# Are colors causally effacious in non-conscious interactions? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [February 18, 2006, 11:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-colors-causally-effacious-in-non-conscious-interactions/345077 "2006-02-18T11:39:34Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![SentientMeat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/43a26b/32.png) [@SentientMeat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SentientMeat)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2006, 2:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-colors-causally-effacious-in-non-conscious-interactions/345077/81 "2006-02-23T14:00:10Z")
> [@other-wise](#): > > I see no justification for the stronger claim that light is the _only_ causal factor. In that specific experiment (read “context”?) light _is_ the only causal factor, isn’t it? > [@](#): > > For the umpteenth +1 time, I do not see “light”, I see “green”; You said in post #57 that in that you “see light”. (In fact, you said _of course_ you “see light”). I’m afraid I still don’t quite understand the distinction. > [@](#): > > I can, and sometimes do, _call_ the light green And yet you berated me before for _assuming_ that you did this. Do you still think I was out of order for my post #38? > [@](#): > > but my doing so is a matter of commonplace convenience, not accuracy This is what I struggle with most, I think. I n what way is it _inaccurate_ to call the light green? > [@](#): > > Once again, you take my words, deftly excise them from their original context, then ask questions about something I’ve never said. This is very tiresome. I apologise in advance, but I can’t see _how_ the context matters so much here. I’m genuinely trying to see how you accommodate the two statements “green is a label” with “I see green”. Is it something to do with the aforementioned _inaccuracy_? > [@](#): > > In its original context, the sentence “I suppose I could start calling experiences of that nature ‘red’”, clearly refers to the sentences immediately preceding it. Read those sentences and you’’ll get your clarification. I suspect my confusion lies in the fact that red is both a _verb and a noun_, and you’re using it as the _latter_ here? That would make sense, but I’m trying not to assume. > [@](#): > > The original post was “Of course it is, unless you take my answer out of context yet again.” OK, I apologise again, but you must believe that I’m still not entirely sure what for. You answer “green” instead of “red” because you prefer not to confuse people, right? So, if somehow everyone started getting confused by a “green” answer (don’t ask me how! Mass hypnosis or something?), you’d just switch to “red” along with everyone else. That means that what you see isn’t _definitely_ “green” - you’re just _saying_ it is. > [@](#): > > Sorry, but I asked first: How do you justify bringing a continuum into my experience? Because that’s what I designed the experiment for: the colour spectrum is a continuum but your answers are discrete, and I want to investigate _why_. > [@](#): > > Why are you (seemingly) trying to chase me into some sort of semantic contradiction? If there is an underlying purpose for doing so, please tell me what it is and we can debate it straight-up. Yes, I _really do_ want to understand your position, and what I want to understand just as much is how I may allow you to understand mine. I’m afraid I just don’t understand some of your objections to my questions, nor some of the things you’ve said. Indeed, it seems very much like _I_ could have objected to _your_ questions earlier in the thread on similar grounds (but didn’t), and I think there’s important parallels between how I might explain my philosophy of consciousness to you and how you explain your philosophy of colour to me. If you want to bow out, well, that’s a shame - I hope this exchange is not darkly remembered as “the time _ **Sentient** _ asked some questions” :). ---
**Author:** ![SentientMeat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/43a26b/32.png) [@SentientMeat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SentientMeat)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2006, 2:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-colors-causally-effacious-in-non-conscious-interactions/345077/82 "2006-02-23T14:24:50Z")
> [@Gyan](#): > > I would change ‘the real world’ to ‘other experiences’. Oh, here we go with the idealism. Can I just first check you’re not an outright _solipsist_? I’d prefer to save the bandwidth. > [@](#): > > This fallacy is called ‘begging the question’ No, it would be circular in demonstrando if I’d said “and green is light of wavelength 550 nm” at the end, which I didn’t. > [@](#): > > I don’t. As long as it happens, I’m cool with it. In a state of SDMB bliss, would you say? > [@](#): > > I wasn’t brought up in the Western culture, so I’m not familiar with this reference. [Google is your friend](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosopher's_stone). > [@](#): > > That delay gives rise to my use of ‘culmination’. Again, I’m not asking about the delay but _what happens during it_. What do you _mean_? > [@](#): > > I didn’t prefix ‘mystery’ with ‘eternal’, so drop the strawman. Dropped. It is heartening to find that you accept that cognitive science _could_ explain consciousness. Maybe one day you’ll drop the eternal consciousness of each single photon. > [@](#): > > The specifics are besides the point, just that wavelength alone explains squat. “Squat”? Then how do you explain, in the prism experiment, your perception of green _depending upon_ the presence of light of wavelength 550 nm? > [@](#): > > How does synaesthesia figure? The association in childhood of incoming wavelengths with whatever was being remembered (“banana”, say) yielding the same response in the visual cortex upon, say, _tasting_ banana. Those “wavelength memories” can be triggered by other means (as in dreams) but again, the explanation still _requires_ wavelengths. Without the wavelengths (as in the congentially blind), the _aesthesia_ (synchronous or not) is absent. ---
**Author:** ![SentientMeat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/43a26b/32.png) [@SentientMeat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SentientMeat)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2006, 2:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-colors-causally-effacious-in-non-conscious-interactions/345077/83 "2006-02-23T14:30:53Z")
> [@Tevildo](#): > > So would you say that the “colours” perceived by a synaesthete are not actually colours? No - see my answer to **Gyan** above. I answer “what came first, the wavelength or the colour” with “the wavelength, which _is_ the colour in most cases” while explaining those other cases _in terms of_ wavelengths being _memorised_. I think we’re largely in agreement, really, with merely slight preferences for how we label our _explicans_ and _explicanda_. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![SentientMeat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/43a26b/32.png) [@SentientMeat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SentientMeat)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2006, 2:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-colors-causally-effacious-in-non-conscious-interactions/345077/84 "2006-02-23T14:37:07Z")
