COLOUR

[Koyaanisqatsi]

I'm definitely not saying 1, but I don't think I'm saying 2 either. What I was trying to say is that unlike, say, walls, mountains or planets, there is no colour or brightness (or for example pain) 'out there'.

You’re equivocating again. Just exchange “wavelength” for “colour” and “number of photons” for “brightness.” Iow, 1 (“There are no wavelengths or numbers of photons”). But you are “definitely not saying 1.”

So what you’re actually talking about is “qualia;” or, how the brain interprets signals.

I'm also trying to avoid the issue of self.

You can’t if you’re talking about qualia.

You could say I'm trying to discuss the topic as if there were baseline 'experiences' that do not necessarily require a self.

Well, then you're equivocating “experiences” again; conflating the reading of a book with the writing of a book. Those are distinctly separate kinds of experiences.

I would suggest you choose a different word. Accidentally stabbing my finger with a knife while cutting a carrot is one kind of experience. Looking down and seeing the blood flowing out of the open wound is another kind of experience. Looking down and seeing the blood flow out of the wound, which triggers a PTSD flashback on the time my mother was stabbed and murdered in front of me...

See where I’m going?

You can’t simply use the term “experience.” It is WAY too loaded. Case in point:

It's possible that a sense of self is a prerequisite to having conscious experience. I believe it's an open question.

You’ve just said, to me, at least: It’s possible that having a conscious experience is a prerequisite for having a conscious experience.

Additional cases in point:

For example, I'd say a mouse can experience stuff (eg pain, possibly colours I'm not sure I would claim that) without having a sense of self.Or maybe mice do in fact have some sort of very rudimentary sense of self.

In the above, you are conflating a “sense” of self with a self (i.e., an ongoing narrative analogue) and using the word “experience” to not include any interpretation (i.e., “direct” experience), which is a different context than anything related to consciousness.

It might be better if I covered my bets by only saying that a robust or sophisticated sense of self (such as most normal humans have during wakefulness) is not a prerequisite to having 'bare' experiences.

Then I would suggest again that you simply stop using the loaded word “experiences” and instead say something like, “having direct interaction with matter energy” or the like.

Skin, for example, is essentially a sensory array. It senses when it is punctured, for example. It sends that information to the brain for processing and action. You can place all of that activity in the meta category of “experience” but it will get confusing very quickly once you add layer upon layer upon layer of ancillary actions that are all related to and then associated with the comparatively simple act of puncturing skin, as in the example above where it is revealed that a mother was stabbed to death in front of her child.

ALL of that could--technically--be placed under the extremely broad word "experience," but that takes you further away from clarity imo.

 

[ruby sparks]

Is conscious experience a behaviour?

No. Experience is considered to be behavior.

If by 'considered to be' you mean that you accept the definitions you cited, that experience is a behaviour, how come you say, no, conscious experience isn't a behaviour?

 

[ruby sparks]

So what you’re actually talking about is “qualia;” or, how the brain interprets signals.

Approximately, yes. Something like that.

I'm also trying to avoid the issue of self.

You can’t if you’re talking about qualia.

You are essentially saying there are no qualia without an accompanying sense of self. I'm not sure that's necessarily the case. See my previous elaboration.

I would say there are no qualia without consciousness, but thats slightly different. It's basically a lower bar for qualia.

What I would like to stress is that self is not a central issue for me here. The lower bar is all I need to assert, for my purposes here, because I'm not so much asking 'what are conscious experiences' or 'what is self', so much as the much more limited question, 'where is colour (as in for example what we learn to call redness)'?

ALL of that could--technically--be placed under the extremely broad word "experience," but that takes you further away from clarity imo.

As with responses, I accept that not all experiences are the same, qualitatively or quantitatively. When I say colour is a conscious experience, I do not mean to say that it is the only type of experience, or even the only type of conscious experience, merely that it is (generally or often at least) a conscious experience.

