Infinite qualia

[Moreno]

According to modern physics electromagnetic spectrum is infinite. There is no limit to energies photons can have and therefore no limit to frequencies EM waves can have. Does at mean that in theory humans can see an infinite number of completely different colors? And if yes, what kind of brain do we need to have to have ability to see an infinite numbers of colors? Especially, if we assume that people may hallucinate and imagine this colors without actually using their eyes?

[koti]

43 minutes ago, Moreno said:

According to modern physics electromagnetic spectrum is infinite. There is no limit to energies photons can have and therefore no limit to frequencies EM waves can have. Does at mean that in theory humans can see an infinite number of completely different colors? And if yes, what kind of brain do we need to have to have ability to see an infinite numbers of colors? Especially, if we assume that people may hallucinate and imagine this colors without actually using their eyes?

There is a limit of the amount of shades of a color you can distinguish between. It varies quite heavilly between individuals, circumstances and technologies but its certainly not true that you can divide the visible spectrum indefinitely and distinguish between the resulting colors. Though there is an infinite amount of colors located within the visible spectrum just like there is an infinite amount of numbers within the limit between the number 1 and number 2. It doesn’t matter if you’re seeing the colors in real life or you hallucinate, color perception happens in the brain anyway in any case. 

Edited March 11, 2019 by koti

[Moreno]

1 hour ago, koti said:

There is a limit of the amount of shades of a color you can distinguish between. It varies quite heavilly between individuals, circumstances and technologies but its certainly not true that you can divide the visible spectrum indefinitely and distinguish between the resulting colors. Though there is an infinite amount of colors located within the visible spectrum just like there is an infinite amount of numbers within the limit between the number 1 and number 2. It doesn’t matter if you’re seeing the colors in real life or you hallucinate, color perception happens in the brain anyway in any case. 

I'm talking not about shades of colors, but about true colors. Shades exist within some finite spectrum. But humans cannot see ultraviolet, x-rays, gamma rays, for example. If we do then it would add to some principally new colors we never seen before and therefore cannot even imagine. But since EM spectrum is infinite (possibly), then we can potentially perceive an infinite amount of true colors, not only shades between them.

[taeto]

4 minutes ago, Moreno said:

I'm talking not about shades of colors, but about true colors. Shades exist within some finite spectrum. But humans cannot see ultraviolet, x-rays, gamma rays, for example. If we do then it would add to some principally new colors we never seen before and therefore cannot even imagine. But since EM spectrum is infinite (possibly), then we can potentially perceive an infinite amount of true colors, not only shades between them.

There clearly is an infinite spectrum of wavelengths received by the receptory organs. Perception is a completely separate issue. For some organisms it is sufficient to distinguish between just "light" and "no light".  Such organisms "could potentially distinguish between an infinite amount of colors", except they don't, because they are not equipped with a sensory apparatus to do so.

[koti]

50 minutes ago, Moreno said:

I'm talking not about shades of colors, but about true colors. Shades exist within some finite spectrum. But humans cannot see ultraviolet, x-rays, gamma rays, for example. If we do then it would add to some principally new colors we never seen before and therefore cannot even imagine. But since EM spectrum is infinite (possibly), then we can potentially perceive an infinite amount of true colors, not only shades between them.

There is an infinite amount of colors within any given spectrum or its part regardless whether the spectrum is finite or not. Like taeto said, perception of colors is something that differs between species, individual conditioning and technologies.

[Eise]

First, despite the fact that it is all electromagnetic radiation, their effects can be radically different. Long radio waves can only move nearly-free electrons, e.g. the electrons in an antenna. From about the microwave domain, the waves can warm-up substances, so they can warm us up too. We probably feel it first on our skin, but then we cannot detect the exact direction from which the radiation comes, so we cannot make a 2 (or 3 dimensonal) picture of what radiates the microwaves. Infrared is invisible, but we definitely can feel it as warmth with our skin.

We can detect light waves with our eyes, but we have already no sensors for ultra-violet. Only after a sunburn we know we have been exposed to ultraviolet radiation. With higher energies, it becomes worse. Where light already can have chemical influence (so it can effect electron orbitals in molecules), this is stronger with ultraviolet, even stronger in X-Rays (risk of cancer!), and gamma radiation can even trigger nuclear reactions. This is all explained by the energy of the respective photons: long waves have very low energy, gamma waves very high.

So from there follows the first problem in your idea: we cannot have a single sense organ that could cover the complete radiation spectrum. The effects of the different frequencies are too different.

Now we come to the second point. You could speculate that if we would have such a variety of sensors, but all connected to the same brain area, would give an 'overall view'. I doubt that that would be possible. From the 'qualia-point-of-view', I would speculate that the input from different sense organs will also 'feel' differently, as different as hearing, smelling, seeing etc. In the end, I do not think that neurons in the auditory cortex and visual cortex are very different. However, how they are organised depends on what kind of input they get.

And even if we could see the whole spectrum, what suggest that these colours would be different than the colours we already see? Maybe we would 'see' long waves as red, and gamma rays as violet? Maybe, I've heard of people who have used LSD, and said they had seen colours that one normally never sees.