It seems that there is only one answer to Sentient’s question (I know the minute I say that I’m setting myself up to be made to look like a fool). Also, I don’t understand why the back and forth and splitting hairs without just getting down to providing an answer.
We (humans) call light of wavelength 550nm “green” because:
As we were learning about our environment around us, and we encountered an object reflecting light of wavelength 550nm (give or take some nm’s) that our eyes were able to detect (i.e. not color blind), others told us to categorize that sensation as “green”. So we created the association of the word “green” with the various examples of “green” encountered. After sufficient training, our neural network is able to create a best match based on prior experience of incoming light signals to color names that have been taught to us.
But you’re not taking a position; you’re trying to take two positions simultaneously (contradictory positions, at that): “There is no such thing as a ‘definitive’ answer” and “There might be such a thing as a ‘definitive’ answer”.
If you want to entertain multiple positions simultaneously and move freely between them, that’s fine by me. Just don’t call “foul” when someone else (like me, ‘ferinstance) does the same.
I keep telling you: no, I do not call it green. If you flipped your light on and asked me: “Do you see wavelengths of 550nm?”, I’d answer “Uhh… what?”. However, if you asked me “What do you see?” I’d answer “Green.” Spectroradiometers “see” wavelengths; I see green.
When I do say something like “that light’s green”, it’s the same usage and context as when I say “the sun is setting”: the phrase is a convenient, commonly-understood, and inaccurate way to label an event, not an indication of it’s identity or cause. The same way that pointing to a reel of film and saying “that’s Star Wars” does not indicate the identity or cause of Star Wars.
I wrote: “What if there’s an illusion where that range doesn’t correspond to green, as in the checkerboard example.”, but never mind.
That’s the point. The quale exists without the physical component. The quale is elicited by other contexts. So there isn’t a one to one relationship between color and wavelength (you should be seeing grey, the background color, instead of an green afterimage).
So conscious representation is created by the brain and is not the same as the ‘external world’.
By introducing and demarcating “green-seers”, you weaken your point about what the primary cause of seeing green is.
That doesn’t talk about proxies, just neural basis of shape discrimination. A science student will say that we see green because of a wavelength, but we see shape because there’s a shape.
Upon the waves impinging on my retina, my visual pathway undergoes a cascade of reactions, culminating in a representation of those EM waves as a perceptual property. Had the gestalt been different, as in the illusions, the perceptions would have been different.
Any explanation of colors and physics must account for all phenomena, not just the mundane. The wavelength = color fails to account so. The better explanation starts that wavelength X in background conditions B1 elicits neuroactivity A1 and wavelength Y in background conditions B1 elicits neuroactivity A2 whereas wavelength X in background conditions B2 elicits neuroactivity A2 and wavelength Y in background conditions B2 elicits neuroactivity A1. Let’s grant that the correlation between neuroactivity and psychoactivity is 1.0. Ergo, at best, color may be said to be neuroactivity, if supervenience holds, but ‘wavelength is color’ fails. Especially considering the phenomenon of synaesthesia.
IMO, color is nothing more than the construction of conscious minds that are hardwired with retinal cones sensitive to EM wavelength stimuli in the range of ~350nm to 700nm and in possession of a brain able to convert that stimuli into a tangible “reality” for the observer. Color sensitive rods evolved because being able to perceive and distinguish objects that reflect light in the color spectrum wavelength frequencies was deemed advantageous to certain animals, including man. It is advantageous for bees to perceive and distinguish wavelength frequencies in the ultraviolet range, so they evolved the ability to do so. Snakes benefit from the ability to perceive and distinguish EM wavelengths in the infrared range. How the bee’s brain presents the “show” of ultraviolet gradations to the bee and how the snake’s brain presents the show of infrared gradations to the snake is unknown to us and of minor import. How our brains express stimuli to our consciousness and the MOA through which it does so is unimportant so long as some method is used to make us aware of stimuli that is important for the well being/survivability of that particular species. EM wavelength frequency perception is unimportant for the well being of flowers, so color, ultraviolet and infrared awareness does not exist for them. However, being able to reflect distinguishable UV wavelengths is important to flowers (i.e. bee pollination), and so they do (the color spectrum probably just came alone for the ride).