Obviously, I am obliged to clarify what type of experience, yes. I have tried. I am saying that perhaps like pain, it is a fairly rudimentary, basic conscious experience (that may or may not require much of a sense of self; that is why I would say that mice can feel pain but not have much a sense of self).

I imagine that when an infant human opens its eyes for the first time (and possibly even before, in the womb) colour experiences happen automatically to it, assuming the retinal rods and cones and other apparatus are sufficiently well-formed, which they may not be, at least not fully. The colours may even be happening without the rods and cones. But if they aren't, it would be my guess that even as a fetus, experiences of brightness and darkness are happening, at least. Whether those are happening in consciousness or not is a tricky question. Possibly not.

My guess would be that colour experiences (or at least distinguishing between shades of brightness) like pain, are so fundamental and innate to humans that in newborns they precede the formation of a sense of self, and possibly even of shapes and forms (given that infant vision is apparently very blurry indeed).

In any case, in order to try to set limits on the topic, I would repeat that I am mainly interested in the location of the conscious experiences. That is why I say that to my understanding, colours are generally conscious brain experiences, that colours (like pain) are not a property of the world outside brains. That's my basic claim in a nutshell, and it's primarily about property location, in this case properties for which the word 'qualia' would at least be quite a good general term.

 

[fromderinside]

Is conscious experience a behaviour?

No. Experience is considered to be behavior.

If by 'considered to be' you mean that you accept the definitions you cited, that experience is a behaviour, how come you say, no, conscious experience isn't a behaviour?

My editing in the definition of experience makes clear that when conscious is used it is documented behavior by a humans or society. Human experience is behavior. Inserting conscious before experience adds nothing to the meaning of experience. As I've declared many times trying to prop up conscious theory runs counter to ockham's razor principle. Adding the word "conscious" - Self Reference = presumption that introspection is a valid empirical tactic which it clearly is not - to experience adds nothing to the fact that experience is behavior.

 

[ruby sparks]

If by 'considered to be' you mean that you accept the definitions you cited, that experience is a behaviour, how come you say, no, conscious experience isn't a behaviour?

My editing in the definition of experience makes clear that when conscious is used it is documented behavior by a humans or society.

Your editing didn't make anything clear at all, it was very confusing as to what your point was in relation to my question, because the definitions of experience that you posted included, 'the conscious (documented/expressed?) events that make up an individual life' and (by following your own link for the word 'perceiving') 'to become aware of through the senses' and I don't know if you're endorsing those definitions or not.

The rest of your post has some straw men about cognitive science. The irony is that psychophysical techniques often do rely on self-reporting and cognitive science often doesn't. Earlier you cited Pinker. Well, Pinker doesn't seem to share your concerns to the extent you do:

"The subjectivity issue.

It is dangerous to take people 's introspective reports about the contents or properties of their images as evidence in characterising imagery, because such reports can be unreliable and subject to bias, because the referents of people 's descriptions of imagery are unclear and because interesting cognitive processes are likely to take place beneath the level of conscious accessibility.

Again, [this is] a non-issue; all parties agree that much of image processing, whatever it is, is inaccessible to consciousness, that experimental data and computational and neurological feasibility are the proper source of constraints on imagery theories, and that introspective reports are psychological phenomena to be accounted for, not accurate descriptions of underlying mechanisms".

http://mitp-content-server.mit.edu:..._pres_0&id=7127&fn=9780262661782_sch_0001.pdf

And by the way, where did you even get the idea that the thread was primarily about trying to 'explain behaviour' in the first instance, let alone whether consciousness is needed to do that? That's a straw man, possibly two. If you had started a thread entitled, 'explaining behaviour' I'm not even sure I would have strongly disagreed that you don't need consciousness to do that at least very well, albeit I might have said it's not known yet what the function of consciousness is, so it would be presumptuous to say that it doesn't have one and thus unwarranted to rule it out of consideration altogether, just because it's not your cup of tea. I might even go as far as to say that it seems unlikely that consciousness, something which every normal human has evolved to have, has no function at all. And as to the reverse question, whether behaviour can explain consciousness, I would have had even fewer caveats. But neither of those questions is central to the OP.