**other-wise** : red is both an _adjective_ and a noun, beg pardon. ---
**Author:** ![Tevildo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9bd4f/32.png) [@Tevildo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tevildo)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2006, 2:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-colors-causally-effacious-in-non-conscious-interactions/345077/85 "2006-02-23T14:49:31Z")
> [@SentientMeat](#): > > No - see my answer to **Gyan** above. I answer “what came first, the wavelength or the colour” with “the wavelength, which _is_ the colour in most cases” while explaining those other cases _in terms of_ wavelengths being _memorised_. I think we’re largely in agreement, really, with merely slight preferences for how we label our _explicans_ and _explicanda_. 🙂 I hope so too. Your “in most cases” is really - as I see it - conceding the central point of my argument. A win-win situation? 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![SentientMeat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/43a26b/32.png) [@SentientMeat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SentientMeat)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2006, 2:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-colors-causally-effacious-in-non-conscious-interactions/345077/86 "2006-02-23T14:55:41Z")
> [@Tev](#): > > Your “in most cases” is really - as I see it - conceding the central point of my argument. Well, yet again I never said there’s _no such thing_ as optical illusions - indeed I made this clear in my first post in this thread. Explanations are far more important than definitions. ---
**Author:** ![Tibby](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tibby/32/17030_2.png) [@Tibby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tibby)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2006, 4:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-colors-causally-effacious-in-non-conscious-interactions/345077/87 "2006-02-23T16:52:42Z")
Part -1) If two being’s color spectra perception was out of sync with each other, would this not be entirely incalculable? (What I see as red, orange, yellow, etc.; you see as orange yellow, green, etc.). Part-2) Let’s look at the following EM wavelength ranges: A) Blue: 492 – 455: range of 37nm B) Between Blue and Violet 473.5 – 436.5: range of 37nm C) Violet: 455 – 418: range of 37 nm (violet is actually 455 – 390, but I want to use the same 37nm range). We have 3 EM wavelength ranges of 37nm between 492 and 418. Two of these ranges are within a color (A=Blue; C=Violet) one is between two colors (B=Blue/Violet). We perceive A and C to be different than B insofar as A and C appear fully quantized and smoothly gradating, whereas C appears un-smooth due to the apparent demarcation between blue and violet when light is viewed split in a prism. Therefore, we can say that a perceived physical difference exists between some, otherwise smoothly gradating, EM wavelength ranges (nm ranges within spectral colors v. ranges between spectral colors). Questions: Does this A/C v. B difference exist (or is it relevant) in any other physical process in the universe, besides color vision perception? In a universe devoid of color receptive retinal cones (or an alien equivalent), can it not be said that no difference exists between A, B and C? If part-1 and part-2 are indeed true, which I believe they are, does this not give weight to the argument that color is an arbitrary construction of a sentient mind rather than a universal absolute? ---
**Author:** ![other-wise](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/4bbf92/32.png) [@other-wise](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/other-wise)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2006, 5:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-colors-causally-effacious-in-non-conscious-interactions/345077/88 "2006-02-23T17:39:49Z")
> [@SentientMeat](#): > > In that specific experiment (read “context”?) light _is_ the only causal factor, isn’t it? No, I don’t think so; since you’re _changing subjects_ with each trial, the light is _not_ the only factor that changes in the experiment. (I suppose you could be measuring the response of only one subject, but even then you’d still be comparing the reports of your one subject to data culled from (many) other subjects). The most demonstrable evidence that changing the subject changes the variables would probably be in the case of a color-deficient subject: It would be just as valid to posit the presence of a specific configuration of opsin amino acids as the cause of “seeing green light” as it would to posit the presence of a specific configuration of EM radiation as the cause of “seeing green light”. > [@](#): > > I apologise in advance, but I can’t see _how_ the context matters so much here. I’m genuinely trying to see how you accommodate the two statements “green is a label” with “I see green”. Is it something to do with the aforementioned _inaccuracy_? Yes. Green is a label (a word I associate with an experience). “I see green” is a shorthand way of saying “Hey, I’m having an experience; specifically, the experience that I usually associate with a word; specifically, the word “green”. I don’t mean that I see a _label_. The most commonplace interpretation of the phrase “I see green” would be that one is seeing _something_, and that something is green (EM radiation, for instance). I believe that phrase is as inaccurate as saying the “sun is setting”, but, like everyone else, I say imprecise stuff like that all the time (although I’ve taken pains to make my meaning(s) clear in this debate). So I’ll just ask you to try and remember that when I call something “green” or say something like “that light’s green”, I _always_ mean it in the aforementioned contexts, with the aforementioned cavets; the same way that _I’m_ trying to remember that when you say, for instance, “No, the physical component _is_ the effect of the complementary spectrum on the retinal cells.” there’s an additional, unspoken “… at least that’s the position I favour. You might favour a different position.” > [@](#): > > I suspect my confusion lies in the fact that red is both a _verb and a noun_, and you’re using it as the _latter_ here? That would make sense, but I’m trying not to assume. Well, I think colors are