COLOUR

[ruby sparks]

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...":

View attachment 27183

View attachment 27184

You say the rods and cones process colour information and by posting from Palmer you imply he does, but he doesn’t.

If, every time you see Palmer use the word colour, you bear in mind that for him, it is only a psychological phenomenon, and not in light or objects, you will make better sense of what he says. He is not making the distinction that some do between non-psychological colour and psychological colour. For him, the former does not exist. He clearly says this.

As I have been saying for quite a while, you should stop trying to attribute to Palmer a model that is not his.

He may not be right of course.

 

[ruby sparks]

Here is what the OP model suggests (whether it is Palmer’s model or not is at the end of the day somewhat secondary, though I strongly believe it is, but we could leave Palmer out of it if we can’t agree on that).

Regarding specifically the ‘squares’ in the middle of the ‘nearest, vertical face’ of the above image and of the ‘top, horizontal face’, are there two different colours of those ‘squares’ in the image?

(Inverted commas because neither parts of the image are actually square, vertical, horizontal, near, top, or separate faces, obviously).

No. Because there are no colours at all in the image (or in the light reaching our eyes from it).

Are there two colours though?

Yes. The two actual, real, different colours are the two that you see.

That there appear to be colours of any sort in the image is an illusion of projection. They (both of the colours) are real, and different, but only exist in your brain, and that is the only place they are and all that they are. Forget about the idea that there are actually any colours whatsoever in the image/object or in the light reaching our eyes from it.

That is what the model says, and imo it’s a valid, coherent model.

 

[skepticalbip]

View attachment 27185

Here is what the OP model suggests (whether it is Palmer’s model or not is at the end of the day somewhat secondary, though I strongly believe it is, but we could leave Palmer out of it if we can’t agree on that).

Regarding specifically the ‘squares’ in the middle of the ‘nearest, vertical face’ of the above image and of the ‘top, horizontal face’, are there two different colours of those ‘squares’ in the image?

(Inverted commas because neither parts of the image are actually square, vertical, horizontal, near, top, or separate faces, obviously).

No. Because there are no colours at all in the image (or in the light reaching our eyes from it).

Are there two colours though?

Yes. The two actual, real, different colours are the two that you see.

That there appear to be colours of any sort in the image is an illusion of projection. They (both of the colours) are real, and different, but only exist in your brain, and that is the only place they are and all that they are. Forget about the idea that there are actually any colours whatsoever in the image/object or in the light reaching our eyes from it.

That is what the model says, and imo it’s a valid, coherent model.

Yes.

The problem that I see is the same problem I see with many of those who consider themselves philosophers... they refuse to define the terms they are arguing about. I, and apparently you, strictly define 'color' as a personal subjective experience. Holding to that definition, neither light nor objects can have color. So far all attempts to get Koy to offer a specific definition of 'color' that will apply to all the things he claims possesses color have failed.

 

[Koyaanisqatsi]

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

As have I.

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

He very clearly did and your own source confirmed, remember? Oh, right, you also commented on that at the time by saying you thought your own source was wrong in his assessment, which isn't a counterargument, so let's review Palmer's actual words once again and Maund's clarification of same:

People universally believe that objects look colored because they are colored, just as we experience them. The sky looks blue because it is blue, grass looks green because it is green, and blood looks red because it is red. As surprising as it may seem, these beliefs are fundamentally mistaken. Neither objects nor lights are actually “colored” in anything like the way we experience them. Rather, color is a psychological property of our visual experiences when we look at objects and lights, not a physical property of those objects or lights. The colors we see are based on physical properties of objects and lights that cause us to see them as colored, to be sure, but these physical properties are different in important ways from the colors we perceive. (Palmer 1999: 95)​

This quote, however, needs unpacking. Palmer is obviously challenging our ordinary common-sense beliefs about colors. Specifically, he is denying that objects and lights have colors in the sense of colors-as-we-experience-them (or colors as we see them), As far as this goes, it is compatible with objects and lights having colors in some other sense, e.g., colors, as defined for scientific purposes. Secondly, he is saying that color (i.e., color-as-we-experience it) is a psychological property, which in turn, might be interpreted in different ways. Accordingly, the view is quite complex (see the next section). If we examine the writings of others in the scientific tradition, we find that their views are also complex. The view maybe color-eliminativism, but it is not merely that.

