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Do rainbows exist objectively?
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2018-01-10 at 11:44 PM UTC
Originally posted by Captain Falcon I didn't say it was. Read it again. You have to establish that colour, including the experience of colour, is not itself an objectively quantifiable phenomenon. Just because it feels that way doesn't make it so.
I never claimed otherwise. Only that colours only exist in our minds, therefore it's impossible for an arch of colours to exist in reality. Light exists in a variety of different frequencies. It takes an eye and a mind to convert those light waves into colour. -
2018-01-11 at 12:04 AM UTC
Originally posted by Open Your Mind I never claimed otherwise. Only that colours only exist in our minds, therefore it's impossible for an arch of colours to exist in reality. Light exists in a variety of different frequencies. It takes an eye and a mind to convert those light waves into colour.
And there is no evidence that the "mind" and it's products are outside of the purview of objective description. -
2018-01-11 at 12:23 AM UTC
Originally posted by Captain Falcon And there is no evidence that the "mind" and it's products are outside of the purview of objective description.
Im not arguing that it is. If I mention a snake with a lions head, you are probably picturing one in your mind right now. Because your mind exists and is made of objective things, do you believe the lion-headed snake in your mind objectively exists? -
2018-01-11 at 12:43 AM UTC
Originally posted by Open Your Mind Im not arguing that it is. If I mention a snake with a lions head, you are probably picturing one in your mind right now. Because your mind exists and is made of objective things, do you believe the lion-headed snake in your mind objectively exists?
Do I believe that the snakelion is a real creature outside my mind? No. Does the experience or idea exist in some physical or objective capacity? Sure!
If your point is that there is no arc made up of the qualia of colours then you're right but that is a fucking retarded point that makes no sense. Of course the qualitative content of colour is inside our mind (and perhaps our brain itself). That experience objectively exists, and the physical phenomenon that causes that experience objectively exists. What part of the rainbow, thus, does not objectively exist? -
2018-01-11 at 12:59 AM UTC
Originally posted by Captain Falcon Do I believe that the snakelion is a real creature outside my mind? No. Does the experience or idea exist in some physical or objective capacity? Sure!
If your point is that there is no arc made up of the qualia of colours then you're right but that is a fucking retarded point that makes no sense. Of course the qualitative content of colour is inside our mind (and perhaps our brain itself). That experience objectively exists, and the physical phenomenon that causes that experience objectively exists. What part of the rainbow, thus, does not objectively exist?
Things that only exist in your mind are called "subjective". -
2018-01-11 at 1:17 AM UTCthe things do exist in their own primordial fashion, but they are naked and elude any sort of category or utilization
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2018-01-11 at 1:20 AM UTCthis thread is cancer
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2018-01-11 at 2:20 AM UTC
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2018-01-11 at 2:25 AM UTC
Originally posted by Open Your Mind Things that only exist in your mind are called "subjective".
A materialist would argue that there is no such thing as "only existing in your mind". Scientifically and rationally, there is no reason to believe in a mind-body separation. What exists in the mind can also be described in physical terms. Such is the case for all concepts in a materialist worldview. Ultimately, all "concepts" are merely relationships between physical phenomena, and these relationships are also present only by virtue of their physical properties.
So colours don't exist "only in your mind" any more than electronic data exists "only in your SD card's mind". The relationship might be harder to describe than flash memory but it's not a special case. -
2018-01-11 at 2:29 AM UTC
Originally posted by Lanny That doesn't seem true at all. Mathematical objects don't seem to have any existence outside of minds but that doesn't really make them subjective.
Yeah ok, I guess you're right. Still, there is a difference between measuring and describing the activity in a persons brain, and actually having that persons conscious experience. -
2018-01-11 at 2:31 AM UTC
Originally posted by Captain Falcon A materialist would argue that there is no such thing as "only existing in your mind". Scientifically and rationally, there is no reason to believe in a mind-body separation. What exists in the mind can also be described in physical terms. Such is the case for all concepts in a materialist worldview. Ultimately, all "concepts" are merely relationships between physical phenomena, and these relationships are also present only by virtue of their physical properties.
So colours don't exist "only in your mind" any more than electronic data exists "only in your SD card's mind". The relationship might be harder to describe than flash memory but it's not a special case.
The information on the flash drive is only ones and zeros until it is interpreted by a system and turned into a picture or a song. -
2018-01-11 at 2:34 AM UTC
Originally posted by Open Your Mind Yeah ok, I guess you're right. Still, there is a difference between measuring and describing the activity in a persons brain, and actually having that persons conscious experience.
