COLOUR

[untermensche]

Vision is not seeing the world.

It is experiencing a representation of the world created by the brain in response to stimulation from the world.

The brain can create "blue". Just close your eyes and force your brain to do it.

 

[fromderinside]

Vision is not seeing the world.

It is experiencing a representation of the world created by the brain in response to stimulation from the world.

The brain can create "blue". Just close your eyes and force your brain to do it.

The brain is a responsive organism. The physical world drives everything to which the brain reacts or is designed to accommodate for which it was driven to be designed to accommodate. No invention, here, no divinity, no magic, just hard dirt driven activities hopefully best suited to where the being finds itself.

Even in vison where if light of particular kinds aren't available it reacts with "here". That particular kind of information, color, key to becoming part of the information the brain must be of certain frequencies to which biological system can respond. That means the only way information can get in is via photosensitive material imbedded in receptors. Not only are the transducers color sensitive there is a subsystem that tunes to response moving up from the ganglion cells specifying the extent of the received color is correlated with adjacent receptor inputs. I presumed you knew that.

That's why its important to see that prior to entering the brain proper, the receptor system including ganglion cells determine if, what, and how that information comes to brain.

There is no magic here. The brain gets very clear information about what is going on in the world including information encoded in transducer terms. They, the transducers, are color sensitive and color transferring representing the totality of visual input - that is not including compensation for balance and vestibular corrections etc, - the brain has available for the individual to react and deal. Nothing special here. The brain gets information from the world transduced into color codes from the frequencies the receptor transduces.

No magic, just a central processor treating information as it has received via spectrally sensitive transducers. No creation, just spatial representation of what has been passed to it.

So put your little "experience is the only place where brain treats color so it must be a creation, an experience" into the waste bin of unnecessary intervening variables.

I've taken away your pot. Quit trying to piss in it.

 

[untermensche]

Vision is not seeing the world.

It is experiencing a representation of the world created by the brain in response to stimulation from the world.

The brain can create "blue". Just close your eyes and force your brain to do it.

The brain is a responsive organism.

That is part of the story. The brain receives a variety of stimulus at the eye and responds by constructing the experience of vision from it. The brain is receptive, responsive and creative. Pain is pure creation. There is no correlate to pain in the external world. Pain is pure subjective experience. Pure brain creation. Color is the same thing. Pure creation of the brain. Not a thing in the world.

Every thought that comes from nowhere into consciousness shows the creative nature of the brain.

Consciousness is a creation. The desk in the mind is not the same desk in the world. It is a representation of the desk in the world. Created by the brain as a visual experience. The entirety of the visual experience is a creation by the brain. There are over 30 areas of the brain that are involved in creating the visual experience.

No invention, here, no divinity, no magic, just hard dirt driven activities hopefully best suited to where the being finds itself.

The creation of the experience of pain is not magic.

Nor is the creation of the experience of color.

Nor is the creation of consciousness and the ability to have experiences.

An experience is not energy hitting a few switches. A visual experience is what the brain makes out of the information from switches in the eye. The external world does not enter the eye and travel to the brain. The brain has no access to the external world. It only has access to the information from receptor cells.

That particular kind of information, color, key to becoming part of the information the brain must be of certain frequencies to which biological system can respond.

There is no color information in EM radiation. There is only a variety of information. The brain uses this variety and creates color. Color creation clearly helps in many survival tasks like recognizing poisonous animals and fruit. That's why it is still around.

That means the only way information can get in is via photosensitive material imbedded in receptors.

Within a tiny part of the EM spectrum there is energy that can cause chemical reactions in the eye. Depending on the wavelength the receptor cells send a different signal to the brain. All the receptor cells can do is discern variation within the EM radiation. The energy varies by wavelength. It does not have color or color information. It has variety. That is all.

The brain has all the color information and it uses this information to create the different colors people can experience. Color is only an experience. A brain created experience like all experiences.

That's why its important to see that prior to entering the brain proper, the receptor system including ganglion cells determine if, what, and how that information comes to brain.

The receptor cell behaves reflexively. It is a switch. It does not make decisions. You have not moved one inch past this metaphor. EM energy is just a hand that throws a switch. And depending on the shape of the hand (energy level of the photons) you have different switches thrown.

There is no magic here.

The brain creating all of consciousness is not magic. The brain creating the experience of pain or smell or taste is not magic.

The brain creating color is not magic.

I've taken away your pot. Quit trying to piss in it.

My pot is right here. I smoke it regularly.

You have no argument that demonstrates color is not a pure creation of the brain.

