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Is it not abundantly clear that a photon is just a photon? What else could it be? > the perception of red is the chemical cascade starting with the stimulation

Is it not abundantly clear that a photon is just a photon? What else could it be? > the perception of red is the chemical cascade starting with the stimulation of L-cones and ending with the firing of neurons in the visual cortex. So this quote illustrates the gist of your thinking, but I think you've got some muddled terms. For you there is "red light" and "the perception of red". So for you: "red light" is the photon & "the perception of red" is the chemical cascade. Whereas, I would break it down as follows: "red light" is the photon as well - ie a photon with wavelength between 620-750nm (though I'd caution that despite calling this photon "red light", there is in fact no "red" associated with it - except that it can cause the perception of red if it hits and excites specific cone cells at back our eyes, but it is still just a photon, albiet with a specific energy level but the point is this photon has no quality "red") Where we differ is I believe: The chemical cascade is the chemical cascade & "the perception of red" is "the perception of red" So I think the real problem with your understanding of this is your confusing the chemical cascade caused by a 620-750nm photon to be "the perception of red". In a sense, you are claiming that this chemical cascade is 2 things: 1: a chemical cascade and 2: the perception of red (i.e. the subjective sensation of looking at red); whereas, I would say the chemical cascade is just a chemical cascade... that's all it is, because of course chemicals can't be chemicals AND sense perceptions - that's the real incorrect leap of faith in your argument. I believe it makes much more sense to consider sense perceptions to be a separate distinct phenomenon. You say that I have yet to present an observable phenomenon that is clearly in the mind, but just imagine a red triangle, boom there you have it - that red triangle only exists in the mind. Sure, in the brain there's electrochemical activity within the visual cortex, but you won't find a red triangle in there, because the red triangle is made up of fundamentally different material - i.e. the sense-perception of red in the shape of a triangle. Now, I have no idea what red actually is, except that I know it is a qualitatively different material than the brain and is fundamentally irreducible. If you still disagree with this, tell me where is the red triangle? Because I think it's patently absurd to say the red triangle IS a chemical cascade in your brain. No, it's not. It's highly correlated with a chemical cascade in your brain, but it is an objectively distinct and separate entity/object; it's simply made of qualitatively different material than the brain. Ultimately, as I said before, I believe you're confusing 2 correlated processes/things for a single process/thing: the chemical cascade and the sense-perception.

kerkeslager 7y ago
> Is it not abundantly clear that a photon is just a photon? What else could it be? Well, light can be modeled as either a wave or a particle[1]. When talking about colors, it makes more sense to talk about light using the wave model of light than the particle model of light--not that either way of talking about it is wrong, it's just that the particle model is way more complicated for modeling this particular phenomena. > "red light" is the photon as well - ie a photon with wavelength between 620-750nm No. If you're talking about wavelength you should be using the wave model. It absolutely makes sense to say "red light" when you're talking about a wave. There's no such thing as a red photon because photons don't have color by themselves--red light is made up of many photons, which have a frequency. It sounds like your argument is basically that you don't know how to represent color with the particle model of light, so you assume the answer is "the mind". Not only can you go learn how to represent color using the particle model, but even if that weren't possible, assuming that anything you don't understand is "the mind" is pretty premature. > In a sense, you are claiming that this chemical cascade is 2 things: 1: a chemical cascade and 2: the perception of red (i.e. the subjective sensation of looking at red); whereas, I would say the chemical cascade is just a chemical cascade... that's all it is, because of course chemicals can't be chemicals AND sense perceptions - that's the real incorrect leap of faith in your argument. People who have the chemical cascade experience red. People who don't, don't--even if red light is there (i.e. if they are colorblind). Do you have any reason for believing these are different phenomena? > You say that I have yet to present an observable phenomenon that is clearly in the mind, but just imagine a red triangle, boom there you have it - that red triangle only exists in the mind. [...] > If you still disagree with this, tell me where is the red triangle? It's also in the brain, because the mind is just the brain. This isn't hypothetical. We can read (very) fuzzy images from people's brains using neural-imaging[2]. I'm not aware of any experiments that specifically has read a red triangle, but I don't see any reason to believe that this image is uniquely in the mind and not the brain. Again, it seems like you're just defining "the mind" as anything that happens in the brain where you don't know how it happens. And again I'll say, even if we didn't already know how it happens, concluding that this is "the mind" rather than some physical process we haven't yet discovered, is premature. > it's simply made of qualitatively different material than the brain. If it's qualitatively different, what are the qualitative differences? As for the parts of your post I didn't respond to directly: declaring things irreducible, patently absurd, and declaring that you know things, all ex nihilo, is not a persuasive argument. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wave%E2%80%93particle_duality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wave%E2%80%93particle_duality [2] https://news.berkeley.edu/2011/09/22/brain-movies/ https://news.berkeley.edu/2011/09/22/brain-movies/

kerkeslager 7y ago

> Is it not abundantly clear that a photon is just a photon? What else could it be? Well, light can be modeled as either a wave or a particle[1]. When talking about colors, it makes more sense to talk about light using the wave model of light than the particle model of light--not that either way of talking about it is wrong, it's just that the particle model is way more complicated for modeling this particular phenomena. > "red light" is the photon as well - ie a photon with wavelength between 620-750nm No. If you're talking about wavelength you should be using the wave model. It absolutely makes sense to say "red light" when you're talking about a wave. There's no such thing as a red photon because photons don't have color by themselves--red light is made up of many photons, which have a frequency. It sounds like your argument is basically that you don't know how to represent color with the particle model of light, so you assume the answer is "the mind". Not only can you go learn how to represent color using the particle model, but even if that weren't possible, assuming that anything you don't understand is "the mind" is pretty premature. > In a sense, you are claiming that this chemical cascade is 2 things: 1: a chemical cascade and 2: the perception of red (i.e. the subjective sensation of looking at red); whereas, I would say the chemical cascade is just a chemical cascade... that's all it is, because of course chemicals can't be chemicals AND sense perceptions - that's the real incorrect leap of faith in your argument. People who have the chemical cascade experience red. People who don't, don't--even if red light is there (i.e. if they are colorblind). Do you have any reason for believing these are different phenomena? > You say that I have yet to present an observable phenomenon that is clearly in the mind, but just imagine a red triangle, boom there you have it - that red triangle only exists in the mind. [...] > If you still disagree with this, tell me where is the red triangle? It's also in the brain, because the mind is just the brain. This isn't hypothetical. We can read (very) fuzzy images from people's brains using neural-imaging[2]. I'm not aware of any experiments that specifically has read a red triangle, but I don't see any reason to believe that this image is uniquely in the mind and not the brain. Again, it seems like you're just defining "the mind" as anything that happens in the brain where you don't know how it happens. And again I'll say, even if we didn't already know how it happens, concluding that this is "the mind" rather than some physical process we haven't yet discovered, is premature. > it's simply made of qualitatively different material than the brain. If it's qualitatively different, what are the qualitative differences? As for the parts of your post I didn't respond to directly: declaring things irreducible, patently absurd, and declaring that you know things, all ex nihilo, is not a persuasive argument. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wave%E2%80%93particle_duality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wave%E2%80%93particle_duality [2] https://news.berkeley.edu/2011/09/22/brain-movies/ https://news.berkeley.edu/2011/09/22/brain-movies/