I suppose a monochromat (ie, someone with only one kind of working retinal cone cells) would think there is no colour, because he/she would not be able to see distinct colours! But are you a monochromat?

It's a pity that romansh never responded to the above remark. It would have helped clear the issue up of why he thinks there is no such thing as colour, and it only requires a simple standard colour vision test.

Romansh, it's nothing to be ashamed of if you don't see colour. OTOH, it is kind of embarrassing if you DO see colour, yet have been claiming not to for some time.

DavidMcC wrote:Romansh, it's nothing to be ashamed of if you don't see colour. OTOH, it is kind of embarrassing if you DO see colour, yet have been claiming not to for some time.

I am sorry David.
But you have consistently missed the point of this thread.

ScholasticSpastic wrote:Ah, nice, a thread where I get to side with DavidMcC! This should be tons of fun.

Our perception of red is a function of the types and quantities of cones in our retinas. Very simple animals, with levels of neurological complexity which probably preclude attributing conceptual thought to them, are able to perceive and react to the color red specifically, and many of these simple organisms will even modify their reactions as a function of the specific shade of red that they're perceiving.

Unless one proposes a dualistic and/or Idealist model of the world, it stands to reason that perception precedes conception for us.

Yes! This is a rare treat for me as well.

ScholasticSpastic wrote:

laklak wrote:If God didn't want red to be angry he wouldn't have said "nature, red in tooth and claw". Checkmate, atheists.

On a slightly different note, why do women paint their nails (or maybe "talons"?) the color of blood? Are they trying to tell us something? What's it mean?

There are primates whose arses turn red when they're ready for a little bangy-bangy. Maybe the tendency of our females to paint their hands and mouths with these colors is intended to piggy-back on our evolutionary past, grab our attention, and advertise their flexibility in terms of where they'd like it?

No. They do that to their nails because it's illegal for them to cut off our balls and wear them on their belts to get the message across.

romansh wrote:

DavidMcC wrote:Romansh, it's nothing to be ashamed of if you don't see colour. OTOH, it is kind of embarrassing if you DO see colour, yet have been claiming not to for some time.

I am sorry David.
But you have consistently missed the point of this thread.

The point of this article is to point out what confusion there is for us over the idea that we have 'mind' and 'concepts'. The whole point of concepts is to not confuse ourselves but that sure as fuck goes wrong sometimes. It goes wrong around the point where we start to believe in 'objects of the mind'. Being a proper notheist requires that we not substitute stupid god ideas with more intelligent god ideas.

Seeing red things is biology and we can do much to support and prove that this happens. 'seeing red' in the sense you are taking it (if I haven't misread you), is just a hairline removed from certain troublesome beliefs about jesus christ.

I think you have misread me SoS

I am quite happy to call London double decker buses as red and even describe them as such. But are they actually physically red? The physics of colour suggests not. Our departed Hobbes suggested that believing the buses as actually being red as naïve realism

The closest to a sensible answer I got (I forget who) suggests the question does not make sense.

I suppose I am asking the question does my perception match the noumenon.

How does physics so suggest?


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

The_Metatron wrote:How does physics so suggest?


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

light falls on an object. Some is reflected, some absorbed, some reradiated, some refracted etc. The light reaches our eyes photochemical reactions in our cones, the signals are transferred along the optical nerve as charges, then processed in the brain which we 'experience' as colour.

The experienced colour is the same as the surface? Really?

Sure our experience of colour correlates with the light coming from the surface of the object, but that I suspect is it.

Well, I'll tell you what. You get a piece of gold leaf and look through it. What comes through will be a wavelength of 500 nm or shorter. This never changes.

What you call that color is your own affair, but it will be light in the wavelength I just mentioned.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

The_Metatron wrote:Well, I'll tell you what. You get a piece of gold leaf and look through it. What comes through will be a wavelength of 500 nm or shorter. This never changes.

