There are no material objects

[Dancing David]

I did take it. I sampled his White Lightning and Blue Cheer too. I suppose it all depends upon what you mean by real. My first trip happened because somebody gave me a tab of Blue Cheer and I rather foolishly swallowed it in our local pub. At one point during the evening the landlord was washing the glasses and stacking them on the bar. I saw the glasses melt, run down the bar like lava and the tide flowed over to me , touched my shoes, which became glass too. I wasn't scared, I found it fascinating. Are you saying that this really happened? The friend I was tripping with didn't see it and the regulars in the pub just saw some wet glasses.

Your perception was a real perception, not a valid one.

 

[dafydd]

Your perception was a real perception, not a valid one.

I suppose we can indulge in semantics, but the glasses did not melt otherwise we would all have been drinking out of jam jars the following day.

 

[Dancing David]

Exactly. LSD visions are not reality. I doubt if any of the people who are arguing the point have any experience of psychedelic substances. A true argument from ignorance, and that is not intended as an insult.

Oh, nice appeal to authority.

You don't understand that the perceptions take place in reality, unless you think your serotonergic neurons and others are in fantasy land. That the perceptions are real does not mean they are accurate representations of reality

 

[Dancing David]

I suppose we can indulge in semantics, but the glasses did not melt otherwise we would all have been drinking out of jam jars the following day.

So keep arguing semantics, where were your perceptions, another dimension?

You need to read more carefully and perhaps ask more questions.

 

[Dancing David]

I was in that pub the next evening. All the glasses were there, unmelted. I was back in reality . Is Bhodi saying that the glasses both melted and did not melt? That is just a tiny part of what happened in my head that evening.

Psst you were never out of reality, perceptions are created from the sensations, you had altered perceptions that did not reflect the sensations with validity.

If I hold a magnet near a CRT screen I can alter the colors that it displays, the colors are real. I can return the CRT to baseline through deguassing, one is an accurate recreation of the signal, the other is altered.

They both happen in reality

 

[dafydd]

Why are there so many stroppy people on this site? Did you all get out of bed on the wrong side? I give up, you win, you're all right.

 

[yy2bggggs]

No they're brain failures. They aren't actual input from your eyes they are your brain failing to properly summate the stimuli. They're as real as brain failures, which aren't very real at all (In that they're a failure of interpreting reality).

Are optical illusions brain failures? How about the aural perception of phonemes?

I don't think the concept of "brain failures" works too well, especially if we use the metric of "failure to interpret reality" to define failure. I would suggest use of concepts that instead compare brain function to a reference brain function.

 

[Lowpro]

Are optical illusions brain failures? How about the aural perception of phonemes?

I don't think the concept of "brain failures" works too well, especially if we use the metric of "failure to interpret reality" to define failure. I would suggest use of concepts that instead compare brain function to a reference brain function.

Optical illusions are definitely brain failures (though in direct response, they're summated poorly from eye stimuli). When the reality of depth or color* is mistaken in your brain, then it fails to accurately depict reality. But the brain tries oh so hard...

It's a brain failure.

*Example: Synesthetics "see" colors that correspond to letter shapes or even sound. But they aren't actually seeing these colors, because the medium they are viewing through their eyes isn't reflecting the electromagnetic "light" that we all generally see. Their brain is failing, it is somehow doing something wrong. But that doesn't mean what the synesthetic sees is "real" because it isn't because there is no corresponding light they're seeing; it's just their brain failing.

 

[Lowpro]

Honestly if I wanted to be a dick about it...

Bodhi if you want to pretend that whatever our acidhead saw in the bar (melting glass etc etc turning to glass blah de blah) is "just as real" then that would conflict with thermodynamics. State change of glass requires heat to liquefy it. There was no heat, and glass can't do it spontaneously.

If the glass touched our acidhead's shoes and those TOO turned into glass, that would pose many physical problems to be sure, and cannot be accounted for naturally.

