https://qr.ae/pNeEBm

The answer above sort of floored me a little as I didn't know that color and sound only exist in our minds (don't worry I googled it). That outside of our heads color is just electromagnetic waves and sound is just pressure waves. If we didn't have ears we couldn't hear anything. But then does it make it fair to say that there is no such thing as color or sound then?

Frozenworld wrote:https://qr.ae/pNeEBm

The answer above sort of floored me a little as I didn't know that color and sound only exist in our minds (don't worry I googled it). That outside of our heads color is just electromagnetic waves and sound is just pressure waves. If we didn't have ears we couldn't hear anything. But then does it make it fair to say that there is no such thing as color or sound then?

Good luck
http://www.rationalskepticism.org/philo ... 51760.html

Frozenworld wrote:does it make it fair to say that there is no such thing as color or sound then?

Organisms have sensory receptor cells to handle information from the environment external to the organism. Unless you want to spring some form of creationism on us, this seems a point you should not be expected to contest. If your understanding of biology is so rudimentary that you are asking questions such as you just did, you need to educate yourself further before trying to engage a mature audience in some sort of discussion. My response is telling you not to concern yourself with the names of colors unless your interest is in communicating with artists and other people who work with colors. Naming a color is just a very elaborate repsponse to a stimulus in the environment of an organism. Likewise for sound, where you'd concern yourself with the names given to sounds by people with training in music. No such thing? Does everything have to be a 'thing'?

Like, everything is vibrations, man. The trick is to stay away from the low-vibein' mo'fuckers.

There's a song about vibrations. They're good good good. If I didn't have ears would that song exist? Yes, cause everyone else has ears and someone wrote down the lyrics when they invented the song.

Cito di Pense wrote:

Frozenworld wrote:does it make it fair to say that there is no such thing as color or sound then?

Organisms have sensory receptor cells to handle information from the environment external to the organism. Unless you want to spring some form of creationism on us, this seems a point you should not be expected to contest. If your understanding of biology is so rudimentary that you are asking questions such as you just did, you need to educate yourself further before trying to engage a mature audience in some sort of discussion. My response is telling you not to concern yourself with the names of colors unless your interest is in communicating with artists and other people who work with colors. Naming a color is just a very elaborate repsponse to a stimulus in the environment of an organism. Likewise for sound, where you'd concern yourself with the names given to sounds by people with training in music. No such thing? Does everything have to be a 'thing'?

That's not even close to what I am saying. Most people don't even know that color only exists in their heads or that sound is just a pressure wave and only exists to biological creatures. Outside our heads there is no sound or color.

There are still sound waves and visible light without life. It doesn't matter what it's called or how it's perceived, it exists whether there's anything around to name it or not.
"If a tree falls in the middle of the forest, does it still make a sound?" Answer: yes.
"What came first, the chicken or the egg?" Answer: the egg.

Frozenworld wrote:
The answer above sort of floored me a little as I didn't know that color and sound only exist in our minds (don't worry I googled it).

They don't only exist in our minds - you're falling down a pit of solipsism, and that pit is *always* made of nonsense.

Frozenworld wrote:
That's not even close to what I am saying. Most people don't even know that color only exists in their heads or that sound is just a pressure wave and only exists to biological creatures. Outside our heads there is no sound or color.

Most people don't "know" it because it's abject fucking tripe, that's why.

Sound only exists to biological creatures? I mean seriously, dude - wtf is that supposed to mean? Everything only exists to biological creatures because biological creatures are the only things we know of which have senses evolved to determine the existence and parameters of things. Your position necessarily suggests that while tragically failing in the aural department, rocks, planets, and other non-living objects somehow manage to sense the existence of other quantities in the universe. It's horrifyingly embarrassingly ignorant. You need some serious help if this is where you're at. I can't help but say as an educator that your education system and/or teachers failed you terribly.

The_Piper wrote:There are still sound waves and visible light without life.

It's dire, isn't it? Like the last 500 years didn't happen.

Je pense donc que la couleur existe seulement dans mon esprit

General Science & Technology... fuck me sideways! This would be a new low bar even for the Philosophy subforum.