To get back to the actual OP again, obviously, it's a big problem for your preferred model if certain phenomena (eg colour or pain) do not exist outside of conscious brain experience (which is all that the OP claims) so much so that you had to attempt, unconvincingly, to say they do exist outside it, which is almost literally, especially in the case of pain, a self-inflicted reductio ad absurdum.

Obviously, ever since making the claims, you have studiously avoided remaking them, especially about pain. I would have done that too if I were you, because it's where your model fell through a big hole, albeit you're in denial about it.

 

[ruby sparks]

Inserting conscious before experience adds nothing to the meaning of experience.

It does. It specifies a certain type of experience, associated with and resulting from certain patterns of behaviour. And you know, as directly as you can know anything at all, that it exists, because it happens to you, a lot.

That's not to say introspection is a reliable guide to it (it isn't) or that it isn't littered with illusions (it is). Both of those are a given.

 

[fromderinside]

All I see is systems working to reconcile sensory imperatives. That is reconciling the fact of one turning one's head toward a target that is not yet identified, resolving a bar twisting back and forth within an odd shaped frame also twisting back and forth as a rotating system with a bar passing through the fame, following a light source slight sources going in directional sequence when a sound is signalling the opposite, things like that. What you call conscious experience is usually not reality. Rather it is sensations gathered from those present into an explanation that fits current individual circumstances. It all relates to whether there is free will, whether evolution is strictly gradual and whether behavior is consistently evolved. Read  Daniel Wegner,  Neuroscience of free will and
Gene Duplication, Co-option, Structural Evolution, and Phenotypic Tango in the Courtship Pheromones of Plethodontid Salamanders https://www.researchgate.net/profil...ip-Pheromones-of-Plethodontid-Salamanders.pdf
for a sense of why I write these statements.

 

[ruby sparks]

All I see is systems working to reconcile sensory imperatives. That is reconciling the fact of one turning one's head toward a target that is not yet identified, resolving a bar twisting back and forth within an odd shaped frame also twisting back and forth as a rotating system with a bar passing through the fame, following a light source slight sources going in directional sequence when a sound is signalling the opposite, things like that. What you call conscious experience is usually not reality. Rather it is sensations gathered from those present into an explanation that fits current individual circumstances. It all relates to whether there is free will, whether evolutioni s strictly gradual and whether behavior is consistently evolved. Read  Daniel Wegner,  Neuroscience of free will and
Gene Duplication, Co-option, Structural Evolution, and Phenotypic Tango in the CourtshipPheromones of Plethodontid Salamanders https://www.researchgate.net/profil...ip-Pheromones-of-Plethodontid-Salamanders.pdf
for a sense of why I write these statements.

The odd thing is that we agree on so much (the absence of free will for example, the illusion of self, etc). I can even (as I said before) admire your reductionism (I would call myself a reductionist) while thinking it may possibly go too far, or not be flexible enough to accommodate certain things into it. I also don't doubt that you have had much more experience than me with the scientific method, and you are clearly a very intelligent and thorough thinker.

But, it seems we're not going to agree on this one issue. That's ok. There is no point in dragging out disagreement for its own sake. Neither of us has to 'win' the conversation.

Most of all, I'm not sure we're even talking about exactly the same things.

Thank you for the discussion. It was interesting and thought-provoking. No hard feelings at this end. Look after yourself in the current crisis.

Ps I will read that paper, yes. I have already read Wenger's, 'The Illusion of Conscious Will'.

You might (or might not) like 'The Mind Club' by the same author, even though it has the dreaded word 'mind' in the title.

The Mind Club: Who Thinks, What Feels, and Why It Matters
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Mind-Club-...s=the+mind+club&qid=1585578771&s=books&sr=1-3

 

[ruby sparks]

We're all looking at the same "colors", but we do not divide them up the same way, and therefore perception also varies.

I came across this, with which I'm certain you are already familiar, and I found it very interesting. I'm not saying it's directly relevant to the OP claims necessarily.



