself to location. I don't think we fully know what colour is or even why it occurs. Whatever it is, it's definitely in the brain. Whatever's outside the brain is probably something else. Calling it colour is a misnomer, imo. In the model I'm going with.
My background is in physics so, for me, the term 'material' means that it is matter so has mass. So for me, phenomena such as colors, taste, ideas, concepts, etc. would all be 'immaterial'.
 
Like ruby, earlier, are you arguing that it's just blue ex nihilo?

Excuse me. :)

Did I say it was blue ex-nilho?

Your arguments defaulted to it.

To me ex-nilho would be created out of nothing. Blue isn't that.

That said, it is not, imo, created out of blue in another form.

:rolleyes: Then it was created out of nothing. MEANING that it isn't based on "blue in another form."

It's the difference between taking a photo of a person you have never met or seen before with a camera (i.e., copying an objective condition) and you spontaneously generating the same image of that person in your head having never met or seen that person before.

Iow, your arguments amount to everyone in the world just spontaneously generating the same image of a person none of them have ever met or seen before in nearly identical fashion across species and replicated nearly identically every generation throughout all of recorded human history.
 
Then it was created out of nothing. MEANING that it isn't based on "blue in another form."

That's not what Ex-nilho means. It means created out of nothing. Blue isn't that.

It could easily have been created out of (better to say emerged or resulted from) something that was not blue however.

Life emerged from non-life, koy. Pain does not result from 'pain in another form'. Nor does fear. I think you'd even have trouble saying that light comes from light in another form.

There is obviously no requirement for new or emerging properties or phenomena to have necessarily pre-existed in another form before they occur for the first time.

It's the difference between taking a photo of a person you have never met or seen before with a camera (i.e., copying an objective condition) and you spontaneously generating the same image of that person in your head having never met or seen that person before.

Iow, your arguments amount to everyone in the world just spontaneously generating the same image of a person none of them have ever met or seen before in nearly identical fashion across species and replicated nearly identically every generation throughout all of recorded human history.

No my argument is not like that at all.

Obviously, all humans with normal senses and physiology will have psychological experiences that are more or less the same for the same stimuli, or generally so. It doesn't mean the psychological phenomena are necessarily out there in the stimuli.

There is obviously no requirement for new or emerging properties or phenomena to have necessarily pre-existed in another form before they occur for the first time.
 
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Then it was created out of nothing. MEANING that it isn't based on "blue in another form."

That's not what Ex-nilho means.

Yes, it does. It means it's created out of nothing, not that it's created out of a signal that may or may not contain the information necessary for the brain to create it.

It could easily have been created out of (better to say emerged or resulted from) something that was not blue however.

Then, once again, you are asserting that the brain is basing its creation of the color blue on something that is not blue. So how the fuck does it do that? Where is it getting "blue" from if not from something that is the color blue? Further, how are billions of similar systems are all doing the same thing the same way if the information acquired isn't within the external signal?

Life emerged from non-life, koy.

:facepalm: ffs. Do you simply not understand what a category is?

Obviously, all humans with normal senses and physiology will have psychological experiences that are more or less the same for the same stimuli

:eek: How the fuck is that "obviously"? Our senses and physiology evolved as a result of adaptation to an objective environment, not magically instantiated.

See: pain and fear for example.

WRONG GODDAMNED CATEGORIES

Pain is a word used to describe damage alert signals. Fear is a word to describe potential damage alert signals. Color is a word to describe particular wavelenghts of light received in our eyeballs.
 
WRONG GODDAMNED CATEGORIES

You simply have no proper warrant to say that. It's just yet another of your many ad hoc objections. And 'category error', along with 'ex-nilho', is possibly another term that you are misusing.

They are clearly all in the category, 'psychological phenomena' for starters.

Pain is a word used to describe damage alert signals. Fear is a word to describe potential damage alert signals. Color is a word to describe particular wavelenghts of light received in our eyeballs.
The words used to describe things are not the things themselves.
 