 

[Jayjay]

No, he is not. He has seen color before, the glasses just makes it easier. The type of color blindness that these glasses help with is not lack of certain cone cells, it's just that the frequencies that their two types of cone cells (red and green) can detect are very close to each other. If they were completely lacking either type of cell, the goggles would do nothing.

No. He is seeing colors he has never experienced before.

Color is an experience.

It is not anything else.

That's nonsense. If it was nothing else, then how do you know he is experiencing color? He could be experiencing taste or sound or pain or shape or weight or whatever else. More realistically though, he is at least partially experiencing happiness and joy from the social interaction with his family. But the point is, according to your own argument, it's all in his head. So who are you to tell what he is experiencing?

I'll answer that for you. Because what he is experiencing is not just in his brain. Color is not just his brains interpretation, color is a thing in the real world, just like shape, size, weight or any other physical quantity.

The energy that causes the brain to create the experience of color is not color. It is just something that cause the brain to construct the experience of color. Bats construct what we call a visual experience with reflected sound waves. They easily fly in what we call the dark.

All experience is a creation of the brain.

Except shape and size apparently.

You keep asserting that color is a perception, but a mere assertion has no greater merit than asserting the opposite: that color is a physical phenomenon and what you are labeling as color is merely the perception of that phenomenon. Furthermore, you are internally inconsistent because you are arbitrarily saying that some things that brains perceive are somehow different than other things they perceive. But they are not. It's all just brain cells firing in various patterns.

 

[untermensche]

That's nonsense. If it was nothing else, then how do you know he is experiencing color?

It is what they say. A sound or a taste is not part of a visual experience. They say they are experiencing color for the first time. And they are incredibly emotional.

Why would I doubt them?

More realistically though, he is at least partially experiencing happiness and joy from the social interaction with his family.

BULL! The guy was a hardened old man that didn't get the least bit emotional until he put on the glasses. Then suddenly he was dancing around like a kid on Christmas. Crying and laughing and not knowing what to make of these new experiences he has never had before.

But the point is, according to your own argument, it's all in his head. So who are you to tell what he is experiencing?

Something incredibly emotional. He is experiencing color for the first time. These people are not lying when they say they are experiencing color for the first time.

The energy that causes the brain to create the experience of color is not color. It is just something that cause the brain to construct the experience of color. Bats construct what we call a visual experience with reflected sound waves. They easily fly in what we call the dark.

All experience is a creation of the brain.

Except shape and size apparently.

Our experience of shape is an experience. But it is an experience of something in the world.

And the experience of shape can be tested. If we can swing through trees and not fall then the shape experienced MUST be very close to the actual shape of the object.

Shape and size and texture can be tested. Simply reach out and see how closely the experience of shape corresponds to that cup. Can you easily grasp it and drink from it? Then the experience of shape and size MUST be close to the actual shape and size of the cup.

You can't do any test to demonstrate you are experiencing the proper color. Because objects don't have color. They have reflective properties. And human brains create the experience of color from colorless energy that bounces off objects.

 

[untermensche]

Energy is in the world.

Light is not in the world.

The experience of light is totally a creation of the brain.

You do not see the table.

You experience a representation of the table created by the brain.

You can easily test to see how close the size and shape of the table match your brain created representation of the table. Reach out and touch the table. It will provide resistance. It is there.

The color you experience is just an evolutionary contingency that helped with survival. Color is not a property of the table. Color is a neural phenomena. It only exists as an experience.

 

[untermensche]

For those who believe in magic evolution, how did an energy wave cause a brain to create a specific color?

How did:



Cause a brain to create:



And not:



How did the brain know it was creating the proper experience?

 

[fromderinside]

You might ask how the brain caused sound to be treated as music, or deformed skin to be treated as touch or stroke. Take as presumption what was used to bring in that information then add experience in the womb when that information was arriving at the receptors and stimulating them. You might conclude, if you looked at how neurons adapt to input, that they learned to treat it as color, sound, touch, stroke. When the child is born that information was coming constantly and in many varieties in each modality that the nervous system adjusts to each specific type of input appropriately due to parents and rewards and more learning.

Ask yourself why there are neurons in every ascending pathway that responds to others doing what the individual would as if the individual was doing it oneself. We have very advanced nervous systems that can be rapidly conditioned and modified to do things like auditory cortex in a deaf person acting as either skin or visual cortex to support processing of light or touch.

No the brain doesn't create experience it facilitates, succors, interprets them. It is a wonderful machine. It does not create a man in machine to give rise to consciousness it facilitates integrations to generate operating models from which ones attending jumps as calculations change. The theater is way after the fact. Experience is actually historical. We behave then we interpret why we behave.

 

[untermensche]

You might ask how the brain caused sound to be treated as music, or deformed skin to be treated as touch or stroke.

