COLOUR

[Koyaanisqatsi]

What is the evidence for your claim? About what people, fundamentally, mean?

Are you seriously arguing that when you're in a Banana Republic and your friend asks you, "Is this shirt blue?" that they are asking you to expound on the philosophical notion of "blueness" as it relates to the subjective interpretation of one's personal accumulative associations with the wavelength? Or do they simply want to know if you are seeing the same color they are?

 

[Politesse]

What is the evidence for your claim? About what people, fundamentally, mean?

Are you seriously arguing that when you're in a Banana Republic and your friend asks you, "Is this shirt blue?" that they are asking you to expound on the philosophical notion of "blueness" as it relates to the subjective interpretation of one's personal accumulative associations with the wavelength? Or do they simply want to know if you are seeing the same color they are?

Setting aside the absurd mental image of me in a Banana Republic, no, I'd say they just want to know whether the shirt is "blue", without giving much extra thought to the matter. Their subjective experience of the color blue is likely subconsciously involved, though. Why ask about the shirt's color at all, otherwise? If one has no mental associations with the color, no acquired personal preferences or culturally prescribed notions of what colors go together or are appropriate for given situations, etc, there's no reason to prefer a green shirt over a blue one, anyway.

 

[Koyaanisqatsi]

What is the evidence for your claim? About what people, fundamentally, mean?

Are you seriously arguing that when you're in a Banana Republic and your friend asks you, "Is this shirt blue?" that they are asking you to expound on the philosophical notion of "blueness" as it relates to the subjective interpretation of one's personal accumulative associations with the wavelength? Or do they simply want to know if you are seeing the same color they are?

Setting aside the absurd mental image of me in a Banana Republic, no, I'd say they just want to know whether the shirt is "blue", without giving much extra thought to the matter. Their subjective experience of the color blue is likely subconsciously involved, though.

So what? Again, you are simply shifting the narrative--aka, stuffing straw--onto a completely different concept. Here:

If one has no mental associations with the color

See? NO ONE has said that there are "no mental associations with the color." There are TWO concepts being conflated here. One is the objective condition of color. The other is the additional subjective experiences triggered by the objective condition of color. Neither of these are strawmen because both you and ruby have stated at various times throughout this thread that color exists "ONLY" in the brain. This is false. Full stop.

So, we have one fact: Color--writ large--is an objective condition.

And another ancillary fact: Colors trigger associated memories in human brains.

If you want to talk about associated memories and how the brain bundles various bits of interrelated information from previous experiences, by all means, but then you're not talking about "color;" you're talking about associated memories and how the brain bundles various bits of interrelated information from previous experiences. THAT is your subject.

You, however, keep shifting the subject. You say "color" but then you (again, ironically) refer to association and information bundling by the human brain. And to what end? None, other than the already well established fact that we subjectively experience an objective world.

Great! Fin.

 

[Politesse]

Setting aside the absurd mental image of me in a Banana Republic, no, I'd say they just want to know whether the shirt is "blue", without giving much extra thought to the matter. Their subjective experience of the color blue is likely subconsciously involved, though.

So what? Again, you are simply shifting the narrative--aka, stuffing straw--onto a completely different concept. Here:

If one has no mental associations with the color

See? NO ONE has said that there are "no mental associations with the color." There are TWO concepts being conflated here. One is the objective condition of color. The other is the additional subjective experiences triggered by the objective condition of color. Neither of these are strawmen because both you and ruby have stated at various times throughout this thread that color exists "ONLY" in the brain. This is false. Full stop.

So, we have one fact: Color--writ large--is an objective condition.

And another ancillary fact: Colors trigger associated memories in human brains.

If you want to talk about associated memories and how the brain bundles various bits of interrelated information from previous experiences, by all means, but then you're not talking about "color;" you're talking about associated memories and how the brain bundles various bits of interrelated information from previous experiences. THAT is your subject.

You, however, keep shifting the subject. You say "color" but then you (again, ironically) refer to association and information bundling by the human brain. And to what end? None, other than the already well established fact that we subjectively experience an objective world.