Regardless of what you personally choose to believe--including Maund's assessment--Palmer is unmistakably making the same distinction as the MIT scientists; the "phenomenal colors" and "colors-as-we-see-them" distinction, or the science of color wavelengths as opposed to the psychological experience.

Here, for the sake of harmony, let's temporarily remove the section from Palmer that is evidently the most problematic for you and parse his claim:

People universally believe that objects look colored because they are colored, just as we experience them...Neither objects nor lights are actually “colored” in anything like the way we experience them...The colors we see are based on physical properties of objects and lights that cause us to see them as colored, to be sure, but these physical properties are different in important ways from the colors we perceive.

That's straightforward and consistent. Everything there affirms the thought: "Colors as we see/experience/perceive them" yes?

Now let's isolate the problematic phrase:

color is a psychological property of our visual experiences when we look at objects and lights, not a physical property of those objects or lights.

There are two assertions, of course, embedded in that sentence, so let's further parse them in proper form:

1. Color is a psychological property of our visual experiences when we look at objects and lights, and
2. Color is not a physical property of those objects or lights

1 is trivial and affirmed by the hard problem. So that leaves us with 2, which he immediately qualified in the very next sentence with:

The colors we see are based on physical properties of objects and lights that cause us to see them as colored, to be sure, but these physical properties are different in important ways from the colors we perceive.

So just use substitution. He defines "color" in 1 as a "psychological property of our visual experience." Ok, so plug that definition into the next sentence and you get:

The psychological properties of our visual experience are based on physical properties of objects and lights, to be sure, but these physical properties are different in important ways from the psychological properties of our visual experience.

No more problems of equivocal language or loaded terms.

 

[fromderinside]

Color is in nature. Having color vision evolve is proof of that.

What philosophers and many pychologists get wrong is the relation between physics and living things. Living things evolved because of the physical properties and processes.

Ergo such as the mind don't fit the same rationality that produces physics. Life is derivative of physics.

Life interacts with the physical world is in how life is derived from the physical world through the process of evolution.

Before on gets tocolorone needs to understand how color is derived as a sensed thing. One cannot go around 'splaining mind in terms of the physical properties of color without undertaning how those who have color vision got there fromlight.. Rather one must put how life interacts with light, mechanical properties, chemical properties, etc. in the world.

All of us psychophysicists understand that.

So it is silly to suggest there is no color when when life depends on it to exist. There are physical links between all the sensible physical properties such as light, sound, touch, odor, heat, etc. and and all life.

In the field of psychophysics of vision there is a physical link between light and the nervous system. That link exists in how light becomes information for visual processing.

Light becomes information by being transduced via limited light reacting chemicals into the form of energy being used by the nervous system. That energy is biochemical and biomechanical and it usually is seen as nerve impulses, reflected as changes in tissue electrical, chemical, and mechanical behavior.

Not to put too fine a point on it what is sensed in the visual world are limited bandwidth bits of information organized by location of receptor types. These are the 'molecules' of color. The brain as you like to call cortical nervous system reflects the organisation spatio topically and - get ready for it - color spectrally in the brain.

However, by being converted to bits of spectrum, a limitation of living matter's capacity to record light, the brain is limited to access of only the visual spectral information the receptor provides and from which nervous function can extract. There is no ideal here. What you receive and process is what you get.

If you want to produce an ideal you need to understand what is available to the and go from there to make the best you can a philosophy of color which is the coin of the realm in the nervous system. The same is true for audition, touch, smell, taste, thermo sensitivity, and various forms of touch.

In each case you need to understand the limits of physical properties the receptors and nervous system processors and other losses before you begin to make claims about what can be in the mind.

What you are doing to'color' here is at best a wild goose chase, at worst an attempt to promote the mind as a physical ideal.

end of outburst.

 

[fromderinside]

The rant goes on.

