Philosophy- What Do we See?

What you are speaking of is not on the colour blue being blue but instead on the problem of symbolic representation and description concerning perception, the problem on the validity of converting an information algorithm into another...secondly, there is a way of knowing when you compare what you see with what others see and check (more or less) if it is the same...beyond that it is pointless to argue..."blue" is what we perceive !

Yeah, pretty freaky, eh?

Ironically, it seems more a set of secondary conclusion-generating procedures than literally "seeing" (infinite regression of humunculi or whatever). The information inputted from the senses should first be about the condition of that part of the body (like an enclosed fire's effect on skin being represented as pain), but the secondary inference that the sensation is also saying something about an object existing in an environment (a stove), and using both innate and socially acquired recognition concepts for such extrospection, has come to dominate and specialize the brain's attitude about the role of those message-sending tissues.


We've worked out and diagnosed when particular individuals, due to this or that medical condition, are perceiving the world differently from the "norm". Humans inherit the same operating system, except for those very cases where it goes haywire or has become highly mutable. Regardless of however the manifestation of colour arises, it is processed separately from other characteristics of an object, which makes it easier to both publicly explore and discern any chromatic aberrations, via comparing that neural activity to the conventional kind under the same observer conditions.

"This year, psychologist Cristiana Cavina-Pratesi at Durham University in the UK found that shape, texture and colour are all processed in individual regions."
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20727751.200-the-minds-eye-how-the-brain-sorts-out-what-you-see.html

where i come from, we call a sofa a chesterfield

Yes, but while we cannot prove it we get along quite well assuming that when we use the same term, say "blue", we are referencing the same/similar phenomenon. In other words, while it may be a "technical" problem, it's practically non-problematical.

colour of light is a WAVE LENGTH of light

nothing more nothing less

When I was little my teachers pointed to a color and said it was named green. Another was yellow, and red and blue and so on. And that's all we have to go on. Common consensus. We are all agreed that the color of the sun is named yellow.
I percieve 1 meter differently than other people. We all agree on the specific length that is 1 meter (1/1000000 of the distance from equator to the north pole through Paris, I believe was the definition once upon a time). But with my 1,86 meters height that length is different than for a person who is 1,56 meters tall, for instance. I can leap over a 1 meter tall fence with ease, while a shorter person might consider it a bigger obstacle.

yes...that is interesting enough, but still his eyes don´t see 2 meters where 1 is all there is to be perceived...although of course there might be a different angle to it Cyr...common consensus is not out of the blue and you should give it more thought...why oh why, is there in fact such capacity for consensus ? are you up to decently explain it my friend ?

We all have a fetish for the simplicity of absolutes.

I guess "fetish" might be a synonym for what buddhists call "attachments."

Yes, I think we can say that. And when I manage to sever my attachmets towards anything I find that I have grown attached to the notion of my self as a succesful practitioner of non-attachment, which is in itself an attachment... I get the feeling that I am chasing my own tail...

But isn't that ultimately O.K., if there's noone to chase the tail? I like to watch myself attaching, which is a good way to let go.

I guess so. I hadn't thought about it like that.

By the way, Cryacuz do we "see" more than sensations, i.e., colors, shapes, etc.. It seems to me that when I look at, say, a horse, I see shapes, contours, colors, etc. and I THINK "horse." RAW sensations must be COOKED by the ascription of cultural meanings.

By the way, Cryacuz do we "see" more than sensations, i.e., colors, shapes, etc.. It seems to me that when I look at, say, a horse, I see shapes, contours, colors, etc. and I THINK "horse." RAW sensations must be COOKED by the ascription of cultural meanings.

I like your idea that raw sensations must be cooked by the ascriptions of our cultural meanings. I would expand on it and say that we see not only with our eyes, but with our preconceptions as well. One particular experience of horse is seen in contrast to all experiences of horse, as I understand it. Is that what you mean when you say that we see shapes and colors and think horse?

What we see is what our brain chooses to see. Eyes being a receptor, it is in our gray matter where we process the information and apply it to our realm of consciousness. If you say green is your blue, then so be it.

How does a brain "choose" to do anything?

Every observer "sees" its own subjective reality. And yes there is probably no such thing as objective reality so the true Color is not just unexplicable - it does not exist . This is the eyes of the observer that vision will depend on.