So, even if our acidhead experiences these things, they are NOT part of reality. They are NOT just as real. Experience will NEVER equal real no matter how many people experience it; science is not a general consensus of experience, it's mathematically driven. If you're seeing something, then you better have evidence to validate it as being real.

To sum it up, brain failures are real. When you are seeing something that ain't there, then your brain failed. It failed hard.

 

[yy2bggggs]

Optical illusions are definitely brain failures (though in direct response, they're summated poorly from eye stimuli). When the reality of depth or color* is mistaken in your brain, then it fails to accurately depict reality. But the brain tries oh so hard...

It's a brain failure.

Let's talk color.

Here is an image:

For reference, this image comes from a presentation by Beau Lotto, which I recommend you see, at TED.

In this image, there are tiles that I have labeled a1, a2, b1, and b2. The color of those tiles, on the screen, are all the same. However, in the context of the sample images, given your criteria, there should be a "correct" color that corresponds to the "actual" colors of the object. On the left hand image, which we can simply call "A", the tile a1 is in a shadow, and the tile a2 is outside of it. On the right hand image, which we can call "B", the tile b1 is under the same approximate lighting conditions as the tile b2.

Obviously, there is less light in a shadow than there is outside of one. So if two tiles, let's say a1 and a2, are emitting the same amount of light, but a1 is in the shadow, then a1 should be reflecting a greater percentage of the light that is available to it than a2 (since it reflects the same amount, but there's less light available), and thus, it should be whiter. But if those same two tiles are under equal lighting conditions--let's say b1 and b2--then if they are reflecting the same amount of light, they should be the same color.

There are similar sorts of adjustments that occur in lighting conditions where different color lights are present... for example, take this image:

Here, there are tiles labeled A and B on the left and on the right. Both of the tiles A and B are drawn using the same exact color of gray; however, if the squares on the left are illuminated by a bluish light, and the squares on the right by a yellowish light, then the tile A's "correct" color would probably be yellow, and the tile B's "correct" color would probably be blue.

So here's the point. These are the kinds of things our brain has to do to an image in order to get the "right" color of an object--simply because of the way light comes from objects in an image. There is no way to describe the workings of a hypothetical brain that gets the "correct" color of objects based on the presentation of an image, because the problem of getting the correct color of such objects is an impossible problem. It is for this reason that I object to your use of the term "brain failure".

What our brains do, instead, is make an assumption that objects present themselves in a natural world in "normal" ways, and working off of the assumption that objects have a definite color that does not change under lighting conditions, applies heuristics to try to perceive that color. The reason we have color optical illusions is that these heuristics can be exploited.

So when we look at this image:

...and our brains experience a "failure" whereby we perceive two different shades of orange, you should note that this "failure" is due to a heuristic that allows it to "succeed" in judging the color of oranges under more normal scenarios.

I think the model you're trying to apply is too simplistic--it ignores the fact that perception is different than the perceived, and that the former is merely a model of the world. It's too naively realistic for my tastes. I prefer a model of the world where objects exist entirely independent from our perceptions, where qualities of our perceptions are not part of the external world's properties, but instead are properties of how our brain builds a model of the world that is useful for our purposes.

*Example: Synesthetics "see" colors that correspond to letter shapes or even sound. But they aren't actually seeing these colors, because the medium they are viewing through their eyes isn't reflecting the electromagnetic "light" that we all generally see.

You're kind of begging the question here, and are mixing categories.

Colors are perceptual qualities, not inherent properties of light (though there is an alternate definition of color that we can say is a property of light; however, using that definition, color is not a perceptual quality). It appears you're using "to see" to describe perceiving something through the visual apparatus. In this case, I see nothing but your arbitrary declaration to support the notion that color grapheme synesthetes do not see shapes as colors. After all, they see shapes visually, and those shapes are imbued with colors.

Their brain is failing, it is somehow doing something wrong.