To western eyes, finding the square that is not the same colour as the others in the above image is quite difficult. But members of the Himba people of Namibia can apparently do it very quickly indeed.




Whereas the Himba apparently have trouble finding the differently-coloured square in this image:



https://www.gondwana-collection.com/blog/how-do-namibian-himbas-see-colour/

And also, the ancient greeks had no word for blue, apparently. I did not know that.

 

[Koyaanisqatsi]

So what you’re actually talking about is “qualia;” or, how the brain interprets signals.

Approximately, yes. Something like that.

Ok, well, at least we're narrowing it down. Now, however, you'll have to define what you mean by "qualia" (without using the word "experience" preferably due to all of the reasons already provided; e.g., punctured skin all the way up the experiential/associative ladder to PTSD flashback).

You are essentially saying there are no qualia without an accompanying sense of self.

Actually, I said you were conflating a "sense" of self (whatever that means) with a self (the ongoing narrative analogue our brains create/animate).

I would say there are no qualia without consciousness, but thats slightly different. It's basically a lower bar for qualia.

Oy.

What I would like to stress is that self is not a central issue for me here.

Now I think you're conflating "self" and "identity." Regardless, it is absolutely the central issue. What you are talking about is the ability for the brain to model the external world based on the information it receives from the body/sensory input device in a manner that allows it to "virturally" calculate optimal actions prior to acting. That is what analogues (aka "selves") or for and how we evolved self-awareness/self-reference and the experience of experiencing (aka, "qualia").

In short, it's how a wavelength gets turned into the experience of "red." Note that "red" and the "experience of red" are NOT the same things. Red is just a wavelength. The experience of red (the "qualia" of red) is a bundle of associations/memories--a quantum packet, if you will of disparate bits of information collected over time--that gets triggered, processed and updated in a nano-second the instant the wavelength hits our eyeballs.

That's why you get one layer--one "bar" if you prefer--of just wavelength detected by optical nerve and one layer of wavelength + blood and one layer of skin is punctured/body in danger and one layer of mother was murdered in front of me, etc., etc, etc., etc., etc.

All from one trigger stimulus. Once you go beyond the layer of wavelength detected by optical nerve, you are moving up the evolutionary cognitive ladder toward self-awareness on the level of homo sapiens sapiens.

And I use "self-awareness" cautiously, as I do NOT mean "aware that our brains create selves" when using it, but I also didn't want to say "toward qualia" as that is likewise too broad.

Whatever stage of evolution--for ANY living creature--where the ability for abstract thought is obtained is the stage where "qualia" emerges.

The lower bar is all I need to assert, for my purposes here, because I'm not so much asking 'what are conscious experiences' or 'what is self', so much as the much more limited question, 'where is colour (as in for example what we learn to call redness)'?

You already have that answer. As with literally every aspect of human existence, all models--all abstract thought--resides in the brain. But, again, there is a difference between wavelength (aka, "red") and wavelength that triggers other memories/experiences/information associated with that wavelength (aka, "experience of redness").

You already know all of this. It's fairly basic.

Obviously, I am obliged to clarify what type of experience, yes. I have tried. I am saying that perhaps like pain, it is a fairly rudimentary, basic conscious experience (that may or may not require much of a sense of self; that is why I would say that mice can feel pain but not have much a sense of self).

Well, again, here you are equivocating. Evidently not on purpose, but that's the problem with these terms; they're way too broad. EVERYTHING is a "conscious experience" no matter the animal. I think what you meant is that mouse brains react to signals of damage generated by mouse nervous systems whenever something within the mouse body malfunctions or is otherwise imperiled.

What they may not do--we don't know--is go up the ladder of "the current damage to my left leg reminds me of that time when my mouse father came to my rescue in the burning building we all infested as infants" or the like.

THAT is "qualia" in my book. The brain reacting to a rudimentary "alert" signal sent from a damaged area of the body? Not so much.

BOTH, however, reside entirely within the brain/body.

