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@person said: I'm not an idealist, I'm just trying to clear up what @SpinyNorman means. I think its maybe an issue of semantics and definitions, when its said that no noumena exist I'm hearing that nothing exists "out there".
Phenomena are perceived by the senses, whereas noumena are inferred. So maybe it's the distinction between empirical and hypothetical?
@SpinyNorman said:
OK, a simple example. An "apple" is round, hard and coloured ( say ) red. But there is no essence of "apple" behind these properties, there are only the properties. So an "apple" does not have these properties, an "apple" is those properties.
This is the meaning of sunyata.
Gawd, as if it ain't 'ard enufff comin' up wiv ideas for all these bleedin' freads, I've got to spoon feed the bleeders too. If in darbt you can always look it up on bleedin' google! Gawd!
-Well, Plato's Theory of Forms holds that "appleness" would be a property of the Idea Apple. But as regards this question, I'll side with the phenomenologists.
I'm familiar with what phenomenology is, but not sure what position they may have around this topic. Do you think you could explain or at least point to the place I should look?
-A phenomenologist would argue against the idea of appleness. Subject "A" can perceive an apple, can remember that apple and then imagine that apple. Subject "B" can perceive, remember and imagine the exact same apple yet have a different perception, remembrance and mental image. This means appleness (read: "apple essence") does not exist independently...
1
federicaSeeker of the clear blue sky...Its better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to speak out and remove all doubtModerator
edited July 2016
I found this site because, I'll be honest, I wasn't entirely familiar with the premise of 'noumena'... I think I understand better, but then again, I might not. The article is a phenomenon. My understanding of it, and ability to explain it for dummies - is noumenal.
Or maybe I have absolutely no idea whatsoever, what I'm talking about.
2
personDon't believe everything you thinkThe liminal spaceVeteran
@person said: I'm not an idealist, I'm just trying to clear up what @SpinyNorman means. I think its maybe an issue of semantics and definitions, when its said that no noumena exist I'm hearing that nothing exists "out there".
Phenomena are perceived by the senses, whereas noumena are inferred. So maybe it's the distinction between empirical and hypothetical?
@SpinyNorman said:
OK, a simple example. An "apple" is round, hard and coloured ( say ) red. But there is no essence of "apple" behind these properties, there are only the properties. So an "apple" does not have these properties, an "apple" is those properties.
This is the meaning of sunyata.
Gawd, as if it ain't 'ard enufff comin' up wiv ideas for all these bleedin' freads, I've got to spoon feed the bleeders too. If in darbt you can always look it up on bleedin' google! Gawd!
-Well, Plato's Theory of Forms holds that "appleness" would be a property of the Idea Apple. But as regards this question, I'll side with the phenomenologists.
I'm familiar with what phenomenology is, but not sure what position they may have around this topic. Do you think you could explain or at least point to the place I should look?
-A phenomenologist would argue against the idea of appleness. Subject "A" can perceive an apple, can remember that apple and then imagine that apple. Subject "B" can perceive, remember and imagine the exact same apple yet have a different perception, remembrance and mental image. This means appleness (read: "apple essence") does not exist independently...
I'm on board with saying that objects are their properties and not that there is an essence that owns them.
It seems though that a property can't exist independent of the senses and a mind that perceives it. So in an objective scientific view we can say that light reflects off the apple except for the red spectrum. But the phenomena of redness doesn't occur "out there", it only occurs subjectively in a mind.
So what links one person's perception of redness to another person's perception of redness? It seems to me like any link is only inferred.
@person said:> It seems though that a property can't exist independent of the senses and a mind that perceives it. So in an objective scientific view we can say that light reflects off the apple except for the red spectrum. But the phenomena of redness doesn't occur "out there", it only occurs subjectively in a mind.
I'm not sure. Is there the perception of a phenomenon, or is the perception itself the phenomenon?
@person said:> It seems though that a property can't exist independent of the senses and a mind that perceives it. So in an objective scientific view we can say that light reflects off the apple except for the red spectrum. But the phenomena of redness doesn't occur "out there", it only occurs subjectively in a mind.
I'm not sure. Is there the perception of a phenomenon, or is the perception itself the phenomenon?
Is the phenomena redness or the light waves absorbed by an object in the "red" spectrum? Because I say they are different.
@federica said:
I found this site because, I'll be honest, I wasn't entirely familiar with the premise of 'noumena'... I think I understand better, but then again, I might not. The article is a phenomenon. My understanding of it, and ability to explain it for dummies - is noumenal.
Or maybe I have absolutely no idea whatsoever, what I'm talking about.
That site did explain it very well and put it into a scientific theoretical/experimental framework that helped clarify things.
@person said: Is the phenomena redness or the light waves absorbed by an object in the "red" spectrum? Because I say they are different.
Biologically we have the ability to distinguish between different visible light wavelengths. We then add a name to label a particular wavelength, in this case "red". So maybe the phenomenon here could be more accurately described as "visible light with a wavelength of 665 nm"?
@person said: I'm not an idealist, I'm just trying to clear up what @SpinyNorman means. I think its maybe an issue of semantics and definitions, when its said that no noumena exist I'm hearing that nothing exists "out there".
Phenomena are perceived by the senses, whereas noumena are inferred. So maybe it's the distinction between empirical and hypothetical?