Please describe what's wrong with the way their brain is working, without appealing to my suggested alternative of comparing their brain to a reference brain.

But that doesn't mean what the synesthetic sees is "real" because it isn't because there is no corresponding light they're seeing; it's just their brain failing.

In the case of color grapheme synesthetes, there most certainly is corresponding light that they are seeing.

 

[Lowpro]

Let's talk color.

Here is an image:
[qimg]http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/imagehosting/thum_206134b650baa2bd99.jpg[/qimg]
For reference, this image comes from a presentation by Beau Lotto, which I recommend you see, at TED.

In this image, there are tiles that I have labeled a1, a2, b1, and b2. The color of those tiles, on the screen, are all the same. However, in the context of the sample images, given your criteria, there should be a "correct" color that corresponds to the "actual" colors of the object. On the left hand image, which we can simply call "A", the tile a1 is in a shadow, and the tile a2 is outside of it. On the right hand image, which we can call "B", the tile b1 is under the same approximate lighting conditions as the tile b2.

Obviously, there is less light in a shadow than there is outside of one. So if two tiles, let's say a1 and a2, are emitting the same amount of light, but a1 is in the shadow, then a1 should be reflecting a greater percentage of the light that is available to it than a2 (since it reflects the same amount, but there's less light available), and thus, it should be whiter. But if those same two tiles are under equal lighting conditions--let's say b1 and b2--then if they are reflecting the same amount of light, they should be the same color.

There are similar sorts of adjustments that occur in lighting conditions where different color lights are present... for example, take this image:
[qimg]http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/imagehosting/thum_206134b683d9979675.png[/qimg]
Here, there are tiles labeled A and B on the left and on the right. Both of the tiles A and B are drawn using the same exact color of gray; however, if the squares on the left are illuminated by a bluish light, and the squares on the right by a yellowish light, then the tile A's "correct" color would probably be yellow, and the tile B's "correct" color would probably be blue.

So here's the point. These are the kinds of things our brain has to do to an image in order to get the "right" color of an object--simply because of the way light comes from objects in an image. There is no way to describe the workings of a hypothetical brain that gets the "correct" color of objects based on the presentation of an image, because the problem of getting the correct color of such objects is an impossible problem. It is for this reason that I object to your use of the term "brain failure".

What our brains do, instead, is make an assumption that objects present themselves in a natural world in "normal" ways, and working off of the assumption that objects have a definite color that does not change under lighting conditions, applies heuristics to try to perceive that color. The reason we have color optical illusions is that these heuristics can be exploited.

That's a lot of work to get across the fact that you object to "brain failure" man, but maybe you're stuck on your idea. If you want to talk color (we'll talk simple), your brain summates stimuli from cone receptors and sorting out light etc etc and you get color. The failure is when your brain sorts out light that isn't there (synesthetics are seeing colors that aren't actually there). That's what I mean by brain failure and yes it is very simplistic but it's also correct, however it then bugs people to determine what is a "brain success" too, which is easy. Do you see color? Is it actually there? Then your brain succeeded enough.

When it comes to the color illusions like this one:



And this one's a failure of depth (reverses depth due to shadows)



That's a brain failure of sorts. The tiles are the same color, reflecting and absorbing their particular wavelenghts of light, but due to the shadows and surrounding tiles your brain "thinks" there's a color difference (similar to the orange tiles picture you put up) but again SIMPLY PUT your brain failed. It tried hard to be correct, but it wasn't.

I think the model you're trying to apply is too simplistic--it ignores the fact that perception is different than the perceived, and that the former is merely a model of the world. It's too naively realistic for my tastes. I prefer a model of the world where objects exist entirely independent from our perceptions, where qualities of our perceptions are not part of the external world's properties, but instead are properties of how our brain builds a model of the world that is useful for our purposes.

