COLOUR

[skepticalbip]

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

More brainfarts:

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

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

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

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

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

Wow! That is quite a bit heavier than I was thinking. But just off the top of my head (or pulled from my nether regions), I think that how faithfully our senses reflect reality would depend on which particular sense we are talking about.

It doesn't seem to me that taste would have much at all in common with any aspect of the object we are tasting. However taste would be beneficial, in a survival sense. We crave sweets and fats which taste informs us about and which gives us calories and energy. Taste also identifies salt which we also crave and the body needs to remain healthy. Evolution is an unforgiving bitch... those who didn't crave the taste of nutrients the body needs were dropped from the gene pool.

The sense of touch would seem to give us a closer representation of reality. I would think the sensation of texture, solidness, heft, size etc. would probably be fairly faithful information about reality.

The sense of hearing (in humans, not bats or dolphins) seems to me to be more useful in sensing movement of things more so than the things themselves.

Finally sight. For humans this is our primary sense for understanding our environment. Personally, I think it is a fairly reliable sense for informing us of the shape, identity, and position of objects in our environment. At least I have yet to reach to open the door of my auto and be surprised to find it doesn't exist for my sense of touch or that it is a tiger.

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

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

This seems to be the result of watching too many Michio Kaku or Graham Greene videos. The video popularizations of string theory and/or quantum mechanics, I think, does a disservice to both science and the viewer. They present, often highly theoretical, quantum concepts as though they were "scientific fact" within the macro-universe. Worse, they don't explain well enough that they are making an analogy of what the behavior of the universe would be if the macro-world behaved like the quantum world... it doesn't.

We see wood and steel as firm, solid materials because, in our macro-world, they are. At the sub-atomic level they are overwhelmingly vacuum and fields. But since we don't exist as sub-atomic critters, it is irrelevant to our daily life. It is those fields that make it solid on our scale.

 

[DBT]

I can shift quantum particle position from here to there by moving my body from here to there.

 

[skepticalbip]

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

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

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

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

You are amazing at hand waving but not so much at making sense.

You are now saying that color is a frequency (or wavelength) of light. If so, then the rods and cones aren't need to transduce it. The question is still, in your model, how does this color (wavelength) pass through the optic nerve and how does the brain 'see' it.

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

Now you switch back to light (wavelengths) being transduced to color. WTF. one sentence before wavelengths were already color.

And you have the color being "passed through the NS as action potentials (bio-chemical impulses)" whatever the fuck that means. Are you now saying that neurons fire in color? If so which definition of color are you using? Also, if so, could you explain how a neuron can fire in blue then in red then in green, etc.?

 

[skepticalbip]

I can shift quantum particle position from here to there by moving my body from here to there.

But if you were a fermion you would first need to check with Pauli to see if you were allowed to move there.

 

[fromderinside]

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

You are amazing at hand waving but not so much at making sense.

You are now saying that color is a frequency (or wavelength) of light. If so, then the rods and cones aren't need to transduce it.

Thanks for bringing that up. The article below will fill you in.

We need to close the door on that topic.

Not amazing at all. Just recognizing humans are incapable of processing light strictly IAC with properties. Yes, properties are the target of receptors. Human receptors can't process individual frequencies of light. But they can process a few contiguous frequencies. They can't because they must depend on materials with biochemical properties of responding to light, opsins.


Evolution of opsins and phototransduction https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2781858/

ABSTRACT
Opsins are the universal photoreceptor molecules of all visual systems in the animal kingdom. They can change their conformation from a resting state to a signalling state upon light absorption, which activates the G protein, thereby resulting in a signalling cascade that produces physiological responses. This process of capturing a photon and transforming it into a physiological response is known as phototransduction. Recent cloning techniques have revealed the rich and diverse nature of these molecules, found in organisms ranging from jellyfish to humans, functioning in visual and non-visual phototransduction systems and photoisomerases. Here we describe the diversity of these proteins and their role in phototransduction. Then we explore the molecular properties of opsins, by analysing site-directed mutants, strategically designed by phylogenetic comparison. This site-directed mutant approach led us to identify many key features in the evolution of the photoreceptor molecules. In particular, we will discuss the evolution of the counterion, the reduction of agonist binding to the receptor, and the molecular properties that characterize rod opsins apart from cone opsins. We will show how the advances in molecular biology and biophysics have given us insights into how evolution works at the molecular level.

