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That's an interesting point. I'm reminded of the way we perceive colors. We may see completely different things as "green", but because they've been given that

That's an interesting point. I'm reminded of the way we perceive colors. We may see completely different things as "green", but because they've been given that linguistic label, we can identify them as the same. However, if I see red when you see green, it's fundamentally impossible to explain or imagine that. I hear this analogy all the time but it makes no sense to me. A color is either physical light or the idea in your head of a particular color. If we agree on both of those, what is left that could be meaningfully compared to decide if we are "experiencing" it as the same or different? Could I be experiencing a poodle as a banana, even though I think it's called a poodle and it actually is a poodle?

nollidge 16y ago
Describe the color green.
- LurkingGrue 16y ago
  #00FF00
- extension 16y ago
  Green is the feeling of EM radiation with wavelength between 520-570nm hitting your retina.
  - a-priori 16y ago
    Yes, and how do you know that we experience the same 'feeling'? That's what the philosophers are talking about.
    - Jach 16y ago
      Because to assume that each individual's brain is so different would go against all other evidence we have to the contrary.
  - joeyo 16y ago
    I can also cause you to experience green by electrically stimulating your visual cortex, so ~500nm light need not be involved, nor your retina even. What is green now?
  - jacobolus 16y ago
    This is actually a dramatic oversimplification. Green is what you experience when (roughly) the difference between the amount of light w/ those wavelengths and the amount of light w/ wavelengths outside that range is greater than it was a (temporally) little while ago, or in comparison with the light coming in from areas nearby, and strongly affected by reasoning about what color the object "should" be, and what the quality of light is that is hitting the object. As you say, green is a "feeling", not embodied in the light itself, but only meaningful in the brain. So the "color" of a neutral gray card (or even something which emits no light at all) surrounded by a bright red object or looked at just after a bright red object is just as "legitimately" green as the light reflected from a "green" piece of paper or emitted by a "green" LED.
Confusion 16y ago
If we agree on both of those [..] The question is: how do you know that you agree on them? That he uses the same cultural naming convention to describe the experience does not mean the experience is the same. He may be a synesthete and you would never know it. what is left that could be meaningfully compared Why do you need to be able to 'meaningfully compare' something for it to be able to be different? My love for my girlfriend is obviously different from that of others for their significant others, because it is a patchwork of feelings tied up with innumerable impressions and memories. No two are alike. Yet I could not express the difference on any measurable scale. There's no reason to suppose once experience of 'a mere color' is any different. The memories colors evoke are unique and there is no 'raw experience' to separate from those memories. That's too simple a view of the human brain.
- extension 16y ago
  We can associate different memories with the color green, but we can't experience it as different colors while claiming it's the same color. The experience of green is, by definition, whatever goes on in your head when you look at green. If you scanned our brains, you might find different patterns of neurons firing, but there is no sense in calling either of those patterns anything besides "green".
  - Confusion 16y ago
    The experience of green is, by definition, whatever goes on in your head when you look at green You never 'look at green'. You can only experience the impression of instances of green things or have thoughts involving the abstract concept 'green'. You may be looking at a traffic light that just turned green and anxiously press the pedal to reach your destination. Or in the context of a psychological experiment, you may be looking at a green square, while remembering what it was that you were supposed to do when you saw something green. In the same context, you may be asked to think of 'green'. However, that will evoke images of grass, traffic lights, a girlfriend's dress. What goes on inside your head when looking at these instances of something 'green', or thinking of 'green' is a jumble of things, none of which could be described as the 'raw experience' of 'looking at green'. On another note, not involving the actual experience: I was just reading the wikipedia entry on 'Grue and bleen'. It ends with: Kripke then argues for an interpretation of Wittgenstein as holding that it is not possible to state the meaning of a word. That's purely out of philosophical arguments concerning language. If you can not state the meaning of a word, then you can not agree upon your experiences of that word, firstly because you don't know what experience you are trying to relate and secondly because relating it requires other, vaguely defined, words. You may also be interested in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distinguishing_blue_from_green_in_language http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distinguishing_blue_from_green_...
mortenjorck 16y ago
I believe what you're describing is the concept of qualia: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qualia/ http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qualia/ The exact scope of the term is not universal, but it might be well expressed as the atomic level of individual mental experience. Even if we experience the same physical wavelength of light and can address it on the same terms, we may nonetheless have entirely different qualia connecting that physical data and that shared mental construction of the color. And there's no way we would ever know!
- Jach 16y ago
  Also read: http://lesswrong.com/lw/p7/zombies_zombies/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/p7/zombies_zombies/
liuhenry 16y ago
The only way that we agree on what a color is is through its physical manifestation. This has worked for all of our existence because when you tell me to think of green, we're referencing something that we both sense. But this doesn't work if you convey "original" thought. If I imagine something, I can only describe it to you, and there's is no way to be sure you are experiencing what I imagined. What you experience is based on how you process that input and what you think of. Your brain may be set up completely differently from mine, so would they be compatible? I guess the real question is, is it possible to agree on an idea without having a reference?
- extension 16y ago
  Your brain may be set up completely differently from mine, so would they be compatible? That's my point.. to even ponder whether or not we have the same idea in our heads, there has to be some objective form of the thought that is compatible with both of our brains. Then, assuming there was some miraculous way to get the thought into my head, I could compare it with my own thought to see if they match. If, however, brains are structurally unique to the point that thoughts are meaningless outside of the context of the particular brain that thinks them, then why is it interesting to ponder if our thoughts are the same or different? Of course they are different since the notion of their sameness is a non-sequitur. The notion that we use the former type of thoughts to think about colors, and that they are interchangeable -- that I could see red in the same way that you see green, while seeing actual green as something else -- is conceivable, but completely unnecessary to explain anything about the mind. You can simply remove that step and get a simpler and equally adequate theory to explain color vision, so why would we even contemplate the step existing?

nollidge 16y ago

Describe the color green.

