COLOUR

[untermensche]

There is a modern madness.

It says: I experience therefore I do not exist.

I experience pain and pleasure and the sorrow of loss and hope for tomorrow. And color.

We have not moved one inch philosophically beyond "I think therefore I exist". That is as absolutely true today as it was when Descartes wrote it.

The only question is: What am "I"?

Descartes said "soul". Today we say some creation by a brain.

 

[fromderinside]

All true if you are a dualist. (Un)fortunately there is no material basis for dualism. It is because it dualism depends on using circular reasoning is not an explanation. Thinking is not evidence of existence. Thinking is self justification in (choose your language) that you are aware. It is from self therefore not evidence.

On the other hand, if you record from others and find work is being performed, oxygen is being used by cells, then you have a basis for measuring something. One still has to link what one has received with what one puts out through what is going on to be in a position to build a model. We don't seem to have an experience area in the brain. We have many possibilities, all of which can be justified by following the evidence, but still no place for experience. That experience is a convenience arises from we the fact we can't pin down the consequence from our current understanding of behavior bases.

My evidence doesn't include making up nonexistent reasons for something I want to be because I 'experience' it, or am 'conscious' of it. First person is the last thing one to which one resorts to, in desperation, justify a belief. Nothing more of an opiate than I 'experienced' that. I accept that many models are possible at anytime based on material evidence but as yet don't see a consistent connection with those models and behavior or one's report of experience. It's become painfully obvious that what one calls experience is made up of many elements of on going activity but, as yet, there is no pathway to experience beyond it comes from a broad assembly of possibilities.

Step back. Find potential material associations, Test them empirically. The build and test a theory based on material results arising from those tests. You will wind up with causes which reliably lead to consequences. If your 'cause' is a belief. You failed to do the necessary work.

Finally, the feeling of pain and the experience of blue are both consequent of relevant stimuli passing through receptor systems containing elements necessary for sensing damage and color respectively whatever the combination of models exist from those inputs. The fact that one senses pain and the other senses color is suggestive of underlying systems that pullout relevant data to accomplish each task. No invention of the the non-material thing experience is needed.

 

[Jayjay]

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?

Because according to you, color is not something that exists in the world. So why should filtering out some of the wavelengths of light that hit his eyes cause any particular experience in his brain? I have a perfectly good reason to think that he is reacting to his changed visual perception of color; you don't, because to you color is a religious experience that has no connection to reality.

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.

That's not what is happening though. I've already explained twice how these glasses work: they filter out a certain band of wavelengths, near the peaks of his L and M cone cells. This makes it easier for him to distinguish colors, but it doesn't give him any supernatural ability to see colors he could never see before. As for being emotional, you can easily find videos of people in thralls of religious experiences acting as if they are seeing God for the first time or some shit. It's called self-suggestion.

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.

If someone said they felt the presence of Christ when they went to church, they might not be lying either, but that doesn't make it true.

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.

Just like color. But the experience of color is not the color itself, just like experience of shape is not the shape.

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.

Just like color. Traffic lights would not be very effective if people could interpret "red" and "green" in ways not corresponding to the actual color of the light.

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.

Just like color then. The fact that you can read this is a clue that your experience of color must be close to the actual color of the pixels on the screen.

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.

Color is not a property of the objects that reflect color, it's a property of light. It's patently false to say that the energy is "colorless", you might as well claim that the coffee cup you are holding is "shapeless" until your brain gives it a shape.

 

[untermensche]

Thinking is not evidence of existence.

Being aware of your thoughts IS evidence of existence. If there is something aware of thoughts then that something must exist.

I see red. I feel pain. I get tired. I like oatmeal.

Therefore I MUST exist.

There is no question about this except from the insane.

Any question about color is a question about consciousness.

It is not a question about anything in the external world.

 

[untermensche]

Because according to you, color is not something that exists in the world. So why should filtering out some of the wavelengths of light that hit his eyes cause any particular experience in his brain?

The brain is getting a different neural signal from the eye. Therefore it is making a different experience.

The person has all the mechanisms in the brain to create red. But they never got the proper signal from the eye to cause the brain to create red.

They are experiencing red for the first time. That makes grown men cry.

That's not what is happening though. I've already explained twice how these glasses work...

The glasses change the neural signal the brain is getting from the eye.

And when the brain gets a different signal it creates a different experience. Color is not the signal. It is not the stimulus on the eye. It is the experience.

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

Just like color. But the experience of color is not the color itself, just like experience of shape is not the shape.

Absolutely not.

