Does Color Exist Without Light

Cyracuz wrote:

I thought about this subject, and I came to think about sound. If we didn't use our light, but sound to create the mental image of the world, would we experience color then? Light is not essential for this kind of perception. It could be pitch black, doesn't matter. We'd see a wooden railing differently than a metal railing for instance, according to the reverberations the matter sends out. They'd have different mental images corresponding to their substance.

I simply wondered if it's possible to change light with sound for the sake of the experiment.

While it may be true that color is an attribute of light, sound is an attribute of the object. But sound needs a carrier, and light does not. It just needs a source and a clear path.

Don't know if this is relevant. Ignore it if it's not. Thanks.

This reminds me of an idea of Dawkin's, I think, that to a bat 'seeing' in sound, the face of another bat might appear beautifully multi-coloured, like a peacocks tale. The point is, the experience of a colour is caused, in human brains, by light of a certain wavelength entering the eye etc. Colour is an experience. I would say that colour is no more 'light-entering-eye' than pain is 'knife-cutting', but that depends on the context in which you are using the word 'colour'.

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Is there color in notes? What color is a D major seventh? Or an A minor? This is a totally different use of the word color. The pitch of an iron tube and a wooden tube of the same length is the same, but the color of the sound is different.

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Color is the way our eyes view light when it is bent therefore no light = no color. One being of the other.

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When a tree falls in the woods, does it make a sound if no one is there to hear it?

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Depends how you define sound.

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Precisely. And this is the reason I placed this analogy SCoates.

For us, sound is defined in only one particular way, as with light. So, as you can tell, this expresses my difficulty with the question.

Try this: are you present in the room when you flip the switch to the lights in the 'off' position? Of course, provided that you remain in the room. Laughing

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Does existence exist without cognition?

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I would ask: whose cognition are we speaking of?

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I recongnize multiple definitions of sound. The experience is seperate from the vibrations themselves, which can again be broken down into the medium and the cause. Honestly, the first thing that comes to my mind when someone asks the tree falling question, are the vibrations, which would be present without their interpretation by a mind.

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Would there be sound if there were no ears to hear it?

Would there be color if there were no eyes to see it?

Would there be either if there were no minds to conceive it?

What in the Universe "exists" that we cannot understand or sense?

Different dimensions?

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xingu wrote:

Would there be sound if there were no ears to hear it?

Would there be color if there were no eyes to see it?

Would there be either if there were no minds to conceive it?

What in the Universe "exists" that we cannot understand or sense?

Different dimensions?

If your kids dig too deep for worms in the backyard can they fall to China?? Drunk

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i've only had time to skim this, but it seems nobody has mentioned this yet, so i ask: what is the color of the reflecting surface of a mirror? if the question is unanswerable, does it indicate that 'color' is not an intrinsic property of matter?

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yitwail wrote:

i've only had time to skim this, but it seems nobody has mentioned this yet, so i ask: what is the color of the reflecting surface of a mirror? if the question is unanswerable, does it indicate that 'color' is not an intrinsic property of matter?

A mirror, according to a physics prof of mine during my undergrad days (not too long ago), consists of a fine cut of a sheet of silver compressed by a backboard and glass.

Locke noted the distinction between primary and secondary properties. Look it up...very interesting. :wink:

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i made need to qualify the second question i posed. i should have more accurately asked, "if the question is unanswerable, does it indicate that 'color' is not an intrinsic property of extended objects?" obviously, if you take a small enough piece of an object, down to molecular dimensions if need be, it becomes invisible and hence colorless.

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NobleCon wrote:

Locke noted the distinction between primary and secondary properties. Look it up...very interesting. :wink:

did look it up, to the extent that i know Locke considered color a secondary quality, but shape a primary quality. i can't resist going on a tangent and ask what about a mirror reflection? is it secondary because it reverses left & right? there are non-reversing mirrors; are their reflections primary qualities, even if they're made of 2 mirrors at right angles that each display secondary qualities?

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They don't reverse left to right, the reverse inside to outside. Just a slight correction.

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For us, we can not see colour without light; more, we can not see that which contains the colour without light.

Do you know, every time I read a post from SCoates it feels as if the cartoon (as his avatar) has said it.

It is too funny Laughing

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do you find Coates amusing? does he amuse you? How does he amuse you? is he funny? do you mean that he is strange funny? (picture Joe Pesci)

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What color is glass?????? Ahha Hurts to think now. Rolling Eyes

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Alice through the looking glass
Glass itself is silver but has just been smoothed to an extent that it takes on a polished characteristic. Kind of if u have a bald dad and u check ur hair on his forehead every morning. Laughing

But since light is reflected off of these smoothed atoms it really doesnt show color. By the way did anyone read "Alice Through the Looking Glass"? And could u help me understand it there are way too many metaphors nd parabals. Shocked

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Does Color Exist Without Light

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