There is a science of color. Color is material. It has properties derived from light. Light properties need to be reinterpreted as koyaanisqatsi does "frequency is color" so that light can be interpreted IAW color theory.

We've programm machines to use color to identify things by color. We've produced computers that produce art people can't distinguish from human artists' products.

there is no way I'm going to reinterpret how the nervous system works just so it can be the source of the concept color. That would be a disservice to physics, psychology, and philosophy.

 

[ruby sparks]

View attachment 27185

Here is what the OP model suggests (whether it is Palmer’s model or not is at the end of the day somewhat secondary, though I strongly believe it is, but we could leave Palmer out of it if we can’t agree on that).

Regarding specifically the ‘squares’ in the middle of the ‘nearest, vertical face’ of the above image and of the ‘top, horizontal face’, are there two different colours of those ‘squares’ in the image?

(Inverted commas because neither parts of the image are actually square, vertical, horizontal, near, top, or separate faces, obviously).

No. Because there are no colours at all in the image (or in the light reaching our eyes from it).

Are there two colours though?

Yes. The two actual, real, different colours are the two that you see.

That there appear to be colours of any sort in the image is an illusion of projection. They (both of the colours) are real, and different, but only exist in your brain, and that is the only place they are and all that they are. Forget about the idea that there are actually any colours whatsoever in the image/object or in the light reaching our eyes from it.

That is what the model says, and imo it’s a valid, coherent model.

Yes.

The problem that I see is the same problem I see with many of those who consider themselves philosophers... they refuse to define the terms they are arguing about. I, and apparently you, strictly define 'color' as a personal subjective experience. Holding to that definition, neither light nor objects can have color. So far all attempts to get Koy to offer a specific definition of 'color' that will apply to all the things he claims possesses color have failed.

Well, I strictly define it that way for the purposes of debate and exploration here. But (a) I'm open to that definition/model being challenged or refuted (it's just the model I'm defending) and (b) when I leave this discussion, in between posts, and possibly during them if I'm not careful, I'll sometimes revert to calling light or objects coloured. Because it's hard to resist.

It seems to me as if, in order to talk about colour, even many scientists investigating colour either (i) lapse into the above inconsistency, (ii) accept a pragmatic naming convention which involves light and/or objects being 'said to have colour' or (iii) genuinely accept that although colours are in the brain, there are (also) actual colours, in another sense, in/of objects and light.

For example, earlier I quoted psychologist David Eagleman. In the quote he says that if we could understand the world as it really is, we'd be shocked at how colourless, dark and silent it really is. And yet, elsewhere he talks of our brains trying to understand the actual colours of things. He says the latter at 0:37 in this video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wtzzS9TtKes

And here's Richard Feyman:

"As we know, white light can be split by a prism into a whole spectrum of wavelengths which appear to us to have different colors; that is what colors are, of course: appearances. Any source of light can be analyzed by a grating or a prism, and one can determine the spectral distribution, i.e., the “amount” of each wavelength.

A certain light may have a lot of blue, considerable red, very little yellow, and so on. That is all very precise in the sense of physics, but the question is, what color will it appear to be?"

https://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/I_35.html

In the second thing they say, both he and Eagleman (unlike Palmer and the physicist in the video animation I posted earlier) seem to be doing either (i), (ii) or (iii).

For what it's worth, my guess is that Eagleman is doing (i) and accidentally contradicting himself (which the two different things he says clearly do) and Feynman is doing either (ii) or (iii), it's hard to tell from just one snippet or one lecture.

In the model I'm defending here, both Eagleman and Feynman are correct in their first statement and either incorrect or merely following conventions in the second. In the second thing they say, they both have it the wrong way round, imo.

 

[fromderinside]

My guess is that you are doing none of the above. Unless you understand how color is derived from light you will continue to fail to answer any of the above.

I provide you clues as to color enters into perception. You don't have a choice since it is clear that color comes by way of how humans take light into their nervous system. When you understand that all your doubts about any of the options you provide will go away with the vanishing of the options which were:

Claim 1: objects are not themselves coloured, they do not have colour.

