How do we know that places like Narnia do not exist?

Interesting Ian said:
Look at this picture.

http://www.michaelbach.de/ot/lum_adelson_check_shadow/index.html

It is extremely clear that all the lighter shaded squares are the same colour, and all the darker shaded squares are the same colour. Right?
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Wrong.

Of course, I have two things going in my favor: one, partial color-blindness that causes like shades to become the same shade; and two, I'm aware of the facts in this case.

The facts are, the 'lighter shaded squares' and the 'darker shaded squares' actually represent several shades, not just two; plus, the illusion of shadowing causes a game of mental hopscotch, in which our minds subconsciously 'color-adjust' the shaded areas appropriately. When we compare the areas, many are astonished that the dark and light squares noted are the same color; but they fail to take into account the color-shift for the shadow, as presented. Use a computer to correct for shadows, and you'd have the colors you expect to have.

The fact is, we can objectively measure the precise information - the precise data - from each square, and reference that data to a commonly agreed-upon reference to declare each square to be a particular color and shade. We can then subjectively consider each square, either alone or in unison, and notice how our perception of its color differs significantly from the reality of its color.

That is, by the way, one of my favorite illusions. I'm rather fond of illusion, actually - they demonstrate, in the most startling ways, how our brains handle some of the gaps and inconsistancies in our perceptions.
 
Interesting Ian said:
You cannot measure qualia. The world as described by science is entirely absent of any colours, any sounds, any smells, indeed it is entirely absent of anthing we ever perceptually experience.
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No it's not. This is a strawman you're building, and he doesn't even look human. There is smell, sight and sound, but they ARE constructs of the brain... or more exactly, they are the brain's interpretation of real things which are, for all intends and purposes, smells, sights and sounds.

Materialists hold that all colours are constructed entirely inside the brain. Well, at least they do if they know what they're talking about.
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Sounds like a No True Scottsman fallacy.

Not in the objects themselves?? But everything we ever perceptually perceive is moulded by the brain. If we really saw colours as in the objects themselves, then the colours of objects would change throughout the day.
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They would ? Why ?

Look, you say you know your car is a nice bright red and it remains red around the clock. But the light is not constant throughout the day. In the morning and evening, the light is considerably redder than at midday. When the sun is low in the sky, lots of blue light gets scattered away, because the sunlight has to penetrate a greater quantity of air when it passes through the atmosphere at an angle.

Yet your car appears to everyone to be equally red all day. This is despite the fact that the light our eyes receive from this car is not the same.
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No it's not. We DO perceive these changes. You're just not very good at seeing colors, that's all.
 
aggle-rithm said:
For instance, the man who discovered and named the grapefruit gave it that name because, to him, it tasted exactly like a grape.
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[Nitpicking source="OED"]
grapefruit [f. GRAPE n.1 + FRUIT n.; so called because it grows in clusters.]
[/Nitpicking]
 
This is somewhat off the thread but I persist! Here's a 'real life' experience of Narnia:

Some years ago, coinciding approximately with a psychotic episode, I thought that I had discovered a telepathic spaceship(don't laugh too much). At some point afterwards it occurred to me to try to find Narnia within the ship's virtual reality system.

I did not expect it to be there but, there it was. The front-end wardrobe complete with impressive hills. Strangely, and uniquely, in my experience this virtual arena was as dead as the proverbial 'completely still virtual arena': Virtual arenas, even if all you can see is grass etc, should feel as if they're active.

You have now heard some heresay 'evidence' that Narnia might exist! On the other hand it might, merely, be residual delusion as a result of psychosis.

If this is too far off the thread, please say; I will try to be more pertinant in future!
 
NNN said:
This is somewhat off the thread but I persist! Here's a 'real life' experience of Narnia:

Some years ago, coinciding approximately with a psychotic episode, I thought that I had discovered a telepathic spaceship(don't laugh too much). At some point afterwards it occurred to me to try to find Narnia within the ship's virtual reality system.

I did not expect it to be there but, there it was. The front-end wardrobe complete with impressive hills. Strangely, and uniquely, in my experience this virtual arena was as dead as the proverbial 'completely still virtual arena': Virtual arenas, even if all you can see is grass etc, should feel as if they're active.

You have now heard some heresay 'evidence' that Narnia might exist! On the other hand it might, merely, be residual delusion as a result of psychosis.