@SpinyNorman said:
OK, a simple example. An "apple" is round, hard and coloured ( say ) red. But there is no essence of "apple" behind these properties, there are only the properties. So an "apple" does not have these properties, an "apple" is those properties.
This is the meaning of sunyata.
Gawd, as if it ain't 'ard enufff comin' up wiv ideas for all these bleedin' freads, I've got to spoon feed the bleeders too. If in darbt you can always look it up on bleedin' google! Gawd!
-Well, Plato's Theory of Forms holds that "appleness" would be a property of the Idea Apple. But as regards this question, I'll side with the phenomenologists.
I'm familiar with what phenomenology is, but not sure what position they may have around this topic. Do you think you could explain or at least point to the place I should look?
-A phenomenologist would argue against the idea of appleness. Subject "A" can perceive an apple, can remember that apple and then imagine that apple. Subject "B" can perceive, remember and imagine the exact same apple yet have a different perception, remembrance and mental image. This means appleness (read: "apple essence") does not exist independently...
I'm on board with saying that objects are their properties and not that there is an essence that owns them.
It seems though that a property can't exist independent of the senses and a mind that perceives it. So in an objective scientific view we can say that light reflects off the apple except for the red spectrum. But the phenomena of redness doesn't occur "out there", it only occurs subjectively in a mind.
**So what links one person's perception of redness to another person's perception of redness? **It seems to me like any link is only inferred.
-I would argue the output (read: communication; written/verbal/non verbal) of Technical Artifacts (read: consciousness) provides the linkage...
@person said:> It seems though that a property can't exist independent of the senses and a mind that perceives it. So in an objective scientific view we can say that light reflects off the apple except for the red spectrum. But the phenomena of redness doesn't occur "out there", it only occurs subjectively in a mind.
I'm not sure. Is there the perception of a phenomenon, or is the perception itself the phenomenon?
-It's both...
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DavidA human residing in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. Ancestral territory of the Erie, Haudenosaunee, Huron-Wendat, Mississauga and Neutral First NationsVeteran
I think the essential question here is can we ever know a thing (noumena) apart from our perceptions (phenomena) of it?
That's a tough road to travel if we want to get to the end of it because we end up at an extreme.
If it is an absolute that we cannot know anything aside from our perceptions (which seems fine and logical at first) that necessarily implies that we cannot trust our senses.
I don't think we can trust our senses on a deep level, I can trust them enough to stop or go at a stoplight but not enough to think that the light that is visible to me eyes is the sum total of the electromagnetic spectrum.
If we cannot trust our senses, we cannot trust that we cannot trust our senses. It seems to lead to more confusion instead of alieving it.
I'm not sure that follows, at least I don't understand how it does. Extreme skepticism does have a certain logical basis to it that philosophy hasn't completely resolved, from my understanding.
Well for one thing we have to remember that it is only perception that tells us we cannot trust our perceptions.
There is a Middle Way through all this stuff I think.
I'm reminded of an argument against total skepticism. If we say we can't know anything for certain, making that claim is an assertion of knowledge.
My point exactly.
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DavidA human residing in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. Ancestral territory of the Erie, Haudenosaunee, Huron-Wendat, Mississauga and Neutral First NationsVeteran
I think the essential question here is can we ever know a thing (noumena) apart from our perceptions (phenomena) of it?
That's a tough road to travel if we want to get to the end of it because we end up at an extreme.
If it is an absolute that we cannot know anything aside from our perceptions (which seems fine and logical at first) that necessarily implies that we cannot trust our senses.
I don't think we can trust our senses on a deep level, I can trust them enough to stop or go at a stoplight but not enough to think that the light that is visible to me eyes is the sum total of the electromagnetic spectrum.
If we cannot trust our senses, we cannot trust that we cannot trust our senses. It seems to lead to more confusion instead of alieving it.
I'm not sure that follows, at least I don't understand how it does. Extreme skepticism does have a certain logical basis to it that philosophy hasn't completely resolved, from my understanding.
Well for one thing we have to remember that it is only perception that tells us we cannot trust our perceptions.
There is a Middle Way through all this stuff I think.
I'm reminded of an argument against total skepticism. If we say we can't know anything for certain, making that claim is an assertion of knowledge.
My point exactly.
If I come across an extreme skeptic that's not my intent. Whenever I think about a belief or some assumed knowledge my tendency is to tear it down as completely as I can, then look for the true bits to build it back up. For me the point of being skeptical isn't to destroy the world but to find the truth amidst the noise.
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personDon't believe everything you thinkThe liminal spaceVeteran
@person said: I'm not an idealist, I'm just trying to clear up what @SpinyNorman means. I think its maybe an issue of semantics and definitions, when its said that no noumena exist I'm hearing that nothing exists "out there".
Phenomena are perceived by the senses, whereas noumena are inferred. So maybe it's the distinction between empirical and hypothetical?
@SpinyNorman said:
OK, a simple example. An "apple" is round, hard and coloured ( say ) red. But there is no essence of "apple" behind these properties, there are only the properties. So an "apple" does not have these properties, an "apple" is those properties.
This is the meaning of sunyata.
Gawd, as if it ain't 'ard enufff comin' up wiv ideas for all these bleedin' freads, I've got to spoon feed the bleeders too. If in darbt you can always look it up on bleedin' google! Gawd!