So-called sound waves are out in the world.

Sound however is an experience, like color. Sound only exists as an experience. Bats turn what we call high frequency sound waves into a visual experience, not sound.

Music is a form of human art, like painting and sculpture. It is something humans construct. It says something about the human ability to create.

We have very advanced nervous systems that can be rapidly conditioned and modified to do things like auditory cortex in a deaf person acting as either skin or visual cortex to support processing of light or touch.

The plasticity of the brain in terms of the creation of experience shows how important the creation of experience is to survival.

No the brain doesn't create experience

The brain creates everything you call an experience. You can only experience what the workings of a brain allow you to experience.

The brain has evolved to create color when the eye is stimulated by certain frequencies of energy.

That is why you can experience color.

Not because there is any color out there to experience.

 

[fromderinside]

Not because there is any color out there to experience.

We still disagree.

I point out:
1) the light sensitive receptor elements tell us there is color in the world,
2) the mechanics in the vision receptor system also tell us there is color out in the world, and
3) material light absorption tell us there is color in the world.

The brain constructs many models from which ongoing events determine what we 'experience', a model selected from those available after we have acted.

Consequently consciousness, from which 'experience', is derived is an illusion constructed from elements of what behavior we have already completed.

I remain consistent in showing the world is determined without the need for dualism, man in machine.

We have exhaustively stated our positions and we both understand other's position pretty well.

There Untermensche, let the reader decide.

 

[untermensche]

Not because there is any color out there to experience.

1) the light sensitive receptor elements tell us there is color in the world,

They tell us there is a variety of energy waves in the world and that photons can cause a chemical reaction. That is all they tell us.

2) the mechanics in the vision receptor system also tell us there is color out in the world, and

The receptor is no more than a complicated switch that gives the brain a signal if a chemical reaction takes place. The receptor knows nothing about color nor transmits any information about color. It transmits the fact that a chemical reaction has taken place. Nothing more. It is a dumb switch.

Waves of energy are not color. They do not contain color information. Brains of evolving animals make what they can from them.

Human brains have evolved to make color from colorless waves of energy.

3) material light absorption tell us there is color in the world.

That merely tells us that molecules absorb some energy and reflect some energy. There is no color in that.

The brain constructs many models from which ongoing events determine what we 'experience', a model selected from those available after we have acted.

The brain constructs all of experience. Experience is not a model. It is a finished product.

Color is like pain however. Something experienced but not something out in the world.

I remain consistent in showing the world is determined without the need for dualism, man in machine.

Consciousness is not a man in a machine. With quantum physics the idea of "machine" has no meaning anymore.

Consciousness is that which is aware and the things it is aware of. Two things. You can't have consciousness with only things to be aware of or just something that can be aware of things. You need both. This dichotomy is not a man in a machine. It is consciousness.

 

[Ahab]

That's nonsense. If it was nothing else, then how do you know he is experiencing color? He could be experiencing taste or sound or pain or shape or weight or whatever else. More realistically though, he is at least partially experiencing happiness and joy from the social interaction with his family. But the point is, according to your own argument, it's all in his head. So who are you to tell what he is experiencing?

I'll answer that for you. Because what he is experiencing is not just in his brain. Color is not just his brains interpretation, color is a thing in the real world, just like shape, size, weight or any other physical quantity.

Pretty much agree with you here.

Looks like untermensche has bought into Cartesian mechanism which is a metaphysical doctrine from the 17th century.

I would highly recommend Stephen Gaukrogers' book "The Emergence of a Scientific Culture" for detailed information about it.
Here is a link to a sample of the book: LINK

 

[untermensche]

Looks like you have bought into magic evolution where colorless EM energy can force evolving brains to create specific experiences of color.

Hogwash.

There is no way for any brain to know what color to produce simply by energy exciting receptor cells.

Experience is that which experiences AND that which is experienced.

There is no rational way to do away with this dichotomy and still talk about experience.

 

[fromderinside]

So an eagle, a bird with very good color vision, has experiences?

Care to share the rationality of that?

 

[untermensche]

An eagle can't tell us what it has. But it behaves exactly as we do. It avoids obstacles and chases what it wants and catches it.

Why would we think the eagle is not experiencing as we experience?

BUT why would we think the eagle turns colorless energy into the same experience we have?

The colors eagles experience are the colors that helped birds survive. They may be totally different colors than the colors that helped mammals survive.

 

[Swammerdami]

... BUT why would we think the eagle turns colorless energy into the same experience we have?

The colors eagles experience are the colors that helped birds survive. They may be totally different colors than the colors that helped mammals survive.

