On Tuesday, June 18, 2019 at 7:12:33 PM UTC+10, Cosmin Visan wrote: > > Red is red. >
No I don't think it is. I do understand your point of view. Indeed subjectively red does seem to be red, some kind of irreducible. Yet it is far from unambiguously clear that this is really the case. Imagine if you could only see in shades of red. How long would it take before red became black-and-white? Imagine if all you could ever be conscious of were redness. Without contrast, is such a state of consciousness possible? Just pure intrinsic redness, existing in and of itself, outside of any relationship with other colours, other qualia? If you only have one colour receptor in your visual system, you have only one differentiator of elements in your visual field - brightness. If you have two colour receptors, like a dog, what colours do you see? Red and yellow? Blue and yellow? The specific wavelengths of course do not matter here - it's no guarantee that just because a dog has a receptor for what we call "blue" light, that it perceives what we call blue when it sees that colour. Indeed I doubt it, because blue is a differentiator of a trichromatic system, and specifically our, human trichromatic system. I believe that the colour red has its particular qualities by virtue of evolutionary associations with red. What is red in nature? Blood, fire. Red stimulates us to pay attention. Green soothes us because of its deep evolutionary association with safe, sheltered environments. I am not reducing qualia to "nothing but" here, let alone "nothing at all", like Dennett, but I am saying that they are part of a field of relationships and exist only by virtue of those relationships. Take the relationships away and "red" dissolves - and I believe you could prove that by wearing red-lensed glasses for a week. -- 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 view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/9f1a7b73-bbcd-4c30-a57d-5cfdf3fe4df6%40googlegroups.com.
