Qualia and the Mystery of Colors

Like Einstein said objects don’t exist, they are in relative positions which the act of measuring changes, that to me is akin to how in our minds we are subjective beings. Both things are in the detached perspective, and both things are not an object nor objective thing.
Or more simply; all existent things are observers.

I think emotions are entirely in the brain, it is not possible to think about something which is not information, everything that exists is information. There isn’t anything else happening in the brain but information being stored, transferred and compared.

  • what would you suggest thought is other than an experiencing of information? So is emotion not an experiencing of info? I’d say the emotion is more the experience than the info itself, I can agree there. Hmm I suppose there are kinds of holistic knowledge too [art, poetry, literature etc].

nope. Causation occurs where information informs, that’s what it is. I can’t see how that is after-the-fact. Neither can I agree that its a product of our judgment, us thinking about something doesn’t change causality? ‘our judgment’ is just us thinking and has nothing to do with causality except specifically the causality occuring in those thoughts [said judgment].

Inside and outside are nothing more than comparatives to me. By ‘out there’ I meant existent informations which are out there existing in the world.

I don’t see how the logic reasoning went there at all. ‘Out there’ existing in the world is all sets of all existent things. It is a representative abstract, for all info. I don’t wish to detract to much from qualia here, you are speaking of a more existential problem in philosophy [what is existence] and I don’t know how that help with our inquiry there. but to say…

Not being able to measure doesn’t mean there is nothing there, if there is anything that’s patently opaque about reality its that there is something there.

Arcturus

I think that reality is as marvelous as you are painting the mind to be, ~ I don’t see it at all like physicists do. Colour brought on in the mind is no different to a computer doing it, well it is obviously, but what I mean is that when something affects light to make its sine-wave into a colour, then you get the quality of colour.
Inside our brains as the above links show, there is tons of light and photons carry information and quantum entanglement also may occur. That’s what colour must be - I state. An imagined colour, if you are seeing it, surely is a faculty of light or some other magic???

Our emotional attachments are just that, added onto informations. How we feel about a colour is subjective yes, but what the colour quality itself is, is the same regardless. You may feel differently about red to me, but we could both be looking at the same picture, the same red.

_

You are rather unwilling to define your terms which is why we’re going in circles.

I don’t even know what “us thinking about something changes causality” means. This already presupposes that causality is “out there”. I certainly didn’t say there is a causal relation between our thoughts and this imaginary form of causality that is “out there”. The phrase “out there” to me refers to the raw information. There is no causality in raw information. As David Hume said, there is only a sequence of events, among them our own judgments of causality.

Causality is a property of formulas. It refers to the process of calculation, or determination, where the value of one variable changes (i.e. determines, causes, etc) the value of another.

Formulas can be created any way you want, but in order to be of practical use, the best and the most common way to create them is by grounding them in evidence (i.e. raw information) that we possess.

You have an idealized notion of causality. As you do of other concepts, such as existence.

David Hume too was an idealist. Then one day he decided to confront reality, and though he did rather successfully, his emotional response was negative. He was disappointed the world isn’t the way he expected it, wanted it, to be.

That doesn’t say anything.

You’re stuck in this simplistic way of thinking.

Universe (which is what “out there” apparently refers to) is a set of ideas of events that the one owning this set thinks have occurred in the past or will occur in the future.

This means that every person will have his own set that is universe. It also means that the content of this set, the elements included within it, will vary between people as their experience and method of judgment varies.

Idealists don’t like this. Instead, they will argue that there is only one universe to which everyone and everything existent belongs.

This set must be outside of the subject. Otherwise, it will no longer be singular. But this means we can’t speak of it. And yet, we do.

I call it mystery set because we can never know what it is. It is forever “out there” in the sense that it is forever outside of our knowledge.

We cannot speak of its content because that would be putting in it our opinions of what is in it and not what is truly in it.

Whoever asks “is color real?” meaning “does color belong to this set?” must be told that we can never know.

We quite simply don’t know the membership rules of this set. It’s an undefined set.

It’s a classic case of paranoia, of being afraid that your judgments will turn out to be incorrect in the future.

The only thing we know is that we know nothing.

Everything is possible. You can never be sure of anything. I might in fact be a dragon dreaming I’m a man. How can I know that I am not? I can’t.

So let’s give up on our judgments and worship this undefined set.

…an element, created by other elements as a by-product of their activity, that the eye has the ability to take advantage of… just like we have with water to quench our thirst, and produce to satiate our hunger.

We have come to rely on the sun for our main source of vitamin D, just like colour relies on the sun(light) for its creation.

Colours don’t exist outside of the physical, external stimulus that creates them. If they did, I would know what they look like, when in fact, I have no idea.

Define “colour”.

It’s the same as color.

Need not be the case. It could be that your brain is simply not producing them because the condition to initiate their production is lacking.

Well yes. That’s what I said, isn’t it?

You said there must be external stimulus, presumably light, in order to experience colors. I said not necessarily. You might be able to see colors without light and eyes and yet not see them because the corresponding events in the brain are not taking place.

Why would they not be taking place?

Because nothing is causing them to take place (e.g. light hitting the eyes.) But that does not mean that light hitting the eyes is the only thing that can cause them to take place. I think it was Amorphos who mentioned earlier an experiment in which man was made to see via his tongue.

I don’t have the details off hand but I’m willing to bet that the man had not been blind all his life, and/or had at least some light perception.

I’m not a neuroscientist. I do not study relations between what is in the brain (e.g. neurons) and what is in the mind (e.g. colors.) Thus, as far as I am concerned, it may or may not be the case that there are certain states in the brain that are necessary and sufficient condition for the experience of colors.

What I am saying is that if you’re blind and have no idea what colors are that does not mean the experience of colors is dependent upon the presence of light. It could be simply that these states in the brain that have 1-to-1 correspondence with visual states are simply not activated because there is no external cause, such as light, that would do so.

In the absence of evidence, we have no choice but to conclude that light is necessary for the experience of colors. But this absence of evidence shouldn’t stop us from acquiring further evidence. We want to open up the brain – well, not exactly me, I think that’s a bit dirty – and see if there are any connections between what’s in there and what’s elsewhere.

:laughing:

I expect better from you guys (although I can’t think of a good reason to).

Define “color”.

Define “affect”.

Affect == verb - to cause change.

Now back to the topic of this thread;
Define “color”.

Alright. I think everyone knows what change is. But what does “cause” mean? What is causality?

You can ask as many questions as you want but if their relevance isn’t evident noone will answer them.

What exactly is your point?

I can give you any number of definitions of color.
Here’s one straight from the Google:

color
noun
The property possessed by an object of producing different sensations on the eye as a result of the way it reflects or emits light.

Now what?
What exactly is your point?

It’s “relevance”??!!

Color is the very subject of this thread. If you cannot tell me what you mean by “color”, then you literally do not know what you are talking about, because color IS THE SUBJECT.

If that is what YOU mean when you say “color”, then in this thread, you are talking about a “property of an object”. You are NOT talking about a mentally assigned value or qualia. A property of an object can be objectively measured.

But is that what everyone else is talking about?
Probably not (hence senseless bickering).