<p>But even a person with sight doesn’t know each culture’s connotations. You can give them one culture’s connotations, and it would be just as effective as any other’s, theoretically.</p>
<p>^Exactly, and can a person who’s blind think in terms of images? To imagine a color is to imagine something visual.</p>
<p>i think texture would be it, i know that infants learn with senses, but are you familiar with Frank Jackson’s “What mary didn’t know” it is basically an argument against the physicalists argument. </p>
<p>mary is born(incarcerated) and raised in a white and black environment, she reads from white and black books and receives lectures in neurophysiology, physics, chemistry, etc from a black and white t.v. She would know everything to know (hypothetically speaking) if physicalism is correct. But then she gets released and experiences colors. Because of the first premise of her knowing everything to know about the physical world, does the experience of color after she gets released refute the physicalists argument?(that she knew everything in physicalist’s term beforehand) Since she experiences something absent from her previous knowledge. i dont think so, for this i have to type more which i don’t want to,</p>
<p>but what if we tried to give an objective description of the color red before she was released? Jackson argues that she, for a fact, would not be able to know what red is no matter what. There is something in the back of my head that says no to this. That is what i am trying to figure out.</p>
<p>this seems to have implications not just to the mind-body problem, but to physicists understanding of the universe. For how can we know that atoms and elementary particles’ and other theories exist if we have no prior knowledge or prior conceptions or aposteriori concepts before hand? That is, we cannot set up metonyms or conflations to explain certain aspects of say, quantum theory… or a simpler subject as the chemistry of molecules.</p>
<p>Philosophy is merely the sum of human ignorance. What is the nature of god, is mankind good/bad, what is the ideal society of man, are there such things as absolute Forms? </p>
<p>There is always a definite answer to such questions in the universe, or the question is merely asked badly due to bias from the philosopher’s cultural/religious background. (i.e. Is humanity intrinsically evil?) We just haven’t found the right amount knowledge just yet. </p>
<p>How do you teach a blind person about color? Link the sensory part of the brain that normally processes color and link it the mind’s eye. I mean, the person may be blind but that doesn’t mean the part of the brain that handled such sensations is dead. </p>
<p>But you asked, how do you explain that in words? Sure, it’s possible in theory. Same as if I could explain the inner workings of a CLAY supercomputer to a caveman if I read through a 24000 page document explaining the background of fire, iron, steel, glass, circuitry, microprocessor, CPU, motherboard, etc and spent countless more hours making sure he grasps it and could picture it in his mind. </p>
<p>Red huh? We’ll start from the top. </p>
<p>The entire world is composed to matter. Everything around you is composed of matter, whether it is the air you breathe, or the ground you touch…</p>
<p>page 304</p>
<p>So the same light that bounces of matter would enter the eyes, allowing you to capture a physical representation your surroundings…</p>
<p>page 405</p>
<p>What do you see in your mind’s eye? Even if blinded, your brain will be able to form an abstract representation of your environment. Is it dark and not dark, with everything in between? </p>
<p>p2043
YAY!</p>
<p>you didn’t answer my question of whether: since she experienced something absent from her knowledge; presuming that she had all the physical knowledge their is to know; does that refute the physicalist’s argument.(because she experienced the sense of color when presuming she knew everything to know in terms of physicalism) fyi, physicalists argue that the world is entirely composed of physical things, that there exists nothing outside of physical materials. stuff that scientists are mostly composed of.</p>
<p>your analogy of a “clay supercomputer” and describing it to a “caveman” is a bad one. We go into this conversation with the presumption of a certain similarity in regards to equivalent mental capacities, so as to not make it seem absurd. </p>
<p>and your description of red relies on a representation of physical objects being concepts of shade, whether it being dark or not. it still does not distinguish between particular colors and their particular representations in our consciousness. What we intrinsically know to be red, the abstract process of relaying the concept of red and how we see it as the color red.</p>
<p>and scientists are trying to answer this question by doing MRI scans on blind people. cool stuff man.</p>
<p>The point is that describing color in terms of wavelengths makes no difference and defeats the purpose of trying to describe the color to someone who cannot see. Describing color necessitates conveying the emotions connected to certain colors, and concrete examples that also convey such emotions. So a blue block won’t be any different than a red block, nor will it achieve the goal, but water and blood and leaves all achieve this.</p>
<p>to gryffon</p>
<p>by the way, philosophy is really interesting (to me at least) and i quote Armstrong on it’s general purpose: “philosophy gives an account or plays apart in giving an account of the most general nature of things and men” (Armstrong “The Nature of Mind”)</p>
<p>how is it a “sum of ignorance” i presume that you mean something else besides it’s face value lexicon</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>With regards to that, I would say that she does not have all the physical knowledge there is to know (that color is a light’s wavelength, and therefore color itself is a piece of physical knowledge, which she would have had to been exposed to).</p>
<p>The thing about senses and perception is that some things (things normally learned through senses) are described as “is” or “isn’t,” whereas others can be learned (how to ride a bike, or how to cook a meal). We say that the sky “is” normally blue and that grass “is” normally green. We can teach someone the mechanics of riding a bike without having that person actually ride it. In that scenario, Mary only learns the latter, and so I think the argument isn’t logically sound.</p>
<p>On a different note, the thing about connotations is that they come after seeing the object. People associate red with blood because blood is red. People associate leaves with green because most leaves are green. If I told someone with normally functioning eyes to close their eyes and dip their hand in a liquid with the same physical properties of blood and asked him to guess it’s color, they’d guess red, even if it was something completely different. </p>
<p>Color exists as a result of how our eyes process light wavelengths. If someone cannot see, then he cannot experience color, only connotations gained from other forms of experience (perhaps he heard about how the “blue water looked so calm” or how this girl was “seething red with anger” or how the grass was “such a soft shade of green.” And that’s all, I think, there would be to it.</p>
<p>then does color have some implicit non-physical characteristic which cannot be explained in terms of physical causation? Which, by how i saw your argument as existing only when perceived by the individual. So does this abstract notion of color only exist if we see it to exist. This i cannot except. If we assume the world is composed of entirely physical processes, then all of it should be able to be explained in physicalists terms, even the abstract notion of the conscious perception of color.</p>
<p>if color is the effect of the cause of lightwaves hitting our eyes… this then triggers what? a mental process which then we perceive as a particular color? If we do, is this process entirely dependent on certain wavelengths of light hitting our retina? If so, then this mean that color has no intrinsic value and is dependent on the observer, so becoming a paradox with the presumption of the light waves being the initial cause of the color.</p>
<p>You are saying that we see color because we perceive with our senses the color, this implies that color is dependent on our perception. If this is case, color cannot have some intrinsic cause or location because it is dependent on our perception. (you are suggesting or at least implying that color does not exist if we do not see it to exist). If color cannot have intrinsic cause or location from which it arises, and if it is dependent on our perception, and if wavelength is deemed the cause of color. Then there lies a fault in the argument for the physicalists view of the origin of color which is wavelength </p>
<p>you see where i am getting at?</p>
<p>Bionic eye [/thread]</p>
<p>^We have the technology
We can make him better, faster, stronger</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Correction: Color is the direct result of the way your brain interprets a particular wavelength of light. Some people (like me) dream in color, even though this color does not come from a certain wavelength of light.</p>
<p>“What is real?”</p>
<p>If real is what you can feel, smell, taste and see, then ‘real’ is simply electrical signals interpreted by your brain.</p>