COLOUR

[ruby sparks]

Joy. You’re continuing to appeal to authority in spite of being explicitly told not to.

So, to that appeal, perhaps if you hadn’t selectively cherry-picked the middle step in a series intended to demonstrate how using imprecise LANGUAGE keeps tripping you up might help you (ironically) put things into proper perspective? And then you addressing the coder/code/decoder breakdown certainly would help.

You keep avoiding the fact that a brain can do whatever it does AND a message can contain information independently of whatever the brain is doing. Those are not mutually exclusive concepts.

There can exist a coder, a code and a decoder. And yes, since the decoder is decoding the coded message, that necessarily means that they are RECREATING the message on their end. They are unpacking the package. So if you were to JUST LOOK AT THE DECODER, it would seem as if the message is only happening at their end.

But is that objectively the case? No, it is not. There is also the coder and the code that objectively exists too. But there is no way to prove that, only infer it.

And guess what? Just like someone decoding a coded message can get the message wrong, so can a brain.

But it would help matters considerably if you would stop thinking in binary terms.

In the study you referenced above regarding blue and red effecting pain levels, there is a key word: associated.

"These results uphold the first hypothesis that when the noxious stimulus is associated with a red visual cue, signalling that the stimulus is hot, it hurts more and is perceived as hotter than when the same stimulus is associated with a blue visual cue, signalling that the stimulus is cold."

Taking us all the way back around to the beginning of this merry-go-round. Some people (some “brains”) ASSOCIATE the color red with “hot” and the color blue with “cold.”

What does that mean? Break down the actual process, not the vapid sound bite. Here’s yet another clue: you can’t remove the word “associated” and achieve the same result, so what is it that already happened prior to the person who sounds the pain alarm when they see the color red? What is it that the brain is associating?

I’ll answer it for you. At some point in time previously, that person burned themselves on something that was actually (i.e., objectively) “hot” and emanating the wavelength we call “red.” Thus, whenever that person sees the same wavelength, that association gets triggered and that is what in turn triggers a damage alert response.

Iow, the brain can be tricked into sounding the alarm we call “pain.” Why? Because, surprise, surprise, brains are not infallible, omniscient machines, but the very fact that there is a mechanism that associates argues, once again (just like the rods and cones) that the process comes from an objective condition.

Iow, you’re providing exceptions that prove the rule.

So here’s what you’re going to have to wrap your head around. Yes, everything happens in our brains. That is a brute fact. Does it ALSO happen in a like manner outside our brains? We can’t ever know that definitively, we can only infer that. Those two conditions, however, are not mutually exclusive.

Which brings us—as always—back to WHY (and HOW) we developed rods and cones (i.e., the ability to color code) in the first place? The most logical answer to that question is because color—light wavelengths—are, as you have already agreed, objective properties of light.

Just as Morse code conveys a specific, objective message and just as the guy sitting on the other end of the telegraph wire must translate (aka, decode) the series of clicks and pauses and just like the message that guy is decoding technically only gets decoded inside his brain, so too does the thing itself send us coded information about the thing itself.

But at the exact same time, the decoder already knows what the code is, so it’s entirely possible that it might mistakenly hear a similar series of clicks and pauses that was NOT sent deliberately and because his job is to decode coded messages, he gets it wrong. That last series of clicks and pauses did NOT come from the telegraph machine—as he believed—but from something else.

OR, he could be listening to a message and writing down the code on his little pad of paper and hear a series of clicks and pauses that were identical to ANOTHER previous message he took that turned out to be a message that his wife had died and so, on this day five years after that tragic message he decoded, his brain hears the same clicks and pauses as before and it triggers an associated memory that causes him to become emotionally and physically traumatized all over again and guess what? He mistakenly decodes the wrong the message and instead of delivering the message, “Your wife has been killed” he delivers the message, “Your wife is going to be just fine” or the like, because something his brain associated with those particular clicks and pauses caused him to deviate from the objective condition into a subjective condition.