-Well, Plato's Theory of Forms holds that "appleness" would be a property of the Idea Apple. But as regards this question, I'll side with the phenomenologists.
I'm familiar with what phenomenology is, but not sure what position they may have around this topic. Do you think you could explain or at least point to the place I should look?
-A phenomenologist would argue against the idea of appleness. Subject "A" can perceive an apple, can remember that apple and then imagine that apple. Subject "B" can perceive, remember and imagine the exact same apple yet have a different perception, remembrance and mental image. This means appleness (read: "apple essence") does not exist independently...
I'm on board with saying that objects are their properties and not that there is an essence that owns them.
It seems though that a property can't exist independent of the senses and a mind that perceives it. So in an objective scientific view we can say that light reflects off the apple except for the red spectrum. But the phenomena of redness doesn't occur "out there", it only occurs subjectively in a mind.
**So what links one person's perception of redness to another person's perception of redness? **It seems to me like any link is only inferred.
-I would argue the output (read: communication; written/verbal/non verbal) of Technical Artifacts (read: consciousness) provides the linkage...
Is that it though? How can we tell if what I call an apple appears in your mind like something I would call an orange or a car?
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federicaSeeker of the clear blue sky...Its better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to speak out and remove all doubtModerator
I think that's a poor analogy, because you can compare descriptions...
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personDon't believe everything you thinkThe liminal spaceVeteran
edited July 2016
@federica said:
I think that's a poor analogy, because you can compare descriptions...
Good point, I wanted to keep it consistent with the thread and didn't think it through. The one I usually think of is of a specific color. Like we both call an apple red, but is the red I see different from the red you see? Does what you call red look like orange or green to me?
@person said:Like we both call an apple red, but is the red I see different from the red you see? Does what you call red look like orange or green to me?
Only if one of us is colour blind. Colour perception is actually pretty consistent, that's why colour coding is used so widely. Colour perception is also quite detailed, I think I might have mentioned previously I used to do stage-lighting and there are over 100 separate colours listed in the gel book ( the gels go in front of stage lights to project that particular colour ).
@person said:> Is that it though? How can we tell if what I call an apple appears in your mind like something I would call an orange or a car?
We agree the labels based on a common perception of properties and characteristics, often also on purpose. So a "car" is like a metal box with windows and wheels which we drive from one place to another.
We used to think the earth was flat. Flatness is a noumena. Finding out that the earth is actually round is a phenomena. The earth is round, but flatness still exists even though the earth is not. So in this analogy I think both noumena and phenomena exists.
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federicaSeeker of the clear blue sky...Its better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to speak out and remove all doubtModerator
edited July 2016
(Actually, that's a fallacy. The earth was never thought to be flat, by anyone....)
Your belief that people believed the Earth to be flat, is noumenal....
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personDon't believe everything you thinkThe liminal spaceVeteran
@person said:Like we both call an apple red, but is the red I see different from the red you see? Does what you call red look like orange or green to me?
Only if one of us is colour blind. Colour perception is actually pretty consistent, that's why colour coding is used so widely. Colour perception is also quite detailed, I think I might have mentioned previously I used to do stage-lighting and there are over 100 separate colours listed in the gel book ( the gels go in front of stage lights to project that particular colour ).
I don't think you're getting my point. My whole life apples could have looked purple to me but everyone around me calls them red so I call them red too, how would you ever know the difference? Two people could accurately give a description of the color of something but how would we know their subjective experience of that color is identical?
PS: My spell checker has your colour spelling as incorrect, does yours across the pond say color is a misspelling, and how could we ever know?
@federica said:
(Actually, that's a fallacy. The earth was never thought to be flat, by anyone....)
Your belief that people believed the Earth to be flat, is noumenal....
Its a bad example on my part, but hopefully the point is still valid. Noumena exists along with phenomena.
@person said:> I don't think you're getting my point. My whole life apples could have looked purple to me but everyone around me calls them red so I call them red too, how would you ever know the difference? Two people could accurately give a description of the color of something but how would we know their subjective experience of that color is identical?
@person said:> I don't think you're getting my point. My whole life apples could have looked purple to me but everyone around me calls them red so I call them red too, how would you ever know the difference? Two people could accurately give a description of the color of something but how would we know their subjective experience of that color is identical?
Have you ever done a colour blindness test? I had to do one when I trained as an electrician, for obvious reasons.
PS "colour" is the bleedin' Queens English.
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personDon't believe everything you thinkThe liminal spaceVeteran
@person said:> I don't think you're getting my point. My whole life apples could have looked purple to me but everyone around me calls them red so I call them red too, how would you ever know the difference? Two people could accurately give a description of the color of something but how would we know their subjective experience of that color is identical?
Have you ever done a colour blindness test? I had to do one when I trained as an electrician, for obvious reasons.
PS "colour" is the bleedin' Queens English.
I'm not talking about color blindness. Say there are two identical twins, with advanced technology we have mapped out all their visual sense organs and brain regions down to the cell. They both report seeing the same color when looking at the same apple. Is the color that appears to them in their mind identical or have they only learned to label the color they perceive the same way?
@person said: I'm not an idealist, I'm just trying to clear up what @SpinyNorman means. I think its maybe an issue of semantics and definitions, when its said that no noumena exist I'm hearing that nothing exists "out there".