How the brains of wavelength sensitive beings ultimately decide to interpret and present the stimuli to the brain-bearer, IMO, is unimportant -as long as the presentation exists and is quantifiable. I believe we would do just as well if instead of having evolved 350 – 700nm sensitive cones in our retinas, we developed 350 – 700 nm EM wavelength sensitive olfactory bulbs. Then, instead of saying, “What an ugly shade of green”, we could say, “What a stinky wavelength”. IMO, neither sense would be more biologically advantageous than the other. The color of a wavelength is no more valid than the smell of a wavelength – both are illusions of the mind.
Since the frequency range of EM wavelengths is a smooth continuum, why does the color spectrum appear somewhat discreet and quantized to us? I believe this is simply an evolutionary shortcut taken in the development of either the stimuli sensitive sense organ (retinal cones) or the stimuli interpreter (brain). Our species simply does not need the ability to distinguish every infinitesimal nuance of the color spectrum – biological evolution is typically quite efficient and parsimonious. Frankly, I’m amazed that we are able to distinguish as many color shades as we do – we’ve developed a resource wasting hypersensitivity in the evolution of our cones (perhaps evolution acted preemptively, anticipating artists and interior decorators ).
Perhaps more controversially, I also feel that language may have further quantized color perception in humans. Despite a great variety of named color shades that exists in our language, I think that our brains have a tendency to pigeonhole all color gradations into slight variations of the primary colors. To a certain extent, our brains “see” all shades of green as being green and as soon as we interpret green crossing the threshold into shades of blue, we see the subsequent shades as blue, with a discernable demarcation between the two, when in fact, none really exists. Language can affect perception, in other words.
No, I am telling you which of those I favour (the first), while admitting I cannot be certain. This is the nature of open-mindedness - if you consider it paradoxical, perhaps you’d be better off becoming a bigot.
I’ll ask you which of several alternatives you favour. I won’t be so obtuse as to consider this to be absolute certainty on your part.
Which is, of course, why I didn’t ask you that question, either. Honestly, this is a lot easier if you stop changing the words of the question I actually ask you.
What’s the difference between calling it green and answering green when I ask you what you see?
Why do you give that answer, rather than another one?
No, the physical component is the effect of the complementary spectrum on the retinal cells. The physical component in the optic nerve is the same. You might as well be arguing that the photograph is physical but the negative isn’t.
No you shouldn’t, given the non-zero relaxation time. If we had a zero relaxation time, we’d see grey. But we don’t, so we see green.
The optic nerve, chiasm and tract (the ‘sensor wires’) are not the brain any more than your sunglasses are.
I have still shown a non-conscious interaction (between a tree’s leaves and fruit) involving light of wavelength 550 nm (ie. green light), whether or not anyone is around.
Did you read it? It talks about the multiple and complex mechanisms of ending up identifying a shape, which are nowhere near as straightforward as you suggest (in fact, I’d argue that colour recognition is vastly simpler).
No, a science student will say we see a shape because of the configuration of the wavelentghs incident on the retina.
How? You’ve basically described just the retina and optic nerve, chiasm and tract (and maybe the lateral geniculate nucleus). What do you mean by this “culminating” business?
Which is why I accounted for those other phenomena from a physicalist perspective, too. You haven’t yet accounted for the simple phenomenon except for some vague “culminating” gobbledegook.
I’d argue that X in B2 elicits A3 and Y in B2 elicits A4, and one can draw both similarities and distinctions between A1 & A4 and A2 & A3 respectively.
Incidentally, what’s the difference between that and a causation, if all other factors are shown to have <1.0?
Of course - I never said optical illusions don’t exist (and synaesthesia apparently arises from memory formation in childhood, where mulitple sensory inputs are used to encode particular memories). But the answer “what came first, the wavelength or the colour?” can confidently be answered “the wavelength, which is the colour in most cases”, leaving the physicalism of colour unimpeached.
