The REDNESS of red

nolanguage: Nope, never read it. Sounds interesting though. What's it about?

BoGoWo: I implied no such thing! The 'programmed' bit was a word taken from stuh505's earlier post where he was talking about people being programmed to respond a certain way...blah, blah, blah you get the general idea. Yes, I agree with you about the survival thing being a major factor in shaping the evolutionary process. What I was trying to get at was that evolution would seem to have had a really huge influence on our perceptions of colour and the emotions they evoke.

Like I said, this isn't an argument, merely an attempt to explore the common ground we may or may not have in terms of perception.

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An addendum:

I would like to point out to all and sundry that you are still missing the point with the tree thing.

Stop harping on the sound thing! It's not about the bloomin' sound! It's about the nature of reality!

If an event is not percieved, NOONE (I don't care how good you are with physics) can prove that it happened!

Yes, all logic and common sense would indicate that it did, but, BUT, you weren't there! So you'll never know for absotively posolutely sure that it did.

End rant. Hope I didn't step on any toes or disjoint any noses. Smile

(I am so sorry that I picked up on the tree thing Rolling Eyes

)

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fortune wrote:

An addendum:

I would like to point out to all and sundry that you are still missing the point with the tree thing.

Stop harping on the sound thing! It's not about the bloomin' sound! It's about the nature of reality!

If an event is not percieved, NOONE (I don't care how good you are with physics) can prove that it happened!

Yes, all logic and common sense would indicate that it did, but, BUT, you weren't there! So you'll never know for absotively posolutely sure that it did.

End rant. Hope I didn't step on any toes or disjoint any noses. (I am so sorry that I picked up on the tree thing )

no toes here! you can't see them! Smile

I know it's the whole empirical evidence thing your speaking of. Yes the philosophical puzzle of whether or not patterns exist w/o a human experience. Try relating this to whether or not patterns in math exist independently of human definition. Like did we discover math or create it?

but anyway, I was taking the tree thing further and playing on the analitical aspect of the definitions we use when experiencing reality. Like the word sound, is a different experience to you than a deaf person. But anyway, I have a feeling the tree is sort of dead by now. So i'll just comment on other things in this thread
:wink:

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Nolanguage, I'm so glad you put sound in quotes when referring to the "sound" heard by deaf people. Would you do the same for a sound not-experienced by a person who was hypnotized into not being aware of a sound? This is SO simple. There is NO sound made by a falling tree IF by sound we are talking about (1) the EXPERIENCE of hearing "a sound" and (2) if there is noone present to have that experience. On the other hand, if we are referring to sound as a purely objective physical event, the kind discussed by physics and physiology, then there is a sound made by the falling tree in the absence of hearers.
Tywvel's comment serves to show that this discussion is ultimately absurd. It makes sense only within the framework of a set of false metaphysical presumptions.

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BoGoWo / JLN,

your comments on my post show that you are misinterpreting what I was trying to say. I would like to re-explain, in more words, in hopes that you will at least see my point, even if you still do not agree...

Yes, it is true that colors are seen based on what wavelengths of light are reflected at our eyes...and our eyes will undoubtedly get the same data looking at the same object because they work the same way...and yes it is also true that the way our brain interprets this information could be entirely subjective. I recognize this.

I did make one mistake, the second point is actually 2 premesis combined.

1) The fact that we can recognize opposite colors, and arrange colors in terms of value etc, shows that the potentially subjective visualization of the colors is relative to each other. In other words, if one person sees blue as being a little bit more reddish than I do, then they must see ALL colors a little more reddish. This was my first point.

2) My second point is that, once we know the first point, if we discover that ANY one color is seen excactly the same by two people, then we KNOW that ALL colors are seen exactly the same by those two people...because the color hues are all relative to each other.

3) My third point, which I sort of combined into my second point originally, is that we DO see primary colors the same.

Primary colors are not subjective, they are the colors used to mix up all the other colors...so if you saw things differently, then you would notice that the primary colors are all shifted, and are not really pure.

I have a lot more INDUCTIVE reasons for believing that we see primary colors the same...but I will refrain from posting them, because this is all deductive, and I see no need to add in subjective material when the deductive seems to cover it.