Phenomena are perceived by the senses, whereas noumena are inferred. So maybe it's the distinction between empirical and hypothetical?
@SpinyNorman said:
OK, a simple example. An "apple" is round, hard and coloured ( say ) red. But there is no essence of "apple" behind these properties, there are only the properties. So an "apple" does not have these properties, an "apple" is those properties.
This is the meaning of sunyata.
Gawd, as if it ain't 'ard enufff comin' up wiv ideas for all these bleedin' freads, I've got to spoon feed the bleeders too. If in darbt you can always look it up on bleedin' google! Gawd!
-Well, Plato's Theory of Forms holds that "appleness" would be a property of the Idea Apple. But as regards this question, I'll side with the phenomenologists.
I'm familiar with what phenomenology is, but not sure what position they may have around this topic. Do you think you could explain or at least point to the place I should look?
-A phenomenologist would argue against the idea of appleness. Subject "A" can perceive an apple, can remember that apple and then imagine that apple. Subject "B" can perceive, remember and imagine the exact same apple yet have a different perception, remembrance and mental image. This means appleness (read: "apple essence") does not exist independently...
I'm on board with saying that objects are their properties and not that there is an essence that owns them.
It seems though that a property can't exist independent of the senses and a mind that perceives it. So in an objective scientific view we can say that light reflects off the apple except for the red spectrum. But the phenomena of redness doesn't occur "out there", it only occurs subjectively in a mind.
**So what links one person's perception of redness to another person's perception of redness? **It seems to me like any link is only inferred.
-I would argue the output (read: communication; written/verbal/non verbal) of Technical Artifacts (read: consciousness) provides the linkage...
Is that it though? How can we tell if what I call an apple appears in your mind like something I would call an orange or a car?
-When we communicate with language we adopt and then utilize linguistic conventions. It works in much the same way that a sport game is played. When folks want to play soccer they don't show up with table tennis paddles...
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personDon't believe everything you thinkThe liminal spaceVeteran
@person said: I'm not an idealist, I'm just trying to clear up what @SpinyNorman means. I think its maybe an issue of semantics and definitions, when its said that no noumena exist I'm hearing that nothing exists "out there".
Phenomena are perceived by the senses, whereas noumena are inferred. So maybe it's the distinction between empirical and hypothetical?
@SpinyNorman said:
OK, a simple example. An "apple" is round, hard and coloured ( say ) red. But there is no essence of "apple" behind these properties, there are only the properties. So an "apple" does not have these properties, an "apple" is those properties.
This is the meaning of sunyata.
Gawd, as if it ain't 'ard enufff comin' up wiv ideas for all these bleedin' freads, I've got to spoon feed the bleeders too. If in darbt you can always look it up on bleedin' google! Gawd!
-Well, Plato's Theory of Forms holds that "appleness" would be a property of the Idea Apple. But as regards this question, I'll side with the phenomenologists.
I'm familiar with what phenomenology is, but not sure what position they may have around this topic. Do you think you could explain or at least point to the place I should look?
-A phenomenologist would argue against the idea of appleness. Subject "A" can perceive an apple, can remember that apple and then imagine that apple. Subject "B" can perceive, remember and imagine the exact same apple yet have a different perception, remembrance and mental image. This means appleness (read: "apple essence") does not exist independently...
I'm on board with saying that objects are their properties and not that there is an essence that owns them.
It seems though that a property can't exist independent of the senses and a mind that perceives it. So in an objective scientific view we can say that light reflects off the apple except for the red spectrum. But the phenomena of redness doesn't occur "out there", it only occurs subjectively in a mind.
**So what links one person's perception of redness to another person's perception of redness? **It seems to me like any link is only inferred.
-I would argue the output (read: communication; written/verbal/non verbal) of Technical Artifacts (read: consciousness) provides the linkage...
Is that it though? How can we tell if what I call an apple appears in your mind like something I would call an orange or a car?
-When we communicate with language we adopt and then utilize linguistic conventions. It works in much the same way that a sport game is played. When folks want to play soccer they don't show up with table tennis paddles...
Admittedly that wasn't a very good example. Use the simpler example of color perception I used later.
My whole life apples could have looked purple to me but everyone around me calls them red so I call them red too, how would you ever know the difference? Two people could accurately give a description of the color of something but how would we know their subjective experience of that color is identical?
and
I'm not talking about color blindness. Say there are two identical twins, with advanced technology we have mapped out all their visual sense organs and brain regions down to the cell. They both report seeing the same color when looking at the same apple. Is the color that appears to them in their mind identical or have they only learned to label the color they perceive the same way?
Okay. The reason we are able to effectively communicate the concept of redness is that we have linguistically agreed to a color spectrum. When we think "red," our brains model "red." I would argue though, that my "red" is my personal "red." It is separate and distinct from your "red." But, our "reds" are close enough so that we both know that "red" means stop if it's associated with a traffic sign or light...
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personDon't believe everything you thinkThe liminal spaceVeteran
edited July 2016
@Will_Baker said:
Okay. The reason we are able to effectively communicate the concept of redness is that we have linguistically agreed to a color spectrum. When we think "red," our brains model "red." I would argue though, that my "red" is my personal "red." It is separate and distinct from your "red." But, our "reds" are close enough so that we both know that "red" means stop if it's associated with a traffic sign or light...
