"The Nature of Objective Reality" .... (according to me, obviously)

[Gnu Ordure]

Hello people,

this is an offshoot of another thread...

(the bubblemonster, in this section; I joined in late, a couple of weeks ago, introducing a digression, which seems to be interesting enough to warrant a new thread)

... and it does actually concern the nature of reality, objective or otherwise...

... and yes, I do appreciate that given that this is the first thread I've started on this Forum, it might have been better to start off with a slightly less pretentious subject....

... oh well, too late now...


... anyway, I can't really summarize the gist of it, sorry, it's too complicated; if you want to join in here, you just need to read 3 or 4 pages of the other thread first, starting with my contribution here..

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=73672&page=68

... and finishing with my link to this thread on page 71.


At which point , I continue :



hi z,

I'm afraid I'm with zooterkin:

So, no, Gnu... if that's who you are... the perception of the color blue would be subjective. Period.

Are you switching your position on this? Earlier you said :

Well, as I mentioned above, IF we rigidly define blue, then yes, the light is still blue.

You accused me of lazy defintions, z, but I think it's you. I don't know what you mean by 'rigid' definition here, or what the 'loose' definition might be. We're already discussing the subjective and objective definitions of blue light, I don't see how it helps to introduce another dimension.

Unless of course by 'rigid' you meant 'objective', in which case your two statements above are, as zooterkin noticed, contradictory.



zooterkin said :

Originally Posted by Z

"I might be a bit more flexible on the notion of 'is the light blue', since color is a function of our brain's interpretation of certain wavelengths of light. Light has intensity, wavelength, frequency, etc; but until it's been received and interpreted by a brain, it may not necessarily be 'blue'.


Then again, if we apply a more accurate scientific definition to 'blue' - light reflected or emitted in the wavelength of 440–490 nm - then we've reverted it to an objective measurement. So it would be entirely accurate, at that point, to say that the light is still blue, even if no one is present to see it."

Why did you choose to ignore the second part?

Because it had nothing to do with my argument, zooterkin.

My test statement was "The sky is blue". I quoted z in order to confirm our agreement that "until it's been received and interpreted by a brain, it may not necessarily be 'blue' ".

(That's not 'misquoting' or 'cherry-picking', z, - and it's not 'dishonest', either).

Using the definition of 'objective' we're all agreed on ("reality irrespective of observers"), the nature of light before it hits an eye is 'objective'.

The nature (and experience) of light after it hits an observer is 'subjective'.

My test-case ("The sky is blue") concerned what happens to light after it hits an eye, rather than before.

(Can I admit here, that I was playing Devil's Advocate in that part of my argument, and I should have made that clear ? Apologies. I said, as part of the scenario : "By the way, for clarity, this argument depends on the assumption that everyone in the world experiences the sky, on a sunny day, as blue".

When I said that, I knew that the existence of colour-blindness (as opposed than the Chinese, as z suggested), meant that that assumption was incorrect).

So, can we continue the test-case ?

z, we are agreed :

No, it's not "an observation common to all participants", and yes, it would not "still be true with no participants" - so it fails the definition.

So, you want to put it in the subjective categery :

Yes, it's an observation unique to "one or more participants", and yes, it's "not true for all participants" - the experience of 'blue' is different for people in different cultures, so it PASSES the test.

Fair enough. I agree, seeing 'blue' is a subjective experience, so it belongs here.

So your definition rests there, z. You simply put "the sky is blue" in the subjective category, which therefore merely says that when we all look at a blue object, we may not see the same colour.

Fair enough. But not very informative.

I continue with the definition process by adding a sub-definition ("more than one subjective experience"), and then applying the delicate instrument of 'consensus reality' (accurate to 9 decimal places, as I said), which will provide more detailed information about what is meant by "The sky is blue".

But first, another assumption.

I asked a couple of days ago whether there was any evidence that people with normal vision see colours differently. Plenty of evidence that different culures name colours differently, yes, but that's not the same thing. Do human eyes work differently ?

If there are small variations, it doesn't affect my argument anyway.

But for now, I'm assuming normal eyes see colours the same, ok ?

So I make the measurement.

Sample size : maximum

Armed with a big sky-blue card, a few counters, and the full battery of vision-tests which establish the existence of various forms of colour-blindness, I show the blue card to everyone in the world, and count the responses.

