What's Out There?

[Excited Penguin]

Nestor, I think you're assuming that the universe exists for us to perceive it, whereas we are part of the universe ourselves, so that doesn't make any sense. Other things' existence is independent of our own's and it doesn't add any more meaning to it all(at least not as much as all that) whether there's a particular sentient being to observe it or not.

[Angrboda]

I lean towards mereological nihilism, but to my mind, color and sound are primarily mental phenomena.  Yes, different objects reflect different wavelengths of light, but that isn't what makes us perceive it as one color or another.  There is a whole complex of processing in the brain which goes into determining what color we perceive, and is greatly influenced by context.  In short, color occurs in the mind, not in the world.

[Pyrrho]

Nestor, what, exactly, do you mean by "color?"

Surely, you are not asking if there were different frequencies of light before there was anyone to perceive it, are you?

[Longhorn]

What Jorm said.

We don't hear things the way they are, rather our brains construct models of sounds and interprets them accordingly, like when you can't tell what a sound is it's your brain trying to find a corresponding model. Sound is more of a psychological effect

If any of that makes any kind of sense.

[Mudhammam]

Nestor, what, exactly, do you mean by "color?"

Surely, you are not asking if there were different frequencies of light before there was anyone to perceive it, are you?

By color I mean simply ... red, blue, yellow, etc. These are how we experience objects, from the reflections of different light wavelengths, which appear in our vision, and as Jorm said, are processed by the brain... but we wouldn't say that the objects or energy itself contains "redness" or "blueness" as an intrinsic property... I presume anyway.

[Longhorn]

Well....

When light enters the eye, the image in our retina is upside down and the brain needs to interpret this image right. This is a process that needs to be learned, that's why newborns have vision turned upside down for a short period of time before their eyes and brains adapt

Some people suffer from Print Inverted Reading meaning they can only read if the text is upside down. It's probably caused by the eye's inability to properly process the image

What's fascinating is, we could all see colors differently but call them the same names. Like, your red could look like my blue but we'd both call it red. There are differences in color perception between individual people, men and women in general and I even notice the color temperature varying between my eyes.

but you know, it's late and I don't know shit, so sorry if any of this is wrong ._.

[Excited Penguin]

What's fascinating is, we could all see colors differently but call them the same names. Like, your red could look like my blue but we'd both call it red. There are differences in color perception between individual people, men and women in general and I even notice the color temperature varying between my eyes.

That might be the case and nobody would ever know that what they see is not exactly the same color, if anything I ever saw as red, for example, you would always perceive as blue. But then, I'm sure neuroscientists have a way of finding out about stuff like that, so I'm sure there's something to tell whether that's the case or not.

[ignoramus]

What if I am a bat and can tell you that I also perceive things in colour.
All the processing of sound frequency to colour conversion is performed in the brain.
Maybe Nestor is not an " empty" Nestor!
How sure are we that the colours we see are the colours we think we see?

[Angrboda]

What's fascinating is, we could all see colors differently but call them the same names. Like, your red could look like my blue but we'd both call it red. There are differences in color perception between individual people, men and women in general and I even notice the color temperature varying between my eyes.

That might be the case and nobody would ever know that what they see is not exactly the same color, if anything I ever saw as red, for example, you would always perceive as blue. But then, I'm sure neuroscientists have a way of finding out about stuff like that, so I'm sure there's something to tell whether that's the case or not.

[The] tongue TVSS system works by delivering electrotactile stimuli to the dorsum of the tongue via a flexible electrode array placed in the mouth. This electrode array is connected to a Tongue Display Unit [TDU] via a ribbon cable passing out of the mouth. A video camera records a picture, transfers it to the TDU for conversion into a tactile image. The tactile image is then projected onto the tongue via the ribbon cable where the tongue’s receptors pick up the signal. After training, subjects are able to associate certain types of stimuli to certain types of visual images. In this way, tactile sensation can be used for visual perception.

If an array of electrotactile stimulators can be perceived by the subject as visual stimuli, I suspect that much of the way our brain processes imagery is deeply embedded in the architecture of the brain.  I would be rather surprised if our subjective experiences of color differ dramatically, but I suppose that could be argued both ways.

[Pyrrho]

Nestor, what, exactly, do you mean by "color?"

Surely, you are not asking if there were different frequencies of light before there was anyone to perceive it, are you?

By color I mean simply ... red, blue, yellow, etc. These are how we experience objects, from  the reflections of different light wavelengths, which appear in our vision, and as Jorm said, are processed by the brain... but we wouldn't say that the objects or energy itself contains "redness" or "blueness" as an intrinsic property... I presume anyway.

I don't see any reason to suppose that our perceptions must be as things are.  Physicists tell us that solid objects are really mostly empty space with tiny particles moving about (or at least, that is what they said a few years back).  That is not how I experience my dining room table.

As for the color words, they are ambiguous, in that sometimes "red" means particular frequencies of light.