PixyMisa
Persnickety Insect
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I challenge you: your best argument for materialism
- Thread starter Bernardo
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If I state the following: Following the full ramifications of Materialism, the apparent distinct edge of a rock, it's tawny color, it's rough surface - these are fabrications of the brain. Reality is tasteless, colorless, odorless quantities of inert matter.
Are you saying my above assertion is wrong? If so, how is it wrong?
tsig
a carbon based life-form
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The hilited needs more explanation. How do you get from matter existing in various forms to reality is tasteless, colorless, odorless quantities of inert matter?
Belz...
Fiend God
And yet it's matter. Thus it exists, and your previous claim is false.
I fully admit to not being the best person to explain this: color is not found in reality, the colors we perceive are modulated by various wavelengths of visible light.
different wavelengths of visible light are in reality . . . color is a fabrication of brain
Belz...
Fiend God
And isn't that colour ? Don't we define colour as those wavelenghts ?
that's how we define color, but that's not how we see color
Belz...
Fiend God
Don't we ?
Dancing David
Penultimate Amazing
Wuh, materialism says that where and by whom?
Dancing David
Penultimate Amazing
The perceptions are generated by the brain, where does materialism say that objects don't have properties in and of themselves?
Such as an edge that might be perceived as a sharp visual boundary?
Dancing David
Penultimate Amazing
So? A certain wavelength has a label that can correlate to visual labels applied to perceived colors.
Look to post #1263, I'm trying to start with a simple premise to make sure we (including myself) are all on the same page.
We definitely see wavelengths as color. You can shine two different wavelengths of light directly into my eye (no intervening surface or medium required) with no other differences between the beams, and if the wavelengths are in the visual range, I'll see them as two different colors.
It doesn't go the other way. We don't experience color as wavelengths. It took millennia of literate civilization to figure out that color relates to the wavelength of something. Without science education (or very skillful and fortunate personal experimentation), we would never know that red is "longer" or "lower frequency" than blue. (That's why in art tradition, which goes back farther than knowledge of the electromagnetic spectrum, green and blue are "cool tones" and red and yellow "warm tones," a usage that can trip up physics majors in art classes.)
But that's true of everything. We don't experience musical notes as frequencies of pressure waves, but as perceived pitches. We don't experience heat as kinetic energy distributions of molecules, but as sensations of hot and cold. We don't experience hunger as depleted sugars in the bloodstream and liver, but as a desire for food. We don't experience consciousness as neural computation clarifying the role of self in narrative history, but as awareness. We don't experience any of those things as nerve impulses, but as all those various things.
It doesn't go the other way. We don't experience color as wavelengths. It took millennia of literate civilization to figure out that color relates to the wavelength of something. Without science education (or very skillful and fortunate personal experimentation), we would never know that red is "longer" or "lower frequency" than blue. (That's why in art tradition, which goes back farther than knowledge of the electromagnetic spectrum, green and blue are "cool tones" and red and yellow "warm tones," a usage that can trip up physics majors in art classes.)
But that's true of everything. We don't experience musical notes as frequencies of pressure waves, but as perceived pitches. We don't experience heat as kinetic energy distributions of molecules, but as sensations of hot and cold. We don't experience hunger as depleted sugars in the bloodstream and liver, but as a desire for food. We don't experience consciousness as neural computation clarifying the role of self in narrative history, but as awareness. We don't experience any of those things as nerve impulses, but as all those various things.
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tsig
a carbon based life-form
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Light hits an object and light of a certain wave length is reflected to the eye the eye transmits an electrical signal to the brain the brain takes this signal and thru an electro-chemical process compares it to other signals in the memory then when it matches what we have previously learned to call red we see red.
Belz...
Fiend God
Explain.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_vision
this from that wiki page; In this sense, color is not a property of electromagnetic radiation, but a feature of visual perception by an observer.
reality emits wavelengths of light, the subjective experience of color is 'fabricated' by the visual system, especially the brain
mijopaalmc
Philosopher
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Belz...
Fiend God
Are you talking about qualia, or simply the systemic response of the human body to those wavelengths of photons ? In the former case, qualia don't exist and are dualistic in nature, so we need not discuss them in a materialistic frame of reference. In the latter case, one derives directly from the other, so when we talk about the colour red, we talk about both the wavelength of photon, and the perception of that wavelength. The two are wholly connected, so I don't see where you make the disconnect.
tsig
a carbon based life-form
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The brain is responding to an outside stimuli. It is not creating that stimuli. The reason we call it red is that we have learned that that is what you call that stimuli.
Different stimulus gives rise to different responses, we call this experiencing reality.