Are they? How do we know that? If my "red" looked green and my "green" looked red all my life wouldn't I be able to function just the same as someone who saw things otherwise?
I push this argument because there is a philosophical camp that uses the empirical problem of phenomenology and qualia against the metaphysical assumption of physicalism. Of course there are arguments on both sides but I find the idea that we seemingly can't measure an individual's subjective, phenomenological experience of the world by observing the physical correlates compelling.
^^^ Yes, when we're young, we're told 'this apple is red'. So, we go through life with that idea of 'red'. But we can't rely be sure that we're all seeing the same colour.
@Will_Baker said:
Okay. The reason we are able to effectively communicate the concept of redness is that we have linguistically agreed to a color spectrum. When we think "red," our brains model "red." I would argue though, that my "red" is my personal "red." It is separate and distinct from your "red." But, our "reds" are close enough so that we both know that "red" means stop if it's associated with a traffic sign or light...
Are they? How do we know that? If my "red" looked green and my "green" looked red all my life wouldn't I be able to function just the same as someone who saw things otherwise?
I push this argument because there is a philosophical camp that uses the empirical problem of phenomenology and qualia against the metaphysical assumption of physicalism. Of course there are arguments on both sides but I find the idea that we seemingly can't measure an individual's subjective, phenomenological experience of the world by observing the physical correlates compelling.
-In the example I gave, from a practical perspective, our "reds" are close enough for most people to understand that the concepts/conventions of red means stop and green means go. The evidence of efficacy is that traffic generally flows, most folks adopt and follow the convention. I understand your points though and will readily stipulate that what we perceive to be reality is actually an illusion...
@person said:> Are they? How do we know that? If my "red" looked green and my "green" looked red all my life wouldn't I be able to function just the same as someone who saw things otherwise?
That would mean you using the label "red" for the colour that most people label "green", and vice versa.
I think you would soon be corrected about labelling colours wrong, particularly if you applied for a job in bomb disposal.
@Walker said: ^^^ Yes, when we're young, we're told 'this apple is red'. So, we go through life with that idea of 'red'. But we can't rely be sure that we're all seeing the same colour.
But we can. There are tests for this. "Red" is just a label we give to a particular wavelength of visible light. The label doesn't define the wavelength.
The only people who don't see the same colour have a sight problem like colour blindness. If colour perception was unreliable, colour coding wouldn't be used for important safety systems like traffic lights and cable colours in electric wiring.
@namarupa said:> We used to think the earth was flat. Flatness is a noumena. Finding out that the earth is actually round is a phenomena. The earth is round, but flatness still exists even though the earth is not. So in this analogy I think both noumena and phenomena exists.
No, roundness and flatness are both phenomena here, characteristics observed from different perspectives. From the perspective of space it's obvious the earth is round, from the perspective of ground level it's not so obvious ( unless you are looking out to see and watch ships going hull down at the horizon ).
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personDon't believe everything you thinkThe liminal spaceVeteran
@person said:> Are they? How do we know that? If my "red" looked green and my "green" looked red all my life wouldn't I be able to function just the same as someone who saw things otherwise?
That would mean you using the label "red" for the colour that most people label "green", and vice versa.
I think you would soon be corrected about labelling colours wrong, particularly if you applied for a job in bomb disposal.
For the purposes of this discussion lets use quotations ("red") for an individuals mental experience of a color and no quotations (red) for the agreed upon conventional label we assign to things.
If my whole life I saw stop signs, firetrucks and red wires as "green" but everyone used the term red to describe them then I would call "green", red. I would successfully stop at red lights that look "green" to me and I could cut the red wire to diffuse the bomb even though it looked "green" to me.
This tangent is occurring because to me its about what a phenomena is and where it occurs. Does "red" occur out there or in here? And then is "red" the phenomena or is light occurring at a wavelength between 620–750 nm the phenomena?
I would actually go deeper though and say that the eyes and brain are also out there since we can physically observe them and in here is only our personal mental experience of the world.
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personDon't believe everything you thinkThe liminal spaceVeteran
Investigating a little later I came across a scientific study that was able to actually claim we probably don't all see colors the same
In music there is such a thing as having "perfect pitch", but I've never heard of "perfect colour perception" even though I have worked with colour-calibrated computer monitors. You'd think the information is out there somewhere...
@person said:> For the purposes of this discussion lets use quotations ("red") for an individuals mental experience of a color and no quotations (red) for the agreed upon conventional label we assign to things. This tangent is occurring because to me its about what a phenomena is and where it occurs. Does "red" occur out there or in here? And then is "red" the phenomena or is light occurring at a wavelength between 620–750 nm the phenomena?
I would say the phenomenon in this case is visible light with a particular wavelength. This is the empirical "input" which our eye and brain process, and differentiate as a particular colour.
Then there is the process of perception where we assign a label ( name ) to that colour. I'm struggling with your distinction between "red" and red here, because our mental experience of an object is so intimately related to the assigned label.
The distinction between "in here" and "out there" is tricky. Is the boundary at the sense organs themselves, or further down the line, after processing by the brain?
@Kerome said: In music there is such a thing as having "perfect pitch", but I've never heard of "perfect colour perception" even though I have worked with colour-calibrated computer monitors. You'd think the information is out there somewhere...
