But still not a colour. You are conflating the cause and the effect.
Physics and the science of colour vision have nothing to do with the “Bad Argument” and everything to do with empirical study.
I don’t know why you are bringing up language. This has nothing to do with language and everything to do with visual perception. Does a deaf, mute, illiterate human see colours? Do non-human animals see colours?
They’re not instances of colour; they’re instances of photons being absorbed and/or reflected by the electrons on an object’s surface.
Colour is what happens when the appropriate organism’s visual cortex is active in the right kind of way, usually in response to its eyes absorbing photons.
No, the yellow has a visible part (pattern) of the relation in which that experience is satisfied. The blackness of “nothingness” doesn’t.
From the right distance it detects the pattern in the exact same way it detects the dots in halftone images or pointilistic paintings. From a close range it detects dots, from a longer distance smooth continuous colours. That’s how the yellow emerges without any “yellow photons” emitted from the TV. The colour is evidently specified by the distance of view in relation to point of view (camera or observer) and the dots.
Yes, changing the distance of view literally rotates the optic pattern that arises when the picture is viewed or photographed from different distances. Moving along these distances produces a moving visible part of the illusion . Other optic illusions exploit angles of view and light conditions (such as the dress-photo).
No, you’re conflicting the colour and seeing it. For you, nothing is seen, all is illusion or hallucination. That’s solipsism, not realism.
Then there is no good reason for you to assume that we never see real colours, or claim that empirical science would have disproved the reality of colours (it hasn’t, and can’t).
Yes, colour is a feature of visual experience, not a property of material surfaces. There are no colours without seeing colours just as there is no pain without feeling pain. Again, physics and the science of colour vision have firmly established that this is so.
That’s not my position at all.
We always see real colours and we always feel real pain. I’m simply explaining to you that physics and the science of colour vision have firmly established that these real colours are not properties of material surfaces; they, like real pain, are mental phenomena.
What you call “firmly established” is the leap to the invalid conclusion.
Seeing is a mental phenomena, but if also the things we see were mental phenomena, then we’d never see them.
You’ve explained away the external object of perception, and say they’re all (like pain) mental phenomena. That amounts to solipsism (at least epistemological).
No, I’ve explained that physics and the science of colour perception have established that colours are not properties of material surfaces but are sensory qualities like pain.
I don’t know why you keep reading more into it than just this.
It’s not merely reading more into it, it’s not even consistent with his own view at this point.
@jkop ; You’re willing to say that pain exists as a mental phenomenon only; that there is no pain “out there” on a hot stove, say, and it is only a matter of causal relationships.
And furthermore that this does not entail the hot stove is not real.
However, when it comes to colour being a mental phenomenon, you are claiming that that would entail the object of perception not being real. Why?
So, if I am understanding you, you’re agreeing that black is entirely a mental phenomenon right? Just follow it through.
You’re accepting that the brain can make visual experiences (which black still is; the fact it is not a hue is irrelevant), and in this case it necessarily cannot be a visual experience that was (ever) transmitted into the eye.
You’re conceding that at least some kinds of visual experience exist only as a mental phenomenon.
Again, no, it detects red and green and the resultant image will only show yellow to a human viewer who is viewing it from the appropriate distance for that particular human’s eyes. The “pattern” exists in the mind of the viewer.
No it doesn’t. Nothing is rotating. This is one of the most bizarre bullet bites I’ve encountered.
Imagine my friend is viewing the image in his peripheral vision and sees the rotation but I am viewing it in my foveal vision. Where did the rotation go?
No, I told you. Evidently you show no intent to understand.
No, anything you can see is located before your eyes.
But then it’s not open to view.
Well, you tell me, it’s specified by your motion relative to the picture.
It’s an invalid conclusion, recall.
What conclusion is invalid? Your conclusion that if colours are mental phenomena then we don’t see things? Yes, that is invalid. As Mijin1 says, that pain is a mental phenomenon doesn’t entail that I don’t feel the hot stove or the knife in my back. That smells are a mental phenomenon doesn’t entail that I don’t smell roses. That tastes are a mental phenomenon doesn’t entail that I don’t taste chocolate.
Perception of things in our environment doesn’t entail that first-person experiences do not have qualitative character, doesn’t entail that this qualitative character is a property of the thing experienced, and doesn’t entail that colours are not such a qualitative character.
Neither naive colour realism nor naive realism in general is required for us to see, hear, smell, taste, or feel things.
No, the one you claim is “firmly established” and which Searle labels “The Bad Argument.”
I’ve had it.
Physics and the science of perception don’t make “the bad argument”, and I’m not making any kind of argument, let alone “the bad argument”. I am simply explaining to you — with citations — that physics and the science of perception have established that the pain we feel when we touch a stove and the colours we see when we look at an apple are mental phenomena, not properties of the stove or the apple. Nowhere have I said that we don’t feel the stove or see the apple; that’s all you reading something into my words that isn’t there.
An apple’s surface is disposed to reflect a certain wavelength of light because of its microstructural properties, but neither of these things is colour, and colour is not some additional property that the apple has (else we have both overdetermination and the question of why only the former is susceptible to scientific measurement and modelling).
All you’ve done is said what blackness isn’t so I am trying to tease out what your actual position is. I’ll help out by making it multiple choice:
Blackness is:
- A mental phenomenon
- A property of an object
- A property of the relation between objects
- Something else [please specify]
It’s not. Motion is one way this illusion can be seen, but as I say, if you just view the object in your peripheral vision it will appear to rotate.
In any case, I didn’t say motion, I said rotation. Where is the rotation happening?