The Mind

I see purple being called Magenta.

 

The entire "color is only in the mind" thing just rubs me the wrong way. However, I suppose I could use this to my advantage.

After all, as complex as our brains are, it is quite possible that the brains of religious believers are also being tricked into believing that there is a God when there is not. In fact, I believe there is a study out there regarding this. I am sorry for derailing the thread.

Please, continue with the color anomaly.

 

Well, my brain has always worked in weird ways. I was just thinking that perhaps it is something I can understand. After all, as the light diminishes in our world, daylight turning to night, the colors of things do seem to diminish. The only reason we can still discern colors in the night is due to light seeping into a room through the window, whether it be moonlight or a street lamp light. If you are in a completely dark room, where no light penetrates, you will perceive no color except the darkness surrounding you.

 

I think we all see the same color.

When you look at the color wheel a lot of businesses take opposite color schemes like... blue and orange or purple and yellow to catch peoples attention. The human brain doesn't think "hey those are opposite colors" you're just drawn to it.

The only anomalies are color blindness.

 

that magenta is pink ta me.but its probably called magenta cos its a made up color through mixing

 

I am curious to hear why this rubs you the wrong way. Descartes creates the distinction between primary and secondary qualities. Things like length, density, energy, i.e. those things that are put into physics equations, are primary. They exist independent of minds to perceive them. Things like color, taste, feel, (i.e. those adjective that are not put into physics equations) are called secondary properties. They exist only if a mind is present to perceive them. Berkley gives a further analysis with the whole put one hand in hot water and one in cold water. Then put both hands in room temperature water. To one hand, the water will be hot. To the other it will be cold. His conclusion was that "hotness" and "coldness" are not properties that exist outside of the mind. We cannot objectively measure, hotness or coldness. We can measure things like heat, energy, and temperature, but that is not the same hotness and coldness.

 

The color is there as wave length of reflected light. Color not only property of mind but a function of sensory calibration. We can see some colors of light in the spectrum but not all colors. We are not the only animals that see color.
Color is one way to apprehend composition as differing compositions absorb light at different rates. We can determine the elemental composition of a thing by observing it's spectral emissions/reflection.

There is no reason I can see to think that we all do not see the same world although differing perspectives can make you believe that someone is from a different planet. We all have the same neurotransmitters. Our personal palates are nuanced however by associations of nomenclature based on personal preference. Some colors pop more than others for different people. That is someone may say of a particular shade of orange that it is more red than yellow and someone else may disagree and in this way our color perception is uniquely appreciated.

Philosophically I don't think the distinction, mind is everything that isn't matter is too meaningful, energy and matter being equal. To me mind is the propensity to organize in any guise, the palatable features of a rock then an expression of mind, or mind is the abstract probability of material expression.

 

Light hits photoreceptors that gets tranduced and interpretted by the color spectrum that's available to us.

 

i like to watch a color show with my eyes closed . sometimes i
can call forth a color i wish to see , and a splash of it will appear
against a either a dark background or a subdued hue of its
compliment . most often the colors just happen and surprise is my
delight . last night before sleep was the green show . as they manifest
with a sense of space and form , the colors are most always in motion .

occasionally tho i'll witness a multi-color sculptural art form of
light ; a vibrancy of light within , and contrasts defining form . such
still-lifes of light i may observe intensely for a time . then they go to
a memory album .

 

I like that concept of calibration. There is a large area of theoretical cognitive science called connectionism that would mostly agree with that. It involves learning through a process called back propagation. The idea of calibration works with respect to things like language acquisition, but I am not too sure how it will work with respect to colors.

As far as us having the same neurotransmitters, I don't believe that is quite right. We all have the same general types of neurotransmitters for the most part, but everybody's brain is different. Neuroplasticity ensures that. Experiences at least in some part, shape our brains. That doesn't really say much though about the fact of seeing purple when purple doesn't really exist. The point of interest is that, purple does not exist in the visible spectrum. I think your point is though, that what we are seeing does reflect reality, just from a certain perspective, and that is probably correct. We could easily imagine a being who does not see purple, but something more like a swirl of blue and red. This would reflect the same reality, just in a different way. The issue though, is that even this swirl of red and blue doesn't exist, because those are still colors, and colors don't exist outside of the mind. True, it is a "reflection of reality," but still only a reflection.