Turns out humans have several opsins doing this work. By-the-by I further enhanced the word photon to remind you the energy of a photon is related to its frequency which takes us back to my laser color example. The frequency range of indivudual opsins are somewhat variable. So color-frequency becomes colors-frequencies human phototransduction.

Thanks for playing.

 

[skepticalbip]

Thanks for bringing that up. The article below will fill you in.

We need to close the door on that topic.

Not amazing at all. Just recognizing humans are incapable of processing light strictly IAC with properties. Yes, properties are the target of receptors. Human receptors can't process individual frequencies of light. But they can process a few contiguous frequencies. They can't because they must depend on materials with biochemical properties of responding to light, opsins.


Evolution of opsins and phototransduction https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2781858/

ABSTRACT
Opsins are the universal photoreceptor molecules of all visual systems in the animal kingdom. They can change their conformation from a resting state to a signalling state upon light absorption, which activates the G protein, thereby resulting in a signalling cascade that produces physiological responses. This process of capturing a photon and transforming it into a physiological response is known as phototransduction. Recent cloning techniques have revealed the rich and diverse nature of these molecules, found in organisms ranging from jellyfish to humans, functioning in visual and non-visual phototransduction systems and photoisomerases. Here we describe the diversity of these proteins and their role in phototransduction. Then we explore the molecular properties of opsins, by analysing site-directed mutants, strategically designed by phylogenetic comparison. This site-directed mutant approach led us to identify many key features in the evolution of the photoreceptor molecules. In particular, we will discuss the evolution of the counterion, the reduction of agonist binding to the receptor, and the molecular properties that characterize rod opsins apart from cone opsins. We will show how the advances in molecular biology and biophysics have given us insights into how evolution works at the molecular level.

Turns out humans have several opsins doing this work. By-the-by I further enhanced the word photon to remind you the energy of a photon is related to its frequency which takes us back to my laser color example. The frequency range of indivudual opsins are somewhat variable. So color-frequency becomes colors-frequencies human phototransduction.

Thanks for playing.

I have no problem at all with that article. In fact it is what I have been saying. Absorption of a photon causes the photoreceptor to fire. There is absolutely no mention of COLOR, no claim that given frequencies of EM are COLOR, no claim that those frequencies of EM striking the photoreceptor molecules transform the photon to COLOR.

If you find COLOR in what you copied and pasted then it wasn't by the author... it was something you read into it that wasn't there.

 

[ruby sparks]

I have no problem at all with that article. In fact it is what I have been saying. Absorption of a photon causes the photoreceptor to fire. There is absolutely no mention of COLOR, no claim that given frequencies of EM are COLOR, no claim that those frequencies of EM striking the photoreceptor molecules transform the photon to COLOR.

If you find COLOR in what you copied and pasted then it wasn't by the author... it was something you read into it that wasn't there.

I haven't read that paper through but on a quick scan I could not see any reference to colour.

But just to confuse matters, I very briefly googled the two authors (both are biologists I believe) and in the abstract of a different paper by the first one, they (not sure if it's a he or a she) use the term 'blue-sensitive cones' and the term 'green cone' (as in a cone containing 'green pigment'). The second author, in the abstract of a different paper by them, uses the term 'red light'.

So it appears they belong to the school of thinking that sometimes uses the word colour (or colour terms) in explanations and sometimes doesn't (and that when it is used, it is used for different properties, in different locations) whether for convenience, convention, or because of an ontological commitment, I don't know, but it is exactly the sort of lack of precision I am not particularly keen on.

It is also one thing for a scientist, academic or expert to knowingly, for whatever reason, use the same term for different things or properties (because it may not, one would hope, actually hinder their doing the science involved) but another thing if the understanding among humans generally is actually more confused, and thus effectively embracing illusions, eg that the redness is actually on the strawberry, about which I think there is general agreement among relevant experts that this is actually a mistaken idea, and not even taught in many school physics classes (eg mine in the 1970's). The end result is that people might conceptually have matters entirely the wrong way around.

 

[ruby sparks]

Wow! That is quite a bit heavier than I was thinking. But just off the top of my head (or pulled from my nether regions), I think that how faithfully our senses reflect reality would depend on which particular sense we are talking about.