I imagine that when an infant human opens its eyes for the first time (and possibly even before, in the womb) colour experiences

Well, see, there we go again into equivocation. You are conflating "wavelength" with "color experiences."

But if they aren't, it would be my guess that even as a fetus, experiences of brightness and darkness are happening, at least.

Differentiation of comparative amounts of photons received by the developing sensory input devices and rudimentary informational processing and storage by the developing brain are occurring, yes.

"What it feels like to see inside mommy's womb"--aka, what I would call "color experience" is probably not.

In any case, in order to try to set limits on the topic, I would repeat that I am mainly interested in the location of the conscious experiences.

Done. As with all conscious experiences, in the brain. Unless you are talking about specific parts of the brain.

ETA: All of which is to say that there are obviously rudimentary reactions to stimulus and then there are higher order, more complex associations with those rudimentary reactions. But it all occurs inside the brain, of course, so I'm still not sure what is unclear.

"Color" is the brain's differentiation of photon wavelengths; the packet of information/associated memories with the various wavelength differentiations are the "experience of a given color" (or "qualia of a given color" if you prefer).

So, "red" is the wavelength; "redness" is all of the associations/memories the brain processes every time the optic nerve sends the signal "wavelength 'red' detected." Both processes occur internally (though, wavelength detection and "red" differential encoding evidently occurs at the optic nerve with the subsequent information being passed on to the brain for higher order processing).

 

[ruby sparks]

In any case, in order to try to set limits on the topic, I would repeat that I am mainly interested in the location of the conscious experiences.

Done. As with all conscious experiences, in the brain.

Then we may not disagree much.

And I also meant (though on that occasion didn't say) only in the brain (ie there are no colours, and no such thing as colour properties, at all, outside brains).

But it all occurs inside the brain, of course, so I'm still not sure what is unclear.

Well I could not take it for granted that you would fully agree with me about the OP claims. There are those who would disagree with them.

"Color" is the brain's differentiation of photon wavelengths; the packet of information/associated memories with the various wavelength differentiations are the "experience of a given color" (or "qualia of a given color" if you prefer).

So, "red" is the wavelength; "redness" is all of the associations/memories the brain processes every time the optic nerve sends the signal "wavelength 'red' detected".

Now I'm not sure we do agree.

I would say that colour is only the experience. There is no 'red' and (differently) 'the experience of red', they are the same thing, as are 'red' and 'redness'. And the wavelength is not red, and red is not the wavelength.

I imagine that when an infant human opens its eyes for the first time (and possibly even before, in the womb) colour experiences happen automatically to it....

Well, see, there we go again into equivocation. You are conflating "wavelength" with "color experiences."

I would say that that is exactly the opposite of what I am doing (I am making a complete distinction between the two) but that you seem to be doing it.




Apologies for not replying to all your other points, but I am mainly just interested in the OP issue specifically, and perhaps the subsequent implications of it. For example, I am not, in this thread, exploring the details of how stimuli and responses become conscious experiences. Think of me like the physicist in the video animation I posted, who when he got to that bit, said 'it happens via a process that is not yet fully understood'. All he was mainly doing was explaining where the colour is and where it is not, according to his model, and mine, and, it would seem, that of the psychologist quoted in the OP, whose statement I am supporting, via my subsequent claims.

If that were to be fully agreed, then the further implications of that (where the colour is and isn't) would seem to be interesting enough of themselves. For example:

1. It seems to follow that the same things could be said about brightness, which leads to the suggestion that the world does not even have brightness in it, and to my partial analogy with hypothetical (thought-experiment) fully-conscious deep-sea creatures living in complete darkness without realising it (because the brain experiences they are having are so vivid).

Other potentially interesting things that could follow, directly or indirectly, from accepting that colour is only a brain experience would be...