Layers upon layers upon layers, only with the complexity we’re talking about, those layers are more like holograms in a massive, dynamic, Venn diagram of feedback loops and interactions and updates and overwrites that constantly happen at speeds so fast we—the animated selves—have no concept of and are not even aware are occurring.

There is so much of that which is a continued misrepresentation of what I have been saying that it would be too much trouble to try to correct it, yet again.

And you’ve surely been in discussions on the internet long enough now to know the differences between citing the opinions of relevant experts (or indeed anyone for that matter), citing evidence or experiments, and making an appeal to authority. You shouldn’t have to be reminded of when it’s an acceptable part of a discussion and when it’s a fallacy, and that this difference partly has to do with the given reasons for and the manner of citing.

So if, for example, I were now to add, in addition to making my own points, as I have been doing, that the model I am here defending has been around for a very long time, has been considered feasible by notable historical persons (such as Newton, Galileo and Schrodinger) and is still held today by a number of relevantly qualified academics (as I understand it, most cognitive scientists accept claim 1) and in all cases for the particular reasons given by those persons, that is only to support the idea that it is an interesting, not unusual and valid model, not that it is necessarily the correct one.

Similarly, when, in addition to making my own points, scientific evidence is cited, it is only used as support, not conclusive proof. It was accepted, even in the OP, that the matter is unresolved.

 

[ruby sparks]

Here is a 2002 paper, by a philosopher and a cognitive scientist, which makes a case for a form of colour realism. It's quite a long paper:

Color Realism and Color Science
http://web.mit.edu/abyrne/www/ColorRealism.html

There is a downloadable pdf version here (link below) which also has quite a lot of useful and interesting open peer commentary after the paper itself, from philosophers, psychologists, physicists and cognitive scientists:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/9026604_Color_Realism_and_Color_Science

I myself did not find the case a convincing enough challenge to the alternative model in the OP (as outlined in the opening quote from the visual perception psychologist Stephen Palmer for example, who is mentioned in the paper), mainly because the authors essentially make a case for colour as real, actual reflectance values of objects. In principle, this seems as (but no more) valid than saying that light, for example, has real, actual wavelengths, or other properties, that are generally the external causes of brain processes and responses, which no one contests. But it says nothing decisive about whether colour is a brain phenomena instead of being a property of objects or light. In other words, it says nothing decisive about the location of colour.

 

[Koyaanisqatsi]

Ffs. Ruby, the problem is that you are not understanding what others are talking about. A perfect case in point was the study you quoted that noted how the brain associated the color red with a higher degree of pain than the color blue.

Your mistakes and misunderstandings have been repeatedly pointed out to you and instead of addressing them, you simply repeat them or hand wave away what we have been pointing out. Your response is to then fallaciously state that no one you have read in the field has made similar arguments to ours, therefore they fail or are otherwise not valid. THAT is an appeal to authority.

For hopefully the last time, EVERYTHING is a “brain phenomena” no matter what. That is a brute fact and fundamental. THAT DOES NOT MEAN THAT IT CAN’T ALSO BE AN OBJECTIVE CONDITION THAT WE ARE RECREATING.

In other words (your words), nothing you have written or quoted or linked to (and nothing I have argued) says anything “decisive about the location of color” other than one half of the equation is fundamental. We know that our brains decode all pertinent information sent to it from all of the various sensory input devices that comprise our bodies.

That is never and can never be in question. In regard to color, that means it is (or can be) both what we create in brains AND an intrinsic property of objects or light. THOSE ARE NOT MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVE PROPOSITIONS.

Why can’t you get that painfully simple fact? Don’t say you have, because these two sentences strongly suggest that you have not:

But it says nothing decisive about whether colour is a brain phenomena instead of being a property of objects or light. In other words it says nothing decisive about the location of colour.