LurkingGrue 16y ago
#00FF00
extension 16y ago
Green is the feeling of EM radiation with wavelength between 520-570nm hitting your retina.
- a-priori 16y ago
  Yes, and how do you know that we experience the same 'feeling'? That's what the philosophers are talking about.
  - Jach 16y ago
    Because to assume that each individual's brain is so different would go against all other evidence we have to the contrary.
- joeyo 16y ago
  I can also cause you to experience green by electrically stimulating your visual cortex, so ~500nm light need not be involved, nor your retina even. What is green now?
- jacobolus 16y ago
  This is actually a dramatic oversimplification. Green is what you experience when (roughly) the difference between the amount of light w/ those wavelengths and the amount of light w/ wavelengths outside that range is greater than it was a (temporally) little while ago, or in comparison with the light coming in from areas nearby, and strongly affected by reasoning about what color the object "should" be, and what the quality of light is that is hitting the object. As you say, green is a "feeling", not embodied in the light itself, but only meaningful in the brain. So the "color" of a neutral gray card (or even something which emits no light at all) surrounded by a bright red object or looked at just after a bright red object is just as "legitimately" green as the light reflected from a "green" piece of paper or emitted by a "green" LED.

Confusion 16y ago

If we agree on both of those [..] The question is: how do you know that you agree on them? That he uses the same cultural naming convention to describe the experience does not mean the experience is the same. He may be a synesthete and you would never know it. what is left that could be meaningfully compared Why do you need to be able to 'meaningfully compare' something for it to be able to be different? My love for my girlfriend is obviously different from that of others for their significant others, because it is a patchwork of feelings tied up with innumerable impressions and memories. No two are alike. Yet I could not express the difference on any measurable scale. There's no reason to suppose once experience of 'a mere color' is any different. The memories colors evoke are unique and there is no 'raw experience' to separate from those memories. That's too simple a view of the human brain.

extension 16y ago
We can associate different memories with the color green, but we can't experience it as different colors while claiming it's the same color. The experience of green is, by definition, whatever goes on in your head when you look at green. If you scanned our brains, you might find different patterns of neurons firing, but there is no sense in calling either of those patterns anything besides "green".
- Confusion 16y ago
  The experience of green is, by definition, whatever goes on in your head when you look at green You never 'look at green'. You can only experience the impression of instances of green things or have thoughts involving the abstract concept 'green'. You may be looking at a traffic light that just turned green and anxiously press the pedal to reach your destination. Or in the context of a psychological experiment, you may be looking at a green square, while remembering what it was that you were supposed to do when you saw something green. In the same context, you may be asked to think of 'green'. However, that will evoke images of grass, traffic lights, a girlfriend's dress. What goes on inside your head when looking at these instances of something 'green', or thinking of 'green' is a jumble of things, none of which could be described as the 'raw experience' of 'looking at green'. On another note, not involving the actual experience: I was just reading the wikipedia entry on 'Grue and bleen'. It ends with: Kripke then argues for an interpretation of Wittgenstein as holding that it is not possible to state the meaning of a word. That's purely out of philosophical arguments concerning language. If you can not state the meaning of a word, then you can not agree upon your experiences of that word, firstly because you don't know what experience you are trying to relate and secondly because relating it requires other, vaguely defined, words. You may also be interested in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distinguishing_blue_from_green_in_language http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distinguishing_blue_from_green_...

mortenjorck 16y ago

I believe what you're describing is the concept of qualia: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qualia/ http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qualia/ The exact scope of the term is not universal, but it might be well expressed as the atomic level of individual mental experience. Even if we experience the same physical wavelength of light and can address it on the same terms, we may nonetheless have entirely different qualia connecting that physical data and that shared mental construction of the color. And there's no way we would ever know!

Jach 16y ago
Also read: http://lesswrong.com/lw/p7/zombies_zombies/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/p7/zombies_zombies/

liuhenry 16y ago

The only way that we agree on what a color is is through its physical manifestation. This has worked for all of our existence because when you tell me to think of green, we're referencing something that we both sense. But this doesn't work if you convey "original" thought. If I imagine something, I can only describe it to you, and there's is no way to be sure you are experiencing what I imagined. What you experience is based on how you process that input and what you think of. Your brain may be set up completely differently from mine, so would they be compatible? I guess the real question is, is it possible to agree on an idea without having a reference?

extension 16y ago
Your brain may be set up completely differently from mine, so would they be compatible? That's my point.. to even ponder whether or not we have the same idea in our heads, there has to be some objective form of the thought that is compatible with both of our brains. Then, assuming there was some miraculous way to get the thought into my head, I could compare it with my own thought to see if they match. If, however, brains are structurally unique to the point that thoughts are meaningless outside of the context of the particular brain that thinks them, then why is it interesting to ponder if our thoughts are the same or different? Of course they are different since the notion of their sameness is a non-sequitur. The notion that we use the former type of thoughts to think about colors, and that they are interchangeable -- that I could see red in the same way that you see green, while seeing actual green as something else -- is conceivable, but completely unnecessary to explain anything about the mind. You can simply remove that step and get a simpler and equally adequate theory to explain color vision, so why would we even contemplate the step existing?