So to summarize...if one color is seen the same, all colors must be seen the same. The primary colors are seen the same. Therefore all colors are seen the same.

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Except that they're not.

I KNOW my mother sees colours differently to me because she argues with me over the shade of certain objects.

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fortune,

yes, it is certainly possible to have an impairment that causes this...but i am not talking about impairments.

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But if it is possible to have an impairment (by the way I never said either she or I have one, but that's not the point) which alter perception of colour, is it not also possible to begin that way?

Before I attempted to begin a line of argument that we may have evolved to react to the sensory input picked up by the eyes in a uniform manner. No one picked up on it. Sucks to be me.

Ah well. Maybe I'll play the other side for a while.

All, right. So we recognize opposite colours, gradation of colour, everybody has vaguely similar emotional reactions to paricular colours. Nice.

Hmm, once upon a time I thought to myself "what if there were another colour?" You know, something that no one had seen before. OK, I know that wouldn't happen with visible light so don't jump on me.

But what if it happened with other people? What if my mind's internal construction of the concept of 'colour' is completely different from yours? It's not as though our minds are in direct contact with the world around us, they are dependant on relayed information. What if my inner world is so different from yours that 'colour' has a completely different meaning?

Just call me devil's advocate.

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I was surprised this one is still running until I realized that the question is an example of a fundamental issue in philosophy...namely what does it mean to "know" anything!

If we say that "knowledge" is about "agreement" then those who claim that "redness" has some sort of "objective reality" even if "we cannot know directly", base their argument on concepts of "wavelength" which they think we CAN "know" directly. But all they are saying is that the concept of "wavelength" is USEFUL i.e. is noncontentuous with respect to general "vision" NOT individual "perception". At quantum levels of analysis the concept of wavelength may cease to have such utility, because the physics so produced is directed at "other concerns". Similar arguments can be made for neuronal "signals" (signalling what to whom?) such that "brain science" is not very far removed from alchemy.

I submit therefore that what we have in this "question" is an epistemological watershed beyond the realization of those who think there is a simple "answer".

I acknowledge that some posts above hint at these issues, but once it is realized that "same" and "different" are observer dependent, and that even "same observer on different occasions" is problematic then we surely must move onwards and upwards.

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Yeah. What fresco said.

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Given the attribute "color" is a directly and quantifiable function of wavelength within a given subset of the electromagnetic spectrum, and given research into optical perception has established physiologic response to any given visible wavelength results in essentially uniform nuerologic activity, ie the signals emmitted by the the light receptors, or rods and cones, that transmit visual information to the portion of the brain which processes visual information appear consistent across species from flatworms able to distinguish only differences in light intensity to higher orders capabable of very high visual acuity, I would surmise any color perceived by an organism capable of discerning that color is the same color across all species ... bearing in mind, of course, not all species are as capable of color differentiation as are others, nor even are all individuals within a given species capable of the average color differentiation common to that species ("color blindness").

In short, I figure anything that can see a particular color sees the hue and chroma the same as anything else that can see that color, subject only to such differentiation as occurrs due to the density, structure, and distribution of light receptors and optical processing capabilities. Red is red, whether you are a Smith, a Jones, or a bug or a dog or a frog. If you happen to be a rock or a rug, the foregoing of course has no application, naturally.

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timberlandko wrote:

Quote:

Given the attribute "color" is a directly and quantifiable function of wavelength within a given subset of the electromagnetic spectrum, and given research into optical perception has established physiologic response to any given visible wavelength results in essentially uniform nuerologic activity, ie the signals emmitted by the the light receptors, or rods and cones, that transmit visual information to the portion of the brain which processes visual information appear consistent across species from flatworms able to distinguish only differences in light intensity to higher orders capabable of very high visual acuity, I would surmise any color perceived by an organism capable of discerning that color is the same color across all species ... bearing in mind, of course, not all species are as capable of color differentiation as are others, nor even are all individuals within a given species capable of the average color differentiation common to that species ("color blindness").