The answer is—and always has been throughout this circular journey—at least in the brain. That is NOT in question and never has been (by me at least). But that does not exclude the idea that it can ALSO be an objective property of light.

So what IS in question is what information are we collecting and to what degree of accuracy are we recreating it in our brains? Are we (re)creating an objective condition--i.e., the blueberry is blue--or are we just making shit up on our own?

How can we explore that? Through inference based on the available evidence. That is our only option.

What does the available evidence suggest? What can we infer from the fact that we evolved rods and cones and have developed "artificial" technology that can measure the color spectrum in the same manner as our brains?

It could not be more properly basic.

You AGREE that “light...has real, actual wavelengths.” Great! Then we’re done.

Wavelengths ARE what we also call “color.”

So wavelengths are objective properties of light AND the cones and rods in our eyeballs translate/copy/encode that information, which gets sent to our brain for higher order processing, where the brain unpacks that code.

In short, the wavelength exists independently of our encoding/decoding process that goes on in our brains.

NONE of that is controversial nor contradicted in any way by any of the experts you have quoted or linked to and certainly not by me at any time.

Which brings us around AGAIN to the biggest mistake you are making; conflating the wavelength with the associations the brain also makes in unpacking the message from the eyeballs.

This is a separate process. This is the difference between “blue” and “the experience of blueness.” Blue is just the wavelength. They are identical. The “experience of blueness” is essentially the entire process of associated information/feelings/memories/random noise/whatever that ALSO gets triggered after the cones and rods send the information they’ve encoded from the “outside” world.

ETA: This is exactly what I've been saying the entire time.

 

[fromderinside]

My dog Blue is in its kennel since there is nothing there to hunt.

 

[ruby sparks]

Ffs. Ruby, the problem is that you are not understanding what others are talking about. A perfect case in point was the study you quoted that noted how the brain associated the color red with a higher degree of pain than the color blue.

Your mistakes and misunderstandings have been repeatedly pointed out to you and instead of addressing them, you simply repeat them or hand wave away what we have been pointing out. Your response is to then fallaciously state that no one you have read in the field has made similar arguments to ours, therefore they fail or are otherwise not valid. THAT is an appeal to authority.

For hopefully the last time, EVERYTHING is a “brain phenomena” no matter what. That is a brute fact and fundamental. THAT DOES NOT MEAN THAT IT CAN’T ALSO BE AN OBJECTIVE CONDITION THAT WE ARE RECREATING.

In other words (your words), nothing you have written or quoted or linked to (and nothing I have argued) says anything “decisive about the location of color” other than one half of the equation is fundamental. We know that our brains decode all pertinent information sent to it from all of the various sensory input devices that comprise our bodies.

That is never and can never be in question. In regard to color, that means it is (or can be) both what we create in brains AND an intrinsic property of objects or light. THOSE ARE NOT MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVE PROPOSITIONS.

Why can’t you get that painfully simple fact? Don’t say you have, because these two sentences strongly suggest that you have not:

But it says nothing decisive about whether colour is a brain phenomena instead of being a property of objects or light. In other words it says nothing decisive about the location of colour.

The answer is—and always has been throughout this circular journey—at least in the brain. That is NOT in question and never has been (by me at least). But that does not exclude the idea that it can ALSO be an objective property of light.

So what IS in question is what information are we collecting and to what degree of accuracy are we recreating it in our brains? Are we (re)creating an objective condition--i.e., the blueberry is blue--or are we just making shit up on our own?

How can we explore that? Through inference based on the available evidence. That is our only option.

What does the available evidence suggest? What can we infer from the fact that we evolved rods and cones and have developed "artificial" technology that can measure the color spectrum in the same manner as our brains?

It could not be more properly basic.

You AGREE that “light...has real, actual wavelengths.” Great! Then we’re done.

Wavelengths ARE what we also call “color.”

So wavelengths are objective properties of light AND the cones and rods in our eyeballs translate/copy/encode that information, which gets sent to our brain for higher order processing, where the brain unpacks that code.