The tricky thing with colour perception is the variation in how people name and differentiate colours, and most people aren't trained as artists or stage lighting technicians or whatever, in other words they don't look closely enough. With experience you can detect very small differences in colour, in the same way that a trained musician can tell when an instrument is very slightly out of tune.
The stage lighting colour gels I mentioned earlier come with numbers as well as names, so you can give colours numbers, in a very similar way to how musical notes are given letters.
With stage lighting there are over 100 numbered colours, but it's really just a more sophisticated version of the old painting by numbers.
@person said:> For the purposes of this discussion lets use quotations ("red") for an individuals mental experience of a color and no quotations (red) for the agreed upon conventional label we assign to things. This tangent is occurring because to me its about what a phenomena is and where it occurs. Does "red" occur out there or in here? And then is "red" the phenomena or is light occurring at a wavelength between 620–750 nm the phenomena?
I would say the phenomenon in this case is visible light with a particular wavelength. This is the empirical "input" which our eye and brain process, and differentiate as a particular colour.
Then there is the process of perception where we assign a label ( name ) to that colour. I'm struggling with your distinction between "red" and red here, because our mental experience of an object is so intimately related to the assigned label.
"red" is what a stop sign or a fire truck looks like to an individual and red is the label we as a whole put on the color to describe it. Just because we all use the same term red as a descriptor doesn't mean we all experience the color of an apple the same.
The distinction between "in here" and "out there" is tricky. Is the boundary at the sense organs themselves, or further down the line, after processing by the brain?
For me the dividing line is out there is anything another person can also sense, so light, fMRI brain states, apples, etc. In here is what the experience of eating an apple is like to you.
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personDon't believe everything you thinkThe liminal spaceVeteran
Some interesting additional facts on color perception:
From the article: "Egyptians, who were the only culture that could produce blue dyes, were the first ancient civilisation to have a word for the colour blue. Once this product spread, other civilisations picked up on the colour, which doesn't readily appear in nature."
Blue "doesn't readily appear in nature"? Really? What about the sea and the sky? And no blue flowers?
What this to suggests to me is that the ancients only named colours they could manufacture, which is quite different to saying they couldn't see the full colour spectrum.
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personDon't believe everything you thinkThe liminal spaceVeteran
From the article: "Egyptians, who were the only culture that could produce blue dyes, were the first ancient civilisation to have a word for the colour blue. Once this product spread, other civilisations picked up on the colour, which doesn't readily appear in nature."
Blue "doesn't readily appear in nature"? Really? What about the sea and the sky? And no blue flowers?
What this to suggests to me is that the ancients only named colours they could manufacture, which is quite different to saying they couldn't see the full colour spectrum.
Well, there is the current example of the tribe that doesn't have a word for blue and can't pick out the blue square from the green ones. Or that Russians, who have different words for shades of dark blue can pick up on different shades of dark blue more easily.
@person said:Well, there is the current example of the tribe that doesn't have a word for blue and can't pick out the blue square from the green ones. Or that Russians, who have different words for shades of dark blue can pick up on different shades of dark blue more easily.
So what's the explanation for this? We only recognise stuff we have a name for?
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personDon't believe everything you thinkThe liminal spaceVeteran
@person said:Well, there is the current example of the tribe that doesn't have a word for blue and can't pick out the blue square from the green ones. Or that Russians, who have different words for shades of dark blue can pick up on different shades of dark blue more easily.
So what's the explanation for this? We only recognise stuff we have a name for?
I don't know if the mechanism is known or explained in what I've read so far. My take away is that phenomena like color, shape, motion, etc. have a physical basis out there but actually only occur in here
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JeroenLuminous beings are we, not this crude matterNetherlandsVeteran
@person said:Well, there is the current example of the tribe that doesn't have a word for blue and can't pick out the blue square from the green ones. Or that Russians, who have different words for shades of dark blue can pick up on different shades of dark blue more easily.
So what's the explanation for this? We only recognise stuff we have a name for?
I would imagine there is an aspect of training to it. That at a certain point when Russians are learning the words they are seeing example colours, and train their brains to pick them out as they are associated with words.
I know that interior designers who are familiar with the Pantone colour system are capable of picking out and naming all kinds of subtle hues, while we ordinary meditators just say "ooh that's pretty" while we probably see the same thing. But seeing a natural gradation and picking out two slightly different hues are not the same activity.
@person said:> I don't know if the mechanism is known or explained in what I've read so far. My take away is that phenomena like color, shape, motion, etc. have a physical basis out there but actually only occur in here
One definition I've seen for phenomenon is "The object of a person’s perception", and with that definition the phenomenon would be "out there" and the perception "in here".
It's interesting that in the suttas perception ( sanna ) is defined as the recognition of particular colours.
@Kerome said: I would imagine there is an aspect of training to it. That at a certain point when Russians are learning the words they are seeing example colours, and train their brains to pick them out as they are associated with words.
That would make sense, because as children we are taught the names for particular colours. On the other hand with the numbering system for stage lighting colour gels that I mentioned earlier, people may not know the names for colours #1 and #2 ( whatever ) but they will recognise the difference when you point it out to them.
Comments
Phenomena are perceived by the senses, whereas noumena are inferred. So maybe it's the distinction between empirical and hypothetical?
