You first have to distinguish between colors and shades of colors. Nobody knows what those beings experience. It might well be just more shades instead of colors. Regarding your question with the additional input signal that is uncorrelated to the existing input signal, I actually talk about such an example in my book "I Am". That is the case of Haidinger's Brush: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haidinger%27s_brush Haidinger's Brush is the ability to see polarized light, the 2 axis corresponding to the electrical and magnetic vectors of the electromagnetic radiation. The reason why I found out about this phenomena is that at some point few years ago I passed through some health problems and I started to see that shape when I was looking at computer screens. What was interesting is that on the laptop screen the 2 colors were reversed as compared to the pc screen. But it didn't cross my mind what was this thing that I was seeing. I started to think that is an addition problem to those health problems that I was experiencing. And I posted on a medical forum about this and someone pointed to me to Haidinger's Brush. What is interesting about it is that it is an additional input signal uncorrelated to existing input signals that come from the eyes. Yet the qualia in which it is rendered are first: visual qualia, and second: yellow and blue colors, so not some new exotic colors. And what I argue for in the book is that if you are to see only 2 colors, those 2 colors will always be yellow and blue, because yellow will signify the very seeing of a color, while blue would be there to contrast maximally with yellow.
So having a certain number of receptors in the eyes is not necessarily an indicator of seeing more distinct colors. What matters ultimately is what meanings those colors contribute to in the survival of the being. On Friday, 26 April 2019 19:47:36 UTC+3, Jason wrote: > > > Monkeys that were previously colorblind had their retinas infected with a > retrovirus to cause new color sensing cone cells to grow. Within a few > months they were able to perceive an entirely new class of colors they were > previously blind to: https://www.wired.com/2009/09/colortherapy/ > > Birds, and some humans have four types of color sensing cones in their > retinas (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetrachromacy), by some estimates > they can see 100 million colors while most humans can see only 1 million. > Some species of shrimp have 16 types of cones. What do you think about the > consciousness being able to experience altogether new colors and quale just > by being given an additional input signal that is uncorrelated to the > existing input signals? > > Jason > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