I establish, with the assistance of the finest optical physicists available, that 95.643 % of the world experiece that sky-blue card as :

(imagine sky-blue here)

I establish, that 6.09 % of the world (the ones with red-green color-blindness) experiece that sky-blue card as :

(imagine light-green here)

I establish, that 0.41 % of the world (the ones with complete monochrome vision) experiece that sky-blue card as :

(imagine medium-grey here)

.. and so on; there are 8 or 9 specific forms of colour-blindness, apparently..

(Sorry, apologies again; when I say "imagine", above, I'm only talking to people with normal vision, obviously - if you happen to have monochrome vision, it won't make much sense... No offense intended).

So, the reading is made.


The application of a 'consensus reality' category in this example states, as scientifically as any other scientific statement, that if Edith and I are looking at a clear blue sky together, there is a 95.643/100 chance that we are seeing the same colour.

To me, that statement is entirely valid.

And why not ? It acccords with the findings of science, and it's also common-sense; my liver works the same way as yours, my lungs do... why not my eyes ?

Unless there's something wrong with them, of course.



Applying 'consensus reality' provides information.



zooterkin, can I go back to your second, objective definition for a moment ?

light reflected or emitted in the wavelength of 440–490 nm -.. snip .... So it would be entirely accurate, at that point, to say that the light is still blue, even if no one is present to see it.

I beg to disagree, zoot.

On three counts.

First, I disagree that "the light is still blue, even if no one is present to see it".

We are trying to understand light in the absence of observers. Without eyes.

'Blueness' is the experience of a life-form equipped with colour-vision eyes.

In the absence of any such life-form, 'blue' does not exist.

So, in the absence of any such life-form, it doesn't make any sense to describe light of a certain wave-length as 'blue'.

Second,, the numbers; nm is an arbitrary unit of length, (it's part of a Metre -originally 1/10,000,000 of the distance from the equator to the north pole through Paris), invented by observers in order to measure things.

It contains no information other than in comparison to an arbitrary selected standard.



So all one can say of 'blue light' is that it is light of a certain wave-length.

(Mojo, notice I'm agreeing with you here; whatever the word 'metre' refers to, that length exists independently of it; the standard by which one measures it is arbitrary; all one can truthfully say is that a particular length is greater or less than another length.)


So, all we've got left of zooterkin's definition is that "' 'blue light' is 'light of a certain wave-length' ."

Agreed ?


But...


... Light is not just a wave, is it ?

We know this. It's particles as well.

Photons.

Single photons.

(This is a fact, right ? Otherwise my argument's in deep trouble)

So any definition of light that refers only of its wave nature is incomplete.

It ignores wave-particle duality.

Wiki, "Light", front page :

Due to the wave–particle duality of matter, light simultaneously exhibits properties of both waves and particles.

If you look for waves, you get waves. If you look for photons, you get photons.

You can't have both at the same time.

It depends on the observation you choose to make.

... as Heisenberg said (not so pithily, obviously).

So the 'objective' definition of 'blue light' shrinks even further; references to waves or particles have to be disallowed, because of observer dependence...


So, in my opinion...

.... the most we can say of 'blue light', ("irrespective of any obervers"), with any certainty, is that it is: 'light, of a certain kind'.


"Blue light" = "A kind of light".








Gnu.

 

[Soapy Sam]

Do you feel you have given sufficient consideration to the " I'm a loony" hypothesis?

 

[athon]

Mental masturbation. All of it. I can't imagine the blisters you must have after such a marathon of verbal wanking.

I'm not even sure where to begin with such silliness. A wavelength is 'objective', as it exists independently of my interpretation of it. A colour is a description of that wavelength. Indeed, there are issues that are raised when we introduce variation in retinal sensitivity and colour blindness, but if you show a chart and say 'this is the colour blue', that same perceived colour will remain defined as blue for all every time I see that wavelength. Hence you won't get '95.6%' or whatever nonsense number you pulled out of nowhere, but you'd get everybody agreeing that that was blue.

(ETA: colour blindness resulting from a reduction in the types of retinal cells means we will confuse wavelengths of light with one another. This is not a subjectivity of the wavelength, but rather a processing problem of light wavelengths. Therefore there are subjective perceptions of colour patterning, but the colour itself as a stimulus is objective enough).

Subjective experience would create disagreement, where my cut off for what I term 'blue' is different to yours, but that's a matter of semantics and not of subjectivity of the nature of colour.

Hell, if you want to define colour as the perception resulting after the photon hits the eye, be my guest. Who cares?

Man, why did I just enter this loony discussion?

Athon

 

[Gnu Ordure]

Do you feel you have given sufficient consideration to the " I'm a loony" hypothesis?

You raise an interesting point, soapy, in that consensus reality was a important concept in the anti-psychiatry movement of the 60's, which re-defined 'loony' as something less... well... pejorative.