Spearthrower wrote:

Frozenworld wrote:
The answer above sort of floored me a little as I didn't know that color and sound only exist in our minds (don't worry I googled it).

They don't only exist in our minds - you're falling down a pit of solipsism, and that pit is *always* made of nonsense.

And this particular assertion, that colour and sound only exist in our minds, once again serves to demonstrate the irrelevance and utter uselessness of solipsism. True or not, it makes no difference to your behaviour. When you approach a red traffic light (which solipsism insists doesn't exist except in your mind), you do not keep driving regardless because colour is just in your mind, or because your perception of red may differ from that of other people (who also don't even exist except in your mind). When you look like going through the red light, and a passenger in your car screams "Stop!", you do not ignore it because the sound (and passenger for that matter) only exists in your mind.

Frozenworld wrote:https://qr.ae/pNeEBm

The answer above sort of floored me a little as I didn't know that color and sound only exist in our minds (don't worry I googled it). That outside of our heads color is just electromagnetic waves and sound is just pressure waves. If we didn't have ears we couldn't hear anything. But then does it make it fair to say that there is no such thing as color or sound then?

Just electromagnetic waves? Just pressure waves? What does that even mean? What do you expect these to be if not "just" electromagnetic waves or air pressure waves?

"Colour" and "sound" are definitional entities, not natural entities. The definitions are describing what human meat-bags experience when bombarded by electromagnetic or air waves. That's it. No meat-bags, no colour or sound, by definition. But the natural phenomena giving rise to the experiences are still there, whether meat-bags are present or not.

The confusion of definitional entities with natural entities is rather juvenile, frankly. Many are those who think they have stumbled on some deep philosophical insight when they realise that doing away with the things doing the defining, means that their definitional entities also magically disappear with them. Unfortunately, this is not a searing philosophical revelation, it's semantic premature ejaculation.

If there was ever an argument against spending grade school sitting in the back of the class huffing marker fumes and eating glue, the OP has made it.

Frozenworld wrote:

Cito di Pense wrote:

Frozenworld wrote:does it make it fair to say that there is no such thing as color or sound then?

Organisms have sensory receptor cells to handle information from the environment external to the organism. Unless you want to spring some form of creationism on us, this seems a point you should not be expected to contest. If your understanding of biology is so rudimentary that you are asking questions such as you just did, you need to educate yourself further before trying to engage a mature audience in some sort of discussion. My response is telling you not to concern yourself with the names of colors unless your interest is in communicating with artists and other people who work with colors. Naming a color is just a very elaborate repsponse to a stimulus in the environment of an organism. Likewise for sound, where you'd concern yourself with the names given to sounds by people with training in music. No such thing? Does everything have to be a 'thing'?

That's not even close to what I am saying. Most people don't even know that color only exists in their heads or that sound is just a pressure wave and only exists to biological creatures. Outside our heads there is no sound or color.

So what? You'd have to believe our heads were actually components of a significant argument to go along the line you're on. You don't have the merest clue how to make that argument.

Not being close to what you're saying is to be far away from the idiocy you're writing. So, no, it's not fair to say there's no such thing as sound or color. This is because you have such a crude understanding of how to use the word 'thing'.

The_Piper wrote:There are still sound waves and visible light without life. It doesn't matter what it's called or how it's perceived, it exists whether there's anything around to name it or not.
"If a tree falls in the middle of the forest, does it still make a sound?" Answer: yes.
"What came first, the chicken or the egg?" Answer: the egg.

I am not sure i agree with the point you are making here, and beginning with the premise that this whole subject is mental masturbation of the philosowanking variety and that I'm totally comfortable with that, sound , color, texture, etc. really are subjective in the most literal meaning of the word. In a world where we name things and then make models of the things we name and then call those models reality, the point goes pretty deep and is not at all well explored.

BWE wrote:

The_Piper wrote:There are still sound waves and visible light without life. It doesn't matter what it's called or how it's perceived, it exists whether there's anything around to name it or not.
"If a tree falls in the middle of the forest, does it still make a sound?" Answer: yes.
"What came first, the chicken or the egg?" Answer: the egg.