more verb-like than noun-like, but in the structure of that sentence it was a noun (that kind of blurring between nouns and verbs is common in English: in the sentence “I like sex and drugs”, “Sex” and “drugs” both _act_ as nouns, but sex is a process, not a thing). I hope the post above made my intended meanings clear. > [@](#): > > … That means that what you see isn’t _definitely_ “green” - you’re just _saying_ it is. Not quite. Yes I’m just _saying_ it’s “green”, but “what I see”, regardless of what I call it, is _definitely_ “what I see”; I cannot be mistaken about that. > [@](#): > > Because that’s what I designed the experiment for: the colour spectrum is a continuum but your answers are discrete, and I want to investigate _why_. Of course my answers are discrete; you’re asking _me_, not a spectroradiometer. I don’t _see_ a continuum. By the way, I appreciate the extremely civil response; I know you’re a hot-blooded guy (uhh… that came out a little more Brokeback than I intended), and that you must be expending effort to not take me to the Pit. I can only assume this is because you respect that I’m sincere and that I’m trying to be as clear as I can, so… thanks. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Hamster\_King](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/8edcca/32.png) [@The\_Hamster\_King](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Hamster_King)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2006, 6:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-colors-causally-effacious-in-non-conscious-interactions/345077/89 "2006-02-23T18:36:44Z")
Ultimately, all that’s “out there” is particles and fields. An atom in a table doesn’t contain any “tableness” and a photon from a traffic light doesn’t contain any “greenness”. Brains impose structure on the continuum of reality. We label a set of atoms arranged in a particular configuration “table” but this is a very fuzzy designation. In the continuum between “table” and “chair” different people will draw the line where the object ceases to be “table” at different points. Furthermore the precise interface between a particular “table” and it’s surroundings is ill-defined. At an atomic level its difficult to say where the “table” ends and the “spilled coffee” begins. “Green” is the same as “table”. It’s a label for a set of photons with a particular combination of wavelengths. It’s fuzzy – different people will give different answers about where “green” ends and “blue” begins. And because of the limitations of the human eye a huge number of different spectral patterns are contained within the label “green”. But, suprisingly, “green” is actually a far better-defined abstraction than “table” is. I can construct a physical instrument that I can point at different light sources that will spit out color labels with great accuracy: “green”, “yellow”, “brown”, “pink”, whatever. I can’t do the same with “table”, “chair”, “ottoman”, etc. (Although given some advances in technology I wouldn’t be surprised if it became possible sometime in the future.) Given this I would think a more pressing question would be “Are **objects** causally effacious in non-conscious interactions?” ---
**Author:** ![II\_Gyan\_II](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/bbe5ce/32.png) [@II\_Gyan\_II](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/II_Gyan_II)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2006, 6:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-colors-causally-effacious-in-non-conscious-interactions/345077/90 "2006-02-23T18:48:57Z")
> [@SentientMeat](#): > > Oh, here we go with the idealism. Nothing to do with solipsism. How do you know about the real world? > [@](#): > > No, it would be circular in demonstrando if I’d said “and green is light of wavelength 550 nm” at the end, which I didn’t. I asked you to show where colors were involved in non-conscious interactions. You brought up an example of EM activity, calling it ‘green’, which begs the question. > [@](#): > > Again, I’m not asking about the delay but _what happens during it_. What do you _mean_? I don’t know how consciousness is generated, so I can’t answer that. By ‘culmination’, I just refer to the neuroactivity that corresponds to conscious activity, which occurs a non-zero time after ‘external input’. > [@](#): > > It is heartening to find that you accept that cognitive science _could_ explain consciousness. I am doubtful. I just used ‘mystery’ in the mundane sense i.e. as something currently unknown. > [@](#): > > Then how do you explain, in the prism experiment, your perception of green _depending upon_ the presence of light of wavelength 550 nm? My brain creates that quale for that wavelength, provided certain conditions hold. > [@](#): > > the explanation still _requires_ wavelengths. Only as a precursor. The color generation doesn’t require wavelengths anymore, just neuroactivity, just like during dreams. > [@](#): > > Without the wavelengths (as in the congentially blind), the _aesthesia_ (synchronous or not) is absent. How would one know? ---
**Author:** ![SentientMeat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/43a26b/32.png) [@SentientMeat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SentientMeat)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2006, 10:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-colors-causally-effacious-in-non-conscious-interactions/345077/91 "2006-02-24T10:16:14Z")
> [@other-wise](#): > > I suppose you could be measuring the response of only one subject, but even then you’d still be comparing the reports of your one subject to data culled from (many) other subjects Would I? I specified just you and the prism - like I said, I’m interested in _your_ position here, not how it compares with others. Do we agree that with the single subject (you), the _only_ causal factor is the light? > [@](#): > > I believe that phrase is as inaccurate as saying the “sun is setting”, but, like everyone else, I say imprecise stuff like that all the time If as simple an utterance as “I see green light” in this specific situation is inaccurate, surely **all** language is at least _as_ inaccurate? This, I think, is where I struggle to answer _your_ questions because you can _always_ level a charge of inaccuracy at the things I say. For future reference, perhaps it would be best if I admitted that anything I say to you hencforth from this day will be _at least as_ inaccurate as you telling me you saw green light. > [@](#): > > in the sentence “I like sex and drugs”, “Sex” and “drugs” both act as nouns, but sex is a process, not a thing Yes, and processes are nouns (and IIRC from another thread, didn’t we finally agree that processes can be “things” too, or atleast can be _physical_?) > [@](#): > > Yes I’’m just saying it’s “green”, but “what I see”, regardless of what I call it, is _definitely_ “what I see”; I cannot be mistaken about that. Of course - that’s a tautology, and I’m not questioning the identity theorem A=A (not here, anyway :)). But _I_ cannot treat _your_ answers as definitive (nor you mine) - I must view them merely as a preference on your part. > [@](#): > > Of course my answers are discrete; you’re asking _me_, not a spectroradiometer. I don’t _see_ a continuum. Don’t you? Let’s rotate the prism. 