In short, the wavelength exists independently of our encoding/decoding process that goes on in our brains.

NONE of that is controversial nor contradicted in any way by any of the experts you have quoted or linked to and certainly not by me at any time.

Which brings us around AGAIN to the biggest mistake you are making; conflating the wavelength with the associations the brain also makes in unpacking the message from the eyeballs.

This is a separate process. This is the difference between “blue” and “the experience of blueness.” Blue is just the wavelength. They are identical. The “experience of blueness” is essentially the entire process of associated information/feelings/memories/random noise/whatever that ALSO gets triggered after the cones and rods send the information they’ve encoded from the “outside” world.

ETA: This is exactly what I've been saying the entire time.

Fine. But none of that says anything about where the colour is. Naming a wavelength a certain word may be merely an attempt to describe in human language the nature of (prior) brain experiences (word etymologies suggest this is what happened) and could just be yet another case of ‘projecting’. In other words, brain experience first, conventional naming of apparent attributes of objects after. It is also generally accepted among relevant experts, and seems to make good sense, that colour is not actually a property of objects. As such, when objects were given colour names (ie long before light was an understood phenomenon) it was likely a mistake made on the basis of an illusion.

Interestingly, the person given most credit for dispelling that (probable) illusion, Isaac Newton, went on to say that in his opinion, saying that the rays of light were coloured instead was for (his word) ‘vulgar’ people. Now maybe he was right and maybe he was wrong, but the explanation, and his model, still stand on their own merits. Neither objects nor light being coloured is necessary for explanations. And evidence from some experiments suggests, albeit inconclusively, that it is not a property of either.

In that model, to say that the colour is ‘out there’ (in objects or light) and that the brain experience is a copy or mimic of it would be a potential mistake, or at best a folk-psychology linguistic convention in which our intuitions lead us astray.

__________________________________

If you accept that colour is a brain sensation then although it is of course the case that it doesn’t have to be ONLY a brain sensation (it could also exist outside brains, I have been at pains to allow for this throughout the thread) and compare it with another brain sensation, pain, then the latter is at least a candidate precedent for something being only a brain sensation. And so it could also be the case with colour.

On the other hand, colour and pain could differ and colour could be not like pain and could exist in the world outside the brains of living organisms, albeit it is not required for explanations. I have said all this in the thread previously.

 

[fromderinside]

oui.

The name of my dog has nothing to do with whether blue is the color of EM radiation wavelength 450 nm. After all it is just the hue our trusted sensor reported. Sure we call it blue because it's color is one sitting in the middle of a number of more or less similar looking wavelengths, packets of EM, light we used sensors sensitive to that energy named blue. I could have just as well said blue is the color of this or that energy level or blue is the name of any of a number of wavelengths, er packets of EM. As I said before blue is a range of wavelengths, energy levels, which we identify because we aren't sensitive enough to report each and every wavelength and each partial partial increment of wavelength, energy level.

It is blue because everything that reflects it, under standard conditions, looks the same, er, looks blue. Also, as I said, every rainbow breaks down into several colors arranged in a particular order based on energy strength, wavelength, color. Unfortunately visible radiation has both the character of particles and waves so we wind up needing to identify each for clarity. Whatever we name the color it remains the same throughout nature, varying only IAW conditions surrounding it's observation. Being so does not change the reality of the phenomenon called color.

The only relationship between color and harmful stimuli is that they are complex phenomena reported as a singular phenomena by humans who have systems evolved to receive, process, and report when we encounter them. Every thing else about the two 'senses', beyond both of them being comprised of distinguishable energy, are particular to each sense.

What we are left with is a bag of hearsay about the nature of each which we set in opposition to what we now know about them. It is this hearsay we need to reject. Otherwise well intended 'splainers will build up myths about their natures which only leads to over 200 posts on a thread.