In short, I figure anything that can see a particular color sees the hue and chroma the same as anything else that can see that color, subject only to such differentiation as occurrs due to the density, structure, and distribution of light receptors and optical processing capabilities. Red is red, whether you are a Smith, a Jones, or a bug or a dog or a frog. If you happen to be a rock or a rug, the foregoing of course has no application, naturally.

Actually I thought this was/is precisely the line of argument that fresco

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twyvel, the point is that research indicates a given receptor responds to a given wavelength in essentially the same manner regardless of species. Of course it is impossible to KNOW, given curent technology, just what the end result of the processing might be in every species, but the electrical impulses that bring about the processing exhibit remarkable constancy. If a thing remains relatively consistent from point "A" through points "B", "C", "D", "E", "F", etc, it is illogical to assume there would be significant divergence from that trending as subsequent points of reference are considered.

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Timber, even if all your objective "facts" (which to me are always really 'little theories' weighed down with innumerable assumptions) are correct, it still misses the EPISTEMOLOGICAL question of the actual experience of two different individuals with the same (well formally the same: there are no actual identities in nature) neuromechanisms and the same "external" physical phenomena. You say it would be "illogical to assume that there would be SIGNIFICANT divergence" between individuals. That's not unreasonable, given the epistemological realism of your framework. But the question is, as far as I understand, the metaphysical one of "knowing with certainty" other peoples' subjective experience. You acknowledge that it is at present technically "impossible to KNOW" this for different species. But what about the illogicality of claiming that we can know it for subjectivities within a species? How can we know it? I personally see this is as ONLY a metaphysical problem, not one that has pragmatic significance at all. We can go through life ASSUMING perceptual homogeneity across all members of our species and pay no price for it. But it does provide an interesting metaphysical conundrum.
BoGoWo, I thought Berkeley's puzzle served to demonstrate for him the existence of God. If no human hears the sound of the falling tree, the sound remains an "objective" fact (not because of the physics involved) but because God hears it. For him, then, subjectivity (in this case God's) trumps objectivity. He was a philosophical Idealist, after all. The factual or objective nature of Reality rests, according to this model, as I understand it, upon God's subjectivity.

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timberlandko

Quote:

the point is that research indicates a given receptor responds to a given wavelength in essentially the same manner regardless of species. Of course it is impossible to KNOW, given curent technology, just what the end result of the processing might be in every species, but the electrical impulses that bring about the processing exhibit remarkable constancy. If a thing remains relatively consistent from point "A" through points "B", "C", "D", "E", "F", etc, it is illogical to assume there would be significant divergence from that trending as subsequent points of reference are considered.

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As my pot-smoking buddy once slurred, "This is good ****, man."

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timberlandko

The point is that as soon as you use words like "given" and "constancy" you are evoking social agreement. But such agreement has no "reality" outside the social situation. (You might consider the case for Zulus for example who a have a single word "luhlaza" for both blue and green. What would this question mean to them if we substituted "luhlaza" for "red" ?....surely we are into arbitrary sociolinguistic categories...functional boundaries for particular jobs...whose "reality" goes unquestioned at the time....)

Of course attempts to bypass the above are sometines based on the concept of "qualia" or "raw sense data", which assumes there is some level at which perception is passive rather than active. But at this level we are talking about a machine which could print out "colour names" correlated with "wavelengths". We not need evoke an "internal state of redness" anymore than we need to evoke "thinking" to the operation of a computer.

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Well, as I said, " ... the way I figure it ... " Others may and do figure differently. By the evidence of which I am aware, the physical process of vision is such that certain physiologic and electrochemical characteristics of the phenomonon demonstrate broad enough consistency as to be assumed to be generally characteristic of the phenomonon, while providing no reasonable basis to suspect that such might not be so. It is indisputable others might prefer to assume differently. I fail to see any reasoned, logical, scientifically valid basis by which one might assume differently. Perhaps The Scientific Method is wrong. It works for me, though. Your mileage may vary.

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You do realize, Timber that your scientific approach to this question (The Scientific Method you invoke) is really a philosophical one. Your references to physical processes rest on a metaphysics of positivism, objectivism and epistemological realism. Nothing wrong with that, even though I don't share it. I'm just noting it.

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The REDNESS of red

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