Great! Fin.

Says who?

 

[fromderinside]

Most of the above is just one person shooting past another person.

Colour can be defined by the operations used to measure it. Such would be an objective definition of colour.

If light falling on a leaf only reflects particular frequencies of light that sets the stage for those discerning whether beings that see light use that cue for obtaining sustenance from only those kinds of plants, for instance. In fact it is remarkable how close one can predict what one will eat just by knowing they are attracted to a particular set of frequencies of light just because light has been studied objectively.

The subjective isn't very good place to find operations. So those who study such things as colour don't start there. In fact most of the comments above yell out that fact. The subjective is one of the main reasons I was never attracted to psychiatry.

In fact if you think about it it's why Trump is having so much trouble dealing with objective realities of Covid -19.

lesson finished.

 

[Koyaanisqatsi]

So what? Again, you are simply shifting the narrative--aka, stuffing straw--onto a completely different concept. Here:



See? NO ONE has said that there are "no mental associations with the color." There are TWO concepts being conflated here. One is the objective condition of color. The other is the additional subjective experiences triggered by the objective condition of color. Neither of these are strawmen because both you and ruby have stated at various times throughout this thread that color exists "ONLY" in the brain. This is false. Full stop.

So, we have one fact: Color--writ large--is an objective condition.

And another ancillary fact: Colors trigger associated memories in human brains.

If you want to talk about associated memories and how the brain bundles various bits of interrelated information from previous experiences, by all means, but then you're not talking about "color;" you're talking about associated memories and how the brain bundles various bits of interrelated information from previous experiences. THAT is your subject.

You, however, keep shifting the subject. You say "color" but then you (again, ironically) refer to association and information bundling by the human brain. And to what end? None, other than the already well established fact that we subjectively experience an objective world.

Great! Fin.

Says who?

Both of us, evidently. We're both affirming the fact that color is an objective condition that also triggers subjective experiences.

 

[Politesse]

So what? Again, you are simply shifting the narrative--aka, stuffing straw--onto a completely different concept. Here:



See? NO ONE has said that there are "no mental associations with the color." There are TWO concepts being conflated here. One is the objective condition of color. The other is the additional subjective experiences triggered by the objective condition of color. Neither of these are strawmen because both you and ruby have stated at various times throughout this thread that color exists "ONLY" in the brain. This is false. Full stop.

So, we have one fact: Color--writ large--is an objective condition.

And another ancillary fact: Colors trigger associated memories in human brains.

If you want to talk about associated memories and how the brain bundles various bits of interrelated information from previous experiences, by all means, but then you're not talking about "color;" you're talking about associated memories and how the brain bundles various bits of interrelated information from previous experiences. THAT is your subject.

You, however, keep shifting the subject. You say "color" but then you (again, ironically) refer to association and information bundling by the human brain. And to what end? None, other than the already well established fact that we subjectively experience an objective world.

Great! Fin.

Says who?

Both of us, evidently. We're both affirming the fact that color is an objective condition that also triggers subjective experiences.

That was never in doubt. The question was whether "the color is in the object". If some aspects of color are not, then the answer is no.

 

[Koyaanisqatsi]

Both of us, evidently. We're both affirming the fact that color is an objective condition that also triggers subjective experiences.

That was never in doubt. The question was whether "the color is in the object". If some aspects of color are not, then the answer is no.

So NOW you drop the pedantry?

The question as to whether "the color is in the object" was hopelessly vague. What does "in" mean? The subsequent discussion revealed that color is both an external (objective) property of the object--in some more complicated manner depending upon many factors--as well as an internal (subjective) property of the brain in regard to ancillary associations triggered by the color (as well as other elements, such as mapping and translation of information, etc).

So the proper wording would be more along the lines of, "Color wavelengths are affected by which photons bounce off of and which photons get absorbed and which photons are emitted (or not) by an object", etc. Iow, which photons that get bounced off a given rubber ball--as opposed to those that get absorbed--is determined by the objective color condition of the ball, but what we see are only the photons that are bounced off, so one cannot say for certain that the ball itself is blue. What we can say is that, whatever color the ball is, it caused the photons bouncing off it to be of the wavelength "blue."