Claim 2A: Colour is a psychologically-experienced 'mental' phenomenon only. Colour does not really exist other than in this way.

Claim 2B: Colour is a psychologically-experienced 'mental' phenomenon of consciousness only. Colour does not really exist other than in this way.

Plants or things you see have color because they absorb part of the light spectrum, leaving us with some frequencies to process. That fact plays into how fitness works in evolution. Those most fit will be those that best sense those frequencies will lead evolution toward the best available solution which is develop sensors that maximize detecting those frequencies.

That we see frequencies is, as koyaanisqatsi states frequencies are colors. I go a step further and state we sense light with chemicals that absorb several frequencies. So what humans have with which to work are bits of light spectrum.

Such could occur, as you posit, within the nervous system. But defending that view is full of problems. First up is where does one get information about light to construct a frame of frequencies. Remember the mechanics of the nervous system are chemical, mechanical, and electric change processes in neurons. Something is missing.

What is missing is the product of transduction that produces a spatial array of bits of light frequency arranged with respect to visual field. which has at it's center those receptors tuned to different light frequency ranges. Now visual neural processes can go to work with color already encoded into the nervous system. I'll give the brain some organizing credits, but color is already in place as the result of transduction.

Light already has signalled color by the interaction of light with things producing differences detectable by those sensitive to such differences.

And as koyaanisqatsi because usually adjacent frequencies are absorbed and reflected by those things the evolved receptor organ provides a fair analog for detection of such.

I've gone along way to provide you enough evidence for you to really doubt that the brain holds color. It's illogical, there is no basis for finding such to be so, and so doing runs against the stream of practical determinism.

Thanks Ruby Sparks (see post that follows) for bringing me back to Feynman.

"What color will it appear to be" is not really about color at all, but about what the nervous system does with color.

Such does not put color into the brain or mind. It puts analysis and interpretation of what is seen as the focus of your questions. We couldn't go to those unless color already had status as being. The brain didn't rise it to this level. Because it was there it became a problem for what mind or brain might process it as in a given situation. That is a problem of analysis and interpretation not one of being.

I'd change your OP to reflect what you are discussing which is analysis and interpretation of color. Now that's something the brain does. ...and doing so clears up our (yours and mine) entire problem.

 

[ruby sparks]

As have I.



He very clearly did and your own source confirmed, remember? Oh, right, you also commented on that at the time by saying you thought your own source was wrong in his assessment, which isn't a counterargument, so let's review Palmer's actual words once again and Maund's clarification of same:

People universally believe that objects look colored because they are colored, just as we experience them. The sky looks blue because it is blue, grass looks green because it is green, and blood looks red because it is red. As surprising as it may seem, these beliefs are fundamentally mistaken. Neither objects nor lights are actually “colored” in anything like the way we experience them. Rather, color is a psychological property of our visual experiences when we look at objects and lights, not a physical property of those objects or lights. The colors we see are based on physical properties of objects and lights that cause us to see them as colored, to be sure, but these physical properties are different in important ways from the colors we perceive. (Palmer 1999: 95)​

This quote, however, needs unpacking. Palmer is obviously challenging our ordinary common-sense beliefs about colors. Specifically, he is denying that objects and lights have colors in the sense of colors-as-we-experience-them (or colors as we see them), As far as this goes, it is compatible with objects and lights having colors in some other sense, e.g., colors, as defined for scientific purposes. Secondly, he is saying that color (i.e., color-as-we-experience it) is a psychological property, which in turn, might be interpreted in different ways. Accordingly, the view is quite complex (see the next section). If we examine the writings of others in the scientific tradition, we find that their views are also complex. The view maybe color-eliminativism, but it is not merely that.

Regardless of what you personally choose to believe--including Maund's assessment--Palmer is unmistakably making the same distinction as the MIT scientists; the "phenomenal colors" and "colors-as-we-see-them" distinction, or the science of color wavelengths as opposed to the psychological experience.