I’ll try to keep in mind that all your statements reflect only your strong preferences, not your convictions (As for me, I favour the position that it’s possible to have absolute knowledge and ‘definitive’ answers).
As I have pointed out repeatedly, you have not asked me a question; you have put your words in my mouth and then asked me why I’ve said them. Your refusal to acknowledge that you’ve done so is baffling and irritating.
Yet, when I try nonetheless to address your scenario by offering a few examples of questions you could conceivably ask me, and what my answers to those questions would be, you accuse me of “changing the words of the question I actually ask you”.
If you insist on knowing my position, why are you ignoring or undermining my every attempt to clarify that position?
Calling “it” green? What are you having the “it” in that sentence refer to? What I see?
“Green” is the label I’ve come to associate with experiences more or less of that nature.
This is more a question to clarify my understanding of your position, rather than an argument (as yet), but do I take it that you don’t regard perception as being anything other than neural activity? If we demonstrate that the appropriate neural activity is occurring within someone’s brain, given that they don’t have any neurological abnormalities, can we say “That person is now seeing (or perceiving) green” (not “that person ought to be seeing green if their brain works normally”, or something similar), without needing to ask them? Or would you say that it’s essential for us to have a report from the observer before we can know they’re seeing green?
In traditional terms, would you call yourself an epiphenomenalist or an eliminativist? Or something else?
None. Notice that nowhere do the labels “wavelength” or “nanometers” appear. “Seeing” is an event, and I say “I see green” to label the event that’s occurring. Could you just tell me what point you’re trying to make with all this?
Why do I use “green” rather than “red”? Well, I just told you: “green” is the label I’ve come to associate with experiences more or less of that nature.
I suppose I could start calling experiences of that nature “red” (which would be very confusing for everyone) or I could call them “Making the beast with two backs” which Shakespeare uses to label experiences that I usually label “sex”.
Again, what’s your point?
I’m a supervenience physicalist, Tev - epiphenomenalism is too close to the ludicrous uber-dualism of panpsychism for my liking, whereas eliminativism seems like pedantic worldplay akin to eliminating the word “water” in favour of some quantum mechanical description of hydrogen and oxygen atoms. (Although of the two I suppose I’d prefer the latter).
I’m really trying to understand the position of others here instead of just setting forth my own and having others question it, which is usually what ends up happening somehow (I’ve never worked out why). But yes, I think neurological activity explains perception just as electronic activity explains what appears on a computer screen. We could be confident in our perception prediction and the accuracy of our model could be tested using the report (pdf). But even then we can’t know they’re seeing green because they might be lying, or even illusory.
I’m honestly trying to understand your position, how you justify what you say. I hope I’ve provided you enough output in the past that you’ll forgive my curiosity here.
But you just said that green is itself a label. So you’re seeing a label?
So when you said “I see green”, you’re seeing the experience?
But experiences aren’t coloured. I can see a red car, or red light, but could you really call an experience “red”?
So it’s just a preference, yes?
I’m trying to understand why you assign labels in this way. If I rotated the prism slightly, you’d still presumably say “green” when asked what you saw. But slightly more, and you suddenly shift to saying something else (“red”). How do you justify this arbitrary thresholding?
I’ve already addressed this. The phrase “I see light” is a convenient, commonly-understood, and inaccurate way to label an event (much like the phrase: “the sun is setting”), not an indication of its identity or cause.
One can attempt to analyze an experienced event by (arbitrarily) breaking down the experience into (arbitrary) components. Under one such break-down, one of the components of the experience is referred to as “light”.
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You can see a red car? How do you know the car is red? Could it be because that’s how you experience it? What about a purple car, or better yet, a brown car? Is what we label “brown” a goofy hodgepodge of EM wavelengths or how we happen to (consciously) experience those wavelengths? My position is that “EM wavelengths” is one way of breaking-down experience and labeling one of it’s components. But without conscious experience, “brown” (and for that matter “wavelengths”) is meaningless.
Yes. (Well, and habit)
I don’t understand the question… arbitrary means I can’t justify it.