Iow, the ball is a certain color, but exactly which color it may be is (perhaps) not measurable. What color causes certain photons to bounce off and thereby change their wavelength to "blue"? Unknown. And, perhaps, unknowable, because any device we can come up with to measure it, would only be measuring the photons that are being similarly bounced off of the ball.

But that doesn't mean that the ball isn't also colored; i.e., that the color is not also "in" the ball.

 

[skepticalbip]

Both of us, evidently. We're both affirming the fact that color is an objective condition that also triggers subjective experiences.

That was never in doubt. The question was whether "the color is in the object". If some aspects of color are not, then the answer is no.

So NOW you drop the pedantry?

The question as to whether "the color is in the object" was hopelessly vague. What does "in" mean? The subsequent discussion revealed that color is both an external (objective) property of the object--in some more complicated manner depending upon many factors--as well as an internal (subjective) property of the brain in regard to ancillary associations triggered by the color (as well as other elements, such as mapping and translation of information, etc).

So the proper wording would be more along the lines of, "Color wavelengths are affected by which photons bounce off of and which photons get absorbed and which photons are emitted (or not) by an object", etc. Iow, which photons that get bounced off a given rubber ball--as opposed to those that get absorbed--is determined by the objective color condition of the ball, but what we see are only the photons that are bounced off, so one cannot say for certain that the ball itself is blue. What we can say is that, whatever color the ball is, it caused the photons bouncing off it to be of the wavelength "blue."

Iow, the ball is a certain color, but exactly which color it may be is (perhaps) not measurable. What color causes certain photons to bounce off and thereby change their wavelength to "blue"? Unknown. And, perhaps, unknowable, because any device we can come up with to measure it, would only be measuring the photons that are being similarly bounced off of the ball.

But that doesn't mean that the ball isn't also colored; i.e., that the color is not also "in" the ball.

You are still refusing to explicitly define what you mean by 'color', then explain how that definition applies to the properties of that ball, light, our photo receptors firing, the neurons along our optic nerve firing, and finally how our mind interprets the neurons firing.

If you define color as certain wavelengths of light then yes, the ball has some properties that absorb other wavelengths but that doesn't make the ball have the property of what you have defined as color. The problem is that you use a different definition for color depending on which step in the process you are talking about. If you have to use three or four different definitions then you are talking about three or four different things but calling them color.

If 'redness' is a property of the ball then it is still red when there is no light or when illuminated by a blue light.

 

[fromderinside]

As soon as one intervenes 'mind' as a material thing you scramble the discussion. So it's not about colour, but rather about mind (whatever that is) intervening in discussion of colour as some sort of mechanism operating on colour which shall remain unspecified.

Now the discussion becomes operationally unhinged.

The only sensible way to interpret colour is to use it's operational definition colour -such as - light frequency used by some material operator (being, device, "git a rope") to some material end. If one puts things that way mind never need be intervened.

 

[Politesse]

Hold up, who said anything about "mind"-- perception and interpretation are absolutely cognitive processes, hence why I do not accept the idea that they are not themselves as "real" as wavelengths of light or whatever have you. Of course it "scrambles the discussion", we're discussing a compex issue. If you can't swim, get out of the deep end.

 

[steve_bank]

Colors are associated with emotions and feelings. Green with envy, seeing red when angry, pink associated with females.

In music there is the 'blue note', associated with evoking feeling blue.

Frank Sinatra was called Old Blue Eyes.

 

[fromderinside]

OK guys.

First, Politesse you brought up mind in one of the two posts I addressed to 'guys'. And you steve_bank connect squirts and twitches with emotions as did James/Lang and Cannon/Bard so you might have a very small talking point.

But what I took from Hull was the utter hopelessness of quantifying behavior to observed emotional content such as bollae. If, on the other hand, one finds constancy in limen to physical input one can at least use it to model performance (Psychophysics).