It doesn't seem to me that taste would have much at all in common with any aspect of the object we are tasting. However taste would be beneficial, in a survival sense. We crave sweets and fats which taste informs us about and which gives us calories and energy. Taste also identifies salt which we also crave and the body needs to remain healthy. Evolution is an unforgiving bitch... those who didn't crave the taste of nutrients the body needs were dropped from the gene pool.

The sense of touch would seem to give us a closer representation of reality. I would think the sensation of texture, solidness, heft, size etc. would probably be fairly faithful information about reality.

The sense of hearing (in humans, not bats or dolphins) seems to me to be more useful in sensing movement of things more so than the things themselves.

Finally sight. For humans this is our primary sense for understanding our environment. Personally, I think it is a fairly reliable sense for informing us of the shape, identity, and position of objects in our environment. At least I have yet to reach to open the door of my auto and be surprised to find it doesn't exist for my sense of touch or that it is a tiger.

More interesting thoughts, that I would tend to agree with. Sadly, I don't think (tell me if you disagree) that any of them, yours or mine, are yet getting us much closer to explanations for the apparent (and for the OP, key) distinction between 'internal only' and 'internal plus external'. But I for one don't mind chewing the cud about them for a while because something might yet turn up that is at least indicative of something relevant. And anyway, I am stuck in lockdown and it is fun to spend time on this even if it is never resolved (which I fully expect it won't be by us here).

I hear what you say about car doors not turning out not to be there or be tigers, but as regards them 'being as they seem to be' I'm not sure if perception of shape is or isn't more accurate (even if it is in some ways what I have called more 'faithful' in property terms). Shape illusions seem to be as common as colour ones, I think, including the 'not being there at all' ones such as shapes that are mirages.

One difference is that the former can at least be 'checked', ie a possible error of visual illusion of shape can be uncovered more readily, in another way (we can measure the 2-D one below with a ruler for example) or by using another sense (eg by handling a small 3-D object or wrapping our arms around or trying to climb over a large one). And I think that's important to note, although I'm not sure in what way it might be important to the OP question. But at least it's a 'second opinion' (or in empirical terms a second source of evidence) concerning certain features or properties of the world outside our heads.



It is also possible to similarly check at least some things about colour illusions. Two apparently different 'squares' can be set directly against each other and we can see that the illusion that they were not the same was a mistake, but as far as I am aware there is no way to check that they are objectively a colour of any sort in the first instance, or whether that's merely a 'mental projection' (of two real colours) on our part. Such illusions of property location are of course not uncommon. The one I have been using here from time to time is the one where we (incorrectly) think what we call a pain in our toe is actually in our toe when it's actually at completely the other end of our body instead.

 

[ruby sparks]

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

Yes. I agree about the precision and refinement, and it is worth bearing in mind, because it reminds us that other animals may perceive the world in very different ways indeed to the ways we do. We could and possibly should also include plants in our comparisons.

So because we don't (possibly can't) know what their internal experiences are like, I earlier suggested a hypothetical creature that did have vivid experiences to accompany their perceptions of certain (to them) crucial properties of the external world (eg electricity, or as you say sonar, and in theory any number of properties, which some creatures do indeed rely on) in the way that we have vivid experiences to accompany what we perceive via our various senses. This hypothetical leads to the suggestion that the organism would think the world outside it's head was bright and vivid, but the creature would actually be moving around in the equivalent of complete darkness (and silence). And at this point I'm still willing to consider that hypothetical a distinct possibility. And it has been suggested by some of the academics cited in the thread (though oddly, not often by philosophers discussing colour, who by omission seems to have it that if the world is not actually coloured, it is merely in monochrome, as if they have not thought through the full implications).

The other interesting question is whether radio or gamma waves, for example, are coloured, but that we just can't see the colour. To me, this seems a bit problematical, a bit of a stretch. But when considering wavelengths closer to our visual spectrum, it doesn't intuitively seem so problematical. It doesn't seem awry to say (and in some ways demonstrate, via optical filters for example, but also more recently via gene modifications) that other creatures can see (or at least detect) infra-red or ultraviolet, because (in some species) there are, for example, more types of cones (or alternatively just a different type of perception/processing system). Thus suggesting in principle that if we had those cones or systems, we'd see more colours. And of course some humans do have 4 types instead of the usual 3, and by all accounts see slightly differently, as of course do those with 'defects' such as colour blindness. And apparently some people (especially children, I read) can 'see' a small way into the UV wavelengths as a whitish-bluish colour.