But even this was based on Social Constructionism, the sociological theory of knowledge based on Hegel's ideas, and developed by Durkheim at the turn of the century.

But what do I know, I'm just a loony...

And by the way, thank you for such a positive response to my first thread on this Forum.

I feel most welcome.

Gnu.

 

[Apathia]

Gnu,

Fine first post. I personally encourage thinking.
See if a mod can move this for you to the Philosophy and Religion section of the forum, rather than the "Woo-Woo We Love to Bash" Section.
These are ideas many times discussed by our forum phillosophs, and you have presented this position with a rare clarity.
Now get it over to the proper department. You'll get some good responses there, but some more tomatos flung your way, as well.

 

[Gnu Ordure]

Mental masturbation. All of it. I can't imagine the blisters you must have after such a marathon of verbal wanking.

My feeling of belonging intensifies.




Listen, guys.

I started this thread in order to continue an on-going digression on another thread.

If youlre not interested in the discussion, fair enough, go elsewhere.

If you are interested, then you are welcome to join in, as long as you are respectful.

Is that too much to ask ?



By the way, for future reference...

... where I come from, 'loony' and 'wanker' are not terms of respect.



.

 

[Gnu Ordure]

Fine first post. I personally encourage thinking.
See if a mod can move this for you to the Philosophy and Religion section of the forum, rather than the "Woo-Woo We Love to Bash" Section.
These are ideas many times discussed by our forum phillosophs, and you have presented this position with a rare clarity.
Now get it over to the proper department. You'll get some good responses there, but some more tomatos flung your way, as well.

Hi Hyparxis,

thanks, that's the kind of response I like ...

"rare clarity", eh ?

that's nice...

It's not just you, though. I asked my good wife Edith, and she confirmed that I am indeed rarely clear.




I'm daunted, however, by your referral to forum philosophers and such-like.

I'm a novice in this area, in the sense that I've never 'studied' philosophy, but I'm still aware of the underlying complexities of the arguments concerning consensus reality; and I'm aware I know very little about them.




I only started this thread here because it's the same category of the 'parent-thread', so it was more likely to be noticed by any interested parties.

So I'm happy to leave it here, if that's OK, but I don't mind if it 'ought' to be moved.



Gnu.

 

[Apathia]

We have a few members who like a philosophical discussion now and then. We also have some who think that anything philosphy is utterly worthless.
So be prepared for both.

We used to have a retired guy called Coberth who shared his philosophical musing here (as with many other forums), but he finally got tired of being the side show freak in a dunking chair. But out of the majority of rotten eggs, he did some jewels tossed his way.

You'll find people here who matter of factly agree with you about consenses reality, and others who insist on something more robustly absolute.
It usually becomes a display of personalities, a fascinating thing of itself.

 

[Slimething]

Gnu,

I like your style, hate your subject and think you've been spending too much time at K-Mart. Perception threads drive me up a wall and I do usually take my business elsewhere but your posting style is very enjoyable. Welcome to the forum!

 

[athon]

Let me apologise for making you feel uncomfortable. That's not my intention, so don't let the 'verbal masturbation' thing put you off. You'll get the feel of the place quick enough.

Personally, I find the entire 'is your blue my blue' discussion pointless and silly. Indeed, I probably should have ignored the thread, but it might bring up something interesting, so I figured I'd jump in and stir things.

Hang around. If nothing else, this place always teaches you something new, if you're open to it.

Athon

(ETA: small point - learn to dissociate the post from the poster. I did not, and would not, call you a 'wanker'. I might have said that I feel your material is akin to verbal wanking, i.e. using words in a meaningless manner for a sense of gratification, but I don't know you to be able to extend that into calling you a name. It helps to remember that around here)

 

[Professor Yaffle]

And I'd like you to know that if NONE of you go over there and talk to me, I will be psychologically devastated by the rejection, and you'll have to live with the fact that you've put my rehabilitation back YEARS, do you hear me, YEARS !!!

Just popping over to bolster your self esteem. However I am very busy at the moment so can't really contribute. It takes all my free time to read Bubblebrain's hilarious ramblings.

 

[SomeGuy]

The problem is that the light is objectively blue, eventhough we don't know if two people actually see it the same way.

 

[flimflam_machine]

It takes all my free time to read Bubblebrain's hilarious ramblings.

Why bother? From my quick skim through it just looks like yards and yards more tedious, illiterate, arrogant, dismissive, pseudo-intellectual bollocks.

