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Originally Posted by Mr Mephisto
OK, there are a lot of interesting replies and I can't answer each and every one. However I think you all miss the point I was trying to make. Perhaps that's my fault for not being more clear.
Everyone agrees that we "see" colours. But that doesn't necessarily mean that they exist per se.
Colours, as we see them, are simply interpretations of particular wavelengths of light by our eyes and brains.
Let me put it another way. If life on Earth did not exist, and there arose another form of life that perceived the world through sound-waves (like bats), they would be ignormant of such characteristics; colour to them would not exist. In other words, the existence of light is dependent upon its observation (ie, its interpretation) by conscious beings.
What I'm getting at is the link between colours existence and observation. If noone can see in colour, does that mean it's still there? And, as we know for a fact, that certain people see the exact same wavelength differently, then we know it is not a fundamental characteristic. There are brain injuries that can cause complete colour blindness. That is, the victim can see only in black and white. If our brains had evolved as such, none of us would see colour. Would we still be having this argument?
I think the fact that different people see different colours for the exact same wavelength proves the issue that colour are not inherent, but interpretive. And therefore, as they are ways that our brains "see" the world, they do not exist outside our brain.
I guess my question is similar to Nagel's famous paper "What is it like to be a bat?" ( http://members.aol.com/NeoNoetics/Nagel_Bat.html).
Mr Mephisto |
Ah. I understand what you mean now.
To which I would respond, yes I agree that 'colours' don't exist outside the mind, when by colours you mean the 'qualia' of colours (i.e the actual "redness" of red and the "blueness" of blue).
I would agree with you on that. But I would go much much further and argue that these 'colours' don't exist
inside our mind either. To elaborate on this would take us far beyond this thread, and probably beyond this forum.
To me "the propery of red" is "the property that causes the reflection of light in the 610 - 659THertz range" and this is objective and exists outside our mind.
An alien species of intelligent "bat people" would be able to grasp
this concept and would certainly be able to discover it and determine which objects had this propery (which objects are red), however it is unlikely that they would have any reason to make up a specific
word for red. They would just refer to 'colours' using their wavelength. (They would also have no reason to cut-up the spectrum so very finely into 'red', 'blue', 'yellow' etc. "visible" light would be no different from the rest of the elctromagnetic spectrum, and
we only cut that up into very broad terms; gamma rays, x-rays, micro-waves, radio-waves, etc.)