-A phenomenologist would argue against the idea of appleness. Subject "A" can perceive an apple, can remember that apple and then imagine that apple. Subject "B" can perceive, remember and imagine the exact same apple yet have a different perception, remembrance and mental image. This means appleness (read: "apple essence") does not exist independently...
I found this site because, I'll be honest, I wasn't entirely familiar with the premise of 'noumena'... I think I understand better, but then again, I might not. The article is a phenomenon. My understanding of it, and ability to explain it for dummies - is noumenal.
Or maybe I have absolutely no idea whatsoever, what I'm talking about.
I'm on board with saying that objects are their properties and not that there is an essence that owns them.
It seems though that a property can't exist independent of the senses and a mind that perceives it. So in an objective scientific view we can say that light reflects off the apple except for the red spectrum. But the phenomena of redness doesn't occur "out there", it only occurs subjectively in a mind.
So what links one person's perception of redness to another person's perception of redness? It seems to me like any link is only inferred.
I'm not sure. Is there the perception of a phenomenon, or is the perception itself the phenomenon?
That would make Buddha Nature much the same as Atman/Brahman, and Buddhism into a school of Hinduism.
Is the phenomena redness or the light waves absorbed by an object in the "red" spectrum? Because I say they are different.
That site did explain it very well and put it into a scientific theoretical/experimental framework that helped clarify things.
Biologically we have the ability to distinguish between different visible light wavelengths. We then add a name to label a particular wavelength, in this case "red". So maybe the phenomenon here could be more accurately described as "visible light with a wavelength of 665 nm"?
-I would argue the output (read: communication; written/verbal/non verbal) of Technical Artifacts (read: consciousness) provides the linkage...
-It's both...
My point exactly.
Except that it would be becoming increasingly more aware and wasn't always aware of itself.
If there is Brahman, first there was Buddha-Nature.
Just thinking
If I come across an extreme skeptic that's not my intent. Whenever I think about a belief or some assumed knowledge my tendency is to tear it down as completely as I can, then look for the true bits to build it back up. For me the point of being skeptical isn't to destroy the world but to find the truth amidst the noise.
Is that it though? How can we tell if what I call an apple appears in your mind like something I would call an orange or a car?
I think that's a poor analogy, because you can compare descriptions...
Good point, I wanted to keep it consistent with the thread and didn't think it through. The one I usually think of is of a specific color. Like we both call an apple red, but is the red I see different from the red you see? Does what you call red look like orange or green to me?
Only if one of us is colour blind. Colour perception is actually pretty consistent, that's why colour coding is used so widely. Colour perception is also quite detailed, I think I might have mentioned previously I used to do stage-lighting and there are over 100 separate colours listed in the gel book ( the gels go in front of stage lights to project that particular colour ).
We agree the labels based on a common perception of properties and characteristics, often also on purpose. So a "car" is like a metal box with windows and wheels which we drive from one place to another.
We used to think the earth was flat. Flatness is a noumena. Finding out that the earth is actually round is a phenomena. The earth is round, but flatness still exists even though the earth is not. So in this analogy I think both noumena and phenomena exists.
(Actually, that's a fallacy. The earth was never thought to be flat, by anyone....)
Your belief that people believed the Earth to be flat, is noumenal....
I don't think you're getting my point. My whole life apples could have looked purple to me but everyone around me calls them red so I call them red too, how would you ever know the difference? Two people could accurately give a description of the color of something but how would we know their subjective experience of that color is identical?
PS: My spell checker has your colour spelling as incorrect, does yours across the pond say color is a misspelling, and how could we ever know?
Its a bad example on my part, but hopefully the point is still valid. Noumena exists along with phenomena.
Have you ever done a colour blindness test?
Have you ever done a colour blindness test? I had to do one when I trained as an electrician, for obvious reasons.
PS "colour" is the bleedin' Queens English.
I'm not talking about color blindness. Say there are two identical twins, with advanced technology we have mapped out all their visual sense organs and brain regions down to the cell. They both report seeing the same color when looking at the same apple. Is the color that appears to them in their mind identical or have they only learned to label the color they perceive the same way?
-When we communicate with language we adopt and then utilize linguistic conventions. It works in much the same way that a sport game is played. When folks want to play soccer they don't show up with table tennis paddles...
Admittedly that wasn't a very good example. Use the simpler example of color perception I used later.
Okay. The reason we are able to effectively communicate the concept of redness is that we have linguistically agreed to a color spectrum. When we think "red," our brains model "red." I would argue though, that my "red" is my personal "red." It is separate and distinct from your "red." But, our "reds" are close enough so that we both know that "red" means stop if it's associated with a traffic sign or light...
Are they? How do we know that? If my "red" looked green and my "green" looked red all my life wouldn't I be able to function just the same as someone who saw things otherwise?
I push this argument because there is a philosophical camp that uses the empirical problem of phenomenology and qualia against the metaphysical assumption of physicalism. Of course there are arguments on both sides but I find the idea that we seemingly can't measure an individual's subjective, phenomenological experience of the world by observing the physical correlates compelling.
^^^ Yes, when we're young, we're told 'this apple is red'. So, we go through life with that idea of 'red'. But we can't rely be sure that we're all seeing the same colour.
-In the example I gave, from a practical perspective, our "reds" are close enough for most people to understand that the concepts/conventions of red means stop and green means go. The evidence of efficacy is that traffic generally flows, most folks adopt and follow the convention. I understand your points though and will readily stipulate that what we perceive to be reality is actually an illusion...