Sorry Gnu, I don't think there's really much of a discussion here. The human population has sufficiently standard visual physiology for us all to have a similar range of vision in the EM spectrum. As someguy implies, "blue" is just shorthand for "having a wavelength around 465nm". If we called that colour anything else ("bleen" for example) it would still look the same. Just think that bees and birds can see in the UV, but we don't perceive any "colour" in UV light, so it's silly to assert that there is any "colour" inherent to blue light.


If the question is "Is our phenomenology of 'blue' the same?" then that may very well be unanswerable, and I can't say that your experiment goes any way to answering it, or that it is very clear. If you hold up a coloured card in front of someone and say "what colour do you perceive that to be?" they'll reply "Errrr... that one" and point to the card that you're holding up in front of them.

A standard test for colour blindness is to see what colours can be discriminated (like the ishihara tests). If you hold up a sky-blue card and a light-green card in front of someone, and they say that they look identical, all it means is that they can't tell sky-blue from light-green. What it absolutely does not prove is that their phenomenology of sky-blue is the same as your or my (non-colourblind people) phenomenology of light-green.

 

[Cuddles]

I'm with Flimflam here. You appear to be trying to argue something about whether we can know if someone else's experience of a colour is the same as ours or not. This is simply not possible to know. Unfortunately you seem to be confusing this issue with what we define colours to be. If you show people a skybluepink card, they will all agree that it is skybluepink because that is what we have defined as skybluepink. How they actually perceive it is irrelevant. As others have said, "blue" means "wavelength arounf 465nm". How your brain interprets 465nm wavelengths is utterly irrelevant.

I would like to repeat previous requests to have this moved to the philosophy board. The topic has nothing whatsoever to do with skepticism or the paranormal.

 

[Ichneumonwasp]

Welcome to the forum, Gnu.

'Blueness' is the experience of a life-form equipped with colour-vision eyes.

In the absence of any such life-form, 'blue' does not exist.

Basically, yes, but I'm afraid it is a bit more complicated as several others have mentioned. There is a sense in which both you and the folks you were discussing this with are both correct.

In the radical absence of creatures who can perceive "blue", 'blue' does not exist, properly speaking. That is correct. The perception of 'blueness' depends on the wavelength of light, the functioning of the eye, and the interpretive power of the brain. All aspects must be in place to speak of the perception of 'blue' from the real world into our subjective experience. It is an interaction issue -- this perception of 'blue' that involves the external world. It is also possible for us to internally generate 'blue' in a hallucination, however, in which no external light contributes to the process. This still involves a perception of 'blue' -- internally generated, rather than externally generated. This process does not involve the eye or any particular wavelength of light. It's a pure brain process. So, you need to include the brain in your analysis. We can also see the issue arise in folks who have acquired color blindness, or achromatopsia.

So, that briefly and very inexpertly speaks to the original perception issue. But, as you mention, there is the further issue of our use of the word 'blue' which arises from convention and social agreement. I point to a card that I experience in a certain way and call it 'blue'; you learn to associate that word with that internal experience. So, we agree on what blue is. Some people can participate in this process and some cannot. I assume this issue arose over conflicts in the use of the word 'objective'? If we speak of an objective experience of 'blue' at this stage, what we seem to mean is 'inter-subjective'. It, then, becomes an issue in the use of the word 'objective' as to whether it means largely or completely 'inter-subjective' (does everyone experience exactly the same thing or only a large number of us?). If not everyone can experience the same card in the same way, can we speak of an 'objective' sense of the word 'blue' as completely 'inter-subjective'? Well, no, and this arises in numerous types of debates, so I think it is an important issue to deal with. But, if enough people do experience 'blue' and can reliably pick it out, then the social convention makes sense pragmatically.

There is the further issue that we have, through agreement, defined the word 'blue' also to mean 'light of a certain frequency'. We do this because we find it easy and because most people agree on blue being constituted by light at that particular frequency. Now that definition of 'blue' as light of a certain frequency provides an objective 'truth' -- that light is really of that frequency even in the radical absence of creatures like us. This is another definition of the word 'objective' -- true independent of observation. While the word 'blue' can only derive its meaning through social construction -- that's what language is, after all -- since we have agreed that one definition of 'blue' means light at a certain frequency, then there is an objective measure of it, whether or not everyone can experience it. That word still has that meaning.

There is, unfortunately, a third definition, closely related to the idea of inter-subjectivity (available to other observers, not purely subjective).