I am not sure i agree with the point you are making here, and beginning with the premise that this whole subject is mental masturbation of the philosowanking variety and that I'm totally comfortable with that, sound , color, texture, etc. really are subjective in the most literal meaning of the word. In a world where we name things and then make models of the things we name and then call those models reality, the point goes pretty deep and is not at all well explored.

Well, come to that, deepity is not all that well explored, either. I like to compare it to testing the depth of six feet of water with a five foot pole and ask what the cost is of not exploring it when the only tool you wield is the same as the one you're using to assess scientifically the phenomena we experience. Philosowanking is first and foremost the art of pretending thet philosowanking is really, really difficult. More difficult than physics, even. Making models is not as trivial as naming shit. Sing it with Grace Slick: You call it loud, but the human crowd doesn't mean shit to a tree. Using the word 'society' to denote what trees do together kind of just misses the point, another misbegotten, feeble act of declaring that thinking about thought has a result. If the cognitive apparatus is limited, all the more so for thinking about thought, which is not what neuroscientists do.

I disagree

BWE wrote:

The_Piper wrote:There are still sound waves and visible light without life. It doesn't matter what it's called or how it's perceived, it exists whether there's anything around to name it or not.
"If a tree falls in the middle of the forest, does it still make a sound?" Answer: yes.
"What came first, the chicken or the egg?" Answer: the egg.

I am not sure i agree with the point you are making here, and beginning with the premise that this whole subject is mental masturbation of the philosowanking variety and that I'm totally comfortable with that, sound , color, texture, etc. really are subjective in the most literal meaning of the word. In a world where we name things and then make models of the things we name and then call those models reality, the point goes pretty deep and is not at all well explored.

Maybe the point is that sound , color, texture, etc. exist regardless of whether someone perceives it (or what model someone constructs from those perceptions). You'll have a difficult time arguing otherwise.

As for our models representing objective reality, that is an idea few people who have done a modicum of epistemology hang on to. Our models just work. Recent models tend to work better than they superceded, but Chinese astronomers managed to predict solar eclipses at least as early as the one who lost his head because he failed to predict the one that occurred on Oct. 22, 2137 BCE. Predictions were possible despite the model of earth being a flat one and the sun being dragged across the firmament on a chariot. Nomads managed to navigate across featureless deserts by the stars despite the fact that their model was based on geocentrism. Our Newtonian conception of time and space works very well for us today despite the fact that the theory of relativity made a mockery of it.

In the end metaphysical musings about reality are barren, futile, irrelevant. What matters (<--- not a pun; just metaphorically speaking) is what works for us. I made a similar point here, but the solipsist who started this thread ignored it, and nobody else reacted to it either.

Hermit wrote:

BWE wrote:

The_Piper wrote:There are still sound waves and visible light without life. It doesn't matter what it's called or how it's perceived, it exists whether there's anything around to name it or not.
"If a tree falls in the middle of the forest, does it still make a sound?" Answer: yes.
"What came first, the chicken or the egg?" Answer: the egg.

I am not sure i agree with the point you are making here, and beginning with the premise that this whole subject is mental masturbation of the philosowanking variety and that I'm totally comfortable with that, sound , color, texture, etc. really are subjective in the most literal meaning of the word. In a world where we name things and then make models of the things we name and then call those models reality, the point goes pretty deep and is not at all well explored.

Maybe the point is that sound , color, texture, etc. exist regardless of whether someone perceives it (or what model someone constructs from those perceptions). You'll have a difficult time arguing otherwise.

BWE is prioritizing the cognitive. If you really want to litigate this, it will pay you to use language like "the stimuli we interpret as color and sound exist regardless blah blah blah". It's a tempest in a teapot for anyone who doesn't just love litigating it. I don't prescribe that language for you unless you want to carry on a conversation with someone who pickles his own experience and even reality itself to the extent that BWE is doing and pretty much has always done when push comes to shove. If there's something we're missing in descriptions of color and sound, it's the emotionality of pickled fee-fees. Pronounced 'fee-sees'.