<p>This came up while i was reading Nagel's "What is it like to be a bat". </p>
<p>Here is the question: "develop concepts that can be used to explain a person blind from birth what it was like to see... it should be possible to devise a method of expressing in objective terms much more we can at present, and with much greater precision" (Nagel). </p>
<p>The specific thought of describing color to a person born blind came to my mind, and in particular the color red. How would you describe it in an objective fashion that would relay the concept of color red to a person born blind? </p>
<p>I am interested to see your answers!</p>
<p>You ever see that movie “Mask”?</p>
<p>where he’s give the blind girl cotton balls for white, hot coals for red, water or something for blue, whatever that thing is that tastes green.</p>
<p>From a physics standpoint, it’s really straightforward. Red is light with a wavelength between about 640 and 730 nanometers. </p>
<p>Since color is a description, it doesn’t really make any sense to describe it in any other way. </p>
<p>In an attempt to relate the color red to something in the blind person’s mind, you might list connotations of the color red, such as the feelings of heat from fire and the hot coals mentioned above, or emotions such as aggression, lust, and violence. But it’s not an objective description of the color.</p>
<p>to aeroengineer: rebuttal from first answer: yes from the physicalists’ perspective the description of the color red in this way would be valid, but would you provide a person blind from birth a phenomenological conception of “red”? I don’t think so. The color of red would still be as alien to them as ever before.</p>
<p>Second answer: The seeming conflations’ we have with the color red and these concepts such as you mentioned arise from our subjective experience of the color red and these corresponding concepts. Again without the initial phenomenological conception of the color red… this description still fails. </p>
<p>My question should be a bit revised:
Can you describe the color red to a person born blind, as you perceive the color red? That is, to relay the phenomenological mental perception of the color red, so that they perceive the color red. By perceiving, i mean your mental capacity to distinguish the color red from its particular physical appearance and it’s correlating mental state. </p>
<p>this is all my philosophy class talking… thanks for the lively discourse, keep them coming, maybe we can come up with something profound as to be able to publish it as ccers’.</p>
<p>when they stare at the sun, does the black sort of turn to red, like how it happens to us when we close our eyes?</p>
<p>^well actually there are levels to blindness and few actually see the whole just black we imagine they do (actually it’s just white for severe cases), color blindness, light blindness, some only see blurry (actually that’s pretty often is just an extreme blurry), spotty vision, whatever</p>
<p>but if I were blind on any level it’d be pretty damn annoying, and not at all as romantic as Mask, if someone were trying to describe color to me</p>
<p>but usually we would describe it in a feeling or mood since that’s what basic strong colors bring out of us and that’s how we connect it, now describing color to a fully blind, psychopath that also has congenital insensitivity to pain with anhidrosis (had to google that last one, bah) is a challenge</p>
<p>How do we even know that “red” for me appears “red” to you? If your “red” looks like my “green”, you’ll still have all the same connotations due to your upbringing…</p>
<p>^ you are correct, Sir.</p>
<p>^^ah, I used to think that all the time but was like “eh, what does it matter anyway? point is…rainbows”</p>
<p>assuming people here are not idealist, that we look at it from a physicalists’ perspective, and that we shall be describing an objective red, or at least as objective as red could be.</p>
<p>I remember an old parable that talked about a blind man’s quest to familiarize himself with colors. His conclusion: the color red is like the sound of the trumpet.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Eh, I don’t think so. Like I said before, color is a direct result of the reflecting light’s wavelength. If someone sees one particular color differently, it’s because of a difference in how their eyes (or sometimes brain) perceive different wavelengths, which we’d call color blindness. We assume that most people’s eyes perceive light in the same way, and so we can say that most people will agree on color.</p>
<p>For some people, reds and greens look pretty much the same. The wavelengths of the light bouncing into their eyes, however, are still what they should be. The problem is in the person’s eyes - the person’s perception of wavelength - not the color itself. Only if our eyes process light in a radically different manner (and they probably don’t) will my red be different from yours.</p>
<p>once again, sorry to be repetitive, but describing red as a metonymy with a particular concept or physical entity is not describing the phenomenological idea of the color red. What i mean is to describe it so objectively as to not need a prior presumption or prior knowledge of something to begin with. We know or we associate certain things with the color red because we have the ability to see the color red, but without this ability the association itself is impossible to conceive. Do y’all know what iam sayin?</p>
<p>^to areo: i am talking about a hypothetical thought experiment that includes an individual that is entirely incapable of seeing the color red, or color for that matter</p>
<p>How do you propose to describe anything to anybody if either of you has no prior experience with anything?</p>
<p>I think you’d have to describe the connotations of the color and what aspect of the object you are connecting the color with represents or is represented by that color.</p>
<p>by the way phenomenology: “The discipline of phenomenology may be defined initially as the study of structures of experience, or consciousness. Literally, phenomenology is the study of “phenomena”: appearances of things, or things as they appear in our experience, or the ways we experience things, thus the meanings things have in our experience. Phenomenology studies conscious experience as experienced from the subjective or first person point of view. This field of philosophy is then to be distinguished from, and related to, the other main fields of philosophy: ontology (the study of being or what is), epistemology (the study of knowledge), logic (the study of valid reasoning), ethics (the study of right and wrong action), etc.” (stanford encyclopedia of philosophy)</p>
<p>to leafblade:</p>
<p>thats why i posed the question to begin with… it is a current problem which physicalists’ have to deal with in modern philosophy, in particular of how it applies to the mind- body problem</p>
<p>and you can describe something without prior knowledge: how else do infants learn?</p>
<p>hold up one finger, then hold up another one. This can be considered a physical manifestation in symbol of the concept of the number two. </p>
<p>this we can explain to a person that has no prior knowledge of the number 2</p>
<p>Let us assume that the blind person has the faculties of hearing and touch, and a few years’ experience of living without sight (therefore a command of language and a few nouns). Then you can explain color in terms of wavelength (red is 7*10^(-7) times the length of this meterstick, and purple is 4); in terms of connotations as has been described (although this would probably not be a useful way of explaining the difference in color as it is obvious to a seeing person; simply a cultural thing); or in terms of concrete examples (grass is generally green, wood is generally brown). None of these are any use to the original aim of explaining how they are different to someone who can see. It’s like trying to describe a third dimension to someone who can only move in two. (or a fourth to someone who can only move in three, although I’m open to attempts :D)</p>
<p>And a completely off-topic but unrelated question: Is there something analogous to color with sight and pitch with sound, but with touch? Maybe texture?</p>
<p>^And infants learn by way of their senses before they learn through language.</p>
<p>The problem with describing the color symbolically is that these meanings vary by culture. And that, often, the symbols vary greatly even within any one culture.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Yup I know, I was just addressing that one post. </p>
<p>I still don’t think it’s possible to describe a color to someone who is completely blind. I say that to objectively and completely understand color requires the sense of sight because perception of color *requires *the sense of sight. I think that anything else would just be connotation; all we can say is that color is “like” this or “like” that.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>We can explain numbers because they don’t require the use of our senses. Trying to describe color without the sense of sight would be like describing sound to someone who is deaf, texture to someone who can’t feel, or odor to someone who can’t smell. All we can do is use different connotations that will always fall short.</p>