So, there are senses in which we can speak of 'blue' in an objective way, but we need to be careful about how we do it. You need to stick to one definition of 'objective' and not switch to another definition in the middle of the discussion. The switch from one definition to another is what usually happens in philosophical discussions that go on for more than a few pages and why many people find philosophy an utter waste of time.


ETA

Or, in other words, we don't use the word 'blue' in just one way and we don't use the word 'objective' in just one way, and this is why we continue to have these discussions, if any of this helps.

 

[Beerina]

No one knows yet how the subjective experience (the blueness of blue) arises out of the configuration of atoms and energy we call a "brain". We presume it does, and that there's a physics behind it (perhaps undiscovered, perhaps an addendum to our standard physics).

But no one knows, at this point, whether the "blueness" of blue is tied to the frequency in some way directly, or if it's just an arbitrary sensation the brain, via evolution, learned to associate with that frequency (as encoded by the optic nerve).

Are there other colors floating around in "perception space" that the brain never picked up on? Other sense kinds besides the "big 5"? As we don't know how this arises from the brain, we have no way of knowing yet.

Francis Crick, who got the Nobel Prize for co-discovering the helix nature of DNA, suggests the technology is ripe to begin exploring this in detail.

 

[qayak]

I'm with Flimflam here. You appear to be trying to argue something about whether we can know if someone else's experience of a colour is the same as ours or not. This is simply not possible to know.

Hmmmmmmmm. . . . . from a slightly different perspective. Automotive painters seem to be able to match a vehicle's colour. Ten different painters will match the car exactly, so obviously they see the colour the same. Even the ones who do not get the match right are awefully close.

There is a limit to the ability of the human eye but we are adapted to living in our little visible portion of the electrom magnetic spectrum.

 

[flimflam_machine]

If we speak of an objective experience of 'blue' at this stage, what we seem to mean is 'inter-subjective'. It, then, becomes an issue in the use of the word 'objective' as to whether it means largely or completely 'inter-subjective' (does everyone experience exactly the same thing or only a large number of us?). If not everyone can experience the same card in the same way, can we speak of an 'objective' sense of the word 'blue' as completely 'inter-subjective'? Well, no, and this arises in numerous types of debates, so I think it is an important issue to deal with. But, if enough people do experience 'blue' and can reliably pick it out, then the social convention makes sense pragmatically.

Ich, I'm not entirely clear on your point here. I think I agree with you in that "inter-subjective" does not equal "objective", and I'm not even sure from what you would build the argument that the two are the same. I'm also not sure what you mean by "objective experience" since the phrase seems completely oxymoronic.

Could you please clarify what different meanings of the word "objective" you are referring to (metaphysical, epistemological?), and how they relate to different uses of the word "blue" (as a pure perceptual experience vs. as a synonym for "having wavelength about 465nm").

The social construction that "blue" refers to things in the external world that all share a particular physical characteristic seems, to me, to be a fairly unproductive area of discussion. I just think that it's really trivial, our perceptual systems, when functioning properly give us roughly the same experience of the same thing if we see it on two different occasions. If it didn't then consciousness would be pretty counter productive, and language wouldn't be much use to describe things. In a vaguely anthropological sense it might be interesting: different cultures vary in the precision with which they apply certain terms e.g., Japanese people using one term for things that Western cultures might consider blue and green (anyone have a ref for this?).

 

[drkitten]

I asked a couple of days ago whether there was any evidence that people with normal vision see colours differently. Plenty of evidence that different culures name colours differently, yes, but that's not the same thing. Do human eyes work differently ?

Yes, there's lots of evidence for that, but the differences are extremely small. Look up "female tetrachromaticity" sometime.

I establish, with the assistance of the finest optical physicists available, that 95.643 % of the world experiece that sky-blue card as :

(imagine sky-blue here)

The application of a 'consensus reality' category in this example states, as scientifically as any other scientific statement, that if Edith and I are looking at a clear blue sky together, there is a 95.643/100 chance that we are seeing the same colour.

To me, that statement is entirely valid.

That statement is indeed entirely valid -- and has nothing to do with "consensus reality."

It's a simple statement of probability. Similarly, if you and I independently flip coins, there is a 50% chance we are seeing the same side -- and that has nothing to do with "consensus reality." It simply represents the objective distribution of two independent events.

"Consensus reality" plus probability theory equals probability theory.

Therefore, subtracting "probability theory" from each side, we get

"Consensus reallity" equals nothing

.... which I've been suggesting for a dozen or so posts.

 

[flimflam_machine]

Gayak, I think you've missed the point a bit, or I've completely missed your point. The fact that people can match colours doesn't prove anything about whether your experience of blue is the same as my experience of blue.