Just as one wise one once said anything, anything whether true or not, that is not explicitly and uniquely measured (can be operationalized), that might be used will be used to confuse explanation.

 

[Koyaanisqatsi]

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

[1999, attributed to Dr Stephen Palmer, Professor of Psychology (speciality: Cognition), Visual Perception Laboratory, University of California at Berkeley].

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

And what was the next paragraph?

This quote, however, needs unpacking. Palmer is obviously challenging our ordinary common-sense beliefs about colors. Specifically, he is denying that objects and lights have colors in the sense of colors-as-we-experience-them (or colors as we see them), As far as this goes, it is compatible with objects and lights having colors in some other sense, e.g., colors, as defined for scientific purposes. Secondly, he is saying that color (i.e., color-as-we-experience it) is a psychological property, which in turn, might be interpreted in different ways. Accordingly, the view is quite complex (see the next section)

 

[fromderinside]

All I've been doing is reiterating that the basis for human 'color' is receptors being of specific colors, frequencies, energies. Any sense of color we may have depends on internal reference to some 'standard' which is that of receptors and that which causes them to behave.

 

[Politesse]

All I've been doing is reiterating that the basis for human 'color' is receptors being of specific colors, frequencies, energies. Any sense of color we may have depends on internal reference to some 'standard' which is that of receptors and that which causes them to behave.

What "standard"? There's no standard, all organisms perceive the light spectrum differently from one another, and we humans alone try to organize it into established "colors" when it is really, physically speaking, a gradient. Consequently disagreeing with one another at where the boundaries should be drawn, or on how many "colors" we ought to divide the gradient into. You are incredibly obsessed with portraying your subjective experience as objective.

 

[ruby sparks]

And what was the next paragraph?

This quote, however, needs unpacking. Palmer is obviously challenging our ordinary common-sense beliefs about colors. Specifically, he is denying that objects and lights have colors in the sense of colors-as-we-experience-them (or colors as we see them). As far as this goes, it is compatible with objects and lights having colors in some other sense, e.g., colors, as defined for scientific purposes. Secondly, he is saying that color (i.e., color-as-we-experience it) is a psychological property, which in turn, might be interpreted in different ways. Accordingly, the view is quite complex (see the next section)

If Palmer did mean that, I would take issue with it, or possibly consider it merely the use of a naming convention.

However, having now read directly from (an excerpt of) the source, I am not sure if Barry Maund (the writer of the Stanford article) is adding an accurate caveat as regards what Palmer himself was saying. The caveat appears to be more Maund's own view than Palmer's.

The Palmer quote is from the start of section 3.4 in his book (partial link below). Shortly after that quote, he says,

"First, we consider the nature of the input medium, which is light, as a physicist would describe it".

He then goes on to describe light.

Then he says,

"Note that in the physical description of light there was no mention of colour at all. This is because, as Newton said, 'the rays, to speak properly, are not coloured'. Colour only becomes relevant when light enters the eyes of an observer who is equipped with the sort of visual nervous system to experience it."

Then,

"There may be light of different wavelengths independent of an observer, but there is no colour independent of an observer, because colour is a psychological phenomenon that arises only within an observer."

(my bolding)

https://books.google.co.uk/books?id...tant ways from the colors we perceive&f=false

 

[fromderinside]

Wow. Humans become all organisms. Great tactic. Got my attention.

The standard I mention is the receptor in color processing mammalian eyes transmitting information that is translated into neural data used by subsequent nervous system processes. I'm very much aware of various visual processing theories. I'm just relating my observations of general occurrences of colors as bands in a specific order. It is obvious given the few types of photoreceptors we humans possess that some sort of arbitrating need be used to arrive a useable consistent spectrum.

By the way it's never 'ought', it's what we have available to produce results to be as consistent with real world as need be to survive. I don't let agreement enter into my reasoning. We see what see with what we have. That what we see corresponds to what is reflected via spectral analysis only makes my position more likely.