550 nm (henceforth read as “light of wavelength 550 nm”) elicits the answer “green”. 560 nm still elicits the answer “green”. 565 and 570 nm likewise. But _575_ (or wherever you sart answering “not green”)? It’s as different to 570 nm as 565 nm was in terms of wavelength, but you seem to be telling me that there is some fundamental difference in the 575 experience compared to both the 570 experience and 565 experience. The thing is, I think you _do_ see a continuum as the prism is rotated, and the way you divide it up into bands using discrete thresholds labelled by language is _arbitrary_. Just as other cultures divide up the continuum of _audible_ frequencies into different musical scales, I’d suggest you could have been brought up to _move_ those ranges around, say, considering _cyan_ as a colour on its own but lumping both indigo and violet together as indiglet, or something. And this, I suggest, is all we poor thinking machines _can_ do with the universe: set out the thresholds of all kinds of continua which our words are intended to cover. When you question my labelling of my living grandfather as “conscious” but my dead grandmother as “not conscious”, I am only telling you how I label what I see, just as you do in the prism experiment in which I interrogate you about your utterances likewise (which makes it sound as sinister as the _Stanford_ prism experiment, but you ahem see what I mean). > [@](#): > > By the way, I appreciate the extremely civil response; I know you’re a hot-blooded guy (uhh…… that came out a little more Brokeback than I intended), and that you must be expending effort to not take me to the Pit. I can only assume this is because you respect that I’m sincere and that I’m trying to be as clear as I can, so…… thanks. Not at all, you’re one of the last people I’d ever speak ill of, and I apologise if I’ve asked more questions here than I usually do . I must admit I sometimes struggle to see how I might provide acceptable answers for you, so I’ve learned something here from your own. But if I may say, I _do_ wish you’d contribute more here, and modify your style a little. Some of this will sound patronising, or arrogant, or even a little creepy. I ask you to bear with me in good grace. When I arrived here in 2002 after a few months lurking, I noticed that there was practically zero mention of any actual _science_ in these “philosophical” threads. (Indeed, it was you who asked me about my philosophy and experience in one of the very first threads I became seriously involved with here.) The mind, and our consciousness and experience, were discussed as though they were utterly inexplicable; that science had almost literally _nothing to say_ on the subject. And yet there _I_ was (an acoustical physicist of all things) reading books and papers and all the rest of it all on the vast progress in the field of cognitive science which, although being no more _complete_ than any other science, still seemed to me to have enormous explanatory power. Why the apparent widespread _ignorance_ of cognitive science on the SDMB when topics like evolutionary biology were so well covered? So it was that I tried to provide as much scientific background in those philosophical threads as I could. And, I thought, since this is Great _Debates_ - I’ll do so from the philosophical position which is so dominant among authorities in cognitive science and philosophy of mind as to be pretty much overwhelming in our intellectual culture, and which embraces the methodology of science and studies the results of science most closely: _physicalism_. Fast forward a few years. Over the years, I find that not only have you read many of the same books as me (perhaps more), you’re also largely familiar with pretty much all the science (perhaps more). _You_ could provide every bit as much “beer” as you kindly say I do (perhaps with a few more disclaimers in which you described the relevant and interesting science _without_ as many “therefore” or “I conclude that” statements as I set forth). But what you prefer is _questions_. Questions, questions, questions. No matter how woefully ill-informed someone might appear from their OP, very rarely have you engaged _them_. Only myself, **Lib** and a few others seem to attract your attention, when you _could_ do a sterling job directing others to key material which might ultimately yield another person for you to question, if nothing else. I admire your pursuit of a general philosophical position to call your own, given that you say you haven’t settled on one yet. (I recall you skirted with accepting [essentialism](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essentialism) a while ago? I’d certainly be interested in debating you there - it really does involve biting some pretty big bullets, but **Lib** evidently has the teeth for it, for one). That admiration is why I would think it a real bonus if I could convince someone of your calibre to defend (or even just _explain_) the materialist/physicalist view to others, especially since **Spiritus** no longer hangs around here and since I might soon have to devote far less time to it also. But since I cannot seem to raise it in your estimation above even ludicrous philosophies like solipsism or panpsychism, why should you? In my dealings with you, it seems like you are striving after some perfect philosophy which is immune to any questioning or criticism, and only then will you come out and say “I favour _this_ over the alternatives”. My friend, this is a mythical philosopher’s stone, which will only weigh down your search for a position you’re comfortable with. There will _always_ be questions and critiques. Intellectual maturity comes not from learning them all, which any fool with half an education and an internet connection can do, but stepping off the fence after critically analysing them. I would even be overjoyed if you were to adopt a completely different philosophy to myself, perhaps even one I considered absurd, since I know you’d have the wits to defend it capably, and many interesting debates would be had. But at the moment, I must admit I hesitate to characterise your _modus operandi_ as “debating”, as such (from a Monty Python point of view). In summary, I think you’re rather wasting your gifts here, when you could personify the SD motto brilliantly. Of course, this is now sounding quite the most supercilious and overbearing tripe you’ve ever heard, and so I’ll just apologise unreservedly for my crass clumsiness and finish by setting forth a position I hope you might one day consider not too objectionable: Here they are, these incredible thinking machines which have evolved from simple physical molecules over billions of years, and are now capable of using language to label the effects the universe has on their sensoria, and are even capable of using that language to _explain_. If they really are evolved thinking machines, all they can really do is continue throwing language and explanations at each other. There would be no ultimate authority which could declare hey, you guys can stop throwing the words around, _here_’s the answers you’re looking for. There would be a limit to just how definitive and convincing any explanation or answer from any given machine could be, since ultimately any _other_ machine could simply shrug and output a rude noise. Thanks for listening. I’d understand if your response was 😛 pfffft! 