Here, for the sake of harmony, let's temporarily remove the section from Palmer that is evidently the most problematic for you and parse his claim:

People universally believe that objects look colored because they are colored, just as we experience them...Neither objects nor lights are actually “colored” in anything like the way we experience them...The colors we see are based on physical properties of objects and lights that cause us to see them as colored, to be sure, but these physical properties are different in important ways from the colors we perceive.

That's straightforward and consistent. Everything there affirms the thought: "Colors as we see/experience/perceive them" yes?

Now let's isolate the problematic phrase:

color is a psychological property of our visual experiences when we look at objects and lights, not a physical property of those objects or lights.

There are two assertions, of course, embedded in that sentence, so let's further parse them in proper form:

1. Color is a psychological property of our visual experiences when we look at objects and lights, and
2. Color is not a physical property of those objects or lights

1 is trivial and affirmed by the hard problem. So that leaves us with 2, which he immediately qualified in the very next sentence with:

The colors we see are based on physical properties of objects and lights that cause us to see them as colored, to be sure, but these physical properties are different in important ways from the colors we perceive.

So just use substitution. He defines "color" in 1 as a "psychological property of our visual experience." Ok, so plug that definition into the next sentence and you get:

The psychological properties of our visual experience are based on physical properties of objects and lights, to be sure, but these physical properties are different in important ways from the psychological properties of our visual experience.

No more problems of equivocal language or loaded terms.

It is definitely not clear to me, and I disagree that it is the case, that Palmer is using the model you think he is.

The good news is that if we can't agree on that, you can apparently now cite Richard Feynman instead.

And just for the record, I think you cited Maund, not me. In the OP I merely cited the Palmer quote itself from an article by Maund. You later quoted Maund's own words.

But in a way it doesn't matter much. If any of them, Maund, Palmer or Feynman, are using your preferred model, mine is different.

 

[skepticalbip]

Well, I strictly define it that way for the purposes of debate and exploration here. But (a) I'm open to that definition/model being challenged or refuted (it's just the model I'm defending) and (b) when I leave this discussion, in between posts, and possibly during them if I'm not careful, I'll sometimes revert to calling light or objects coloured. Because it's hard to resist.

It seems to me as if, in order to talk about colour, even many scientists investigating colour either (i) lapse into the above inconsistency, (ii) accept a pragmatic naming convention which involves light and/or objects being 'said to have colour' or (iii) genuinely accept that although colours are in the brain, there are (also) actual colours, in another sense, in/of objects and light.

For example, earlier I quoted psychologist David Eagleman. In the quote he says that if we could understand the world as it really is, we'd be shocked at how colourless, dark and silent it really is. And yet, elsewhere he talks of our brains trying to understand the actual colours of things. He says the latter at 0:37 in this video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wtzzS9TtKes

And here's Richard Feyman:

"As we know, white light can be split by a prism into a whole spectrum of wavelengths which appear to us to have different colors; that is what colors are, of course: appearances. Any source of light can be analyzed by a grating or a prism, and one can determine the spectral distribution, i.e., the “amount” of each wavelength.

A certain light may have a lot of blue, considerable red, very little yellow, and so on. That is all very precise in the sense of physics, but the question is, what color will it appear to be?"

https://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/I_35.html

In the second thing they say, both he and Eagleman (unlike Palmer and the physicist in the video animation I posted earlier) seem to be doing either (i), (ii) or (iii).

For what it's worth, my guess is that Eagleman is doing (i) and accidentally contradicting himself (which the two different things he says clearly do) and Feynman is doing either (ii) or (iii), it's hard to tell from just one snippet or one lecture.

In the model I'm defending here, both Eagleman and Feynman are correct in their first statement and either incorrect or merely following conventions in the second. In the second thing they say, they both have it the wrong way round, imo.

Social conventions are a bitch to avoid even though we know better. They are even adopted as a 'shorthand' and widely used in science. It is just so much easier to refer to "red light" instead of describing it as electromagnetic radiation with a wavelength between 635 and 700 nanometers. We also refer to the sun rising in the east even though it is known that the sun does not rise but appears to because the Earth rotates so that our position on its surface rotates out of the shadow of the horizon to bring the sun into view.