I don't think we need to guess. Knowledge of biochemical details is growing by leaps and bounds. IIUC many vertebrates, including birds, have FOUR types of cone (four different pigments ... or five when rods are included) and therefore may have a 4-D color gamut compared with human's 3-D gamut. (It may be preferable to describe these as respectively 3-D and 2-D chromaticity gamuts.)

Mammals outside the Primate Order, OTOH, may have just two cone types.

 

[untermensche]

... BUT why would we think the eagle turns colorless energy into the same experience we have?

The colors eagles experience are the colors that helped birds survive. They may be totally different colors than the colors that helped mammals survive.

I don't think we need to guess. Knowledge of biochemical details is growing by leaps and bounds. IIUC many vertebrates, including birds, have FOUR types of cone (four different pigments ... or five when rods are included) and therefore may have a 4-D color gamut compared with human's 3-D gamut. (It may be preferable to describe these as respectively 3-D and 2-D chromaticity gamuts.)

Mammals outside the Primate Order, OTOH, may have just two cone types.

Color is an experience. Like pain.

The switches in the eye (receptor cells) are far removed from experience. They are several layers away from the brain and within the brain visual information is processed in dozens of areas to produce the visual experience.

A human could turn the information from the eye into one color experience and a bird could turn the same information into a totally different experience. Bats turn sound waves into a visual experience. There is no reason to think the human experience of reflected energy is the pinnacle of experience and it defines all of experience. That is anthropocentric nonsense.

What color the brain creates is an evolutionary contingency.

The colors produced increased the animals ability to survive. The colors produced relate to the organism and it's ability to survive. They have nothing to do with objects in the world or energy that has no color.

 

[fromderinside]

You spout without evidence humans experience. Then you presume that eagles must experience because they see colors. But you again show no evidence that eagles experience either.

They have this because they need to have this isn't a reason.

You're acting like canvas back punchbag. From hither to yon with nary a step.

Let go of that nonexistent straw you can't produce. We all know it isn't there. You are beginning to embarrass yourself.

If there is no connection with color from sense then there is no rational for the brain to produce color. To say it is is an unsupportable argument. You look for a straw and you grab evolutionary contingency as the motivator for generating color experience with the brain. There is no contingency if there is no rationale beyond "It must be thus because it must be thus".

If seeing colors increases the likelihood of survival it must be then that something relating to color is operating in the world. By choosing instead to make up experience of color unsupported by cause you lose the motivation for the making up color.

 

[Swammerdami]

If there is no connection with color from sense then there is no rational for the brain to produce color. To say it is is an unsupportable argument. You look for a straw and you grab evolutionary contingency as the motivator for generating color experience with the brain. There is no contingency if there is no rationale beyond "It must be thus because it must be thus".

If seeing colors increases the likelihood of survival it must be then that something relating to color is operating in the world. By choosing instead to make up experience of color unsupported by cause you lose the motivation for the making up color.

Good point.

Once upon a time my work involved rendition of color images, and I became aware of a "paradoxical" fact about human color perception related to the above. It seems interesting to me, but it may be unrelated to the on-going "debate" in this thread.

 MacAdam ellipse refers to measurements of human color perception. Click the link and study the image in top right to see that humans are more capable of perceiving slight differences in browns and purple-pinks rather than slight differences in green saturation.

The paradox I observed is that, contrary to what you might assume from the chart of MacAdam ellipses, errors in green rendition of a photograph were MORE objectionable or noticeable (with one exception) than errors in rendition of purple-pink or brown. I think this is because greens are associated with vegetation and humans know exactly what color vegetation is. Pinks and browns are associated with dirt and mountains, where there is much color variation anyway. (The exception is browns and pinks in human faces. There you do want to get the color right!)

The effect I describe is my own invention: I've never seen it discussed in textbooks. Maybe I'm "all wet."

 

[untermensche]

You spout without evidence humans experience.

I have the same evidence of experience you have. The only evidence that exists. The subjective experience of experience.

But what is known beyond any doubt about experience is that experience is one thing being aware, being conscious of some other thing. The subjective mind being aware of color is to experience color.

There is no other rational way to talk about experience except by saying experience is a subject experiencing things.

You're acting like canvas back punchbag. From hither to yon with nary a step.

This is serious delusion. Something some cult member might say.

Let go of that nonexistent straw you can't produce. We all know it isn't there. You are beginning to embarrass yourself.

What isn't there?

What am I engaging with?

If there is no connection with color from sense then there is no rational for the brain to produce color.

And if there is no connection with pain from sense then there is no rational (sic) for the brain to produce pain.

Nonsense!!!!!

The ability to experience color arose by accident (like all things related to humans) and because it aided with survival it remained.