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![SentientMeat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/43a26b/32.png) [@SentientMeat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SentientMeat)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2006, 10:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-colors-causally-effacious-in-non-conscious-interactions/345077/92 "2006-02-24T10:51:54Z")
> [@Gyan](#): > > Nothing to do with solipsism. While I’m asking: why not? > [@](#): > > How do you know about the real world? [I don’t](http://www.simulation-argument.com/) “know”. I can only say words. > [@](#): > > You brought up an example of EM activity, calling it ‘green’, which begs the question. As you’ll see throughout this thread, all kinds of other people call light of that wavelength “green” along with me. Perhaps it’s _your_ definition that is circular, as **Mange** pointed out (but you ignored). > [@](#): > > I don’t know how consciousness is generated, so I can’t answer that. Just checking that the explanation score stands at Cognitive Science: 1, **Gyan** : 0. > [@](#): > > My brain creates that quale for that wavelength, provided certain conditions hold. But you just admitted you have no idea _what_ happens when that wavelength is incident on your retina. How do you know that this “quale” whatsit even exists? > [@](#): > > Only as a precursor. A _necessary_ precursor, thus leaving the physicalism of colour supervening on wavelength unimpeached. > [@](#): > > How would one know? By asking them (after all, there are people who are completely _colour blind_ or monochromasic who don’t even dream in colour - wouldn’t one expect a completely _everything blind_ person to be the same?) ---
**Author:** ![other-wise](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/4bbf92/32.png) [@other-wise](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/other-wise)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2006, 3:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-colors-causally-effacious-in-non-conscious-interactions/345077/93 "2006-02-24T15:47:57Z")
> [@SentientMeat](#): > > Would I? I specified just you and the prism - like I said, I’m interested in _your_ position here, not how it compares with others. Do we agree that with the single subject (you), the _only_ causal factor is the light? Hold on - I think we’re mixing up the experiments: I thought we were talking about the “switch-on-a-light” experiment, not the prism experiment (although I don’t think it ultimately affects my answers here). Maybe I’m missing something, but I can’t see any way for you to set up the experiment without comparing my position with others. If you switch on the light and ask me “What do you see?” and I answer “A light”, you’re screwed: you’ve obtained no data about color at all. If you ask “What color do you see?” and I say “Blue” you would be forced to take my response at face value _unless_ you were _comparing_ it to your own experience (seeing green). That means you’re utilizing data from _two_ subjects, not just one. Of course, you could set up the experiment blind so that you operated your switch from another room and had no knowledge of what wavelengths were being presented to me, but unless that data was compared to some standard established by _someone_ then you’d be back to taking my response at face value. If you’re really isolating the data to just one subject’s, you could start with light at one wavelength, then switch to another wavelength and note that when you made the switch the subject said “Hey, what just happened? The light looks different, somehow.” Make up a label for each range of wavelengths (say “red” and “green”) and voila, you’ve established that the wavelength of light is the _cause_ of color vision. But a subject with protanopia wouldn’t make a peep when you switched wavelengths: you’d have no data, and nothing to label. To sum, I don’t agree that with the single subject, the only causal factor is the light; you cannot obtain the requisite data from a single subject, and if you use data from more than one subject more causal factors are involved. > [@](#): > > If as simple an utterance as “I see green light” in this specific situation is inaccurate, surely **all** language is at least _as_ inaccurate? This, I think, is where I struggle to answer _your_ questions because you can _always_ level a charge of inaccuracy at the things I say. For future reference, perhaps it would be best if I admitted that anything I say to you hencforth from this day will be _at least as_ inaccurate as you telling me you saw green light. This sounds a bit overkill to me. Yes, language (and speakers) are inaccurate, but that’s why we have things like clarification, metaphors, defining terms, etc. Sure, we can always level a charge of inaccuracy at each other, but historically, I don’t think either of us has done so, at least not capriciously. > [@](#): > > Yes, and processes are nouns You’re right, of course; I worded that post very badly. My intention was to point out that while nouns name things, a process bears little resemblance to what we normally think of as things. (e.g., a drug is an _object_; like other objects, I could weigh it, put it in a container, and give it to you. You can’t do any of those things with sex.) > [@](#): > > (and IIRC from another thread, didn’t we finally agree that processes can be “things” too, or atleast can be _physical_?) Hmmm… my recollection is that we never quite reached an agreement but _did_ narrow our margin of _dis_agreement. > [@](#): > > Of course - that’s a tautology, and I’m not questioning the identity theorem A=A (not here, anyway :)). But _I_ cannot treat _your_ answers as definitive (nor you mine) - I must view them merely as a preference on your part. Again, I must apologize for being unclear. Let me try it this way: Suppose we’re sitting in a room together and I say “Well, _that’s_ weird! I see a gorilla over in