"What it is like to see the color red"

[Genady]

This sentence (see the title) has appeared several times recently in this forum. Could somebody please explain to me what it means? I honestly don't understand.

[exchemist]

6 minutes ago, Genady said:

This sentence (see the title) has appeared several times recently in this forum. Could somebody please explain to me what it means? I honestly don't understand.

I think it's the sort of question that people who believe in the "hard problem of consciousness" sometimes ask.

It seems to me that if one takes the word "like" literally, the colour red is sui generis - it is what what it is - i.e. it is not "like" anything else -  except for another similar colour, perhaps. But I think the question is actually intended to invite an answer to the (to my mind unanswerable) question of how to describe the sensation of experiencing the colour red.  Another similar, well-known one is Nagel's: "What is it like to be a bat?" I assume they mean a flying one rather than a cricket bat*, but perhaps it doesn't matter.

Massimo Pigliucci has little time for the "hard problem". He doesn't think it is a problem at all, but arises from a category error: https://philosophynow.org/issues/99/What_Hard_Problem

I'm inclined to agree. 

 

 

*Reminds me of a scene in one of those 1950s schoolboy books, "How to be Topp" etc, in which a boy is not paying attention in biology class, when hibernation is being discussed:-

Teacher: Molesworth! What are you doing?

Molesworth: Me sir? Nothing, Sir.

Teacher: Molesworth, what does a bat do in winter?

Molesworth: Er, er.......er, it splits if you don't oil it, Sir.

[TheVat]

The whole "what's it like" discussion in philosophy of mind addresses what's called the Knowledge Argument, against physicalism.  

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knowledge_argument

This summarizes the argument and the famous thought experiment called Mary's Room, developed by Frank Jackson.

Dennett, predictably , argues that there's no need for qualia.

 

[Genady]

22 minutes ago, exchemist said:

it is what what it is

Yes, the complete answer to me is this:

[mistermack]

I don't think there's any mystery.  We experience colours in the mind, so to a person who's been blind since birth, there are no words to convey what that mind sensation is like. To a sighted person who can see a few colours, you could say that it's "like" green, but different. What's it like to see ultra-violet ? It's like violet, but different. Or to a person blind from birth, it's just like all of the colours.

Basically, seeing isn't 'like' anything else, so you can't say what it's like. 

What you can do though, is observe how people react to colours, and tentatively infer from that that most of us "see" red in the same way inside our heads. 

[Genady]

2 minutes ago, mistermack said:

I don't think there's any mystery.  We experience colours in the mind, so to a person who's been blind since birth, there are no words to convey what that mind sensation is like. To a sighted person who can see a few colours, you could say that it's "like" green, but different. What's it like to see ultra-violet ? It's like violet, but different. Or to a person blind from birth, it's just like all of the colours.

Basically, seeing isn't 'like' anything else, so you can't say what it's like. 

What you can do though, is observe how people react to colours, and tentatively infer from that that most of us "see" red in the same way inside our heads. 

My null hypothesis is that if we can examine how our neurons react to the same color, we find that their reactions are generally somewhat similar but not the same in details in different heads.

Moreover, they are not the same in the same head at different times and conditions.

[StringJunky]

1 hour ago, Genady said:

My null hypothesis is that if we can examine how our neurons react to the same color, we find that their reactions are generally somewhat similar but not the same in details in different heads.

Moreover, they are not the same in the same head at different times and conditions.

It depends on the prior experience of the observer how they see the colour red and what it means to them.

[Genady]

2 hours ago, TheVat said:

The whole "what's it like" discussion in philosophy of mind addresses what's called the Knowledge Argument, against physicalism.  

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knowledge_argument

This summarizes the argument and the famous thought experiment called Mary's Room, developed by Frank Jackson.

Dennett, predictably , argues that there's no need for qualia.

 

I see arguments regarding interpretations of that mental experiment. Somehow, I don't see what the question is.