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Where is it getting "blue" from if not from something that is the color blue?

One option is that blue (no inverted commas needed) comes from the other properties that are external to the brain. As with pain. This is not difficult and that is a viable answer, and has been since the start of the thread.

someone said:
Where is it getting life from if not from something that is alive?

There is obviously no requirement for new or emerging properties or phenomena to have necessarily pre-existed in another form before they occur for the first time
 
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If color is defined as an artifact of the detector (the mindtransducer) the description of the process becomes quite simple. Some light source (the sun) emits a broad spectrum of EM frequencies. The strawberry absorbs most of the energy at most of the frequencies but not so much a certain frequency. This frequency of EM radiation enters the eye and excites the cells in the retina to transmit an electrical signal to the optic nerve. This electrical signal travels along the optic nerve to specific neurons in the brain which fire. This firing is interpreted by the mind as a color. Color is created in the mind transducer.

Fixed it.
 
Perhaps this will clarify where I have not been able to (emphasis in original):

The problem of color realism concerns various especially salient properties that objects visually appear to have. It does not concern, at least in the first instance, color language or color concepts. The issue is not how to define the words “red,” “yellow,” and so on. Neither is it about the nature of the concept RED (where concepts are either taken to be mental representations used in thought and inference [Fodor 1998], or the semantic contents of such representations [Peacocke 1992]). Of course, it is natural to suppose that there are intimate connections between a certain salient property that tomatoes appear to have, the word “red” and the concept RED; in particular, the word “red” refers to this property, and the concept RED is a concept of this property. Some scientists and philosophers would argue for more intimate connections between color experiences and color vocabulary and concepts. But the present point is simply that the problem of color realism is primarily a problem in the theory of perception, not a problem in the theory of thought or language.

Consider an analogy. From the point of view of the biologist, the word “food” is applied by ordinary people in a somewhat arbitrary way. According to them, the synthetic cooking oil Olestra, which has no nutritional value at all, is a food, but vitamin tablets and beer are not. An investigation of how ordinary people use the word “food” is not particularly relevant to biology. What is relevant is an investigation into the sorts of substances human beings can digest, whether or not the biological category of the digestible lines up exactly with the folk category of food. The problem of color realism is like the investigation of what humans can digest, not the investigation of the folk category of food. The enquiry concerns certain properties that objects visually appear to have, not how ordinary people use color words, or how they conceptualize color categories.

And this particularly relevant section:

A classic confusion is the conflation of the properties of an experience with the properties represented by the experience (Harman 1990). An experience of a tomato is an event, presumably a neural event of some kind, and although it represents the property red, the experience is certainly not red, any more than the word “red,” which refers to the property red, is itself red. If anything is red it is the tomato.

Failure to attend to this distinction can make it seem obvious that color is some sort of mental or psychological property, rather than a property of physical objects like tomatoes. This sort of mistake is probably one of the main reasons why many textbooks state that color is produced by the brain, or is in the mind; it may well also underlie the International Lighting Vocabulary definition of “hue” as a certain “attribute of visual sensation.”
...
In order for a household thermostat to detect that the temperature is below 65 F, the thermostat dial must be set correctly. It does not follow that the property of being below 65 F is in any interesting sense dependent on, or relative to, thermostats or their settings. No one is likely to make this mistake of confusing temperature with conditions necessary for the detection of temperature. But an analogous mistake is for some reason often made in the case of color. (We will give a particularly nice illustration of this in sect. 3.1.3 below.)

The presence of perceivers and the occurrence of certain mental events are obviously necessary for the perception of color. Just as in the thermostat example, it does not follow that the colors themselves are in any interesting sense dependent on, or relative to, perceivers or mental events. To think it did would be to confuse conditions necessary for the perception of color with color itself.