the corner”. You, however, _don’t_ see a gorilla, and can prove conclusively that there _is no_ gorilla in the corner. I might even agree, knowing intellectually that there is no gorilla in the corner. None of which alters the fact that I see a gorilla. IOW, just because the gorilla isn’t real, it doesn’t mean I’m not really seeing a gorilla… I may hallucinate something that isn’t there, but the _hallucination_ is there. _That’s_ what I cannot be mistaken about: I may mistakenly _attribute_ my experience, but I cannot be mistaken _that_ I experience. > [@](#): > > The thing is, I think you _do_ see a continuum as the prism is rotated, and the way you divide it up into bands using discrete thresholds labelled by language is _arbitrary_. Just as other cultures divide up the continuum of _audible_ frequencies into different musical scales, I’d suggest you could have been brought up to _move_ those ranges around, say, considering _cyan_ as a colour on its own but lumping both indigo and violet together as indiglet, or something. I agree that how I decide to apply my verbal labels depends on what I pay attention to, and that’s largely determined by my culture and personal experience. How I _order and label_ the bands is arbitrary; the _banding_ is not. No matter how I sort them, I see bands, not a continuum. A member of a jungle-dwelling tribe would not see a tree the same way I do, but neither of us sees a _forest_. > [@](#): > > So it was that I tried to provide as much scientific background in those philosophical threads as I could. And, I thought, since this is Great _Debates_ - I’ll do so from the philosophical position which is so dominant among authorities in cognitive science and philosophy of mind as to be pretty much overwhelming in our intellectual culture, and which embraces the methodology of science and studies the results of science most closely: _physicalism_. > > Fast forward a few years. Over the years, I find that not only have you read many of the same books as me (perhaps more), you’re also largely familiar with pretty much all the science (perhaps more). _You_ could provide every bit as much “beer” as you kindly say I do (perhaps with a few more disclaimers in which you described the relevant and interesting science _without_ as many “therefore” or “I conclude that” statements as I set forth). But what you prefer is _questions_. Questions, questions, questions. No matter how woefully ill-informed someone might appear from their OP, very rarely have you engaged _them_. Only myself, **Lib** and a few others seem to attract your attention, when you _could_ do a sterling job directing others to key material which might ultimately yield another person for you to question, if nothing else. **Sentient** , thank you for your kind words. Part of my hesitation in wielding the scientific broadsword is that, unlike you, I’m not a scientist… I’m not even close. I mean, I love science (literally: my wife is a research scientist) but I’m a layperson and I damn well know it. If you were to check through my previous posts you’d find that I _do_ “defend (or even just explain) the materialist/physicalist view to others”, have directed others to key materials, etc. But only on occasion. I hesitate to do so more frequently because I have a horror of _misrepresenting_ the science (or philosophy); there are _way_ too many people that speak with authority, sound good, and are utterly full of crap, and I cringe at the thought of becoming one of them or contributing to the world’s crap supply. Thus, I tend to pontificate only when I’m pretty damn sure of my footing (or when I know there’s enough controversy that _no one_ is sure of their footing). You’re correct in saying that the majority of my posts are questions, mostly directed at a few key posters. I “target” posters that strike me as well-read, extremely smart, and extremely _sharp_; posters that I can learn from and who will spot my mistakes and skewer them. You’re also correct in saying that your philosophical position is dominant in Cog Sci and Philo of Mind. The reason _you_ get so inundated with questions is that you’re the smartest, sharpest, most well-read physicalist I’ve ever encountered, and, after all my layperson study, I can’t for the life of me understand _why_ the physicalist position is dominant. I keep thinking that I must be _missing_ something, and since you’re the Mother Lode, I pester you (unintentionally, of course) with questions. ( **Lib** has made things better and worse: He’s beautifully articulated what were, for me, nagging, inchoate suspicions about the physicalist position, while introducing me to whole new realms of consideration). I pride myself on being a rational, skeptical, science-lovin’ guy, and it pisses me off that I cannot in good conscience join the physicalist club like so many of my friends. It’s not that I’m looking for some perfect philosophy; it’s that I’d really prefer to embrace physicalism and I’ve been making, with gusto, a last ditch effort to do so. ---
**Author:** ![Tibby](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tibby/32/17030_2.png) [@Tibby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tibby)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2006, 4:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-colors-causally-effacious-in-non-conscious-interactions/345077/94 "2006-02-24T16:30:29Z")
The color red has been demonstrated to cause symptoms of the fight or flight response – increased blood pressure and respiration, tachycardia etc. This, I believe, gives us a measurable physical parameter with which to devise experiments on the intrinsic nature of color. Case-1) Imagine an isolated population of people born and raised in an environment totally devoid of the colors red and green (all other colors being fully and accurately represented). Then, as young adults, each is ushered into rooms of either red or green and hooked up to medical telemetry. Would those ushered into the red rooms elicit signs of the fight or flight response over and above those ushered into the green rooms? Case-2) Imagine an isolated population of people whose color spectrum is shifted from the norm, such that what we see as red, they see as green and visa versa. They have access to, and learn, a color spectrum chart that labels the colors as we are familiar with them. Would what they call red (but to us is green) cause the fight or flight response? Would what they call green (but we see as red) elicit a feeling of calm? The purpose of this thought experiment is to glean some understanding of the intrinsic nature of color qualia. In the first case, the population has no experience or cultural bias with the color red (green is simply included as a control). In the second case, the population has experience with (and presumably cultural bias toward) all colors, but they are shifted from the norm. What do you believe the results would show? My own feeling that is that in both cases the color red quale is intrinsic and the real red (by real red, I mean what we- a normal population-calls red) would cause anxiety in both populations and that the real green would not. I believe that real red causes the fight or flight response not from experience (i.e. fire), but because it is an intrinsic quirk of the mind – a sapient artifact. I may be wrong, but I don’t believe a similar experiment has ever been run, so who wants to have a go at it with me? We’ll need a good sampling of newborn babies, a deserted island, a crate of color shifting prism eyeglasses… 😃 ---
