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> Focus on a colour in your immediate environment and ask yourself whether that could really be only a figment of your mind. Yes, of course that could really b

> Focus on a colour in your immediate environment and ask yourself whether that could really be only a figment of your mind. Yes, of course that could really be the case. It's a bit of a downer that this article ends with an argument from incredulity.

danielam 9y ago
That's a very facile response to the article (sadly, the article doesn't go into any depth on the subject). One could just as well ask the same about any property that we perceive in the senses and later apprehend through the intellect. EDIT: I did find this review, but I haven't read it[0]. [0] http://ndpr.nd.edu/news/a-naive-realist-theory-of-colour/ http://ndpr.nd.edu/news/a-naive-realist-theory-of-colour/
- mannykannot 9y ago
  > One could just as well ask the same about any property that we perceive in the senses and later apprehend through the intellect. Indeed, and I have this nagging feeling that there might be something to it. It goes along with the suspicion that neither what I perceive through my senses nor what I apprehend through my intellect are as coherent as they feel, but perhaps that's just me.
  - aklemm 9y ago
    I've been going through this for a couple years now on just about any issue I go deep on. It is unsettling and points toward meaningless (even against relative meaning derived from each other), which is even more unsettling.
    - yesenadam 9y ago
      >Nobody perceives reality as it actually is. A couple of comments: This sentence has a misleading form. It sounds like "Nobody here has a hat", denying something quite unproblematically possible. But would would it mean to perceive reality 'as it actually is'? The phrase seems confused. Like people who worry about life being meaningless, there's a category error being made somewhere. And the phrase 'reality as it actually is' is but a modern version of the Kantian 'reality as-it-is-in-itself', (of which nothing could be known or said). Some of the problems coming from such language (i.e. most of Idealism and relativism in their various forms) and their history have been entertainingly explored by the philosophers Musgrave[0] and Stove[1]. e.g. "We can eat oysters only insofar as they are brought under the physiological and chemical conditions which are the presuppositions of the possibility of being eaten. Therefore, we cannot eat oysters as they are in themselves." or "We have eyes, therefore we can't see." [0] Alan Musgrave, Idealism and Antirealism http://www.phil-fak.uni-duesseldorf.de/fileadmin/Redaktion/Institute/Philosophie/Theoretische_Philosophie/Fahrbach/Metaphysik_der_Gegenwart/Musgrave%20Idealism%20and%20Antirealism.pdf http://www.phil-fak.uni-duesseldorf.de/fileadmin/Redaktion/I... [1] Stove's Discovery of the Worst Argument in the World http://web.maths.unsw.edu.au/~jim/worst.html http://web.maths.unsw.edu.au/~jim/worst.html
      - goatlover 9y ago
        > But would would it mean to perceive reality 'as it actually is'? It would mean that direct perception is the case. We directly perceive the objects out there in the world as they are, not a representation of some sort in our heads. > We have eyes, therefore we can't see. It's more like, we have eyes that provide our brains with information to color in the world in response to visible light reflecting off objects. But that doesn't answer the question about whether the world is actually colored. What if we had a different kind of eyes, or our visual cortex processed the information differently? Is only the visible light colored, or do radio waves have colors, or is the color on the surface of objects themselves?
        yesenadam 9y ago
        >We directly perceive the objects out there in the world as they are, not a representation of some sort in our heads. My point was that this is a grammatical sentence, but like a christian talking of eternal life, the impossibility and unimaginability of the thing is ignored. That bit about the eyes was a TL;DR and teaser for the linked (very funny) papers, which doesn't mean much without them I guess. It's a spoof/reductio of a kind of argument which has often been used in philosophy, Stove's Gem. Yes sorry, not answering questions. I seem to spend more time questioning questions. They often conceal and smuggle in false assumptions.
        mannykannot 9y ago
        How do you reconcile your statements that, on the one hand, we directly perceive the objects out there in the world as they are, while on the other, we have eyes that provide our brains with information to color in the world in response to visible light reflecting off objects, but that doesn't answer the question about whether the world is actually colored? If being colored in a certain way doesn't mean having a certain spectral absorbance, what does it mean?
senectus1 9y ago
Colour is a pigment of your imagination...
empath75 9y ago
Basically all of perceived reality is a simulation created by your mind from very incomplete information. Nobody perceives reality as it actually is. It’s all just vibrations in various fields, and any macroscopic interpretation above that is your imagination, from your own personal identity to the colors you see.