As far as I know M&E, one of my teaching areas, is no longer a viable measurable psychological domain. Nor is, another teaching area of mine, Learning Theory viable for explaining acquisition and maintenance of skills.

Point here is that neuroscience has moved on to much more molecular levels for lawful objective explanation and the operations have changed in nature IAC with the change in utility of the measurement.

One is playing a silly game when one insists subjective material is suitable for objective interpretation. That sanction is true at least until one has the tools to accommodate moving from ranking to counting. Check Tversky and Kahneman on that:
Judgment under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases https://science.sciencemag.org/content/185/4157/1124.abstract

 

[Politesse]

OK guys.

First, Politesse you brought up mind in one of the two posts I addressed to 'guys'. And you steve_bank connect squirts and twitches with emotions as did James/Lang and Cannon/Bard so you might have a very small talking point.

But what I took from Hull was the utter hopelessness of quantifying behavior to observed emotional content such as bollae. If, on the other hand, one finds constancy in limen to physical input one can at least use it to model performance (Psychophysics).

As far as I know M&E, one of my teaching areas, is no longer a viable measurable psychological domain. Nor is, another teaching area of mine, Learning Theory viable for explaining acquisition and maintenance of skills.

Point here is that neuroscience has moved on to much more molecular levels for lawful objective explanation and the operations have changed in nature IAC with the change in utility of the measurement.

One is playing a silly game when one insists subjective material is suitable for objective interpretation. That sanction is true at least until one has the tools to accommodate moving from ranking to counting. Check Tversky and Kahneman on that:
[FONT=&]Judgment under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases [/FONT]https://science.sciencemag.org/content/185/4157/1124.abstract

If I used "mind", the measarable apparatus of the nervous system was what I meant that as a shorthand for. If you insist that "color" is a shorthand for the real physical processes that underlie it rather than a description of how people consciously encounter it, this should not be difficult to understand.

Neuroscience is indeed a promising field of study, though if you think it supports the idea that people are reliable perceivers of "objectively true" properties of the universe, I'm not sure you've been keeping current with it.

 

[steve_bank]

OK guys.

First, Politesse you brought up mind in one of the two posts I addressed to 'guys'. And you steve_bank connect squirts and twitches with emotions as did James/Lang and Cannon/Bard so you might have a very small talking point.

But what I took from Hull was the utter hopelessness of quantifying behavior to observed emotional content such as bollae. If, on the other hand, one finds constancy in limen to physical input one can at least use it to model performance (Psychophysics).

As far as I know M&E, one of my teaching areas, is no longer a viable measurable psychological domain. Nor is, another teaching area of mine, Learning Theory viable for explaining acquisition and maintenance of skills.

Point here is that neuroscience has moved on to much more molecular levels for lawful objective explanation and the operations have changed in nature IAC with the change in utility of the measurement.

One is playing a silly game when one insists subjective material is suitable for objective interpretation. That sanction is true at least until one has the tools to accommodate moving from ranking to counting. Check Tversky and Kahneman on that:
[FONT=&]Judgment under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases [/FONT]https://science.sciencemag.org/content/185/4157/1124.abstract

Philosophy like this thread is a silly game. Silly games once and a while are good to pass the time and relieve boredom for some.

I may have a small point? Color me red.

Other what can be quantified what is not subjective? The word mind itself is contextual It can have psychological, physicals sconce, cultural, philosophical meaning in context.

Precisely define your terms, right? Impossible with the word mind beyond debates like this.

 

[skepticalbip]

I read an interesting article that explains that we can not see a couple brilliant colors because of the way our eyes work. We can see the brilliant color blue-red and call it purple so the article made me wonder what red-green or blue-yellow would look like if I could see them.

https://www.livescience.com/17948-red-green-blue-yellow-stunning-colors.html

Red-Green & Blue-Yellow: The Stunning Colors You Can't See

Try to imagine reddish green — not the dull brown you get when you mix the two pigments together, but rather a color that is somewhat like red and somewhat like green. Or, instead, try to picture yellowish blue — not green, but a hue similar to both yellow and blue.