[Genady]

1 hour ago, StringJunky said:

It depends on the prior experience of the observer how they see the colour red and what it means to them.

This is perhaps why red is my wife's "favorite color", while I don't even know how a color can be "favorite."

[CharonY]

3 hours ago, Genady said:

My null hypothesis is that if we can examine how our neurons react to the same color, we find that their reactions are generally somewhat similar but not the same in details in different heads.

Even on the sensory levels there are differences. Depending on how many and what types of each chromophore you have in your retina (at the areas where the  light is reflected from the object) you will have various levels of excitation. Roughly speaking you will see similar reactions (such as signal going up through the visual nerves to the visual cortex), but it does not really how it is perceived. 

[StringJunky]

9 minutes ago, Genady said:

This is perhaps why red is my wife's "favorite color", while I don't even know how a color can be "favorite."

There is probably an emotional element sometimes, 'colouring' thoughts, funnily enough. I think, the things one sees is limited by what you know, or the ability to see increasing nuances comes with increasing experience. I don't think our visual system is anything like the passive recording with a camera. 

[iNow]

7 hours ago, Genady said:

What it is like to see the color red

It’s just like seeing the color blue, but louder and bloodier. 
 

6 hours ago, Genady said:

My null hypothesis is that if we can examine how our neurons react to the same color, we find that their reactions are generally somewhat similar but not the same in details in different heads.

Moreover, they are not the same in the same head at different times and conditions.

You’re too far around the curve already by starting with neurons. It begins even before that. 

You may already be aware since I’m oversimplifying, but there are two distinct types of photoreceptors in our eyes: Rods (which pick up on shifts btw light and dark and tend to be concentrated on the periphery of the eye), and Cones (which are responsible for our color vision and tend to be concentrated centrally where we focus acutely on objects). 

Within the field of cone shaped photoreceptors are essentially three subtypes: One for seeing Blue, another for seeing Green, and… most importantly here… a final type for seeing Red. 

When light comes into our eyes, these receptors fire at different rates and intensities depending on the characteristics of that light. They’re tuned for certain frequency ranges and when light in that range arrives, they begin the chemical electric cascade.

That’s when our nervous system finally engages by doing a type of bio Fourier analysis on the receptor firing patterns. The action potentials themselves become the signal to be decoded. Those signals get sent to the occipital cortex of our brains for further processing (in parallel with other emotional and memory and control centers in other regions).

While the incoming light can be measured with precision for wavelength, amplitude, frequency etc. at that spot, any detection device after that point will begin to introduce errors. Even cameras have imperfect lenses and imperfect binary storage, and those problems amplify across every metric when comparing vision of different living beings (human, or otherwise) for the reasons highlighted already above… 

Different shape of the lenses, scratches, different densities of rod and cone receptors across different regions of the eyeball, different neural transition infrastructure and responses, etc. As you already highlighted yourself, even the response within the same one individual varies based on a host of things like time of day, fatigue level, hydration, heartrate, cortisol and adrenaline levels, what they were most recently looking at, how long they were looking at it, and so forth. 

6 hours ago, mistermack said:

I don't think there's any mystery.  We experience colours in the mind

I’m pretty sure that’s where we experience absolutely everything in infinitude. 

Edited September 19, 2023 by iNow

[mistermack]

5 minutes ago, iNow said:

I’m pretty sure that’s where we experience absolutely everything in infinitude.

And not up the arsehole? I owe you an apology then. 

[iNow]

It’s ok. I don’t mind when you don’t mind your manners. I’m mindful of the dynamic here ✌🏼

[mistermack]

13 minutes ago, iNow said:

It’s ok. I don’t mind when you don’t mind your manners. I’m mindful of the dynamic here

Where's my neg??

You owe me a neg. 🤨 

[geordief]

7 hours ago, mistermack said:

Basically, seeing isn't 'like' anything else, so you can't say what it's like

"Seeing" is like "understanding" or "learning"

I think we only experience anything by reference to something else.