And, hopefully this section, though of course I recommend reading the entire piece:

Since nothing but confusion can come from using color terms to “denote sensations,” the second part of MacAdam’s distinction needs some adjustment. On the one hand, the things distinguished are intended to be “sensations.” On the other hand, color terms are supposed to be an appropriate way of denoting the things distinguished. We cannot have both. If we stress “sensations,” then the things to be dis- tinguished are certain kinds of visual experiences (e.g., an experience of a tomato in good light). If we stress the appropriateness of color terms, then the things to be distin- guished are certain salient properties represented by those experiences (e.g., the salient surface property the tomato visually appears to have). These properties are sometimes called phenomenal colors, or colors-as-we-see-them.
You may recall that Palmer made that exact distinction. The section continues:
There is, then, a perfectly good distinction between physical color and phenomenal color – although it must be emphasized that this is not a distinction between properties of objects like tomatoes and properties of sensations. Using this terminology, the problem of color realism explained above concerns phenomenal color. What are the phenomenal colors? Do the objects that appear to have phenomenal colors really have them? Accordingly, whenever “color” occurs unmodified in this article, it means phenomenal color.

But here’s the important point: rather paradoxically, a distinction may turn out not to distinguish anything! At the start of enquiry, one would want to make a distinction between salt and sodium chloride, or the butler and the murderer, even though it may turn out that salt is sodium chloride or that the butler is the murderer. It may similarly turn out with phenomenal color and (a kind of) physical color. Although care must be taken to make this distinction at the outset, perhaps phenomenal and physical colors are one and the same.

They then also dive into reflectance (as Palmer did).

ETA: Of further particular revelevance is section 3.4, “Variation in normal color vision,” but it is too long to cut and paste here so I’ll tease with this:

In addition to variation between subjects, there is also variation within subjects. Color matching depends on visual angle (Stiles 1937). The degeneration of the lens with age makes it yellower, producing a shift in perceived hue, with purple objects looking significantly redder (Fairchild 1998, p. 5). Color perception can vary between the right and left eyes due to differences in the optical density of the macula (Fairchild 1998, p. 7).
These facts give rise to an obvious problem, which C. L. Hardin nicely expresses as follows:

[Imagine that all of the] hue chips manufactured by the Mun- sell Company covering [the] 5 Blue-Green to 2.5 Green range were randomly spread out before you to be separately viewed on a dark gray background in North Daylight. One of them would be your considered choice for unique green. Your col- league might make a different choice. If so, which of the chips is unique green? (Hardin 1993, p. 80, endnote omitted)​

According to Hardin, “if this question is to be answered at all, it can be answered only by convention. We might, for example, decree that the most frequently chosen chip is to be unique green. But we could decide otherwise” (p. 80).

Hardin’s answer to his own question is a little odd. Sup- pose a certain chip looks to you to be unique green. Convention has nothing to do with this: what makes it the case that the chip looks unique green are facts about your visual system and its interaction with the chip, and these are not matters of convention or decision. Now consider the ques- tion of whether the chip is as it looks. Convention has noth- ing to do with this either: it is entirely a matter of how things are with the chip. If the chip is unique green, then the an- swer is yes; if not, no.

We suspect that Hardin’s eliminativism is influencing his answer. Even if, as Hardin thinks, nothing is red, blue, yel- low or green (let alone unique green), color terminology has great practical value. For various pragmatic reasons, it would not be a good idea to speak the literal truth and to refuse to apply color expressions – for example, “unique green” – to anything. So how should we use this expression? Obviously the answer to this question is a matter of con- vention: the question calls for a decision, not a statement of fact. But this is not the question that Hardin is officially ask- ing, although the two might be easily confused. By his own lights, what Hardin should have said in answer to his offi- cial question is that – as a plain matter of non-conventional fact – neither chip is unique green.

If this answer – that neither chip is unique green – is cor- rect, then we are in trouble. For, since we may fairly sup- pose that if anything is unique green, one of the chips is unique green, the proper conclusion is that nothing is unique green. And if nothing is unique green, it is hard to see why other shades of green, or of any other color, are any better off. The natural terminus of this line of thought is therefore that nothing has any color, that is, that elimina- tivism is true. So we do not have here a problem solely for physicalism, but rather for any realist theory of color.