danielam 9y ago

That's a very facile response to the article (sadly, the article doesn't go into any depth on the subject). One could just as well ask the same about any property that we perceive in the senses and later apprehend through the intellect. EDIT: I did find this review, but I haven't read it[0]. [0] http://ndpr.nd.edu/news/a-naive-realist-theory-of-colour/ http://ndpr.nd.edu/news/a-naive-realist-theory-of-colour/

mannykannot 9y ago
> One could just as well ask the same about any property that we perceive in the senses and later apprehend through the intellect. Indeed, and I have this nagging feeling that there might be something to it. It goes along with the suspicion that neither what I perceive through my senses nor what I apprehend through my intellect are as coherent as they feel, but perhaps that's just me.
- aklemm 9y ago
  I've been going through this for a couple years now on just about any issue I go deep on. It is unsettling and points toward meaningless (even against relative meaning derived from each other), which is even more unsettling.
  - yesenadam 9y ago
    >Nobody perceives reality as it actually is. A couple of comments: This sentence has a misleading form. It sounds like "Nobody here has a hat", denying something quite unproblematically possible. But would would it mean to perceive reality 'as it actually is'? The phrase seems confused. Like people who worry about life being meaningless, there's a category error being made somewhere. And the phrase 'reality as it actually is' is but a modern version of the Kantian 'reality as-it-is-in-itself', (of which nothing could be known or said). Some of the problems coming from such language (i.e. most of Idealism and relativism in their various forms) and their history have been entertainingly explored by the philosophers Musgrave[0] and Stove[1]. e.g. "We can eat oysters only insofar as they are brought under the physiological and chemical conditions which are the presuppositions of the possibility of being eaten. Therefore, we cannot eat oysters as they are in themselves." or "We have eyes, therefore we can't see." [0] Alan Musgrave, Idealism and Antirealism http://www.phil-fak.uni-duesseldorf.de/fileadmin/Redaktion/Institute/Philosophie/Theoretische_Philosophie/Fahrbach/Metaphysik_der_Gegenwart/Musgrave%20Idealism%20and%20Antirealism.pdf http://www.phil-fak.uni-duesseldorf.de/fileadmin/Redaktion/I... [1] Stove's Discovery of the Worst Argument in the World http://web.maths.unsw.edu.au/~jim/worst.html http://web.maths.unsw.edu.au/~jim/worst.html
    - goatlover 9y ago
      > But would would it mean to perceive reality 'as it actually is'? It would mean that direct perception is the case. We directly perceive the objects out there in the world as they are, not a representation of some sort in our heads. > We have eyes, therefore we can't see. It's more like, we have eyes that provide our brains with information to color in the world in response to visible light reflecting off objects. But that doesn't answer the question about whether the world is actually colored. What if we had a different kind of eyes, or our visual cortex processed the information differently? Is only the visible light colored, or do radio waves have colors, or is the color on the surface of objects themselves?
      - yesenadam 9y ago
        >We directly perceive the objects out there in the world as they are, not a representation of some sort in our heads. My point was that this is a grammatical sentence, but like a christian talking of eternal life, the impossibility and unimaginability of the thing is ignored. That bit about the eyes was a TL;DR and teaser for the linked (very funny) papers, which doesn't mean much without them I guess. It's a spoof/reductio of a kind of argument which has often been used in philosophy, Stove's Gem. Yes sorry, not answering questions. I seem to spend more time questioning questions. They often conceal and smuggle in false assumptions.
      - mannykannot 9y ago
        How do you reconcile your statements that, on the one hand, we directly perceive the objects out there in the world as they are, while on the other, we have eyes that provide our brains with information to color in the world in response to visible light reflecting off objects, but that doesn't answer the question about whether the world is actually colored? If being colored in a certain way doesn't mean having a certain spectral absorbance, what does it mean?

senectus1 9y ago

Colour is a pigment of your imagination...

empath75 9y ago

Basically all of perceived reality is a simulation created by your mind from very incomplete information. Nobody perceives reality as it actually is. It’s all just vibrations in various fields, and any macroscopic interpretation above that is your imagination, from your own personal identity to the colors you see.