The last comment about the distinction of mind and body not being too helpful is in line with the last 100 years of psychological research. Making that division has not proved too helpful in areas of empirical research.

 

a mind shall not be blind .

 

I was just thinking: if colors are simply in the mind and do not exist in the real world, how is it even possible for our minds to even distinguish one color from another? Wouldn't our minds just process everything that we see as the same color?

 

wave vibrations exist . light passes through you . to
feel this light is basic knowing and to survive you will
make meaning of it . eyes not required , and rainbow eyes
is best .

life also creates light .

whenever i meet evil , i see a shadow upon that face .

 

I see. I think that the idea is that colors the mental representation of the wavelengths of photons hitting the retina. That would be the way that we discern one color from another. Photons of a certain wavelength trigger the firing of "Blue Neurons" rather than "Orange Neurons." Colors don't exist in the real world, but photons do, and wavelengths do. One could certainly imagine a being that does not distinguish between certain wavelengths. They see all wavelengths between x and y, as being the same. Maybe in their world, that is evolutionarily advantageous, but in ours, it is definitely advantageous to have some degree of discernment.

 

I see the question now. This is interesting. In a certain since we definitely can. I mean we take certain psychedelics to bring those things about. There we form the notion of objects where there is no object. More mundanely though, we have things like smell. Smells don't really exist in the real world. Smells are produced when certain molecules hit certain receptors causing neurons to fire. The smell of oranges doesn't exist, but the molecules do. For the most part those, there is at least some correspondence to reality. The molecules actually exist, just as the photons do. Hallucinations and the like occur when those neurons fire in the absence of a corresponding external stimuli. What I don't have a good idea of is if we can bring about concepts for which we have never had an external stimulus for. My thought is no, we cannot. It isn't that purple just comes from nowhere, it is that blue and red neurons are firing and our concept of that is purple. Even whilst tripping balls, one still typically has images of things that exist, just not in ways that we typically perceive them. I see neon flowers growing, but I have experiences of neon, of flowers, and of growth. I don't really just invent the concepts, because the neural structure still has to be in place.

 

Backpedaling for interests sake:

I read something recently about a colourblind synaesthete, and although visually he couldn't distinguish the difference in colour, behind all of that he could tell the difference as in his minds eye they would take on "martian colours" that seemed unreal and shouldn't exist within the standard spectrum.

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2007/11/05/martian-colors/#.UUF2o9aLDAQ

Just pulled that, mentions it briefly at the end. He gets a bit more coverage in "Embracing the Wide Sky" by Daniel Tammet, the guys a savant and talks about all the crazy shit that goes on his mind and others. It's a bits of a surface skimmer cos he covers a lot of topics, but they're all fascinating - recommend it.

Well, the double slit experiment challenges the theory that the molecules actually exist.. I mean, they obviously exist, but only because they exist in context with everything else.

I'm trying to explain this in terms of colour, but I dunno how it'll work.

Using your purple example and relating it to the colour wheel. The colour wheel represents physical reality. Purple's only purple because of the red and the blue, as you said. But blue's only blue because it's in between green and purple, and greens only green because it's in between yellow and blue etc..

The scientific approach is very much there, but it's only a highly complex definition of a simplified theory. It removes the nobbly bits to make things easier, so the said process can be examined thoroughly and the specifics can be analysed.
The whole neurological process behind the act of smelling is just as important as your bedside table, and the rusty guitar string being used to throttle some unfortunate toddler.


I think the point I was trying to make was something about when you get down to it, where do you draw the line between physical and subjective reality? I spent too long trying to formulate some kind of logical explanation that I forgot what I was trying to explain. I do that a lot on this part of the forum, I hate words

I'd agree if you look at it from the subjective experience, but broaden the scope and take the concept of life itself and I'd say yes.