But of course it may be, and indeed I would say is arguably likely (for a variety of reasons) that a certain shrimp, one that might have four times as many cone types as us (I think such a shrimp exists), actually has no accompanying colour experiences. That this is the case for some organisms seems clear. In some simple creatures which have no brain as such, and indeed in plants in a slightly different way, the 'signals' from the cells receiving the input just go straight to the motor parts of the organism that can enable it to move (eg change direction). Thus an intervening brain would seem to be necessary for colour experiences and as such even seeing (in the extreme case) radio waves as coloured would not mean they necessarily were (if the colours were still created in the brain).

 

[fromderinside]

In fact it is what I have been saying. Absorption of a photon causes the photoreceptor to fire. There is absolutely no mention of COLOR, no claim that given frequencies of EM are COLOR, no claim that those frequencies of EM striking the photoreceptor molecules transform the photon to COLOR.

If you find COLOR in what you copied and pasted then it wasn't by the author... it was something you read into it that wasn't there.

My intent was to produce an article that sought to define opsins as the phototransducers

This present book Cones and Color Vision https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK11059/ embellishes the discussion in terms of color vision.

[FONT=&quot]A special property of the cone system is color vision. Perceiving color allows humans (and many other animals) to discriminate objects on the basis of the distribution of the wavelengths of light that they reflect to the eye. .... [/FONT][FONT=&quot]This nomenclature implies that individual cones provide color information for the wavelength of light that excites them best. In fact, individual cones, like rods, are entirely color blind in that their response is simply a reflection of the number of photons they capture .[/FONT]...
This ambiguity can only be resolved by comparing the activity in different classes of cones. Based on the responses of individual ganglion cells, and cells at higher levels in the visual pathway (see Chapter 12), comparisons of this type are clearly involved in how the visual system extracts color information from spectral stimuli.

Figure 11 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK11059/figure/A766/?report=objectonly



Makes clear the origins of color vision comes from transduction

Box D The Importance of Context in Color Perception https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK11059/box/A767/?report=objectonly

discuss the limitations of understanding color vision when processing the color information following transduction.



I don't think anyone is going to confuse perceptual processes in the nervous system with phototransduction. The essence of what the eye provides to the nervous system is light differentiated into a trichromatic spectrum of color.

I pretty much made this clear when I wrote transduction is the source of color while nervous system is responsible for what becomes of it after processing and integrating it into a perceptual scene.

We are only interested in resolving whether color is real before the nervous system processes it to make our point that color exists as material before it is processed by the nervous system.

 

[ruby sparks]

We are only interested in resolving whether color is real before the nervous system processes it.....

..... to make our point that color exists as material before it is processed by the nervous system.

Cool. Now perhaps you could wait until the first quoted part above is resolved, because otherwise the first and second parts are merely a tautology.

Unless you are in some way distinguishing between 'real' and 'exists as material'.

Or you could go ahead and make the point (or claim) in the second part above, and add that it is a component of your (possibly strongly) preferred model, which you defend as one viable one but not the only possible example of that, but note that it is based on a currently unresolved issue in the first part above.

 

[fromderinside]

I'm going with bilby's response, to a similar argument ruby sparkes made on another thread. What she asks isn't possible "....outside the Standard Model can affect things in that model at scales relevant to human beings is one of those things."

 

[ruby sparks]

If that's a prelude to a 'how many photons does it take to change a coloured light bulb' joke then I think I might already know the punchline.

 

[fromderinside]

Sorry. I'm using real = material

Is it real? = Is it material?

Has it been found to be real = has it been found to be material?

 

[Politesse]

Sorry. I'm using real = material

Is it real? = Is it material?

Has it been found to be real = has it been found to be material?

A meaningless distinction. Everything is material, or at least has a material element. Anything you can imagine is the result of some real neurological process. There is no "unreal", if that is the only bar one must reach to qualify.

We also have no means to test whether something exists before we have perceived it. If we're talking about it, we have perceived it.

I continue to maintain, in any case, that it makes no sense to talk about color with respect to wavelength, which certainly exists but is not divided into the categories we call "colors" by any naturally existing boundary. When a person refers to a "color", they mean the concept in their head as applied to their perceptive world, not a theoretical property that they have no access to. Hence why different cultures and languages are able to develop different systems of color without becoming disabled in their ability to navigate the world.

