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There are no noumena, only phenomena

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Comments

  • personperson Don't believe everything you think The liminal space Veteran

    @SpinyNorman said:

    @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.

    There may be just some semantic disagreement. But when I learn about things like how hard it is programming a computer to distinguish one object from another or how people with damage to certain parts of their brain can't perceive motion any more, I come to the conclusion that out there is just a big swirling mass of information that hits us like a blob and its only when our brains sort it out does the sense of motion or distinct shapes or colors occur. So if for whatever reason (language, brain damage) we aren't able to process the raw data, certain properties effectively don't exist.

  • DairyLamaDairyLama Veteran Veteran

    I was reflecting further on knowing the names of colours. What about the pitch of sounds from a musical instrument? Most people aren't trained in music theory and don't know the names of notes on the scale ( A-G ), but they can still tell the difference between different pitches, and still enjoy a tune.

  • personperson Don't believe everything you think The liminal space Veteran

    @SpinyNorman said:
    I was reflecting further on knowing the names of colours. What about the pitch of sounds from a musical instrument? Most people aren't trained in music theory and don't know the names of notes on the scale ( A-G ), but they can still tell the difference between different pitches, and still enjoy a tune.

    Yeah, I don't know that they've done a similar study with sounds yet. In one of the articles they said that even if somebody perceives a color differently they will still have the same emotional response (like the blue wavelengths are calming) because of the physical reaction to the wavelength so I wonder if someone who couldn't perceive a certain color would still have the emotional reaction.

  • personperson Don't believe everything you think The liminal space Veteran

    Apparently there is a whole field of research into this area.

    psy·cho·phys·ics
    ˌsīkōˈfiziks/Submit
    noun
    the branch of psychology that deals with the relationships between physical stimuli and mental phenomena.

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