Does Color Exist Without Light

Re: Alice through the looking glass


read it many times. you might want to try The Annotated Alice by Lewis Carroll & Martin Gardener. i'm not suggesting you buy this, since i haven't read the annotated version myself, but see if you can check it out at a library.

Light is an ingredient of color, in our universe.

It is like saying "does air exist without oxygen"?

Now "the potential for color" might exist without light.

But no light=no color.

I don't see this one as that complex?

extra medium,

I don't think your analogy holds.

The arguments in this thread partially rest on the "imagination" or "qualia" of color. which clearly can be evoked in the mind with closed eyes. ( We dont normally evoke "air") Manipulation of "wavelenth of light" is sufficient to manipulate our perception of color but not a necessary factor.

What the "objective realists" on the existence of color tend to forget is that its perception is species and individual specific, as in the case of "pitch" in sound. Neither color nor pitch have any a priori significance. Significance is the basis of "existence". To "exist" means to be named. So by extrapolation not only color and pitch but "light" and"sound" only have "existence" relative to us. If we were all born blind or deaf, the words "blind" and "deaf" would not exist....and by further extrapolation our recognition/naming of all "physical properties" are relative to observer status. Arguments about other species who lack symbolic language are based on our perception/naming of what is significant for them.

To return to the analogy of air and oxygen, the first has "existence" because we relate to it as breathing creatures, and the second by virtue of our modern concepts of "life sustaining sub components", "reactivity with metals" etc. Centuries ago "air" was significant as one of the four "elements", such elemental status thereby discouraging attempts at further analysis. We would be correct in saying that at that time "oxygen" didn't exist. Scientific paradigms are constantly evolving and changing the ontological status of our concepts.

Edit:

If the question were asked in a high school physics lesson the "answer "would be "no" but this is not such specific scenario. The importance of this question is not whether there is a yes/no answer, but that it raises the question of the meaning of existence. In deed all questions asked in an open forum like this will tend to an investigation of semantics within scenarios. (see Wittgenstein).

Apologies to others who may have said similar above.

Oh.

Okay, if that's the definition(s) we're using for color, I'd agree it "exists."

***

So does anything anyone or any animal or plant can imagine, think, forget, or dream exist?

Seems to me it would.

Using those definitions, anything I can imagine exists. Anything anyone can imagine exists.

Interesting.

Then everything exists.

Even beyond everything exists.

Maybe in your universe. Flour is an ingredient in bread, but color is not so in light. Color and light is basically one and the same thing just as time and evolution mean the same. One is just theoretical, the other practical. You don't see light, you see color. You don't percieve time, you percieve evolution.

extra medium

Yes...and within this view I can speak as an "atheist" and still say "God exists". It is a named concept, and my label "atheist" implies a particular (negative) relationship with it.

The colours that we see is a reflection of a reality out there, since sight is a sense that requires an interaction with the outside world. Phenomenally only living things with the ability to differentiate lightwaves and have the ability to exist cognitively can know that they're seeing colours.

An objective realist states that colours do exist, and this is not incorrect since the sense of colour is merely a phenomenal differentiation of certain wavelengths.

Color is color only because someone or something sees it.

In a world with no eyes there would be no color, only different wavelengths.

Could there be another organism somewhere in the Universe that has senses such that it can detect color wavelengths and perceive it as something other than color, perhaps heat or something else?

Would color exist in their world?

The organs we have that perceive color makes color real. Perceive those wavelengths as something else and color would not exist.

Ask someone blind from birth.

A wavelength is only a wavelength. How the detector senses it determines what we choose to call it.

Dunno, but there are critters here who detect radiation we can't see as visible light. Can't ask an insect what color it sees (if any), though...

xingu



What perceives "organ" or "wavelength" ?

.....that which also perceives color !

I do agree with Xingu's statement that "Color is color only because someone or something sees it." Color, by my understanding is an experience. We can, as Fresco notes, even see color with our eyes close. I do it all the time in conjuring ideas for paintings. If all the objective physical conditions that "produce" color occur and no-one is there to experience the "product" of such an occurence, a lot of things happened, but not "color."

JLNobody

JLN and twyvel,

Note that when we speak of "conditions existing" we are in the "control mode". It may be that ideas of "existence" are predicated by a covert assumption of such control.

Twyvel, I'm saying that if the internal conditons (forget about "someone") are not present then the external conditions by themselves will not produce "color". Color results from--or IS--the interaction between internal and external conditions.
I'm sorry, Fresco. It's late, and I fail to grasp what you mean by "control mode." Maybe it will come to me tomorrow.

SAFETY WARNING.

Do not move around whilst experiment is in progress.

I closed the curtains in the dining room, switched off the light and moved to what I thought was the centre of the room in order to make my observations.
I tripped over a leg of the dining table and have fractured a toe. This prevented me from coming to any conclusion, as my squealing caused a member of the family to enter and switch the light back on.

None the wiser, really.

Re: Does Color Exist Without Light


If you add colorful language to a rather flat joke,
sometimes it can create lightness and joviality.

But more often than not, it becomes too off-color
and drops like a lead weight on Capybara tails.

So no, light is not always the result of color, nor vice versa.
I believe they are ontologically uncorrelated.



The "utility of your conclusion"?? My conclusions are none
of your business, young man, so I'll mind you to keep your hands to yourself.

JLN,

Consider the words "external condition". To me "condition" implies "control". What do you think ?

Fresco, to me, "external condition" may be a "circumstance" like gravity, given or beyond one's control. On the other hand, temperature might be a control factor, as when it is regulated as an experiment's independent variable. Similarly, "internal condition" may be a structural given that is beyond control, such as the shape of my nervous system. But some control may be attained by the use of drugs. Am I missing your point?

Pray tell, when and under which circumstances is light not a function of basic reflective properties and colour?

Thank you.