 

[ruby sparks]

Social conventions are a bitch to avoid even though we know better. They are even adopted as a 'shorthand' and widely used in science. It is just so much easier to refer to "red light" instead of describing it as electromagnetic radiation with a wavelength between 635 and 700 nanometers. We also refer to the sun rising in the east even though it is known that the sun does not rise but appears to because the Earth rotates so that our position on its surface rotates out of the shadow of the horizon to bring the sun into view.

I was wondering if it was necessarily always (ii), the knowing acceptance of conventions while retaining the background model that they are, strictly speaking, incorrect, or whether at least some scientists (possibly even some physicists) actually would insist, if pressed, that light, for instance, actually has colour, in another sense, as per my (iii) and what koy is saying.

The latter would not surprise me. Physics has traditionally tended to be primarily about the external world, not so much the internal, psychological domain (or living things in general). It would make sense if physicists ordered their thinking (or paradigms) to give primacy to the former. Not so much cognitive scientists with a psychology background possibly, or neuroscientists with a biology background perhaps. They might be able to be more comfortable talking about mind (and mental properties) being the real ones (in the cases where they are), uniquely created in the brain (as with for example pain) and not merely copies or replicas of external phenomena.

I suspect Cartesian Dualism, and associated religious woo, has left many people wary about that sort of thing, even in principle.

Which is understandable, but imo a mistake (or at least an unnecessary worry) and one that I believe fromderinside has been making throughout. I think it (the worry, for example that it's the thin end of a wedge with homunculi and goodness knows what else at the thick end) is partly why he simply discards the mind, partly also I think because it can't be objectively measured (which is only true up to a point). I think it's a hangover from something a bit akin to eliminative behaviourism, and quite simply therefore an incomplete model, imo, and one that has largely been discarded, for that reason.

The replacement paradigm, the multi-disciplinary cognitive science, which has no aversion to investigating mind and consciousness, has pretty much taken over and is currently doing pretty well. Which must be annoying to any remaining eliminative behaviouralists. But I think cog sci needs to watch out in case its 'brain as machine' paradigm is ultimately limited in a different way. That's my general impression. I'm not a scientist of any sort myself.

 

[skepticalbip]

I was wondering if it was necessarily always (ii), the knowing acceptance of conventions while retaining the background model that they are, strictly speaking, incorrect, or whether at least some scientists (possibly even some physicists) actually would insist, if pressed, that light, for instance, actually has colour, in another sense, as per my (iii) and what koy is saying.

Physicists, being humans, I am sure there is a broad spectrum of personal ideas about the nature of 'color'. However, the language of science is mathematics. Maxwell's equations (which describe EM radiation) or the equations dealing with the generation of EM, refraction, reflection, absorption, or any other interaction between light and any medium do not have any terms that identify "color". The field of optics does use 'colors' in describing certain effects but only as 'scientific shorthand' since the equations they are describing only has terms dealing with frequency (or wavelength), permeability, permittivity, energy, etc... no 'color' terms.

 

[ruby sparks]

I was wondering if it was necessarily always (ii), the knowing acceptance of conventions while retaining the background model that they are, strictly speaking, incorrect, or whether at least some scientists (possibly even some physicists) actually would insist, if pressed, that light, for instance, actually has colour, in another sense, as per my (iii) and what koy is saying.

Physicists, being humans, I am sure there is a broad spectrum of personal ideas about the nature of 'color'. However, the language of science is mathematics. Maxwell's equations (which describe EM radiation) or the equations dealing with the generation of EM, refraction, reflection, absorption, or any other interaction between light and any medium do not have any terms that identify "color". The field of optics does use 'colors' in describing certain effects but only as 'scientific shorthand' since the equations they are describing only has terms dealing with frequency (or wavelength), permeability, permittivity, energy, etc... no 'color' terms.

Yes. It's as if, when they 'get right down to basics', they have no need for colours to be part of their explanations.

Which is arguably as it should be, imo, because it is superfluous. And not just for physicists. Biologists and chemists don't need it either, in the final analysis.

 

[ruby sparks]

scepticalblip,

Here, as I see it, is the (or a) tricky question. I have asked it before.