Is your mind drawing a blank? That's because, even though those colors exist, you've probably never seen them. Red-green and yellow-blue are the so-called "forbidden colors." Composed of pairs of hues whose light frequencies automatically cancel each other out in the human eye, they're supposed to be impossible to see simultaneously.

The limitation results from the way we perceive color in the first place. Cells in the retina called "opponent neurons" fire when stimulated by incoming red light, and this flurry of activity tells the brain we're looking at something red. Those same opponent neurons are inhibited by green light, and the absence of activity tells the brain we're seeing green. Similarly, yellow light excites another set of opponent neurons, but blue light damps them. While most colors induce a mixture of effects in both sets of neurons, which our brains can decode to identify the component parts, red light exactly cancels the effect of green light (and yellow exactly cancels blue), so we can never perceive those colors coming from the same place.

 

[steve_bank]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RGB_color_model

RGB is a device-dependent color model: different devices detect or reproduce a given RGB value differently, since the color elements (such as phosphors or dyes) and their response to the individual R, G, and B levels vary from manufacturer to manufacturer, or even in the same device over time. Thus an RGB value does not define the same color across devices without some kind of color management.
Typical RGB input devices are color TV and video cameras, image scanners, and digital cameras. Typical RGB output devices are TV sets of various technologies (CRT, LCD, plasma, OLED, quantum dots, etc.), computer and mobile phone displays, video projectors, multicolor LED displays and large screens such as Jumbotron. Color printers, on the other hand are not RGB devices, but subtractive color devices (typically CMYK color model).

Physical principles for the choice of red, green, and blue[edit]


A set of primary colors, such as the sRGB primaries, define a color triangle; only colors within this triangle can be reproduced by mixing the primary colors. Colors outside the color triangle are therefore shown here as gray. The primaries and the D65 white point of sRGB are shown.
The choice of primary colors is related to the physiology of the human eye; good primaries are stimuli that maximize the difference between the responses of the cone cells of the human retina to light of different wavelengths, and that thereby make a large color triangle.[4]
The normal three kinds of light-sensitive photoreceptor cells in the human eye (cone cells) respond most to yellow (long wavelength or L), green (medium or M), and violet (short or S) light (peak wavelengths near 570 nm, 540 nm and 440 nm, respectively[4]). The difference in the signals received from the three kinds allows the brain to differentiate a wide gamut of different colors, while being most sensitive (overall) to yellowish-green light and to differences between hues in the green-to-orange region.
As an example, suppose that light in the orange range of wavelengths (approximately 577 nm to 597 nm) enters the eye and strikes the retina. Light of these wavelengths would activate both the medium and long wavelength cones of the retina, but not equally—the long-wavelength cells will respond more. The difference in the response can be detected by the brain, and this difference is the basis of our perception of orange. Thus, the orange appearance of an object results from light from the object entering our eye and stimulating the different cones simultaneously but to different degrees.
Use of the three primary colors is not sufficient to reproduce all colors; only colors within the color triangle defined by the chromaticities of the primaries can be reproduced by additive mixing of non-negative amounts of those colors of light.[4][page needed]

RGB and displays[edit]


Cutaway rendering of a color CRT: 1. Electron guns 2. Electron beams 3. Focusing coils 4. Deflection coils 5. Anode connection 6. Mask for separating beams for red, green, and blue part of displayed image 7. Phosphor layer with red, green, and blue zones 8. Close-up of the phosphor-coated inner side of the screen


Color wheel with RGB pixels of the colors


RGB phosphor dots in a CRT monitor


RGB sub-pixels in an LCD TV (on the right: an orange and a blue color; on the left: a close-up)
One common application of the RGB color model is the display of colors on a cathode ray tube (CRT), liquid-crystal display (LCD), plasma display, or organic light emitting diode (OLED) display such as a television, a computer's monitor, or a large scale screen. Each pixel on the screen is built by driving three small and very close but still separated RGB light sources. At common viewing distance, the separate sources are indistinguishable, which tricks the eye to see a given solid color. All the pixels together arranged in the rectangular screen surface conforms the color image.

