Qualia and the Mystery of Colors

Very strange conclusion.

Light isn’t color. Neurochemicals aren’t color. Color is color. Once again tautology saves the day.

Light and neurochemicals are correlated with color in the same way light switch is correlated with light bulb.

There is no redness in light and I’m sure no redness in neurochemicals either unless we are speaking of their visual form, seeing them with our eyes, instead of simply representing them mathematically, but then that redness is not redness they are correlated with in the manner that we’re speaking of here.

What we cannot see, is hidden from us, we interpret. Using induction. Such as analogical induction. If things are observed to have a lot of similarities, we assume they have some more. That’s how it works. I cannot make an attempt to immerse myself in your consciousness. Thus I cannot see for myself whether you do or do not have consciousness. But because you show many traits I possess that are tightly related to consciousness, I assume you also possess consciousness.

they are what happens when info interacts, if you could make a count it would be of the physical objects - the info. but this does not deny that there is the quality of that, e.g. color, e.g. red. mary would see red just like a camera would, the whole argument is ridiculous.

Not sure, smells can be made to happen with tech which yields the same electrical impulses, so is also a 1:1 thing. For me the smell is real, and the physical information is transitory. So why do they say that physics are more real or the only real, when clearly the quality is at least as real?

[quote="Amorphos
Not sure, smells can be made to happen with tech which yields the same electrical impulses, so is also a 1:1 thing. For me the smell is real, and the physical information is transitory. So why do they say that physics are more real or the only real, when clearly the quality is at least as real?[/quote]
Hello Amorphos,

I don’t quite understand your criticism so far. Where does the Mary argument fall short for you in that Mary finding new information out when she finally enters into the sunlight world seeing red for the first time? Let’s stick with vision for your rebuttle, ill be able to follow more easily if you don’t mind. Do you think a camera would be able to experience a quale (the color red) in the same regard as a human being does? When I dilate on this issue i think where the camera and the human part is where consciousness pick up. I think an intereting question is if to ask ourselves if zombies can experience qualia. Philosophical zombies have no consciousness, they just take in information like a like a camera does and lives a life of an AI unconsciously.

What do you think?

Because she will see red just like a camera would, given that red is a quality and her brain the instrument observing it. red is observed or is in the object [transparent photons].

I think it digitally or chemically copies the color red yes. Equally I think that in optical illusions, the inquirer is shown some color, but the brain inputs the color it expects to see. so when the object with the color is moved to an area which is another color, it is revealed that the object is indeed that color. This says to me that the brain composes color perhaps not unlike a camcorder can ~ the brain can do graphics. The problem with qualia then, is that you get red when it isn’t there physically in the light info.

The philosophical zombie is all of the above, what it means; that the human machine will do what cameras can do. Even with mental qualia.

I saw a documentary where a scientist made a blind man see [very blurred though] by re-routing info from his tongue [thus acting like eyes], so it appears that the brain just needs enough info to say something is e.g. red, and there will be the quality red.

  • it all means that qualities [red] are a fundamental element of the real world - but are not physical.

I don’t see how any of that suggests that qualities are the fundamental element of the world and I don’t even know what “the fundamental element” means.

The dog doesn’t see any color.
Some people see a little color.
Some people see a lot of color.

How much color was there before they looked?

Ah yes, well I didn’t mean like the elements in the periodic table, just that qualities/qualia are as real as information. Where there is info about a colour you get the quality, if one thing is real then the thing it delivers or exchanges is surely as real.

Come to think of it, colour even in optical illusions is probably a faculty of light. I just don’t get how we can see photons inside the cells of our brain? Like in dreams also, where the colours are purely mental - made by the brain making photons.

james

Jellyfish with a simple orifice for an eye can see red. The example I saw on a documentary had only 4 neuron bundles. I suppose it doesn’t take much to see. People with colour blindness or who see lower/higher hues, just means their brain is fucked or they don’t have as strong visual dept.
The camera will tell you how much colour was there before they looked.