What you call that color is your own affair, but it will be light in the wavelength I just mentioned.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

That is not under debate. But using gold also as an example when very finely divided takes on a ruby red colour.

It's not a case of what you or I call it Metatron. Because I am quite happy to call photons at 500 nm cyan. The object emitting/reflecting them may or may not be.

romansh wrote:

The_Metatron wrote:Well, I'll tell you what. You get a piece of gold leaf and look through it. What comes through will be a wavelength of 500 nm or shorter. This never changes.

What you call that color is your own affair, but it will be light in the wavelength I just mentioned.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

That is not under debate. But using gold also as an example when very finely divided takes on a ruby red colour.

It's not a case of what you or I call it Metatron. Because I am quite happy to call photons at 500 nm cyan. The object emitting/reflecting them may or may not be.

That's not a well defined question, though.

At what scale? That's what's going on here, I think.

As far as our brains can tell, among those that can, the red bus is red. It's only when we start looking closer do we find otherwise.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

The_Metatron wrote:
That's not a well defined question, though.

Is the bus the same colour as the perception I have of the colour? I am not sure how I can ask the question in a more defined manner.

The_Metatron wrote:At what scale? That's what's going on here, I think.

At any scale.

The_Metatron wrote:As far as our brains can tell, among those that can, the red bus is red. It's only when we start looking closer do we find otherwise.

And here our brains may need to defend against Hobbes' charge that we might be succumbing to naïve realism.

It's likely, probably owing to some bell curve distribution of chromats. We may have different words for the color of a clear sky, but we probably perceive them similarly. But, only probably.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

Of course, it would be trivial to test the correlation between our color perceptions. It'd almost certainly be pretty close.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

The_Metatron wrote:Of course, it would be trivial to test the correlation between our color perceptions. It'd almost certainly be pretty close.

Yes I would agree with you here. But again it does not address the question under discussion.

The_Metatron wrote:It's likely, probably owing to some bell curve distribution of chromats. We may have different words for the color of a clear sky, but we probably perceive them similarly. But, only probably.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

We could test for correlation of likeness - whether two colours are more or less alike. Those colour blindness test charts with numbers can be used for that. But such tests could not determine if my subjective experience of blue and green are the exact compliment of yours, for example. According to some this is a meaningful question, but to others it is meaningless. I think that asking 'does colour exist' is like asking 'do colour qualia exist, and I have the same qualia as you?'

DavidMcC wrote:

romansh wrote:

DavidMcC wrote:
Definitely only one physical colour, but two perceptual colours, based on post-processing of cone cell signals in some part or other of the visual cortex.

Which one is the correct perceptual colour?

AFAIAC, there is no "correct" perceptual colour. There is, however, the perceptual colour under standard conditions, such as when it is surrounded only by a wide, white border, and nothing else. This would make the brownish appearance more standard than the yellowish one. However, this is only a matter of convention.

EDIT: If you used a wide, black border instead, the hue would look more-or-less the same, but the shade would seem much brighter.

There you go, your got it at last!

If 'there is no "correct" perceptual colour' that is what is meant by 'colour does not exist'. Of course we might agree we see the bus as red under certain lighting conditions and in certain scenes, and the correlation between us can be understood in terms of physics, physiology and psychology, but the quality of colour we experience is not created by the bus. It's a complex interaction of all those factors.

GrahamH wrote:
We could test for correlation of likeness - whether two colours are more or less alike. Those colour blindness test charts with numbers can be used for that. But such tests could not determine if my subjective experience of blue and green are the exact compliment of yours, for example. According to some this is a meaningful question, but to others it is meaningless. I think that asking 'does colour exist' is like asking 'do colour qualia exist, and I have the same qualia as you?'

I agree with you here and I get the question is meaningless camp as well.

But if this camp is right, then when I say the bus is red is a very superficial statement ... ie our each of our perceived qualia have been defined as red when it comes to speaking of London double deckers. I have no problem with this but it does highlight the difference between noumena and phenomena.