2. The examples of when brain processes in general (or as a whole) affect or alter the subjective experiences of colour, at least to some extent. Politesse highlighted how language and culture could have certain subtle effects, for example (and I think he was referring to such things as the Himba people, unlike 'westerners', having trouble readily distinguishing blue from green). Now, we may not get to the point of explaining how, in detail, language processing comes to affect colour experiences in that way, but to me it's telling that it does seem to. It says something potentially important about colour, namely that if it's only a brain experience, it is (in at least some interesting ways, though not by any means all) decoupled from light input, which is consistent with the suggestion that light actually has, of itself, no colour properties at all.

 

[fromderinside]

Thank you for the discussion. It was interesting and thought-provoking. No hard feelings at this end.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/color/

OK. So I re-read through the above chapter and read no theory or defense of theory that justifies qualia as a rational, much less empirically justified, conclusion. It's hard to avoid getting bogged down in schools and squabbles about and turfs. The read just re-affirmed my view that philosophers don't know how to deal with material evidence, especially when they have a venerable old classical position to justify.

Here are my comments on the the concluding topic, action based theory of color. It's turns out to be based on a false idea about how humans, any species actually, comes to make choices relevant to fitness. never mentions it just constructs a bad principle that necessitates that cause by staking the following position

Matthen’s account is complex. The idea is that the senses (the visual sensory system) do categorize objects as “blue”, “yellow”, etc., but these qualities are related to actions that perceivers can perform, and in particular, to “epistemic affordances”. The sensory systems are held to be devices that are in the business of classifying distal stimuli (physical objects) as having certain properties, which stand in similarity and difference relations with each other. These categories are constructed by the system anddo not, at least in the case of color, correspond to any objective propertiesthat are independent of perceivers.

IOW he takes the opponent process theory of color vision as the fitness model for classifying color. Obviously Matthen's was on something when he claims something defining a proven visual color evolved processing mechanism is not related to evolution or sensorially processed properties.

Above is how the chapter on philosophy of color ends.

... and this is why we are I agree we aren't going anywhere here. Thanks for the ride. I'm fully confident you'll have ample doubts about color for life. I leave you in Good Will Hunting.

 

[ruby sparks]

... and this is why we are I agree we aren't going anywhere here. Thanks for the ride. I'm fully confident you'll have ample doubts about color for life. I leave you in Good Will Hunting.

You should start a thread on the topic of opacity.

 

[Koyaanisqatsi]

If that were to be fully agreed, then the further implications of that (where the colour is and isn't) would seem to be interesting enough of themselves.

I'm not sure how. Every "experience" we have--certainly that goes beyond rudimentary stimulus/response--is created by the brain.

This is a brute fact of our existence, so there's no new ground there, so the only open question is whether or not the brain is modeling an external (objective) condition, or "winging it" by using color coding simply as a means to differentiate wavelengths. The problem with that, however, is how and then why?

Iow, these are just some of the questions such a hypothesis raises:

1. How would we evolve--as a species--color coding cones in our eyes? Mutation?
2. If not mutation, where would we have got the idea?
3. If not from an external or intrinsic quality, why would we collectively--as a species--choose color coding as the means to differentiate wavelengths?

 

[fromderinside]

Wonderful except the brain doesn't create, we don't choose, and what the heck are ideas except processed information expressed.

 

[ruby sparks]

...... the only open question is whether or not the brain is modeling an external (objective) condition, or "winging it" by using color coding simply as a means to differentiate wavelengths. The problem with that, however, is how and then why?

Iow, these are just some of the questions such a hypothesis raises:

1. How would we evolve--as a species--color coding cones in our eyes? Mutation?
2. If not mutation, where would we have got the idea?
3. If not from an external or intrinsic quality, why would we collectively--as a species--choose color coding as the means to differentiate wavelengths?

I don't understand the evolution of the eye enough to say how much of it involved mutation, but if we merely said that eyes have evolved to detect and respond to different, uncoloured stimuli in the form of wavelengths (or different, uncoloured photon energies or whatever), that seems to cover it in a general sense.

As to exactly how or why we then have these weird, vivid conscious experiences, to re-quote the physicist in that video animation, "it happens via a process that is not yet fully understood".