Either you are saying that colour is mental, or that there is no such thing as colour qualia - colour which is not of light and is purely mental whatever that is?

The word “real” refers to a category (or more exactly, a set of related categories, since there is no single category it refers to and since these multiple categories it refers to cannot be reduced to a single category) and this category it refers to has certain rules that determine what is included in it and what is excluded from it. You need to tell me what these rules are before I can agree or disagree with your claim that qualities are real. In simple terms, define the word “real”.

What exactly are you saying? Are you saying that the color we perceive is the color of . . . light? Light is made out of colored corpuscles that when hit the eye determine, based on their color and not on how they move, what kind of image we see?

What was experienced in the past is real. That’s one of the categories associated with the word “real”. Since each one of us has an experience of colors, each one of us will categorize them as real. But then, is that what you mean by “real”?

This doesn’t tell us what colour qualia is though. Reasonably and after seeing a paper [that I posted a while ago] stating that there is a ton of light in the brain, and that cells release photons, I can only imagine that those electrical signals are being converted to light. How else do we see colour?

The problem is that as you know, photons are merely a point of energy and physicists say they are transparent. Red is simply a stream of photons moving in that particular wavelength, - this doesn’t tell us what the quality of redness is.

When we observe what stuff is made of we loose sight of the holistic entity, what colour is, what water is, and what we are.

I divide it into what is existent [physical objects] and what is non existent [infinity, mind, qualities, etc]. if something is there in any way at all then it is in some way real, even a dream is a reality in that our minds are acting like computers and composing the images we see. Can we say that there is something which isn’t real? We can say something isn’t true or is an illusion, but an illusion is real graphics.

Indeed, and I do know all of that btw; the light is turned into electrical impulses which at the back of the eye is more akin to a kaleidoscopic image, and it then gets calibrated even before it moves to the optical cortex where the image is processed. So what I was saying above is that once the image has been processed we then see it, ergo the brain is making colour happen, which reasonably can only be done with light. But like what I am saying to james [above], there is an issue even with colour as a property of light ^^.

_

So mind is not real? Qualities are not real?

Yes, we can say there are things that are not real.

Dreams are real.
Why? Because we have an experience of them.

Imaginary dreams are not real.
Why? Because we have no experience of them.

Imaginations of dreams are real.
Why? Because we have an experience of them.

Robot, cartoon and imaginary unicorns are real.
Biological unicorns are not real.
And you know the reasons: the former have been experienced whereas the latter have not.

Why do we say dreams are not real when they are in fact real?
Because dreams do not have all the properties wakeful experience has. That is what is meant by the statement. Not that they are literally unreal.

Color is real, and qualities in general, whether or not color is a property of light (in other words, whether or not our experience of color is correlated with the color of light corpuscles that hit our eyes.)

The word “universe” refers to a category that includes every idea that points to something we consider to exist and excludes every idea that points to something we consider to not exist.

The word “exist” on the other hand is a label that we attach to the pointer of ideas. We use specific set of rules to decide whether we should attach “exists” or “does not exist” to the pointer of any given idea.

Some will say that the word “universe” does not refer to a category. But then, when you ask them what it refers to, they won’t be able to give you an answer.

Some will agree that the word “universe” refers to a category but will deny that it includes ideas. They will say, it includes not the ideas but what the ideas point to. They will say, it includes things that can be sensed such as humans, animals, mountains, rivers, planets and galaxies. They will agree that it also includes ideas but will disagree that it only includes ideas. But then, when you ask them what does the category exclude, they won’t be able to give you an answer.

Some will agree that the word “universe” refers to a category that includes certain ideas and excludes others but will disagree that its content is based on our judgment. They will say, whether something exists or not is independent from our judgment. But then, when you ask them what does the category include and exclude, they won’t be able to give you an answer without using their own judgment.

They are morons.
Abstract beyond limits of sanity.

It is us who judge whether something exists or not. And we do so using a specific set of rules. The only question is what kind of set of rules do we use.