A hard-line physicalist would disagree, but I do happen to agree with that. But if I understand where this is going then we come back to the point of saying "look a rainbow!" does not have the same meaning as "I am having the experience of viewing a rainbow" as the former seems to pick out something in the world and the latter attempts to communicate an internal state.The following users say it would be alright if the author of this post didn't die in a fire! -
2018-01-11 at 2:36 AM UTC
Originally posted by Lanny A hard-line physicalist would disagree, but I do happen to agree with that. But if I understand where this is going then we come back to the point of saying "look a rainbow!" does not have the same meaning as "I am having the experience of viewing a rainbow" as the former seems to pick out something in the world and the latter attempts to communicate an internal state.
Exactly! -
2018-01-11 at 2:54 AM UTC
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2018-01-11 at 3:17 AM UTC
Originally posted by Captain Falcon There is no reason to believe that an experience has anything more special than an arrangement of 1s and 0s.
Well I hate to jump "sides" here in the middle but that doesn't quite ring true. Maybe experience can be encoded in some physical artifact like a brain or a computers disk but it seems like this physical representation isn't what we talk about when we talk about our experiences.
A "representative" model of physical experience storage, that is to say the idea that the physical encoding of experience as brain signals or bit sequences, or anything else, represents but is not the same as experience, seems justified by the idiosyncrasy of encoding. We know my experience of redness will generate a somewhat different fMRI record than yours. If you think it's possible for machines to experience redness (rather than simply capture it via video) the digital representation of that experience would be vastly different than the neuronal representation. And the fact that we talk about brain or bit structures "representing" experiences demonstrates that there's an experience independent of the thing representing it.
While I think we might find objective physical states, "1s and 0s" so to speak, that necessitate experiences (e.g. a drug which induces a brain state that makes the user perceive red, or elves in the case of DMT, or whatever else) I don't think that means experiences have an equivalence relation with those state, that experiences are not synonymous with underlying physical structures that give rise to them. -
2018-01-11 at 5:49 AM UTCits like not even real mannn
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2018-01-11 at 12:05 PM UTC
Originally posted by Lanny Well I hate to jump "sides" here in the middle but that doesn't quite ring true. Maybe experience can be encoded in some physical artifact like a brain or a computers disk but it seems like this physical representation isn't what we talk about when we talk about our experiences.
A "representative" model of physical experience storage, that is to say the idea that the physical encoding of experience as brain signals or bit sequences, or anything else, represents but is not the same as experience, seems justified by the idiosyncrasy of encoding. We know my experience of redness will generate a somewhat different fMRI record than yours. If you think it's possible for machines to experience redness (rather than simply capture it via video) the digital representation of that experience would be vastly different than the neuronal representation. And the fact that we talk about brain or bit structures "representing" experiences demonstrates that there's an experience independent of the thing representing it.
While I think we might find objective physical states, "1s and 0s" so to speak, that necessitate experiences (e.g. a drug which induces a brain state that makes the user perceive red, or elves in the case of DMT, or whatever else) I don't think that means experiences have an equivalence relation with those state, that experiences are not synonymous with underlying physical structures that give rise to them.
The physical 1s and 0s aren't what we talk about when we talk about a picture either. We are talking about their abstract interpretation into a picture. The same 1s and 0s interpreted a different way (say if you opened a JPG as a PNG) would make no sense, but with the right context, it becomes a picture. Those 1s and 0s aren't "objectively" a picture any meaningful way either, they just are in a particular relational context.
A materialist would argue that neither that nor your experience of colour exist outside of the purely physical realm: that these experiences can, in principle, still be described like any other physical phenomenon.
I'm not some kind of hardcore materialist but I see no rational justification for a belief in some kind of "substance of ideas" so to speak, specially when that concept proposes that we are special in some way: that we, being no different as a physically constructed race of beings, happen to have special access to some kind of conceptual world that, say, a rock or a computer does not. -
2018-01-11 at 12:15 PM UTCin·ter·pret·er
inˈtərprədər
noun
* a program that can analyze and execute a program line by line. -
2018-01-11 at 12:38 PM UTC
Originally posted by Captain Falcon There is no reason to believe that an experience has anything more special than an arrangement of 1s and 0s.
A person's experience could be described using ones and zeros but I don't agree that is the same as having that person's conscious experience. That seems beyond the scope of this topic though, the point of which is that colour is something happening in your head and not out there in the world. I won't disagree with you if you want to claim that "red" or "blue" is a specific arrangement of one's and zeros so long as those ones and zeros refer to activity in a person's brain and not something floating up in the sky. -
2018-01-11 at 12:43 PM UTC
Originally posted by Open Your Mind A person's experience could be described using ones and zeros but I don't agree that is the same as having that person's conscious experience. That seems beyond the scope of this topic though, the point of which is that colour is something happening in your head and not out there in the world. I won't disagree with you if you want to claim that "red" or "blue" is a specific arrangement of one's and zeros so long as those ones and zeros refer to activity in a person's brain and not something floating up in the sky.
Well of course. But that's a meaningless statement, nothing that happens inside your head is literally the thing that is happening outside of it, that's also the case for a computer experiencing the same thing through a sensor.