The CMYK color model (/smaɪk/; process color, four color) is a subtractive color model, based on the CMY color model, used in color printing, and is also used to describe the printing process itself. CMYK refers to the four ink plates used in some color printing: cyan, magenta, yellow, and key (black).
The CMYK model works by partially or entirely masking colors on a lighter, usually white, background. The ink reduces the light that would otherwise be reflected. Such a model is called subtractive because inks "subtract" the colors red, green and blue from white light. White light minus red leaves cyan, white light minus green leaves magenta, and white light minus blue leaves yellow.
In additive color models, such as RGB, white is the "additive" combination of all primary colored lights, while black is the absence of light. In the CMYK model, it is the opposite: white is the natural color of the paper or other background, while black results from a full combination of colored inks. To save cost on ink, and to produce deeper black tones, unsaturated and dark colors are produced by using black ink instead of the combination of cyan, magenta, and yellow.

 

[steve_bank]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi... t e Emerging, Category List Category List

Jump to search
Multi-primary color (MPC) display is a display that can reproduce a wider gamut color than conventional displays. In addition to the standard RGB (Red Green and Blue) color subpixels, the technology utilizes additional colors, such as yellow, magenta and cyan, and thus increases the range of displayable colors that the human eye can see.[1][2]
Sharp's Quattron is the brand name of an LCD color display technology that utilizes a yellow fourth color subpixel.[3][4] It is used in Sharp's Aquos LCD TV product line, particularly in models with screens 40 inches across and larger.[5]

 

[steve_bank]

This is a rather colorless thread.

 

[ruby sparks]

I think that a major problem here is one of the earlier questions I tried to have clarified, "What is the definition of color that is being used?"

That is a very good point. How many threads here have we seen this request made as a prerequisite to having a shared discussion?

In some ways, is it not sightly unusual that we are being asked to accept numerous definitions? In a way, I think it is. At times in this thread, colour has been defined by those not accepting the implied OP definition (colour as a brain experience only) as existing in at least 4 ways in 4 different places (in light, in objects, in the optic nerve and in the brain).

To my mind, the models that have colour, in different forms, in all 4 places are, I think, guilty of stretching definitions too far and just being confused, imprecise and profligate.

However, imo, the model that has it only in/of objects and in/of brains (possibly the most naturally intuitive model for the average human) is arguably definitionally precise, because it is saying that objects have the real, objective, actual colour and that the brain experience is merely a secondary representation or psychological model of this. This is colour on a par with shape. It is also the distinction between 'red' and 'redness'. Red qualia are allowed, but only as mimics of 'true red'.

Even then, it might arguably be helpful and clarifying not to use the same term for what are very different phenomena with different properties.

But more fundamentally, and no matter how precise its two related but different definitions are, in my opinion it is simply wrong. I would quite strongly claim that objects are not in fact actually coloured at all. Imo, that is probably a mistake, and an illusion of perception (a form of mental projection), and the model that has objects as coloured is falling for it.

As for light, I'm not particularly convinced at all. Seems pretty unlikely, imo. Ditto the optic nerve.

I would argue that the definition of color as property of light makes more sense. Consider, for example, this optical illusion:

View attachment 28245

The small squares are in fact the same "color", in terms of how your computer or phone display's pixels are configured or which wavelengths of light happen to hit your eyeball. But your brain perceives them as two different colors. If you define color as mental event, then you'd have to agree that these are two different colors. But what do you call that color? Purple or gray? Purple-on-gray or gray-on-purple perhaps? To me that seems unnecessarily complicated, and impossible to qualify (and much less quantify) except by referencing private constructs in your brain. Which could be different for you and me, let alone for other animals that have different sensory organs, or even machines with cameras.

On the other hand, the wavelengths and amount of photons (i.e. brightness) in a beam of light is quantifiable. And we can use the same definition with any observer.

What you seem to be saying there is that it is simpler (less complicated) and more objectively measurable to use wavelengths. That's fine. But the colours (in the case of the above image, two sets of different colours) would still be in your brain, and if that's complicated, well, it's complicated (and possibly all the more interesting because of that).