A note to ruby sparks. The human visual system is incapable of processing individual frequencies and it is incapable of replicating sensed energy so it does the next logical thing, produces output that makes sense of the world illuminated by light. Fortunately it is clear that light frequency and energy can be grouped by color. What is left to science is to explain how one gets from frequency/energy to color and how color relates to frequency/energy. The easiest way is to understand is frequency is color and that specific photic energy is color. There is no need to invent a mind to experience color. The way we process light leads to that very thing.

 

[Koyaanisqatsi]

Goddamnit. What you left OFF (again) from Palmer is this all important qualifier (emphasis in original):

First, we consider the nature of the input information, which is light as a physicist would describe it. Next, we consider the output information, which is the experience of color as a psychologist would describe it. Then we examine the nature of the relation between the two: how the physical domain of light maps onto the psychological domain of color experience.

That distinction is EXACTLY what I first brought up and have been hammering you with ever since.

There's the wavelength we call "blue" (i.e., "as a physicist would describe it") and then there is the experience of blueness (i.e., "as a psychologist would describe it"). These are distinctly different propositions.

Fucking hell, Ruby. Your own source is making the exact same distinction I have been making this whole time.

YOU have not. YOU have been conflating the two repeatedly.

Further, on the following page he makes an even more precise distinction:

Although we sometimes see colored light emitted directly by a luminous object or surface, such as a TV or computer screen, we normally experience color as a property of surfaces. This occurs because some of the light emitted by luminous objects, such as the sun or light bulbs, is reflected by surfaces into our eyes). It is this reflected light that enables us to see nonluminous surfaces and their properties. They appear differently colored because difference surfaces reflect different proportions of light at different wavelengths.

So what Palmer is talking about in regard to objects is reflected light. Recall what I said prior in regard to absorption vs. reflection?

 

[ruby sparks]

So what Palmer is talking about in regard to objects is reflected light. Recall what I said prior in regard to absorption vs. reflection?

Koy, either you are saying something about the location of colour, or you are not. If you are not, then you're not doing the OP issue.

Yes, Palmer is talking there (as regards objects) about light. Light, not colour. Are you now talking about light, or colour?

 

[ruby sparks]

First, we consider the nature of the input information, which is light as a physicist would describe it.

Indeed. And he explicitly ruled out colour. What is your point?

You seem to think that because he also mentioned the experience of colour as a psychologist would describe it, that he was saying that that is 'the (psychological) experience of the colour that is in the light', but he wasn't, he's explicitly saying that the experience of colour is all that colour is.

According to him, "there is no colour independent of an observer, because colour is a psychological phenomenon that arises only within an observer."

That is the OP model in a nutshell, and the conflation is arguably yours. You are the one talking about what may be two different things and using the same word as part of a descriptor for both, not me and not Palmer.

Unless you want to use naming conventions, in which case, yes, call light 'coloured'. The usage may be in some ways pragmatic and convenient, and quite common, possibly even hard to avoid, but it obfuscates about where the colour actually is.

 

[fromderinside]

What is it about light alighting on one plant that makes it distinguishable from another plant if the plants, other than the effect of light alighting on them are identical in shape and size. Why its the effects of light alighting on them then having some frequencies absorbed while other frequencies are reflected.

Now along comes a human who can't detect individual frequencies because she hasn't the equipment to adequately do so. Yes light is sensed, but it is only sensed as many adjacent frequencies. Is sufficient to give her the capacity to integrate them into the appreciation of white light, all visible light radiated from the sun through the atmosphere permitted to reach the earth's surface. Yes it is.

We can conclude four things.
1. humans are capable of integrating the light they process into what an instrument indicates is all visible frequency light
2, humans accomplish this without the capacity of perceiving all visible frequencies..
3. humans by processing groups of frequencies can replicate the substance of processing all the visible frequencies.