But what is the problem, exactly? What the facts about individual differences in color vision show is that, under the twin assumptions (a) that objects do not have many differ- ent colors simultaneously (e.g., if a chip is unique green, it is not also bluish-green), and (b) that if objects really are colored (e.g., a certain chip is unique green), then there iS widespread misperception of the determinate colors: Many people will misperceive a chip that is in fact unique green as slightly bluish-green, for instance. If this can be turned into a good argument against color realism then two things must be established. First, that the conclusion, widespread misperception of the determinate colors, is unacceptable. If this is right, then we have to reject either (a) or (b). Sec- ond, to complete the argument it must be established that (b) is the culprit.

We think this argument fails at the first stage, because the conclusion is not unacceptable. First, note that the conclusion is not especially astonishing or at odds with apparently obvious facts. The conclusion is not that people rarely see objects as having the colors they actually have, but that they rarely see objects as having the determinate colors they actually have. It is consistent with the conclusion that people typically see green objects as green, orange objects as orange, and so forth. Second, note that similar conclusions hold for other perceptible properties, for example, spatial properties. For a concrete case consider aniseikonia; a moderately common opthalmological condition in which the size (or shape) of the retinal image differs between the two eyes.
 
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Like I sed.

What the nervous system gets are snippets of light bandwidth. What the nervous system does with those snippets is through trial and error build a memory of them connected from highest to lowest energy* from which to make comparisons with in coming data. Result is selection of appropriate color of input.

* I admit I may have made a Franklin mistake and have chosen the wrong direction of ordering.
 
More for Palmer's book (that, once again, I could not just copy and paste so had to take screenshots). This is in regard to exactly how the rods/cones translate color information before that information gets sent to the brain for higher order processing. Start with the second paragraph that begins with "The obvious question at this point...":

Screen Shot 2020-04-19 at 12.44.33 PM.png

Screen Shot 2020-04-19 at 12.44.44 PM.png
 
Perhaps this will clarify where I have not been able to (emphasis in original):



And this particularly relevant section:



And, hopefully this section, though of course I recommend reading the entire piece:

Since nothing but confusion can come from using color terms to “denote sensations,” the second part of MacAdam’s distinction needs some adjustment. On the one hand, the things distinguished are intended to be “sensations.” On the other hand, color terms are supposed to be an appropriate way of denoting the things distinguished. We cannot have both. If we stress “sensations,” then the things to be dis- tinguished are certain kinds of visual experiences (e.g., an experience of a tomato in good light). If we stress the appropriateness of color terms, then the things to be distin- guished are certain salient properties represented by those experiences (e.g., the salient surface property the tomato visually appears to have). These properties are sometimes called phenomenal colors, or colors-as-we-see-them.
You may recall that Palmer made that exact distinction. The section continues:
There is, then, a perfectly good distinction between physical color and phenomenal color – although it must be emphasized that this is not a distinction between properties of objects like tomatoes and properties of sensations. Using this terminology, the problem of color realism explained above concerns phenomenal color. What are the phenomenal colors? Do the objects that appear to have phenomenal colors really have them? Accordingly, whenever “color” occurs unmodified in this article, it means phenomenal color.

But here’s the important point: rather paradoxically, a distinction may turn out not to distinguish anything! At the start of enquiry, one would want to make a distinction between salt and sodium chloride, or the butler and the murderer, even though it may turn out that salt is sodium chloride or that the butler is the murderer. It may similarly turn out with phenomenal color and (a kind of) physical color. Although care must be taken to make this distinction at the outset, perhaps phenomenal and physical colors are one and the same.

They then also dive into reflectance (as Palmer did).