If this is too far off the thread, please say; I will try to be more pertinant in future!
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LOL. Actually, thats the closest to being on topic of any post recently.

And welcome to the boards, NNN. Interesting first post.
 
Welcome, NNN. I'm glad that these episodes appear to be a thing of the past. You didn't find my ex-wife, the second coming of Christ, in that wardrobe by any chance?

~~ Paul
 
Interesting Ian said:
Now when we declare that something is a certain colour, do we go by what a machine says, or do we go by what everybody actually experiences??
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Having worked in the professional print industry, I can conclusively say that we go with what the machine says. Every time. Because what everybody experiences changes depending on the situation and other factors. The machine gets it right without bias or "interpretation". In fact, for any objective, scientific approach wher ethe exact shade of the color is important, we go with machines. You might go by what you see in casual conversation, but if I'm, for example, wanting to know the precise color of a laser beam that I'm trying to use to excite a particular atom, I'm going to use a machine to make darn sure that the color (i.e.-the frequency) is precisely what it needs to be.

THe problem here, as in almost every other argument with you, is the equivocation fallacy. Color can be used in two senses: one as a description of the color of light that appears to be reflected by an object to our eyes and brains, and the other to a specific wavelength or combination of wavelengths and intensities of light. You are simply playing a semantic argument, and as such, it is meaningless.
 
Huntsman is right.
Rarrit!
(obscure Blazing Saddles reffrence)
 
Huntsman said:
Having worked in the professional print industry, I can conclusively say that we go with what the machine says.
Every time. Because what everybody experiences changes depending on the situation and other factors. The machine gets it right without bias or "interpretation".
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Gets what right? There are no colours out there that our experiences of colour correspond to. If for every last human being something appears to be a certain colour, then it would be ridiculous to declare that it isn't really that colour but some other colour. It would make everyday conversation impossible since the colours of objects would then constantly change as the day progresses. Say someone asks me the colour of my car. I would have to ask them at what time of the day, and whether they mean the car is parked in a shadow or not etc. Utterly ludicrous.

In fact, for any objective, scientific approach
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Excuse me?? Who the hell gives a toss about the "objective scientific approach"?? The scientific is merely objective and as such abstracts from reality. Only the subjective is real, only the subjective matters.

THe problem here, as in almost every other argument with you, is the equivocation fallacy. Color can be used in two senses: one as a description of the color of light that appears to be reflected by an object to our eyes and brains, and the other to a specific wavelength or combination of wavelengths and intensities of light. You are simply playing a semantic argument, and as such, it is meaningless.
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Colour is what we experience. I am aware that scientists have hijacked the term for their own purposes, but I'm using the word in the same sense as the vast majority of the human race. A wavelength of light is a wavelength of light. It is not colour.
 
If there were no wavelengths of light there would be nothing for us to experiance to be called color. You can't have the experiance of color without having run into one of these wavelengths at sometime in your life.
 
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Narnia did exist , but the wardrobe got woodworm some years ago and in any case with global warming the place is just not the same as I remember it .
C S Lewis must have been one of the first people to hear the Lord of the Rings read by J R R Tolkein . They used to read their efforts to each other .
 
Ian, you must have missed my question:

How do you describe and explain the difference between the perception of the pink and green colors?


~~ Paul
 
Interesting Ian said:
Only the subjective is real, only the subjective matters.
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I'm hoping that this was a joke, because if it is not, you have demonstrated that you are completely unamenable to reason, since your subjective "truth" is real and objective evidence is not. When did you become a solipsist?
 
69dodge said:
You start by saying "nope." But how does the rest of your post (which I agree with) contradict what Ian said (which I also agree with)?
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Ian's use of the word "only". You can have the experience of seeing colours when there are no photons present at all.
 
69dodge said:
The CCD in a digital camera is a photosensor too. But it doesn't consciously see. It's not obvious just by looking at an eye that it does see.
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Well, that's why I asked how you defined seeing. You define it as a conscious subjective experience.

Can a bee see? It has eyes, it can certainly locate flowers visually. But it has a brain simple enough that it can be modelled completely and accurately by a computer. How do you determine whether conscious experience is present or not?

In Newtonian mechanics, the force of gravity doesn't travel; it simply exists everywhere at once. A constant force could exist everywhere at once just as easily as a force that decreases with distance.
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No. A force that propagates instantaneously must still propagate, and still disperses into the available dimensions.
 
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