If we were all color blind... ?

And I guess if we were all color blind we wouldn't know it (until some scientist took measurements) . When I was a child I was very myopic, but so was my brother (one year younger than me). It seems that because we shared our myopia we never had any idea of it, until a teacher in the second or third grade noticed that we never looked at the blackboard.

That's the key issue. Nobody would know unless we noticed that other species were discriminating between objects which to us were the same shade of grey. And when we talk of "scientists", we should bear in mind that much of the development of chemistry used "color" as an empirical concept.

That's pretty damned silly. If we didn't know that colors exist, even noticing that other species discriminated wouldn't suggest to us someting which were incapable of imagining. We only get scientists after many, many thousands of years of both physical and societal evolution. Without color vision, we likely wouldn't have ever started down the path that lead us here. Both color vision and binocular vision are believed to have developed while our most distant ancestors were still arboreal.

(Ignoring your crass first sentence).This sentence above indicates that you are beginning to see the point of this rhetorical discussion with respect to whether "reality" is independent of observers or otherwise. Historically( ), the discussion of color perception has been a microcosm of major philosophical debates regarding ontology and epistemology.

You are only saying that the first sentence was crass because you don't want to address the undeniable fact that your claim was silly. I saw what you believe is the point of your largely pointless yammering here shortly after the chin music started.

So you've only come to consolidate your reputation of being a belligerent old codger have you ? Why bore us rigid ? Is it because your "real-life" contacts won't put up with it ?

How very crass of you. I came this time, as i did at the beginning of the thread, to point out how silly this sort of discussion is. It matters not one iota to reality, and is an exercise in mental masturbation. That is something which cannot be stressed too often.

fresco said

How did Varela arrive at this assertion? Im still puzzled. He seems to disregard genetic hierarchies in color vision. To say that the advantages are NOT of survival significance is actually ass backward. Did it confer any selection advantage in his mind? Cichlids of Lake Victoria have radiated into many niches and each successful adaptation had conferred some sort of reproductive advantage. Verala seems to be talking about what you can do to become a fossil rather than a genetic success.

Ive read some of his stuff and have adopteda noted biologists observation that Varela often is "A vocabulary without a discipline"(sorta like spendi). Im not gonna read the book because Ive been burnt by catching his latest drop of wisdom and I often wonder whether hes having a huge laugh at our expense.

Varela starts from the axiom of a "dependent reality". He therefore does not acknowledge evolution as adapting to an independent environment, but bringing forth an interactional niche. It is possible that this overview is unacceptable to traditional biologists, but as far as I can see, the evidence he cites on species specific dimensionality of color vision supports his case. That is why careful reading of his work might be required.

In English please. Is he saying that the interaction of the individual and the environment changes the environment? Thats nothing earth shaking its the subject of a reemerging interest in epigenetics and "neo Lamarkianism" (not really Lamarkianism but a sense of transfer of some forms of "Aquired " characteristics to offspring. However, its still adaptive

Grow up !If you find the discussion "silly", what are you doing here other than making a fool of yourself ? The ideas I discuss here have been raised by acclaimed professional philosophers. If you disagree with them you need to more than a bit of layman's heckling.

In English, organism and environment are co-existent and co-extensive.
This is a view Varela holds in common with Piaget's genetic epistemology (the two way process of adaptation=assimilation +accommodation) and Merleau-Ponty's gestaltism ( perceptual "objects" do not have properties but are affordances for interaction). If that is what "epigenetics" deals with, we are talking the same language. If not then only direct reference to Varela will suffice.

You're the one who is making a fool of himself. How immature is it to tell someone to play by your rules or go away? It's hilarious to see a reference to acclaimed philosophers. Like medieval guilds, academics close their shops to all but the approved initiates, and then spend the rest of their lives either patting one another on the back, or trying to find ways to stab one another in back without themselves suffering for it. Who, precisely, acclaims these philosophers--other philosophers?

You aren't discussing color vision, you're not even discussing the idea of color vision. You are, as usual, discussing the idea of the discussion. In this case, the idea of a discussion of discussing color vision. I have a perfect right to come here and point out just how silly and useless the exercise is. That's how it works on the interweb. So you need to grow up, get over yourself, and deal with it.

An occasional mutant who wasn't achromatic would range from being branded by the majority as anything from a nut (like people who claim to see auras, etc.) to regarded as some kind of shaman dispensing a revelation. At least until some eventual physiological and EM wave research vindicated such individuals (synesthesia was doubted in various quarters until VS Ramachandran and others developed tests to confirm that it wasn't the work of delusion or fraud).

I would love to encounter an "intelligent" species on another world that had only one sense: Olfaction, just see what potentially unique situation they progressed into as the result of that extreme limitation. Would distinct odors, of much higher resolution than we have, eventually be conceived and manipulated as objects distributed in a space -- or would some unknown alternative scheme be substituted? Since evolving a somatosensory system of some degree would seem to be unavoidable for any complex organism, the possibility of having only an olfactory sense alone is extremely unlikely. And thus any additional, even feeble tactile sense would pretty much guarantee a similar feeling of the world that even our blind/deaf have (or perhaps a grade below what a dog has with its somewhat inferior vision, compensated for by that wet nose and its appended neural equipment that can navigate so ably in the environment, from smell).

Well that wasn't too profitable.

Wrong !You have absolutely no right to make derogatory comments about either the contents or the posters on a PHILOSOPHY THREAD because you don't like, or don't understand philosophy. If in doubt, consult the rules of the forum. Now lets have your infantile rejoinder and you can go and take your nap.

I'll be taking a nap with or without your crass comments. You're the one making derogatory remarks about the members. I'm just ridiculing the ideas here. If you take that personally, that's certainly not my fault.

You make some valid points particularly the one about social ostracism of "perceptual misfits" . In fact the literature suggests synesthesia (blurring of the senses) is more common than one would expect, so people who "see" colors with their fingers may not be so far fetched.

Regarding the ostracism of perceptual misfits, if they are not "obstracised" they would appear to be more common.

How about the things we 'naturally' don't percieve? That evidence can't be spoken for on behalf of our percieved reality.