The perception of the wavelength of light is what counts. It takes our eyes, and the brain interpreting what it receives to understand “yellow”. Certainly the wavelength exists independently of human observation, but it is the observation that creates the experience of “yellow”. An intelligent being that does not have our equipment would perceive it differently, (or not at all) and be unable to understand “yellow”.
I’m sorry, I’m not following you. Are you actually saying that humans instinctively will color bananas yellow even if they have never seen one before? Considering that bananas actually come in a variety of colors, including green, brown, red, purplish, and even a pale bluish sort of color depending on geographical region, that is pretty tall glass to swallow.
Google Images for banana.
I’m assuming you are serious. Your ignorance of bananas does not alter reality.
Just one example. There are all sorts of others. Certain Asian varietals can be maroon to purple in color, and there are several species that stay green. Many African types are brown. I’m having a difficult time locating an image of the blue ones, though I’ve seen them in person at specialist fruit nurseries.
in the meantime here is picture of a buddha’s hand lemon. lemon. The world is stranger than you might think.
ETA purple bananas
You do realize that the word “empirical” denotes information gained by means of observation or experience, right?
Also, there is no such thing as a concrete banana and even if there was, it would be impossible to eat.
They are however, easy to locate on a GIS Concrete banana 
Google says banana is yellow.
:smack:
Just when you think you’ve seen it all…
Um, I don’t guess the philosophical question “Paper or plastic?” is germane, is it?
No, the physical properties of the banana skin, that determine what wavelengths it reflects, are what counts. It’s reflecting yellow light whether observed or not. You might as well contend that it is the measuring of the plates moving that counts, or even just the inferring of movement from magnetic stripes, *not *the movement itself. But you claim that’s different. Why? both are physical phenomena.
You’re trying to create this artificial distinction - which only works if you privilege certain kinds of “facts” - but there is no *real *category difference between the classes of facts you are trying to differentiate. So youre effort is in error.
*Only *if you contend that there is something to “yellowness” *other *than a label for certain wavelengths.
Me, I don’t think qualia exist.
Again, only if you *assume *qualia. Otherwise, yellow is just a label for particular combinations of wavelengths of light. Even a being that couldn’t sense it, could be told about it. That is all it takes.
You’re trying for a rephrasing of the Mary The Colour Scientist argument for qualia. It’s not new, and I think Dennett did a very good job of demolishing it in Consciousness Explained, Quining Qualia and What RoboMary Knows
Interesting. If I’m doing it, I did so without prior knowledge of the argument. My initial impressions though having cursorily read those two papers, is that Dennett is full of hot air. His logic goes in circles and ultimately to nowhere at all. I suppose if that is the end goal to philosophical pursuits, then fine and well, but he assumes so much on his own side that it’s almost ridiculous when placed up against empirical knowledge.
“Color” Is both a descriptor of an effect, and a slag term we use to describe a specific set of wavelengths. Without the optical machinery to “see” color, it has no meaning other than as an abstract shorthand for a wavelength. “Yellow” does not exist independently of the mind at all. Without something to view it, there is no Yellow. There is an object reflecting a spectrum of light, but that spectrum is broader than yellow. A being with a wider range of perception would view that object differently. Even if we were quite specific and told that being to ignore other wavelengths and focus in on the ones we determine as “yellow” there is no reason at all to assume that it’s brain would process the data into the same effect we experience.
I don’t see how Dennett’s position demolishes this at all.
Even as children it takes time, examples and lots of repetition for us to learn to accurately define and identify colors. Our eyes process the wavelength and are certainly displaying “yellow” to the brain, but “yellow” as a concept must be learnt. Even if Mary is deducing the experience of yellow without having ever seen it, she is doing so based upon prior knowledge and experience fed into her, augmented by her new ability to actually “see” the wavelength. If all we gave Mary was information that asserted that “yellow” was “blibblefrop” Then she would call it such.
I also want to state that I don’t agree with Naxo’s position entirely. I was only positing my interpretation of what he posted. I do think that there are quantifiable data that can be separated from experiential data, but the difference is moot in most cases since it is really the perceptible data that matters in most cases.
Please clarify something for me here. Are you contending that, when I write about “yellow”, I am referring specifically to certain wavelengths of light? Even without positing the reality of qualia, I’m just not sure that’s right – what I call “yellow” is not wavelength but rather something bound up with my interpretation of wavelength. I could hallucinate yellow; I could dream yellow. If you tinkered with my brain such that I could no longer differentiate between a Granny Smith and a Red Delicious, it seems wrong to deny that the Granny Smith would seem red to me (or the Red Delicious yellow, as the case may be).
This really doesn’t have anything to do with the color scientist argument, which posits that the subjective experience would be “new” even to someone who knew everything about color.
Yes. Or more specifically, you are referring to a connection between all previous experiences of those wavelengths and a group consensus on what that experience is named.
I agree, but it is not in any way independent of that wavelength, now is it?
Could you do that if you had *never *seen yellow with your eyes, though?
Dennett addresses this when he offers the alternative - what if I tinkered with your memory of “red”, switching it with “yellow” without affecting your immediate apprehension of colour. You’d react the same as though I had. So where’s the difference?
The colour scientist bit is just a thought experiment. The heart of the matter is that what we mean when we say “know” - do we fully realise the implications? Dennett was arguing against those who say we can know all about something and yet not experience it fully.
Well, my inexperience with the philosophy of mind makes me cautious about taking a stand one way or the other on the existence of qualia. I just wonder if it’s any more right to say that yellow just is a certain wavelength of light than that a copy of Pride and Prejudice just is wood pulp stained with ink – “yellow” is not meaningful absent reference to an experiencer.
I have taken the liberty of highlighting where you went wrong.
You can, of course, give an example of where he did this, right?
You can, of course, enumerate these assumptions?
I’m not seeing a difference here.
Errm, no. Or else the banana would be orange, or green, or white, instead.
If your objection is that we have arbitrarily cordoned off a chunk of the EM spectrum as “visible light”, well, yes, but that doesn’t make the banana’s restricted reflections over that range not happen.
Yes. Agreed. That’s irrelevant to whether the banana is or isn’t yellow, though. “Yellow”, in this context, means “appears to reflect such-and-such visible light,” after all. The restrictions are (implicitly) understood when we’re talking about colours.
How could you *possibly *know? All you would know is that it would self-report that, having restricted itself to only scanning radiation of the visible spectrum as we defined it, it only received radiation of 570–580nm. How is that not “seeing yellow”? What, exactly, is missing.
By showing that there’s no need for qualia to explain anything.
I disagree. Berlin and Kay showed quite clearly that we have an innate physiological colour response independent of cultural influence.
Wait - that’s a completely separate argument - we could call those wavelengths that and it doesn’t change anything I’ve said.
Witness the case oflanguageswith less colours, or more. Berlin and Kay found that the linguistic framework is still subordinate to the biological sense.
Such as?
I agree that "yellow’ isn’t *just *a wavelength - it’s also the culturosemantic baggage that goes with it. But that baggage is not ineffable, private and yet miraculously also available to introspection. So I have no hesitation in kicking qualia to the kerb.
ETA: the issue here isn’t whether there* is* an internal cognitive aspect to colour. Of course there is. The question is whether that’s independent of, and seperable from, the physiological experience. and if so, in a way that is provably *unique *to each human being