I have no idea how you consider my "model" as anything different than what you've described. I LOVE a model that is independent of our brains. If light exists as we see it, awesome. I'm irked when people think there's light there that DOESN'T exist (such as people who do hallucinogens may see).

As for what you're saying in retort to synesthetics, I'm talking about color as it pertains to the property of light, and I cannot imagine another definition for it. Objects may absorb and reflect parts of the visible light spectrum; the parts reflected are what we see, or at least see most of.

There's no need to compare to a reference brain; color doesn't require you to see it to be there because it's an electromagnetic wave and measurable as such, absent the brain. When someone thinks they're seeing colors and those colors are NOT there, their brain fails. For synesthetics they observe a medium and sometimes the intricacies of this medium (be it the shapes of letters or even sounds) change color for them. I don't quite know how to explain it, but in their brain something's happening. It's NOT happening in the medium they are viewing though. A letter doesn't change color due to the shape it's in, a letter would only change color if something made it reflect a different wavelength of light.

Which is why I say their brain is failing, because it is interpreting something wrong. And I can say that without using a reference brain, because color doesn't require the brain to exist.

Now this is a VERY simple concept and I feel that you should already know this so I may have missed something in what you've been saying.

I'll try to make it a little more fair. The brain also sees afterimages which are technically not a brain failure; they're a failure of the chemistry in your photoreceptors overadapting to whatever it's seeing, usually color related. But your brain still gets the stimulus and you "see" an afterimage, but it's not the brain's fault, the photoreceptors won't re-adapt.

So yea I may use the term "brain failure" with abandon, only because I think it's apt. If I wanted to get more in depth as to one "failure" to another, I may but I think my statements suffice.

 

[yy2bggggs]

That's a lot of work to get across the fact that you object to "brain failure" man, but maybe you're stuck on your idea. If you want to talk color (we'll talk simple), your brain summates stimuli from cone receptors and sorting out light etc etc and you get color.

But color is not light. Color is a perception. You're confusing the two.

The failure is when your brain sorts out light that isn't there (synesthetics are seeing colors that aren't actually there).

Synesthetic brains do not sort out light that isn't there. They sort out signals that are there--and not only that--but those signals are created using light that is there. In color grapheme synesthetes, a particular grapheme is always associated with a particular color. When they see that grapheme, they see that color, period; just like when we see this banana, we see this color.

That's what I mean by brain failure and yes it is very simplistic but it's also correct,

I would use the term "naive".

however it then bugs people to determine what is a "brain success" too, which is easy. Do you see color?

Yes, and so does a grapheme color synesthete.

Is it actually there?

And with this question your naive realism shows through. We are not seeing light "as it is"; light as it is is spectroscopic and photometric. We're merely trichromatic, with brains that adjust the trichromaticity of the images in such a way as to give enough consistency to the perceptual space in regards to objects that we can possibly speak of them as having color. The invariance of the color of an object is a construct particular to how we see, and a huge number of heuristics involving color vision, to which 1/3 of our brains are devoted.

Color isn't something that is "just there" that objects "just have", it's something our brains do a lot of work to invent. And they do a damned good job. They deserve our recognition!

So in a sense, no, the colors are not "actually there". They're made up by our brains. In another sense, they are actually there, but they're very, very dependent on the way our brain works. In no sense are they actually there and are independent from how our brain works.

That's a brain failure of sorts. The tiles are the same color, reflecting and absorbing their particular wavelenghts of light, but due to the shadows and surrounding tiles your brain "thinks" there's a color difference (similar to the orange tiles picture you put up) but again SIMPLY PUT your brain failed. It tried hard to be correct, but it wasn't.

Your brain created the concept of objects having the same colors to begin with. It's an impossible problem, but it does so anyway. So our brain fails because there's no such thing as success.

But insofar as you get to speak of objects having a particular color, the brain succeeded.

I have no idea how you consider my "model" as anything different than what you've described.

The difference is the suggestion that colors are independent of the way our brain works.