That would mean you using the label "red" for the colour that most people label "green", and vice versa.
I think you would soon be corrected about labelling colours wrong, particularly if you applied for a job in bomb disposal.
But we can. There are tests for this. "Red" is just a label we give to a particular wavelength of visible light. The label doesn't define the wavelength.
The only people who don't see the same colour have a sight problem like colour blindness. If colour perception was unreliable, colour coding wouldn't be used for important safety systems like traffic lights and cable colours in electric wiring.
No, roundness and flatness are both phenomena here, characteristics observed from different perspectives. From the perspective of space it's obvious the earth is round, from the perspective of ground level it's not so obvious ( unless you are looking out to see and watch ships going hull down at the horizon ).
For the purposes of this discussion lets use quotations ("red") for an individuals mental experience of a color and no quotations (red) for the agreed upon conventional label we assign to things.
If my whole life I saw stop signs, firetrucks and red wires as "green" but everyone used the term red to describe them then I would call "green", red. I would successfully stop at red lights that look "green" to me and I could cut the red wire to diffuse the bomb even though it looked "green" to me.
This tangent is occurring because to me its about what a phenomena is and where it occurs. Does "red" occur out there or in here? And then is "red" the phenomena or is light occurring at a wavelength between 620–750 nm the phenomena?
Try this article
https://newrepublic.com/article/121843/philosophy-color-perception
I would actually go deeper though and say that the eyes and brain are also out there since we can physically observe them and in here is only our personal mental experience of the world.
Investigating a little later I came across a scientific study that was able to actually claim we probably don't all see colors the same
http://www.livescience.com/21275-color-red-blue-scientists.html
In music there is such a thing as having "perfect pitch", but I've never heard of "perfect colour perception" even though I have worked with colour-calibrated computer monitors. You'd think the information is out there somewhere...
I would say the phenomenon in this case is visible light with a particular wavelength. This is the empirical "input" which our eye and brain process, and differentiate as a particular colour.
Then there is the process of perception where we assign a label ( name ) to that colour. I'm struggling with your distinction between "red" and red here, because our mental experience of an object is so intimately related to the assigned label.
The distinction between "in here" and "out there" is tricky. Is the boundary at the sense organs themselves, or further down the line, after processing by the brain?
http://colorvisiontesting.com/online test.htm
The tricky thing with colour perception is the variation in how people name and differentiate colours, and most people aren't trained as artists or stage lighting technicians or whatever, in other words they don't look closely enough. With experience you can detect very small differences in colour, in the same way that a trained musician can tell when an instrument is very slightly out of tune.
The stage lighting colour gels I mentioned earlier come with numbers as well as names, so you can give colours numbers, in a very similar way to how musical notes are given letters.
With stage lighting there are over 100 numbered colours, but it's really just a more sophisticated version of the old painting by numbers.
I'm still OK!
"red" is what a stop sign or a fire truck looks like to an individual and red is the label we as a whole put on the color to describe it. Just because we all use the same term red as a descriptor doesn't mean we all experience the color of an apple the same.
The live science article explains it well.
For me the dividing line is out there is anything another person can also sense, so light, fMRI brain states, apples, etc. In here is what the experience of eating an apple is like to you.
Some interesting additional facts on color perception:
Some small percentage of women have a 4th type of color receptor cone that lets them distinguish millions of colors invisible to the rest of us
There's a tribe in Africa that doesn't have a word for blue but several words for green, the members couldn't pick out a blue square from a bunch of green squares but could easily pick out a very slightly differently shaded green square that most of us can't distinguish.
From the article:
"Egyptians, who were the only culture that could produce blue dyes, were the first ancient civilisation to have a word for the colour blue. Once this product spread, other civilisations picked up on the colour, which doesn't readily appear in nature."
Blue "doesn't readily appear in nature"? Really? What about the sea and the sky? And no blue flowers?
What this to suggests to me is that the ancients only named colours they could manufacture, which is quite different to saying they couldn't see the full colour spectrum.
Well, there is the current example of the tribe that doesn't have a word for blue and can't pick out the blue square from the green ones. Or that Russians, who have different words for shades of dark blue can pick up on different shades of dark blue more easily.
So what's the explanation for this? We only recognise stuff we have a name for?
I don't know if the mechanism is known or explained in what I've read so far. My take away is that phenomena like color, shape, motion, etc. have a physical basis out there but actually only occur in here
I would imagine there is an aspect of training to it. That at a certain point when Russians are learning the words they are seeing example colours, and train their brains to pick them out as they are associated with words.
I know that interior designers who are familiar with the Pantone colour system are capable of picking out and naming all kinds of subtle hues, while we ordinary meditators just say "ooh that's pretty" while we probably see the same thing. But seeing a natural gradation and picking out two slightly different hues are not the same activity.
One definition I've seen for phenomenon is "The object of a person’s perception", and with that definition the phenomenon would be "out there" and the perception "in here".
It's interesting that in the suttas perception ( sanna ) is defined as the recognition of particular colours.
That would make sense, because as children we are taught the names for particular colours. On the other hand with the numbering system for stage lighting colour gels that I mentioned earlier, people may not know the names for colours #1 and #2 ( whatever ) but they will recognise the difference when you point it out to them.