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Mudhammam · (This post was last modified: July 9, 2015 at 8:51 am by Mudhammam.)

This question is sort of akin to "Does a falling tree make a noise when nobody is around to hear it?" but I'm mostly interested in the phenomenon of color. We probably are all aware that what we see as red sunsets, blue skies, green trees, etc. are wavelengths of light reflecting off the particular properties of objects, transmitted through our retina and into the brain, from which differentiated sensations that we identify as colors are perceived. So my question is this: Imagine the world as it existed prior to conscious life. What did it look like? Is there any color in that world? Is it a meaningless question? What does that entail for other properties of objects "out there" that we only know through perception?

**Whateverist** · July 9, 2015 at 8:59 am

(July 9, 2015 at 8:49 am)Nestor Wrote: This question is sort of akin to "Does a falling tree make a noise when nobody is around to hear it?" but I'm mostly interested in the phenomenon of color. We probably are all aware that what we see as red sunsets, blue skies, green trees, etc. are wavelengths of light reflecting off the particular properties of objects, transmitted through our retina and into the brain, from which differentiated sensations that we identify as colors are perceived. So my question is this: Imagine the world as it existed prior to conscious life. What did it look like? Is there any color in that world? Is it a meaningless question? What does that entail for other properties of objects "out there" that we only know through perception?

Hmmm ... what did it look like before there was any thing around to do the looking. I imagine -before there was anyone around to do the imagining- that all the essential properties of things would be the same. Stuff will be what it is but won't enter into a looking-like relationship until the stuff itself acquires the properties necessary to do the looking.

ignoramus · July 9, 2015 at 9:15 am

Why do you ask grasshopper?
If it's any consolation, animals used colour to their advantage, eg: camoflauge (octopus, camelion, etc) possibly million of years before sentient humans were around.
Is this more of a philosophical question rather than a technical one?

**Whateverist** · July 9, 2015 at 9:17 am

(July 9, 2015 at 9:15 am)ignoramus Wrote: Why do you ask grasshopper?
If it's any consolation, animals used colour to their advantage, eg: camoflauge (octopus, camelion, etc) possibly million of years before sentient humans were around.
Is this more of a philosophical question rather than a technical one?

Ahh so the stuff was already acquiring the necessary properties. Excellent. Time for them to go forth and look.

**The Grand Nudger** · (This post was last modified: July 9, 2015 at 9:31 am by The Grand Nudger.)

(July 9, 2015 at 8:49 am)Nestor Wrote: Imagine the world as it existed prior to conscious life. What did it look like? Is there any color in that world? Is it a meaningless question? What does that entail for other properties of objects "out there" that we only know through perception?

What did the world look like before you woke up this morning? Reckon there might have been a difference?

Longhorn · July 9, 2015 at 10:28 am

42.

And bread, IMO

LostLocke · July 9, 2015 at 10:33 am

(July 9, 2015 at 10:28 am)Neimenovic Wrote: 42.

And bread, IMO

Is it a light rye with caraway seeds?
If not, I don't accept your version of reality.

Aoi Magi · July 9, 2015 at 10:36 am

Whatever it looked like, the looks were wasted till I began looking.

Mudhammam · (This post was last modified: July 9, 2015 at 3:52 pm by Mudhammam.)

I know bees are said to see ultraviolet, and that our color vision exists within a very narrow space of the light spectrum... But I'm trying to figure out what it is we should take to mean by properties of the external world versus properties of subjective experience of that external world... There are some who want to make the whole gambit just a giant mesh of unintelligible particle stuff that has no real distinguishable structure until it interacts with mind, whatever that is (I assume bees must have something of it to see ultraviolet, on their view)... then there seems to be the more defensible position that matter has its form, but the human/animal experience is such that involves the supervenience of mental states upon physical ones, so that an object we perceive like "tree" exists mostly in the form it appears to regardless if the specific time includes me awake or alive... and then I suppose branching off (no pun intended) from there might be those who say that colors are such properties that only exist in the mental side of things, and those who say that, no, the tree is green regardless of whether or not a mind is producing the sensation of green due to the surface properties of the tree and the particular wavelengths of light reflecting off it... so... Is there any reason to believe that colors exist outside the brain in any sense? Before animals with the capacity of vision, is it more correct to just imagine everything colorless? Or, more extreme, to not have existed in any meaningful sense that we can convey? Or rather that stuff existed just as it appears to, i.e. when I'm looking at it, and that it remains exactly the same when I'm not? Why or why not?

TubbyTubby · July 9, 2015 at 3:29 pm

Also depends on what type of star you happen to receive your light from.

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