 

[fromderinside]

On testing whether something exists before we perceive it we have spatial representation of place and color in the nervous system prior those elements being used to perceive. Think of it as a rock existing before an eye sees it.

Take the puzzle of whether the sound of the deaf person's hand clapping. There are other animals with essentially the same equipment man has there to experience it. Having a human mind available isn't necessary.

If you really need an example install a one hundred forty dB sound source in a dry cedar forest. Count the number of branches on the ground. Then turn it on emitting a 40 hz sound. After one minute turn it off. Now go back and count the number of branches on the ground.

That should be enough evidence for even you.

That conception of color in is built in as I just mentioned when I spoke of color topical and spatial topical. Many seem to go into this as egoists rather than rationalists. Unfortunately what is required here are empiricists.

Please put down your self reporting as evidence. It isn't.

Americans are doing just fine using foot, quart, pound building cars. Hell, even european mechanics can repair them. So why not other configurations of color just as long as it is color. Think cat skinning.

 

[skepticalbip]

In fact it is what I have been saying. Absorption of a photon causes the photoreceptor to fire. There is absolutely no mention of COLOR, no claim that given frequencies of EM are COLOR, no claim that those frequencies of EM striking the photoreceptor molecules transform the photon to COLOR.

If you find COLOR in what you copied and pasted then it wasn't by the author... it was something you read into it that wasn't there.

My intent was to produce an article that sought to define opsins as the phototransducers

This present book Cones and Color Vision https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK11059/ embellishes the discussion in terms of color vision.

[FONT="]A special property of the cone system is color vision. Perceiving color allows humans (and many other animals) to discriminate objects on the basis of the distribution of the wavelengths of light that they reflect to the eye. .... [/FONT][/COLOR][COLOR=#000000][FONT="]This nomenclature implies that individual cones provide color information for the wavelength of light that excites them best. In fact, individual cones, like rods, are entirely color blind in that their response is simply a reflection of the number of photons they capture .[/FONT]...
[FONT=&]This ambiguity can only be resolved by [/FONT]comparing the activity in different classes of cones. Based on the responses of individual ganglion cells, and cells at higher levels in the visual pathway (see Chapter 12), comparisons of this type are clearly involved in how the visual system extracts color information from spectral stimuli.

Figure 11 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK11059/figure/A766/?report=objectonly

View attachment 27400

Makes clear the origins of color vision comes from transduction

Box D The Importance of Context in Color Perception https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK11059/box/A767/?report=objectonly

discuss the limitations of understanding color vision when processing the color information following transduction.

View attachment 27401

I don't think anyone is going to confuse perceptual processes in the nervous system with phototransduction. The essence of what the eye provides to the nervous system is light differentiated into a trichromatic spectrum of color.

I pretty much made this clear when I wrote transduction is the source of color while nervous system is responsible for what becomes of it after processing and integrating it into a perceptual scene.

We are only interested in resolving whether color is real before the nervous system processes it to make our point that color exists as material before it is processed by the nervous system.

And once again, the problem is in defining what you mean by color - and then actually considering what that definition would imply. If color is defined as a property of something like a strawberry then specific frequencies of EM radiation is not color because strawberries are not made of EM. If it is defined as specific frequencies of EM then the signal that the photoreceptors create and send to the optic nerve when they are excited by a photon is not color because it is not EM. If color is defined as the signal the photoreceptor creates when excited by a photon then those specific frequencies of EM are not color. If how the mind interprets the signal from the optic nerve that fires neurons in the brain then the signal from the photoreceptor is not color.

Like many "problems" those who consider themselves philosophers deal with, this one is a matter of not first strictly defining the terms they are arguing about. I would posit, since color is an experience not a thing, that color would be best defined as a process. 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.

But then that particular chain is not really necessary for someone to experience color. All that is required is those neurons in the brain to be triggered. This can be done by direct stimulation of those neurons. Then again, someone with a good imagination can easily do it just by thinking about a color.

 

[fromderinside]

I'll leave the meaning of color up to the likes of Helmholtz and others who followed him in similar vein. Besides I've already partitioned perception from the existence of color becoming information in the nervous system. If you want to play perception games then you need to specify the conditions of those games. So when you actually do specify the conditions of those games, the rules, the situations, the meanings, the physics behind them, then maybe I'll jump in and show you how they got to color as they did.