**Author:** ![II\_Gyan\_II](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/bbe5ce/32.png) [@II\_Gyan\_II](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/II_Gyan_II)\ **Post date:** [February 25, 2006, 12:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-colors-causally-effacious-in-non-conscious-interactions/345077/95 "2006-02-25T00:01:23Z")
> [@SentientMeat](#): > > While I’m asking: why not? Solipsism is one step beyond idealism. The uncertainty of other people existing need not be resolved either way. > [@](#): > > I don’t “know”. I can only say words. "Know’ here indicates awareness, not certainty. How are you aware of the monitor in front of you? > [@](#): > > As you’ll see throughout this thread, all kinds of other people call light of that wavelength “green” along with me. Perhaps it’s _your_ definition that is circular, as **Mange** pointed out (but you ignored). I ignored because Tevildo countered it adequately. > [@](#): > > Just checking that the explanation score stands at Cognitive Science: 1, **Gyan** : 0. It’s CogSci: 0, Gyan: 0 > [@](#): > > But you just admitted you have no idea _what_ happens when that wavelength is incident on your retina. How do you know that this “quale” whatsit even exists? I know (i.e. have read about) what happens when the wave hits the retina. I don’t know how the awareness is generated. > [@](#): > > A _necessary_ precursor, thus leaving the physicalism of colour supervening on wavelength unimpeached. This just establishes dependence, although ‘necessary’ begs the question, again. The further experience of color is no longer tied to the requirement of that wavelength, hence shows color to be a neural byproduct, not a physical one. > [@](#): > > By asking them (after all, there are people who are completely _colour blind_ or monochromasic who don’t even dream in colour - wouldn’t one expect a completely _everything blind_ person to be the same?) If a blind person hasn’t experienced normal vision, how do they know what it is that they are missing? ---
**Author:** ![EllisDee](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ellisdee/32/4531_2.png) [@EllisDee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EllisDee)\ **Post date:** [February 28, 2006, 8:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-colors-causally-effacious-in-non-conscious-interactions/345077/96 "2006-02-28T08:41:30Z")
I’m guessing that virtually everyone in this thread has already read Daniel Dennett’s [Quining Qualia](http://ase.tufts.edu/cogstud/papers/quinqual.htm), but for any who haven’t it’s an interesting read. ---
**Author:** ![II\_Gyan\_II](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/bbe5ce/32.png) [@II\_Gyan\_II](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/II_Gyan_II)\ **Post date:** [February 28, 2006, 12:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-colors-causally-effacious-in-non-conscious-interactions/345077/97 "2006-02-28T12:14:28Z")
> [@Ellis Dee](#): > > I’m guessing that virtually everyone in this thread has already read Daniel Dennett’s [Quining Qualia](http://ase.tufts.edu/cogstud/papers/quinqual.htm), but for any who haven’t it’s an interesting read. That attack sophisticatedly conflates qualia demarcation and their judgements to attack qualia itself i.e. when you drink coffee what part of the reaction is the taste and what part a “reaction”. Changing the “memory-access” links also presumes that you know what modifying something does to the experiencer. That internal partitioning is irrelevant, since even with quale being relational properties, they are only relational to other qualia of yours. The gestalt appears impenetrable. ---
**Author:** ![other-wise](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/4bbf92/32.png) [@other-wise](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/other-wise)\ **Post date:** [February 28, 2006, 12:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-colors-causally-effacious-in-non-conscious-interactions/345077/98 "2006-02-28T12:26:28Z")
> [@Ellis Dee](#): > > I’m guessing that virtually everyone in this thread has already read Daniel Dennett’s [Quining Qualia](http://ase.tufts.edu/cogstud/papers/quinqual.htm), but for any who haven’t it’s an interesting read. I’ve never liked the concept of “qualia”. As this thread amply demonstrates, when you start examining the nature of consciousness, semantics rapidly become a slippery and treacherous thing. Since the proponents of qualia have no agreed upon definition of the term (and neither do their opponents), debates centered on the concept tend to turn into endlessly recursive train wrecks. IMO, Tye, Chalmers, et al, basically handed Dennett a Build-It-Yourself Strawman kit, which he put together and demolished with a grand rhetorical flourish (I have to admit, though, that at the time of Dennett’s publication “qualia” was a balloon sorely in need of a good deflating). ---
**Author:** ![SentientMeat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/43a26b/32.png) [@SentientMeat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SentientMeat)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2006, 11:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-colors-causally-effacious-in-non-conscious-interactions/345077/99 "2006-03-02T11:01:36Z")
> [@other-wise](#): > > If you’re really isolating the data to just one subject’s, you could start with light at one wavelength, then switch to another wavelength and note that when you made the switch the subject said “Hey, what just happened? The light looks different, somehow.” Make up a label for each range of wavelengths (say “red” and “green”) and voila, you’ve established that the wavelength of light is the _cause_ of color vision. Yes, that’s all I ever intended to demonstrate with this experiment. What it seeks to investigate is _precisely where_ those ranges fall, and why. > [@](#): > > Yes, language (and speakers) are inaccurate, but that’s why we have things like clarification, metaphors, defining terms, etc. Each of which introduces _more_ inaccuracy, if anything. Again, if it’s “definitive” answers you’re after, I don’t think I (nor anyone else, for that matter) can _ever_ supply them, but I’ll continue to do my best