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Tue 22 Jun, 2004 07:58 am
When I was a little boy, nine or ten years old, one of the thoughts that haunted me was
Is the RED I'm seeing when I'm looking at the red roses the same as someone else's RED when he's looking at the same roses? Or is it maybe that what I'm experiencing when seeing red roses is really like someone else's GREEN when they're looking at the green grass?
My parents and teachers couldn't answer that, and for the most it was a silly question just begging "Well of course roses are red you silly!"
The most I could get was "But there are people who are color blind and cannot distinguish between red and green, you see my little boy?"
Later I've learned it's one of those thoughts that are thought over and over by different persons since the dawn of men.
Seeing films and reading books where 'mind reading' appeared inevitably got me thinking about that. Say person A is thinking about a red apple. And person B is looking inside his mind. Will person B see the red apple necessarily as RED? Or will he, since he experiences red as person A experiences green, see the apple GREEN, and hence reversely project it in reality as green?
It seemed to me that the only objective approach is through dualistic 'reality'; we all agree on red - by making references to commonly available instances of red. Then we somehow assume that red translates to RED, and green translates to GREEN. What if not so? How can we determine if two person's experiences are the same?
Maybe we colud locate the physical location of a region in our brain that is excited when we see red. Then we would claim that RED equals to that physical region and could in this way measure RED and GREEN. But what if every man is a bit different, and in the level of detail needed to determine RED the brain size and structure differs too much from person to person? What about color blind people?
Chalmers and others label this kind of property Qualia - our experience of perceptions, the REDNESS of red, what is it like to be in a red garden etc. They say this is what consciousness is all about. Then they differ quite essentially where this Qualia comes from.
I wonder what do you think, is red necessarily seen as RED, and is there such a thing as RED in the first place? Is it phenomenological (the effects caused by seeing red), is it behavioral (how we respond to red color), physiological (the physical location in the brain), or is it something else?
Relative
A vexing question Relative. Actually, It doesn't really matter if I see green and you see red so long as we both agree it's red. A friend of mine is color blind and we had parked beside a red car. When we came back from where we were he said, "I remember we parked beside that blue car". I pointed out to him that the car was red. Then he revealed his color blindness to me.
Hey, as long as the drapes match the carpet, who cares?
This question leads to the position that all "categories" involve sociolingusitic acquisition and are subject to consensus of needs - not objective reality.
This in turn leads to a nondualistic philosophical stance in which observer and observed are inseperable. (See current consciousness threads for similar)
Lovely green haired lady ya got there cjsha!
An intriguing age-old (as you say) epistemological conundrum, Relative. It should inspire a lot of thinking and discussion. Thanks. It's important that we understand Fresco's observation that this puzzle points out the unity, not the duality, between the individual and his perceptions: we may very well have different experiences because we are different perceivers.
And Nickfun's observation that it doesn't really matter, so long as we agree (because of our sociolinguistic training) to call roses red and the sky blue. Our actual experience of "redness" is a strictly private matter, of no social consequence. If, at the public level, our experience in this regard differs, it amounts to what the pragmatists call a difference that makes no difference.
Yes this is where fresco's particular perspective rises up. Perceptions/language/common knowledge(?) unite us.
If there is only one observer what prevents me from seeing out of your eyes and vise versa? Ignorance?
cjhsa wrote:Hey, as long as the drapes match the carpet, who cares?
Oh my god !!!
You just made my heart almost leap out of my chest.
I adore redheads and Alicia in particular.
She seems to have that effect on people.
While it is an interesting question, I think we all know the real answer.
That is quite an interesting question. But, you know, we'll never find out the answer unless we can create the technology that can have us see what another individual sees.
There isn't a way to describe color because we an only describe it as it appearers. You cam so "Oh, red is a rusty color. like..pink only darker" But rusty can look totally different to me than to you. Ok, so I'm basically repeating what you said.
I think there's a book about this and the primary subject is Red.
Humans do not see colors differently, generally speaking. Aliens might, bugs might, superman might (I suppose that is redundant of "aliens"), because their eyes are competely different than ours. But our eyes are all based on the same genes.
SCoates, the question is How do you know, How can you demonstrate that different people looking at the same color have the same experience. Farmerman, how does the Munsel Chart solve this epistemological problem? If we say that a color emits a certain number of Xs no matter who is looking at it doesn't PROVE that it elicits the same experience in all lookers. Now, some might say that we can, in principle if not yet in practice, compare internal brain states of lookers. But how do we know FOR SURE that similar brain states tightly entail similar mind states? I frankly think this is no more than a trivial technical puzzle, but it does demonstrate that perceptions, perceivers and objects of perception are all ONE.
It doesn't matter whether or not we experience the same thing, just as long as we know what that person is talking about when they point to a rose and say "That is red."
If that made any sense at all.
I understood that the question was "how" we know. But I was content with the fact that I do indeed know, regardless of how.
That's cool. Me too. I don't know for sure. But that's no real problem for me--or for you. When I like a painting I've made, I will show it to others with the confidence that they are seeing what I am seeing, including its colors. If I could not enjoy this confidence I would be less inclined to show it to them.
JL, the point then is that we are all being duped together. The chroma, hue, value numbers are all catalogued by wavelength . So its a matter of whether we accept that same frequencies are sensed the same in varying lights and are, therefore equivalent to some norm.
its how spectrophotometers work, they sense molecular concentrations in accordance with beers law. Color was a property of mass that was quantified early in the game. So, as far as the epistomological discourse, youre quest is more one of mathematical derivation than the pure perception of color.
i dont belong in a philosophical discussion. im like bill Cosby when asked "why is there air?' and he says
'to blow up volleyballs"
I get offended to much when talk gets philosophical. And others get too offended when I talk science.
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