Meanwhile I'll stick to light and its impact on human sensors which have evolved to make them available to the nervous system which I did above.

Geez. Always running for another reason to prolong the discussion when it has already been decisively concluded. Every time you intervene I'll ask for more definition of conditions and processes so we can control the experiment in a way to lead to a singular result. I've found the material cause. Now you need to work with the system I developed to show me the error in my ways or my finding stands. You can't just add an elephant and say now what?

As for your triggered neurons you need some mechanisms to define the need for those neurons. It always comes back to cause and effect. You can't get an effect without a cause. So you may as well as I asked above because you need to justify those neurons acting.

Just one more thing. What respectable psychologist or physicist or neurobiologist would begin with "since color is an experience not a thing, that ....yada yada ..... ." No person who is interested in finding answers prejudges what his result is going to be. If color is fundamental it's relationship to light properties must be fundamentally sound. That is why biophysicists looked for the mechanism of transduction and found opsins.

 

[skepticalbip]

I'll leave the meaning of color up to the likes of Helmholtz and others who followed him in similar vein. Besides I've already partitioned perception from the existence of color becoming information in the nervous system. If you want to play perception games then you need to specify the conditions of those games. So when you actually do specify the conditions of those games, the rules, the situations, the meanings, the physics behind them, then maybe I'll jump in and show you how they got to color as they did.

Meanwhile I'll stick to light and its impact on human sensors which have evolved to make them available to the nervous system which I did above.

That is silly. No one can reasonably discuss color until the first define what the fuck they are talking about. Then that definition needs to be adhered to throughout the reasoning or they are talking gibberish. If, as you have done, you define color as a wavelength of light then color only exists as EM radiation. If, as you have done, you define color as the biolectric firing of a photodetector then it can not be EM radiation, or a conscious experience. A photodetector firing is just a photodetector firing. It doesn't fire in red, green, blue, purple, yellow, etc.

Geez. Always running for another reason to prolong the discussion when it has already been decisively concluded. Every time you intervene I'll ask for more definition of conditions and processes so we can control the experiment in a way to lead to a singular result. I've found the material cause. Now you need to work with the system I developed to show me the error in my ways or my finding stands. You can't just add an elephant and say now what?

Read my post that you are pretending to be responding to and you will see that I explicitly defined the condition and process that I am proposing.

As for your triggered neurons you need some mechanisms to define the need for those neurons. It always comes back to cause and effect. You can't get an effect without a cause. So you may as well as I asked above because you need to justify those neurons acting.

Neurons firing is how the conscious mind works. It is the firing of neurons that create our thoughts, recollections, and interpretation of sensory input. This can actually be imaged in a MRI. A patient can be placed in a MRI and instructed to visualize some color (like red or green) and the appropriate neurons firing can be detected and displayed - the same neurons detected as firing if they are shown a card in that color. Without a conscious mind there is no sense of color.

Just one more thing. What respectable psychologist or physicist or neurobiologist would begin with "since color is an experience not a thing, that ....yada yada ..... ." No person who is interested in finding answers prejudges what his result is going to be. If color is fundamental it's relationship to light properties must be fundamentally sound. That is why biophysicists looked for the mechanism of transduction and found opsins.

No scientist can test any hypothesis until they first define what they are testing, what mechanism they are looking to disprove or verify.

 

[fromderinside]

 Young-Helmholtz theory


Photostimulation of Single Cones https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2195057/pdf/101.pdf

SUMMARY
A method of illuminating individual cones in the isolated functioning fish retina is described. The electrical response (L type) of the second order of retinal neurons has been recorded when one cone is being illuminated. In evoking a response in the second order of retinal neurons, the cones in the center of the area of convergence proved to have equal thresholds. The amplitude of the response evoked by stimulation of one cone was graded and proportional to the logarithm of the light intensity. The relationship between the amplitude of the response and the number of cones illuminated was also studied. The spatial summation of the synaptic effects of the cones was linearfor a certain limited area, which was different for different species of fish.At the bipolar level no inhibitory interactions between the receptive fields were observed.

fluttering around in the sky was a bi.., er leaf driven by the whimsy of a wandering thought.

...and the research just keeps confirming the authors above.

You might also look up  Visual phototransduction to clarify the photon-action potential issue