and let you know when I think we’ve reached the point where one cannot do any better. > [@](#): > > a process bears little resemblance to what we normally think of as things. (e.g., a drug is an _object_; like other objects, I could weigh it, put it in a container, and give it to you. You can’t do any of those things with sex.) Which is why I suggest that progress might be made by modifying our ‘normal’ way of thinking. Is a _cloud_, or a _heartbeat_, or a _computer game_ an “object” or a “process”? What about a _memory_, or a _word_? If we don’t limit the label “thing” only to _spatial_ arrangements of atoms (yielding a weight, volume, location and capacity for ‘ownership’) but also allow _temporal_ arrangements to be labelled so (yielding other measures such as a _rate, duration, **temporal** location ie. **time** _, or capacity for _‘observation’_), I think we could go a long way towards understanding _how_ “things” supervene on the physical. > [@](#): > > _That’s_ what I cannot be mistaken about: I may mistakenly _attribute_ my experience, but I cannot be mistaken _that_ I experience. Hmm, again I don’t see how that’s not tautological. All each of us can do is process our inputs (which can’t _not be_ our inputs, be they from memory, from ‘the world’ or from wherever) and produce an output, and all each of our outputs can _be_ is an input for someone else. The attribution aspect is all I _can_ investigate. > [@](#): > > How I _order and label_ the bands is arbitrary; the _banding_ is not. No matter how I sort them, I see bands, not a continuum. Then what is it about light of wavelength (L.O.W.) 575 nm which causes the answer “not green” even though it is only as different to LOW 570 nm (labelled “green”) as is LOW 565 nm (_also_ labelled “green”!). How is 575 fundamentally different to 570 in a way that 565 is not? Surely you are _arbitrarily thresholding a continuum_? > [@](#): > > I hesitate to do so more frequently because I have a horror of misrepresenting the science (or philosophy); there are way too many people that speak with authority, sound good, and are utterly full of crap, and I cringe at the thought of becoming one of them or contributing to the world’s crap supply. Well, that is itself admirable, but I think you’re making the perfect an enemy of the good. Go ahead – do your best, and if someone thinks you’re misrepresenting them I’m sure they’ll let you know. It is still _surely_ better than no reply at all, given the SD’s motto? > [@](#): > > The reason _you_ get so inundated with questions is that you’re the smartest, sharpest, most well-read physicalist I’ve ever encountered, and, after all my layperson study, I can’t for the life of me understand _why_ the physicalist position is dominant. Oh, pish posh, I’m a layperson in philosophy and cognitive science myself – like I say, I strongly suspect _you’re_ better read than me, an acoustical physicist for crying out loud (continuous \>85dB, A-weighted at 1 kHz :)), but thanks for the kudos. And I tell you what I tell everyone else, and what I suspect you appreciate pretty well already: the physicalist preference is easily understood in terms of Ockham’s Razor – it is clearly _parsimonious_ in terms of what it tries to explain with what. I think one has to interpret OR pretty perversely, or even ditch it altogether like Kant, to deny that physicalism embraces both it and the methodology of science most closely out of all the alternatives. And that’s the crucial point. By saying you don’t understand why physicalism is dominant, you’re saying that the _alternatives seem just as reasonable_. I cannot see how a person of your intellect can consider ludicrous alternatives like solipsism or panpsychism so favourably (_ie._ not _un_favourably). After all, if this really _was_ the case, you’d be questioning **Gyan** , **mswas** or others just as much as me. > [@](#): > > I’d really prefer to embrace physicalism and I’ve been making, with gusto, a last ditch effort to do so. Again, to “embrace” it doesn’t mean you’re _married_ to it. Future arguments might well bring an instant divorce, heck, even for me I suppose. But your last ditch effort can be as effortless as saying to yourself “you know what? Having surveyed the alternatives, I guess we _could well be_ thinking machines, _somehow_. But how _exciting_ to live at a time when we’re still trying to work it out.” ---
**Author:** ![SentientMeat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/43a26b/32.png) [@SentientMeat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SentientMeat)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2006, 11:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-colors-causally-effacious-in-non-conscious-interactions/345077/100 "2006-03-02T11:23:56Z")
> [@Gyan](#): > > Solipsism is one step beyond idealism. The uncertainty of other people existing need not be resolved either way. If I argued that solipsism and idealism were just as silly, how would you rebut me? > [@](#): > > "Know’ here indicates awareness, not certainty. How are you aware of the monitor in front of you? Via the visual processing which correlates the wavelength configurations on my retina with past configurations in working memory labelled by language. > [@](#): > > I ignored because Tevildo countered it adequately. And since **Tev** and I are now in agreement given the fact that I never denied optical illusions, I’ll assume you are too. > [@](#): > > It’s CogSci: 0, Gyan: 0 Sorry, I’ll rephrase. It’s Cog Sci: 1, Monty Python: 1. That will be £5. > [@](#): > > know (i.e. have read about) what happens when the wave hits the retina. I don’t know how the awareness is generated. That’s why I’m telling you the account given by cognitive science. If you don’t have an alternative, feel free to look around for one. > [@](#): > > This just establishes dependence, although ‘necessary’ begs the question, again. I’m telling you _how_ it is necessary, referencing congentially blind who _cannot see_ **because** their wavelength receptors have never worked. > [@](#): > > The further experience of color is no longer tied to the requirement of that wavelength, hence shows color to be a neural byproduct, not a physical one. And neurons are physical. _QED_. > [@](#): > > If a blind person hasn’t experienced normal vision, how do they know what it is that they are missing? How do you know you can’t hear bat sonar, even in dreams? And an extra question: _How come it’s only ever with you that I seem to end up in these endless, inane games of one-liner tennis?_ If the next exchange is as devoid of substance, I think I’ll concede and retire to the pavilion. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-colors-causally-effacious-in-non-conscious-interactions/345077.md?page=4) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-colors-causally-effacious-in-non-conscious-interactions/345077.md?page=6)