Are colours like pains, or are they like lengths?

I might agree that there is length out there as well as my brain having a model of it, consisting of properties that are different from any in or of, for example, an object itself (or the separation distance between two objects or phenomena).

With pain, I would say it is simply not out there in another form.

I can't think of a way to tell which category (of those two possibilities) colour belongs in. Which is why I leave open the possibility that the model I am using is wrong.

Or (before you confuse me with spacetime, lol) we could just say that there are some phenomena which we experience which are out there in some form and some which are only in brains. How to tell which ones are in which category?

If you know the answer, I'll split the profits with you.

 

[ruby sparks]

The colors we see are based on physical properties of objects and lights that cause us to see them as colored, to be sure, but these physical properties are different in important ways from the colors we perceive.

So just use substitution. He defines "color" in 1 as a "psychological property of our visual experience." Ok, so plug that definition into the next sentence and you get:

The psychological properties of our visual experience are based on physical properties of objects and lights, to be sure, but these physical properties are different in important ways from the psychological properties of our visual experience.

Yes indeed. Very much so. No colour in objects or light, only other properties. Colour only in brains. That's exactly what Palmer is saying.

Though I might pick him up on one thing. He stresses that the properties of the objects and light are physical. By contrast he says colours have psychological properties. That might imply he would say the latter were not physical. I wouldn't necessarily say that.

 

[Koyaanisqatsi]

Colour only in brains. That's exactly what Palmer is saying.

No, it isn’t, but it’s pointless to continue parsing it as we just keep going round and round and since you have already conceded it doesn’t matter—that you are using your own “model” regardless—let’s just pivot to your model.

What’s the point of it?

 

[fromderinside]

Physicists generally don't actually study life beyond confirming life obeys physical laws. If it were necessary for physicists to account for receptors they wouldn't be physicists.

Psychophysicists take into account physical law then carry application it of through perception at least. Whatever equations need be formulated subservient to physical law psychophysicists attempt to develop. It is their job to actually distinguish between what is physical process and what is nervous system process.

The above described tasks are why I'm so confident that receptors are physical processes and subsequent information processing in living things are biological nervous system processes.

The above demarcations were used to destroy Hull, Skinner, whatever behavioral analyses. Bollae and pellet accounting adds nothing to understanding of how living things get on. Nor does putting color in the mind because of some prejudice against considering the appearance of color as a physically lawful entity outside the brain in the physical world.

I'm going on maximum redundancy here.

Alteration in appearance with administration of light, any light, is physically lawful. That specific light properties make light accessible to the nervous system is lawful. That specific light properties are applied to make light accessible and form a boundary where physical is translated to neural as several filters is lawful. Using these results to define the parameters of transformation of light to color for each species which has the capacity to use it are lawful.

Everything is lawful and traceable to processes subserving them.

Don't like the above? Tedious? No wiggle room? Sorry that is modern science for you. those don't likes are why there is no sustaining experimental philosophy. Progress moves from why to how when extending the body of science rather than jumping from reasonable assertion tested by logical argument. Scientists are getting to why through a sequence of empirical hows.

As nice as all the discussions above have been there is no evidence they explain anything. grab an armchair.

 

[ruby sparks]

Colour only in brains. That's exactly what Palmer is saying.

No, it isn’t...

Yes it literally is.

—let’s just pivot to your model.

What’s the point of it?

I believe it gets things the right way around and is more precise.

 

[ruby sparks]

Alteration in appearance with administration of light, any light, is physically lawful. That specific light properties make light accessible to the nervous system is lawful. That specific light properties are applied to make light accessible and form a boundary where physical is translated to neural as several filters is lawful. Using these results to define the parameters of transformation of light to color for each species which has the capacity to use it are lawful.

Everything is lawful and traceable to processes subserving them.

Don't like the above? Tedious? No wiggle room? Sorry that is modern science for you.

No complaints here. I particularly liked 'transformation of light to colour'.

 

[fromderinside]

Process A, sending, operated on by filter to transform information to receiving process B. What was in A is converted, with some loss, to B.