Seriously though, taboo ‘colour’ from your question. Exactly which bit are you still waiting to have explained?
I think you’re tabooing overzealously. If I have a bunch of red balls and a bunch of blue balls, and ask 5 people to partition the balls into two subsets based on color, I would expect the same result from all 5 people. How do they do it?
I can’t speak for the other 4 people, but I was taught to perform that trick in kindergarten. They even asked me which color was my favorite. Later, in high school, I learned about the difference between red and blue on the electromagnetic spectrum. And still later, in college, I learned about color perception in Psych and CompSci classes. For a while, I imagined that everyone had learned the same color facts that I had.
Then I ventured into a philosophy classroom, was exposed to G.E. Moore talking about “yellow” and “qualia”, and I came to understand that not everyone had the same educational advantages I had.
The philophical question of qualia has nothing to do with how the sensation of color gets to your brain. It’s about what it does in your brain that makes you conscious of it.
I’ll be frank, I honestly do not understand where the philosophical dispute comes from. It seems incredibly silly to me.
The idea that a specific wavelength can trigger a specific electro-chemical response in a specific organ, which is then transmitted to a specific part of the brain which processes that response in a specific manner, but somehow the mental representation of such comes out of nowhere is nonsensical to me. Where would you even come up with such an idea?
Again I’m reminded of computer monitors. It’s not magic by which they produce light of varying wavelengths and intensities on the screen, there is a real physical process going on. An electrical engineer could tell you all about in extensive detail.
Computers can distinguish between various colors very well, and can even process those colors without any light as input.
Ben Jones said:
Seriously though, taboo ‘colour’ from your question. Exactly which bit are you still waiting to have explained?
I think you’re tabooing overzealously. If I have a bunch of red balls and a bunch of blue balls, and ask 5 people to partition the balls into two subsets based on color, I would expect the same result from all 5 people. How do they do it?
I can’t speak for the other 4 people, but I was taught to perform that trick in kindergarten. They even asked me which color was my favorite. Later, in high school, I learned about the difference between red and blue on the electromagnetic spectrum. And still later, in college, I learned about color perception in Psych and CompSci classes. For a while, I imagined that everyone had learned the same color facts that I had.
Then I ventured into a philosophy classroom, was exposed to G.E. Moore talking about “yellow” and “qualia”, and I came to understand that not everyone had the same educational advantages I had.
The philophical question of qualia has nothing to do with how the sensation of color gets to your brain. It’s about what it does in your brain that makes you conscious of it.
In order to answer the question you need to first understand what color actually is.
Once you do, the answer to both your and Mitchell’s questions are immediately obvious.
So what is it?
I was expecting you to go discover it for yourself. It’s much better that way. It really is a “palm to the forehead” moment.
If you want a further push, you could start with Wikipedia, it has a pretty good explanation of it.
Downvoted for “I know something you don’t know, but you’ll one day learn, young grasshopper” attitude.
If you have an answer, and someone asks you for it, then if it’s simple enough to answer, answer it. If you have no answer, don’t pretend you do.
Voted up, because you’re absolutely right.
I’m guessing you don’t mean the part where it says “complex and continuing philosophical dispute, see qualia”.
I’ll be frank, I honestly do not understand where the philosophical dispute comes from. It seems incredibly silly to me.
The idea that a specific wavelength can trigger a specific electro-chemical response in a specific organ, which is then transmitted to a specific part of the brain which processes that response in a specific manner, but somehow the mental representation of such comes out of nowhere is nonsensical to me. Where would you even come up with such an idea?
Again I’m reminded of computer monitors. It’s not magic by which they produce light of varying wavelengths and intensities on the screen, there is a real physical process going on. An electrical engineer could tell you all about in extensive detail.
Computers can distinguish between various colors very well, and can even process those colors without any light as input.
What do computers “see” when they see color?