As for what you're saying in retort to synesthetics, I'm talking about color as it pertains to the property of light, and I cannot imagine another definition for it.

But light is not color. Color is a property of perception. Light is just photons at particular frequencies. They are entirely different things.

There's no need to compare to a reference brain; color doesn't require you to see it to be there because it's an electromagnetic wave and measurable as such, absent the brain.

No, I showed that in the last reply. The same exact electromagnetic spectrum could be black (a1), white (b1), yellow (A), or blue (B); especially if you want to say that objects are particular colors.

Color is a very complicated creation particular to our brains and how we see. And, once again, it is a perceptive quality, not a property of light.

If you want to speak of color as a property of light, you need to talk spectroscopy. In those terms, we need to drop notions such as objects having particular colors, "yellow" being an example of a color, and so on.

 

[Lowpro]

Hang on a sec I need to get something cleared up because I think I'm saying what you're saying (not about the Graphemes though). Photoreceptors send stilumi to the brain, they get summated, and you "see" color. I think we agree on that simplified version.

Now, in between the eyes and the brain something can "go wrong" and you'll see something that's not there. That's what I've been trying to get across.

I call them brain failures, you say that's naive, but I mean, nuts to you y2. Yes our brain does a REALLY good job of making us see color (because you're right, electromagnetism isn't "color" but for the purposes of color vision they play a very very very central role in vision. Now, you can see color without vision but that doesn't make whatever you're seeing real which is what I'm trying to get across. At that point it's not accurate color vision; it's the parts working for something that's not there.

Just like when you see depth that's not there doesn't mean that depth is real (in relation to optical illusions)

So I know what you're saying that it's not really brain failing because the brain's doing everything correctly enough but then what do you want to call it, brain deception?

And yes I do think color exists independent of the brain only because it is reduced to spectroscopy, but maybe that is my naivete showing; I give more credit to the understanding of electromagnetic color before what our brains see. So I don't really consider the subjectivity of color because it's useless when you have a really really really good definition for color (460nm = blue).

 

[punshhh]

Yes, they are real perceptual events, they may or may not have validity.

The largest dose I ever took was probably around 2,000, those events were real perceptual events, I saw goblins dancing in the rain.

Now they were not valid as real objects outside of perception.

It gets interesting when you look into the flashlight of enlightenment on a high dose and retrace your steps and those of all of your fellow life forms. One can perceive of the friction and pain of the experience of physicality in a single visualisation, or thought.

 

[Bram Kaandorp]

It gets interesting when you look into the flashlight of enlightenment on a high dose and retrace your steps and those of all of your fellow life forms. One can perceive of the friction and pain of the experience of physicality in a single visualisation, or thought.

Very deep. You should send that in to the Reader's Digest, they have a page for people like you.

 

[Brainache]

It gets interesting when you look into the flashlight of enlightenment on a high dose and retrace your steps and those of all of your fellow life forms. One can perceive of the friction and pain of the experience of physicality in a single visualisation, or thought.

The flashlight of enlightenment? I don't have one of those. Would it work with a pineapple of truth? I've got one of them.

 

[dafydd]

The flashlight of enlightenment? I don't have one of those. Would it work with a pineapple of truth? I've got one of them.

You need a flashlight of enlightenment to peer about when you are beyond the event horizon of the formless, searching for pixies in your foliage.

 

[Dancing David]

It gets interesting when you look into the flashlight of enlightenment on a high dose and retrace your steps and those of all of your fellow life forms. One can perceive of the friction and pain of the experience of physicality in a single visualisation, or thought.

I don't needs drugs to do that, I was seeking relief from depression.

 

[Dancing David]

The flsshlight of enlightnement is my phrase, usually when I am rude and accuse people of casing into it

 

[Bram Kaandorp]

The flsshlight of enlightnement is my phrase, usually when I am rude and accuse people of casing into it

See, Jonesboy, dyslexia is real.

[/off topic]