ETA: Of further particular revelevance is section 3.4, “Variation in normal color vision,” but it is too long to cut and paste here so I’ll tease with this:

In addition to variation between subjects, there is also variation within subjects. Color matching depends on visual angle (Stiles 1937). The degeneration of the lens with age makes it yellower, producing a shift in perceived hue, with purple objects looking significantly redder (Fairchild 1998, p. 5). Color perception can vary between the right and left eyes due to differences in the optical density of the macula (Fairchild 1998, p. 7).
These facts give rise to an obvious problem, which C. L. Hardin nicely expresses as follows:

[Imagine that all of the] hue chips manufactured by the Mun- sell Company covering [the] 5 Blue-Green to 2.5 Green range were randomly spread out before you to be separately viewed on a dark gray background in North Daylight. One of them would be your considered choice for unique green. Your col- league might make a different choice. If so, which of the chips is unique green? (Hardin 1993, p. 80, endnote omitted)​

According to Hardin, “if this question is to be answered at all, it can be answered only by convention. We might, for example, decree that the most frequently chosen chip is to be unique green. But we could decide otherwise” (p. 80).

Hardin’s answer to his own question is a little odd. Sup- pose a certain chip looks to you to be unique green. Convention has nothing to do with this: what makes it the case that the chip looks unique green are facts about your visual system and its interaction with the chip, and these are not matters of convention or decision. Now consider the ques- tion of whether the chip is as it looks. Convention has noth- ing to do with this either: it is entirely a matter of how things are with the chip. If the chip is unique green, then the an- swer is yes; if not, no.

We suspect that Hardin’s eliminativism is influencing his answer. Even if, as Hardin thinks, nothing is red, blue, yel- low or green (let alone unique green), color terminology has great practical value. For various pragmatic reasons, it would not be a good idea to speak the literal truth and to refuse to apply color expressions – for example, “unique green” – to anything. So how should we use this expression? Obviously the answer to this question is a matter of con- vention: the question calls for a decision, not a statement of fact. But this is not the question that Hardin is officially ask- ing, although the two might be easily confused. By his own lights, what Hardin should have said in answer to his offi- cial question is that – as a plain matter of non-conventional fact – neither chip is unique green.

If this answer – that neither chip is unique green – is cor- rect, then we are in trouble. For, since we may fairly sup- pose that if anything is unique green, one of the chips is unique green, the proper conclusion is that nothing is unique green. And if nothing is unique green, it is hard to see why other shades of green, or of any other color, are any better off. The natural terminus of this line of thought is therefore that nothing has any color, that is, that elimina- tivism is true. So we do not have here a problem solely for physicalism, but rather for any realist theory of color.

But what is the problem, exactly? What the facts about individual differences in color vision show is that, under the twin assumptions (a) that objects do not have many differ- ent colors simultaneously (e.g., if a chip is unique green, it is not also bluish-green), and (b) that if objects really are colored (e.g., a certain chip is unique green), then there iS widespread misperception of the determinate colors: Many people will misperceive a chip that is in fact unique green as slightly bluish-green, for instance. If this can be turned into a good argument against color realism then two things must be established. First, that the conclusion, widespread misperception of the determinate colors, is unacceptable. If this is right, then we have to reject either (a) or (b). Sec- ond, to complete the argument it must be established that (b) is the culprit.

We think this argument fails at the first stage, because the conclusion is not unacceptable. First, note that the conclusion is not especially astonishing or at odds with apparently obvious facts. The conclusion is not that people rarely see objects as having the colors they actually have, but that they rarely see objects as having the determinate colors they actually have. It is consistent with the conclusion that people typically see green objects as green, orange objects as orange, and so forth. Second, note that similar conclusions hold for other perceptible properties, for example, spatial properties. For a concrete case consider aniseikonia; a moderately common opthalmological condition in which the size (or shape) of the retinal image differs between the two eyes.


1. I posted that paper here 8 days ago and commented on it at the time.

2. When, above, you say that Palmer makes a certain distinction, he doesn’t.
 
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