As I’ve said before, what has been experienced in the past is automatically judged as existent. What hasn’t been experienced in the past is passed to the second round of judgment. When no round of judgment picks it up as existent, we say it is non-existent.

Because we have an experience of quality that is color, we say it exists.

However, that does not mean that light is made out of corpuscles that are colored and the color of which determines the color we are seeing when they [corpuscles] hit our eyes.

These are two separate things.

I think that it does.

Wow
Seriously?


Something is physically real if, and only if, it affects physically real things. And if it does not affect any physically real thing at all, it is not physically real.

There is no example of a perfect circle in nature. The physical universe cannot contain a perfect circle. Thus a perfect circle cannot affect anything physical and therefore is not physically real. And although dreams physically exist, the concepts contained in a dream are not physically real.

I think they are, but physicists don’t. they think the mind is the brain and qualities are physical objects e.g. photons for colour.

Ok, can you give an example?

We experience the colours and sounds etc, and they are not necessarily a faculty of experience. The brain is composing those qualities just as it does the world, so they are akin to the brain working like a computer and making the graphics for the game.

Do you mean that an experience of colour [or any given quality] can be different to light colour? Hmm that’s a tricky one, an idea of colour is not the same as colour, but if we are seeing the idea as a colour in a dream or in the world, then surely it is of light. Do you think there is a quality of colour which when we see it in our minds or world is not photonic?

_

Mind is not the brain. Mind is caused by the brain. I don’t think physicists, at least most of them, deny the former. They are simply stating the latter using crude terms.

I already did. Imaginary dreams (i.e. dreams that are imagined and not experienced) and biological unicorns.

Existence is a property of ideas of what might be real. When the idea of what might be real is a dream for which there is no evidence of its occurence, then we say it is not real.

This property is useful in separating ideas that are potentially a factor in decision making process (the real ones) from ones that are not (the unreal ones.)

They are experienced. If you have a memory of them, they have been experienced.

The state of the brain is separate from the state of the mind but that does not mean they are unrelated.

You are making a mistake of assuming that if A causes B that B is A. It is not.

Light switch causes the state of the light bulb. But they are not the same.

When you turn the light switch on, the light bulb emits light. But there is no light in the light switch.

There are no colors in the brain and there are probably no colors in light. Colors do not belong to these categories.

some interesting links…

rats seeing infa red light via implant…
sciencemag.org/news/2015/10/ … ared-light

Photon entanglement through brain tissue…

nature.com/articles/srep37714
greenmedinfo.com/blog/biopho … made-light

and light into matter even…
phys.org/news/2014-05-scientist … quest.html

Phototransduction and how the eye works…
backyardbrains.com/experiments/eye

It may be so that mind actually is the brain, if you consider that a simple rainbow has vast complexity such to be seen differently by all observers. Something happens when informations meet and exchange ideas [- in said rainbow for example], and you get qualities. It may be so that that happening in the brain is literally what thought is. To me this doesn’t demean mind, though I do think the way scientists and atheists describe that majestic nature of reality does. Really I think a fuller explanation tells us that the perceived physical reality is much more than what it appears to be ~ more than merely physical objects [which themselves don’t exist in absolute terms].

I already did. Imaginary dreams (i.e. dreams that are imagined and not experienced) and biological unicorns.
Ah ok sry. Biological unicorns don’t exist until you make them, but I take your point, they are just an idea about something which is not real. A real idea concerning a non-real. What kind of dream is imagined without being experienced? We are somewhat disconnected from the same memory we use in everyday life, so we can forget dreams, but that doesn’t mean we didn’t experience them.

Does a camcorder experience what it ‘sees’, no, so can we not say that the functional part of sight is making colours such that they can be observed? We don’t experience everything we see, look up blind-sight for example, this is where blind people [and everyone] see things in terms of the mechanics taking in information, but aren’t consciously seeing it. Equally there will be mechanistic aspects of the brains graphics software, composing the colours we expect to see e.g. in optical illusions where that is not the real colours in the world.

And so we return to the question; what is colour?
I do think it is, and only is, a property of light.

_