On 7/11/2011 5:00 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote:
There are humans who have four pigments in their color receptors but
they do not perceive a fourth primary color.
http://www.klab.caltech.edu/cns186/papers/Jameson01.pdf
They just have increased distinction between the primary colors we
perceive. I take that to mean that they cannot point to anything in
nature as having a bright color that ordinary trichromats have never
seen.
How would you know if they did? The only evidence would be if they
could consistently distinguish the colors of two objects that looked
perfectly identical to other people; just as red-green color blind
people can't tell the difference between green and ripe strawberries.
From the color-blind persons perspective that's just increased
distinction between colors he sees.
Brent
Yeah I don't know the technical descriptions of what constitutes
primacy in hues, but it's not important to what I'm trying to get at.
The important thing is that the range and variety of colors we can see
or imagine is not explainable in purely quantitative or physical
terms, neither is it metaphysical, random, made up, or arbitrary. It
constitutes a visual semantic firmament, similar to the periodic
table. The differences between the color wheel and the periodic table
is that since experiences and feelings are phenomena that are
ontologically perpendicular to their external mechanics, they are not
strictly definable through literal observation and measurement, but
through first hand encounters which address the subject directly in a
more uncertain, figurative way. Colors look different depending on
what colors they are adjacent to, what mood we are in, our gender,
etc. unlike iron and magnesium which remain the same if placed next to
each other.
You're just asserting that perception is mysterious. Just because we
don't have an explanation for something doesn't mean that an explanation
is in principle impossible. If you given terms like "yellow" an
operational definition then you can test those ideas. As it is, you
*define* them to be "first hand encounters". Then you've already
defined them as impossible to replicate - even by other human beings.
Brent
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