But again in very general terms, it seems that light gets transduced at the retina into electro-chemical impulses and these become part of the incredibly complex system of electro-chemical impulses looping and looping around inside our heads in all directions at almost incomprehensible speeds. That's one way for colour to happen (it can also be stimulated to happen using external cranial magnets, apparently, which is why I say that at least to some extent and in some ways, colour can be decoupled from light).

Why different colours as opposed to other sorts of experiences? Who knows. When other sorts of stimuli or energies in the form of external waves (or whatever) hit another part of our body (our ears) the stimuli, although also tranduced into electro-chemical impulses (that become part of the incredibly complex electro-chemical impulses looping and looping around inside our heads in all directions at almost incomprehensible speeds) at a similar sort of boundary (between the brain and the outside world) these are then experienced as a range of different sounds instead (and sometimes there is crossover, especially in synesthesia) which correlate, generally quite accurately and reliably it seems, as with colour, to the differences in the wavelengths/energy of the stimuli.

You can probably guess that I would say that there is no sound 'out there' either.

So not only is the world (outside brains) devoid of colour and brightness, it's also silent, I'm suggesting.

Ditto regarding flavour, or smell, or pain (ie the external world is flavourless, odourless and painless).

Democritus (Ancient Greece, 400BC), whose atomic model is now seen as very flawed in many ways, nonetheless may have been onto something interesting when he said, "the first principles of the universe are atoms and empty space; everything else is merely thought to exist" and "by convention sweet is sweet, bitter is bitter, hot is hot, cold is cold, color is color; but in truth there are only atoms and the void".

 

[ruby sparks]

One way of trying (in broad conceptual terms) to form a bridge between (a) the external stimuli (wavelengths/energies) and (b) the electro-chemical impulses in the brain, would be to say that the former either contain (or at a stretch, are) information, and that this is what gets at least pretty well preserved, in the latter form, after the transductions.

I say that without even getting close to fully understanding the information theory involved, obviously.

But one thing I would say is that it seems that the brain doesn't only process external inputs, but also generates and (responds to) its own internally-created information, which is consistent with the idea that the brain is an active predicting machine, not just a passive recording machine. That might be why we sometimes see (or hear) what we 'expect to see or hear', not what is actually in the inputs. In other words, it's like a relationship (or relationships) where the world acts on the brain and the brain also acts on the world (or at least on what comes in from it).

And it would be my guess that the nature of the predictions have been and are constrained by their pragmatic success in evolutionary terms. In other words, if it is/was adaptive (if it works or worked) the disposition for it to happen is/was retained and passed on (at least when its heritable). For example, if we see something that merely could be a potential predator, we will tend to initially respond as if it were, just in case, even though it isn't always (and we might be reacting to something that isn't there, for example) because not doing so could be fatal. Hence, perhaps, the persistence of some optical illusions, and indeed by extension, possibly some superstitions.

So, in that sense, the limits to the accuracy of an organism's perceptions (including ours) are partly set by the usefulness, in normal circumstances, of the responses generated.

Unusual circumstances may result in errors.

If, for example, you are a certain sort of brown, dimpled beetle and your system is tuned to (in this case presumably non-consciously) locate dimpled, brown, light-reflecting beetles to mate with (because that's what the females of your species look like) you could end up trying to have sex with dimpled, brown, light-reflecting empty beer bottles that have been discarded by humans, as apparently happened in Australia, to such an extent that the design of Australian beer bottles was changed to prevent this.

https://www.livescience.com/16331-discoverers-beetle-beer-bottle-sex.html

 

[Koyaanisqatsi]

...... the only open question is whether or not the brain is modeling an external (objective) condition, or "winging it" by using color coding simply as a means to differentiate wavelengths. The problem with that, however, is how and then why?

Iow, these are just some of the questions such a hypothesis raises:

1. How would we evolve--as a species--color coding cones in our eyes? Mutation?
2. If not mutation, where would we have got the idea?
3. If not from an external or intrinsic quality, why would we collectively--as a species--choose color coding as the means to differentiate wavelengths?