The shape can be tested. If you bump into the object but don't want to you are not experiencing the shape correctly. The object is there.

If you fall over the cliff you did not see the shape of the cliff correctly.

The animals that don't make a good representation of shape will not survive as well as the animals that do. The experience of shape is self correcting. It gets better and better because the better you approximate shape in your experience the better you survive.

There is no way for an animal to approximate the proper color. There is no such thing as the proper color. Color is arbitrary.

In terms of mammals and apes like humans it is good for survival if the skins of fruit are vivid colors like red or yellow. Therefore the animals who by chance makes yellow out of the light reflected off bananas will survive better than the animals that makes grey out of that light.

Just like color. Traffic lights would not be very effective if people could interpret "red" and "green" in ways not corresponding to the actual color of the light.

That just shows that the same species makes the same experience of color when exposed to the same colorless energy.

The fact that humans share the same experience of color is due to their genetic proximity.

It is not evidence in any way that color is out there. What is out there is energy that has no color.

Color is not a property of the objects that reflect color, it's a property of light.

Anthropocentric nonsense.

"Light" is simply the small part of the spectrum that excites the human eye. "Light" is an anthropocentric concept based on human experience with energy.

You think that the arbitrary manner in which humans experience energy is some universal. That is anthropocentric nonsense.

There is no way for a brain to know which color it is supposed to present to consciousness based on the frequency of energy. The colors created are the colors that helped with survival the best. They have nothing to do with the world and everything to do with evolving organisms trying to survive.

 

[fromderinside]

Thinking is not evidence of existence.

Being aware of your thoughts IS evidence of existence. If there is something aware of thoughts then that something must exist.

I see red. I feel pain. I get tired. I like oatmeal.

Therefore I MUST exist.

There is no question about this except from the insane.

Any question about color is a question about consciousness.

It is not a question about anything in the external world.

I hinted at the problem of consciousness and experience when I wrote humans have many models extant at any time from which may be used to produce to behavior. The problem is that most behavior is not just the result of one model, rather it consists of aspects executed from many models which are aggregated into a single instance of collective behavior. It is apparent that what is produced is revisited as an instance of near term history apparently using tools of language and logic to form a unit. In other words what we call conscious experience is no more than a cleaned up summary of what just happened. It is neither conscious nor experience they are recordings of behavior.

 

[untermensche]

I hinted at the problem of consciousness and experience when I wrote humans have many models extant at any time from which may be used to produce to behavior.

That is meaningless gibberish that wouldn't satisfy a child.

The subjective mind has experiences and you have no clue how the brain does any of it. You have more holes in your knowledge of the workings of the brain than explanations. What you know isn't wrong. It just doesn't explain anything. You have no explanation for the phenomena of consciousness and experience.

Color is an experience. That is ALL it is.

You pretending you have any explanation for consciousness and the ability of a subjective mind to experience is nothing but bluster. You have no understanding or explanation for any aspect of it.

 

[untermensche]

The experience of color is not a property of light.

White light contains a mixture of all wavelengths in the visible spectrum. It is the dirtiest, muddiest color possible. But the visual system does not model it in that way. Instead, the visual system encodes the information of high brightness and low color. — Michael Graziano

 

[fromderinside]

The subjective mind has experiences
Color is an experience. That is ALL it is.

!. The subjective mind is scientifically (materially) meaningless in itself, ergo so is experience. It is only used because we do not yet understand the relations between brain and environment. Something that is a place holder is not a thing. It is like a black box, a hypothetical ideal vessel, for treating radiation in a frame for experimenting with the material topic not wholly understood. Now if you think of consciousness and experience in that light you should see they are only names, a container, for examining material meaning of specific brain activity.

The goal of the scientific method is to determine material relationships of material things in a, and of, the material world.

2. Color is of what we call materially discernable energy of visible light. Color is the box that provides for treating the suite of visible of stimuli. The only problem you have is that you don't understand the properties of visible light. That is to say there are physical things, including biological systems that are capable of differentially representing various components, colors, of visible light to material advantage.

Over the past 50 years we've pretty much put the concept of consciousness to rest as an illusion. We now pretty much dismiss humans acting on the world. Rather we understand ourselves as reacting to the state of the world. Consciousness is more or less an onboard reporter of how the human has and is responding to the world. We behave consistent with determinism. So much for experience - that is unless you accept experience is the translation of individual responses over time - being responsible for color constancy.

We've dropped the consciousness idea and now we're looking to explain how material differentially responsive to light frequencies and magnitude gets that information to become a consistent index of particular light. I've hinted at how neural plasticity and how information is treated in the brain as playing a determinative role in this process.

