Seeing red

[The Grand Nudger]

You're asking why you can't see, with your brain, colors that your eyes can't see........because in this case..they don't exist.  It's the same answer for those colors that -do- exist which you can't see anyway.  The answer is, to me..obvious.  Your color qualia is based upon your sensory systems ability to perceive wavelengths of lights...it uses your eyes to do this, and so it's range for color is naturally defined by the range of operation of the eye - this is the list of variables which are valid operants for further work.

When I dream, I can definitely see the color red, despite the fact that I'm not using my eyes.  And when I hallucinate sounds, I sometimes hear sounds that I know I've never heard before-- they are completely simulated or created.  It could be that the sounds are based on patterns that I HAVE heard before, but it certainly doesn't seem that way.

You aren't actually seeing anything when you dream, you're equivocating, but that's okay because I know what you mean.  You sometimes hear sounds that you've never heard before, you think?  Do you think you hear sounds above or below the human range of hearing when you hear these dream sounds?

I have my definitions, but they've fallen by the wayside, despite being pretty textbook definitions of the word.  So I want to know what YOU think an idea is, specifically.  What specific physical structure or function are we talking about, and how do we know when we've encountered one?

I've told you what I think they are, as specifically as the context calls for (we could talk about chemistry and anatomy of neurons, if you like? How a neuron could "do logic".).  I couldn't locate one for you anymore than I could locate a specific IO on an un-familiar board by looking at it.  In principle I should be able to find any given IO if I have a map of the board, but when it comes to human beings we're pretty sure that the "board", if you will, is not a standard model manufactured to identical specs in every human being.   We see common regions doing what appears to be common tasks, that;s about as far as we've gotten, thusfar.

Okay, in your theory, what kind of states are we talking about, and how would you recognize one in practice without already knowing it to be an idea (i.e. by telling someone to think about a red apple)?

States, as in machine states (in this case mental states) the states of computational systems.  Red would be a state, when  x y and z transmit abc pattern (nuerons either individually or collectively).   It could be that many states are abstractions for red. There is no way to know what state means what without translation, and they mean nothing in isolation.  The best we have at present is to subject people to sensory input and see what "lights up".  Asking them to "think red apple" is also useful, particularly in that regard, you seem to think it would be a problem...but why?  So whatever we see the brain doing at the "moment of red" is the state of red, if you're attempting to explain mind by reference to comp. States are just the arrangements of matter that grant a system function in the specific and the general. A manner of achieving effect.


We could learn alot more if we could dice their brains into tiny pieces while -maintaining their function- and then begin damaging them neuron by neuron to see what "blinks off" in their experience as we do so........but I don't think people are going to get too far into one of these types of experiments (though they -have- been performed with inhibitors simulating the effect, most notably alcohol.....lol). That sort of thing would give us a more exacting description of the state of red (because it offers a way to eliminate other variables or functions that may be occurring simultaneously without our knowledge, "static light" on the monitor) - or it could disabuse us entirely of the idea.

@emjay, specific regions of the cortex appear to be handling specific attributes of the visual field, independently and concurrently (color and shape, depth and velocity, etc). These regions -never- see the same thing because they can't, they're physically incapable (unless they've got wifi in there)...hooked up to the wrong parts of the eye. What you "see" appears to be a summary of their collective work. We don't notice this until one of them presents us with what would be described as anomalous data by reference to the other streams. An odd combination of color and shape, depth, velocity. The minority report from just one center working independently of the others, lol. A "wtf was that!?!" moment. The eye and visual cortex are probably the best places to look, for now, for the hows and why's of experience. We spend alot of money and time on our ability to see.