There are no pure experiences ,just relationships  between experiences.

If someone is blind from birth and ,in our eyes has no understanding of what we experience when we see something we call "red" it is a sufficient to paint (no pun intended) a scene for them ,any scene will do.

Then we tell them (say it is the scene of a shipwreck at sea.)

"The boat is red"

And ,with the scene in their mind they will associate that boat with "redness"

 

That is their "red" from now on (so long as they remain blind and perhaps even if they later gain the faculty of vision)

 

[mistermack]

1 hour ago, geordief said:

And ,with the scene in their mind they will associate that boat with "redness"

But a person blind from birth will have no idea what a scene looks like, nor a boat. Nor light and shade or water. You can use words, but you can't really paint them a scene. It's a scene to you but not to them. 

[geordief]

39 minutes ago, mistermack said:

But a person blind from birth will have no idea what a scene looks like, nor a boat. Nor light and shade or water. You can use words, but you can't really paint them a scene. It's a scene to you but not to them. 

They must be able to imagine simple scenes or they wouldn't be able to navigate around the room.

You could call fast movements red and slow movements blue.

Actually touch and vision are similar in that they are both em related.

You could call  a sharp contact blue and a caress red.

Markus knows all about synaesthesia (as do we all to a degree  I believe)

"Red" is just a relative term and it could be relative to anything (disregarding practicalities)

[mistermack]

2 hours ago, geordief said:

They must be able to imagine simple scenes or they wouldn't be able to navigate around the room.

I don't think they would imagine a scene, but a situation. If I'd been blind from birth, I think I'd be recreating the room in steps for distance, and objects as the feel of something solid, with size related to the distance between the hands etc. In other words, I'd relate it to what I'm familiar with. 

[geordief]

30 minutes ago, mistermack said:

I don't think they would imagine a scene, but a situation. If I'd been blind from birth, I think I'd be recreating the room in steps for distance, and objects as the feel of something solid, with size related to the distance between the hands etc. In other words, I'd relate it to what I'm familiar with. 

We don't know,do we?

I am guessing that,in the womb our tactile sensations might have been far more heightened than afterwards.

Might unsighted infants   be able to "visualize" their surroundings merely from movement,hearing and tactile sensations?

If so ,they would carry that through their lives  even only as an atrophied  capability that might still retain something 

I wonder if "everblind" people  can have vivid dreams.If the optical nerve is completely dead ,does the brain still have an ability to "think visually"....a bit like how we get "phantom pain" from missing limbs (I think that is fairly well established)

[augustdiaries]

Red is a color that attracts attention, stirs up passion, and generates strong feelings. When you see red, it's like a visual explosion that can stir up either love or anger. It's like an increase of energy. It's a vivid energy in the range of human perception that can be found in roses, fire engines, and sunsets.

[mistermack]

1 hour ago, augustdiaries said:

Red is a color that attracts attention, stirs up passion, and generates strong feelings.

Is it "better red than dead" or "better dead than red"  ?    People say both. 

Well, I can reveal the true answer. You're better off red than dead. A billion Chinese would tell you that, as would 200 million Russians before they dumped communism. So the people who have lived it, know the right answer. 

Of course, that doesn't make red the best thing that's out there. Just definitely better than death.

[Genady]

How many shades of red do you see here?

I see two, but there is only one.

[studiot]

1 hour ago, Genady said:

How many shades of red do you see here?

I see two, but there is only one.

 

Well I agree there is only onle red, but I note there are also some aliasing bars on you grid

Of course red plus green makes brown.

 

[Genady]

5 minutes ago, studiot said:

 

Well I agree there is only onle red, but I note there are also some aliasing bars on you grid

Of course red plus green makes brown.

 

I don't think there are aliasing bars (if I understand correctly what you refer to) in the original. They are added by the zooming algorithm when the image is enlarged.