I don't understand the evolution of the eye enough to say how much of it involved mutation, but if we merely said that eyes have evolved to detect and respond to different, uncoloured stimuli in the form of wavelengths (or different, uncoloured photon energies or whatever), that seems to cover it in a general sense.

How does that cover anything? Why would our eyes respond to “uncoloured stimuli” by developing cones and rods that encode that stimuli with a color spectrum?

As to exactly how or why we then have these weird, vivid conscious experiences, to re-quote the physicist in that video animation, "it happens via a process that is not yet fully understood"

Including his and your claims regarding the objective nature of light.

But again in very general terms, it seems that light gets transduced at the retina into electro-chemical impulses that include color coding and these become part of the incredibly complex system of electro-chemical impulses looping and looping around inside our heads

Fify and, once again, the hard problem isn’t an open question, it’s a brute fact. So the part in red above is the only relevant question. Why do we have cones that “see” color if you and your youtube video are correct?

That part comes before the information is sent to the brain, btw, so there is that as well.

Why different colours as opposed to other sorts of experiences? Who knows.

Yes, well, again, THAT is the only open question worth addressing. That “experience” is created in the brain is nothing new, but just because it is an internal process does not necessarily negate that it accurately models (or to a certain degree accurately models) an objective, external condition.

Iow, we see colors because the process evolved in order to accurately model—to the best of our abilities—the "colors" that exist independently of our existence.

Evolution isn’t random or just POOF now that happens. We can’t just make up shit that we want to be able to do and then presto we can do that now.

There is a reason why we developed the ability to process color, but more importantly, there is also a reason why those colors are universal and that billions upon billions of case studies all confirm that we process colors the same way.

That we don’t understand the process—or at what stage we are currently in the evolutionary process to be able to gauge how accurately we do or do not model something external—doesn’t allow you to simply skip over it. For all we know, in regard to light, our eyes and our science are mere zygotes in the evolutionary stage as it pertains to the complexity of what is objectively the case.

And it certainly may be that our current ability to perceive (or differentiate) wavelengths into color spectrum is the equivalent of Pong to what may actually be the objective condition of light, but it’s still a process that is occurring. We have cones. Why? We all see the same color spectrum (and that encoding happens before the information gets to the brain). Why? It had to come from an external reality that our primitive sensory processing devices are trying to mimic/model/copy/reflect etc.

The rule is monkey see, monkey do, not “we just make up anything we want and then that’s a thing we can all magically do uniformly now.”

 

[fromderinside]

Anything unknown that is processed is, by definition, information. No stretching required. Information is not what you translate. Information is what is transmitted and received, translated or no. You might say it is the known unknown.

It seems what you want to do is to tell us the unknown becomes known using some magic intervening faerie.

It's much simpler than that.

We've worked it out.

Specific light frequencies are received because we have a transducer that converts specific light energy in to neural energy by being sensitive to selected light frequencies. When such energy arrivesatthereceptor it is absorbed. Then the energy absorbed performs work by twisting strands near the receptor cell wall to produce mechanical impetus. The mechanical impetus stresses the receptor membrane generating a change in inside-outside ionic potentials produce sufficient energy to release of transmitter substance. In turn this substance is decoded by receptors through a lock and key shape recognizing mechanism leading to ionic transfer via membrane to synapse where action potentials are generated.

The rest is normal neural process. The fact that the receptor always responds to the same light frequencies in crucial in understanding how the NS "knows" the input is green or red or yellow. It is a machine that learned (became permanently wired) through evolution to know specific frequencies ware important to surviving. A whole system of such receptors and neurons produce a system that selectively communicates presence of specific light frequencies.

No faerie or mind or will or self intervenes it's just an evolved visual system. The "knowing' comes with the survival of the specific system

 

[ruby sparks]

Iow, we see colors because the process evolved in order to accurately model—to the best of our abilities—the "colors" that exist independently of our existence.

Colour existing independently of organisms experiencing it appears to be as unnecessary for explanations as is pain existing independently of organisms experiencing it.