 

[untermensche]

I know beyond any doubt that I experience. That is what is known beyond doubt. All else may be an illusion.

I experience pain and pleasure and desire and vision and sound, touch, taste and smell.

There is the subjective "I" that experiences all things.

You can't wipe reality away. You must deal with it.

You're living in a delusion you can't support.

What exactly is making all those posts of yours? Please tell me, what is it that cares so much about this it is putting together sentences?

 

[untermensche]

If you are aware of this color there can be no doubt you are experiencing it.

To doubt that one can experience is as irrational as a person could be.

What is doubting? To doubt is to experience doubt.

 

[fromderinside]

I know beyond any doubt that I experience. That is what is known beyond doubt. All else may be an illusion.

And the world is definitely flat everybody can see that. It's self evident. hmmmm self?

 

[untermensche]

I know beyond any doubt that I experience. That is what is known beyond doubt. All else may be an illusion.

And the world is definitely flat everybody can see that. It's self evident. hmmmm self?

Kind of like thinking because the brain makes the experience of red when certain energy hits the eye the energy must be red.

We experience many things.

To doubt one experiences is to experience doubt.

 

[fromderinside]

I'll duck your continued use of a term that is subjective.

The brain is configured IAC with the senses with which it is informed. In the case of light the input is determined by response of light brightness and frequency sensitive materials in the retina. In the case of hearing the the input is determined by mechanical changes along the basilar membrane which provides tonotopic separation. For touch the inputs are from tissue and hairs in the skin. I think you'll also find there are cells that respond to tissue damage that provide information along pain pathways.

Similar relations can be found in position sense, orientation sense, balance sense, even vibratory sense. There is no sense to having receptors suited to stimuli unless there are also evolutionary drives to develop appropriate analysis capabilities to treat those inputs. In each case receptors are specially adapted to capture the appropriate information.

Magic is the last thing one would expect to find in a successfully adapted being.

Finally you should look at the relation between temperature and light that play a large part in motivating the development of quantum theory as a result of the photoelectric effect studies.

 

[untermensche]

You are proposing magic.

You are proposing waves of energy have color that evolving brains can somehow discern. But only a small part of the spectrum has color to you.

And why?

Because humans make color out of it.

Anthropocentric nonsense.

 

[fromderinside]

.

And why?

I'm proposing what I propose because you turn the relationship around from environment to being. The relationship is always from matter and energy to being, never from being to matter and energy.

I'm proposing much more that that. I'm proposing sense is the result of life taking advantage of material properties to provide information at and outside the extent of the life beings occupy. We respond to mechanical waves in matter, mechanical waves on skin, vibrations outside and inside the living thing, acoustic energy from other beings and things and radiation energy of several types along with molecular information about damage to tissue.

That limited range of light frequencies stimulate light sensitive matter. Or put another way, some matter responds to only some frequencies of light. Living things come from matter within those frequencies of light that stimulate matter. The last may be too broad. I suspect some matter from which life arises is made up from matter which is outside those frequencies which some matter is stimulated by some light.

 

[untermensche]

All the frequencies stimulate matter.

Those frequencies just happen to cause humans to have the experience of light.

Anthropocentric nonsense.

Bats create a visual experience from sound waves.

 

[fromderinside]

The only photo detectors living things we know about have limit the range of frequencies colors we can see. Ergo we call those frequencies visible light.

Why don't you do your research just a little bit.

Obviously you want to remain a dualist.

 

[Swammerdami]

Eavesdropping on this debate, I usually take fromderside's side, but I'm afraid some of his posts also resemble extremist caricatures.

!. The subjective mind is scientifically (materially) meaningless in itself, ergo so is experience. It is only used because we do not yet understand the relations between brain and environment. Something that is a place holder is not a thing....

Over the past 50 years we've pretty much put the concept of consciousness to rest as an illusion. We now pretty much dismiss humans acting on the world....

Who is "we"? I do not think it includes ALL the people who call themselves scientists.


I still think this whole debate might be settled by Goggling "definition:color" although I've not actually done this myself. Or maybe "definition:COLOUR" — would that give different results? Is the semantic impact of that extra "U" what this debate is about?

 

[untermensche]

The only photo detectors living things we know about have limit the range of frequencies colors we can see. Ergo we call those frequencies visible light.

Why don't you do your research just a little bit.

Obviously you want to remain a dualist.

Yes.

You think that the only part of the spectrum that just by coincidence can effect cells also happens to have this special property called color.

Anthropocentric nonsense.