But agreeing with me there (and that’s a big step I’m glad you’ve taken, but let’s put my positions aside for the moment) doesn’t answer my question. You said “I see green” and “green is a label”, but berated me for suggesting that you called light of wavelength 550 nm green. Are you seeing a label or not? I still don’t understand your initial objection that you don’t call the light green.
But you said you call experiences “red”. How do you know the experience is red? Is that because of how you experience the experience? And how do you know that? It seems you’re in an infinite regress there.
So your answer that you’re seeing green isn’t definitive, then?
Just checking your agreement that you are acting utterly arbitrarily in thresholding a continuum so, as you put it earlier, “superfluously”. Again, this arbitration is just a preference rather than a conviction of yours, yes?
If I may express my own view on this particular point:
“I see green” is a statement of exactly the same type as “I feel generous” - it describes my mental state. What causes that mental state is irrelevant to what that state is. Usually, the state of “seeing green” is caused by light of a particular wavelength impinging on my retina, but the illusions (and we can use brown instead of green to emphasise the point) demonstrate that the perception is not always due to this cause.
This isn’t intended to contradict the idea that all mental states are physical, or that the cause of my feelings of generosity has a different ontological status to the cause of my perception of redness. It’s just to make the point that we can’t identify “green” with anything other than a mental (or neural, if you prefer) state - in particular, that we can’t identify it with light of a particular wavelength.
The light from the lamp, in my opinion, does not convey “green-ness” from the lamp to my eyes. “Green-ness” is something that my mind generates when it receives a particular stimulus. To answer your question, I would say “the light is green”, but only in the same way that I might say “the light is holy”. As an atheist, I assume you regard “holy” as describing only people’s reactions towards the venerated object, rather than an intrinsic property of the object itself; I would argue that “green” is an observer-dependent property of exactly the same sort.
To answer your question, when I say “I see green” I’m describing an experience. But I’m not making the same type of statement as “I see water”. “I see water” may be expanded to “My visual experiences lead me to believe that there is some water in front of my eyes”. “I see green” may be expanded to “My visual experiences are currently of the type associated with my eyes being exposed to light of a particular wavelength”. But this doesn’t imply “My eyes are being exposed to that wavelength.”
I entertain the position that there are (seemingly) multiple causal factors involved in the experience we call “seeing light”.
In the context I described? Yes, of course.
No, I don’t see a label; labels are what I associate with experiences (as I made perfectly clear) in order to convey those experiences to another, but the labels are not the experience.
Sentient, you say you’re honestly trying to understand my position, but I have a hard time believing you when you keep putting words into my mouth: I never said I call experiences red, or any other color for that matter. For the umpteenth time: “green” (or red, or blue, or whatever) is a label I associate with experience; it is not experience.
Of course it is, unless you take my answer out of context yet again. I cannot be mistaken that that which I’m experiencing is what I tend to associate with the labels: “seeing green”. The part that isn’t definitive is the labeling; I don’t have to label it “seeing” or “green”.
What continuum? Every time I look at the output of a prism, I see segregated bands, and again, my experiencing is my experiencing; I cannot be mistaken. How do you justify bringing a continuum into my experience?
That’s a problem. Our experience of the world is our consciousness, not what the real world is.
What’s that got to do with color? Waves of all wavelengths causally interact with other matter-energy. Color doesn’t figure in microwave radiation.
Shape and color just happen; I don’t identify them. The paper talks about what the brain does with the light. Configuration here is a spatial term. No one knows what the real input to the brain from which all modalities emerge, really “looks like”.
Is there no time lag between photons hitting the retina and one viewing an image? If not, there’s a ‘culmination’.
Yes, the generation of consciousness is still a mystery.
That situation can also arise. The darker shade in the checkerboard corresponds to the “normal” response of some other distinct input.
It may be a cause or an identity.
That ‘most cases’ breaks the deal, like I already said. Now you have to state, in a majority of cases that happen to have background conditons A, X happens and in the minority with conditions B,C,D…, P,Q,R happen. ‘Wavelength is color’ denotes identity, which must correlate to 1.
Is it just me or are you trying to unravel a circular reference? If you define colour as an artifact of human perception then no, it doesn’t exist anywhere else, by your own definition.
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