Therefore since there is no way for a human to know what she is processing is other than what she sees and yet she can replicate full visible frequency spectrum emitted light.

4. She does so by processing chunks of adjacent frequencies neurally as colors which we know can be combined additively in to full visible spectrum light.

 

[Koyaanisqatsi]

So what Palmer is talking about in regard to objects is reflected light. Recall what I said prior in regard to absorption vs. reflection?

Koy, either you are saying something about the location of colour, or you are not.

Color is NOT A THING. It has no “location.” It is a category of wavelengths. The question is as insipid as asking where the “love” is when you send a text saying “I love you” to your spouse via your phone.

Yes, Palmer is talking there (as regards objects) about light. Light, not colour. Are you now talking about light, or colour?

Wrong. Again.

Although we sometimes see colored light emitted directly by a luminous object or surface, such as a TV or computer screen, we normally experience color as a property of surfaces.

Now put this into the mix:

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

What is different about them? They are reflecting light off of their surfaces, which changes the properties of the light, i.e, changes the wavelength. So we aren’t seeing the object’s color—as we do with emitted light such as a TV or computer screen—we are seeing the altered wavelength that gets reflected off of the object.

Hence, Maund (another of your own sources) stating:

This quote, however, needs unpacking. Palmer is obviously challenging our ordinary common-sense beliefs about colors. Specifically, he is denying that objects and lights have colors in the sense of colors-as-we-experience-them (or colors as we see them), As far as this goes, it is compatible with objects and lights having colors in some other sense, e.g., colors, as defined for scientific purposes. Secondly, he is saying that color (i.e., color-as-we-experience it) is a psychological property, which in turn, might be interpreted in different ways. Accordingly, the view is quite complex (see the next section)

 

[Politesse]

The question is as insipid as asking where the “love” is when you send a text saying “I love you” to your spouse via your phone.

That question not only has an answer, it has the same, obvious answer as does Ruby's: "it's in your head".

 

[ruby sparks]

The question is as insipid as asking where the “love” is when you send a text saying “I love you” to your spouse via your phone.

That question not only has an answer, it has the same, obvious answer as does Ruby's: "it's in your head".

You got there before me. Yes. that's exactly where it is.

Or hey, maybe it's in heat energy or electricity. You know, like what pain is.

 

[ruby sparks]

Now put this into the mix:

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

You seem to have taken Palmer's words out of context. It is clear from the context that when he says see colours or coloured light, his view is that the colours we see are only in our heads. He says this explicitly just before the above. That is why the part you quoted is in the 'psychological' section. Palmer explicitly and pointedly excluded the word colour when discussing light, or anything outside the observer, in the prior section. In the section you quoted from, he is doing the observer, and the seeing is the internal processes of vision.

What is different about them?

In the model I am currently embracing and endorsing here, one is electromagnetic radiation, or some equivalent form of (uncoloured) energy, or information, and the other is a brain experience.

It's a dumb question, because even if light does have colour properties, they would likely not be the same ones as in the brain anyway.

They are reflecting light off of their surfaces, which changes the properties of the light, i.e, changes the wavelength. So we aren’t seeing the object’s color—as we do with emitted light such as a TV or computer screen—we are seeing the altered wavelength that gets reflected off of the object.

That objects themselves are coloured (the subject of claim 1 in the OP) is an extremely unusual claim nowadays and generally considered incorrect.

 

[Koyaanisqatsi]

The question is as insipid as asking where the “love” is when you send a text saying “I love you” to your spouse via your phone.

That question not only has an answer, it has the same, obvious answer as does Ruby's: "it's in your head".

AND it's in the text AND it's in the sender's head. It isn't JUST in the receiver's head. Those are not binary, mutually exclusive propositions. It's not either/or.

So, ONCE AGAIN, the question as to the objective condition can only be answered via inference based on the evidence. Why did we evolve rods and cones? Where did the wavelength categorization come from? Are they copying an objective condition?

Etc., etc., etc.