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There is a very fruitful line in philosophy of mind and language that addresses the colour qualia question: anti-cartesianism and anti-skepticism. Wittgenstein

There is a very fruitful line in philosophy of mind and language that addresses the colour qualia question: anti-cartesianism and anti-skepticism. Wittgenstein's arguments on seeing-as is the best example of this line. He argues, quite convincingly I think, that a lot of the kind of skepticism, of a cartesian sort, implicit in the colour qualia question arises out of conceptual confusions in language. The goal isn't to solve the debate, or directly refute it per se, but to dissolve the entire conceptual confusion upon which it relies by making clear how it is essentially a house-of-cards. For instance, we know that humans have a relatively uniform perceptual landscape. Physiological realities in the eye limit the variations in human visual perception to a certain set wavelength band. With all the correct parts working correctly, we see and we all see in relatively the same way. We don't see our seeing. We don't perceive our perceptual experience from the inside out. We see. The variations in "what people see" are more in language, which is to say that people report seeing different things. As Wittgenstein would put it, we often "see-as" just as much as we "see-that", which are ways of "seeing" that intersect and mix in language. Colour is interesting because in our language it is heavily dependent on ostensive definitions, which is the linguistic way of saying colour is reliant on pointing at examples. Often quite literally pointing with your hand, or directing someone to look at something in particular. So if there is a red car in front of you and both people say the car is "red" then they are seeing the same red because the colour is not the result of empirical validation of an internal private perceptual experience, but because the colour is in language. They are reporting the same colour. Viewed in this line, the colour qualia question essentially dissolves away as irrelevant.

Dudeman112 5y ago
>the colour qualia question essentially dissolves away as irrelevant And yet, I still wanna know. The question is IMO as valid as "if I poke you with this pen, do you feel it different enough than what I feel if I poked myself?" If we go through the exercise of breaking down the physiology, neurology and linguistic, I still wanna know if they feel it any different and how different.
- mabub24 5y ago
  > The question is IMO as valid as "if I poke you with this pen, do you feel it different enough than what I feel if I poked myself?" Funnily enough, Wittgenstein also famously looked at pain as well [0] in the context of his famous private language argument, and he comes to the same conclusions as he does about perception and language. It should be noted that Wittgenstein's central point is about the intelligibility of color, or perception, or pain, or a private language. He is not denying the existence of pain, or of what could be considered "first person priority", as a sensation. But he's commenting on the logical necessity of a public intelligibility for it. For him that intelligibility comes about through behavior or public criterions, that is, what we might call pain-behavior wrapped up in a public form of life. > I still wanna know if they feel it any different and how different. Wittgenstein's whole point, really, is that you can get an answer by asking them because, after all, you're speaking the same public language. That is also why pain, as it is intelligible, has a history. [0]: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/private-language/ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/private-language/
Al-Khwarizmi 5y ago
I don't understand the point: we could both be seeing a red car (which is objectively red, in the sense that it has a wavelength of 625–740 nm) but we could be perceiving it radically differently (for example, maybe my perception of red is exactly like your perception of blue) and language would never help us find out. In my world, that car, stop signs, fire extinguishers or chili peppers would look like the clear sky or sea water in yours. But we would never find out, because I would point at the car and say "red" (I have learned that all objects that look that way from my point of view are "red"), and you would agree that it's "red". There is no way to find out that our perception is different. But I guess my lack of understanding is because I haven't read Wittgenstein, so I hope to do so when I get the time. Thanks!
- mabub24 5y ago
  > There is no way to find out that our perception is different. Wittgenstein's point is more that there is no way in which a distinction of that kind could even be intelligible in the way that you have presented it. What is intelligible is our public behavior, namely our language use, so to find out if what you perceive is different you can ask someone if you're looking at the same thing, if it has the same characteristics, etc. He would point to the fact that we don't have radical uncertainty in our day to day life and perception. The philosophical question is a question of sense and nonsense around the concept rather than a metaphysical question about an "inside" vs. an "outside". I would really recommend reading Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations if you are interested in these kinds of questions, it's incredibly influential in philosophy precisely because of the way it approaches "age-old" problems in ways that lead to clarity and very interesting results.

Dudeman112 5y ago

>the colour qualia question essentially dissolves away as irrelevant And yet, I still wanna know. The question is IMO as valid as "if I poke you with this pen, do you feel it different enough than what I feel if I poked myself?" If we go through the exercise of breaking down the physiology, neurology and linguistic, I still wanna know if they feel it any different and how different.

mabub24 5y ago
> The question is IMO as valid as "if I poke you with this pen, do you feel it different enough than what I feel if I poked myself?" Funnily enough, Wittgenstein also famously looked at pain as well [0] in the context of his famous private language argument, and he comes to the same conclusions as he does about perception and language. It should be noted that Wittgenstein's central point is about the intelligibility of color, or perception, or pain, or a private language. He is not denying the existence of pain, or of what could be considered "first person priority", as a sensation. But he's commenting on the logical necessity of a public intelligibility for it. For him that intelligibility comes about through behavior or public criterions, that is, what we might call pain-behavior wrapped up in a public form of life. > I still wanna know if they feel it any different and how different. Wittgenstein's whole point, really, is that you can get an answer by asking them because, after all, you're speaking the same public language. That is also why pain, as it is intelligible, has a history. [0]: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/private-language/ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/private-language/

Al-Khwarizmi 5y ago

I don't understand the point: we could both be seeing a red car (which is objectively red, in the sense that it has a wavelength of 625–740 nm) but we could be perceiving it radically differently (for example, maybe my perception of red is exactly like your perception of blue) and language would never help us find out. In my world, that car, stop signs, fire extinguishers or chili peppers would look like the clear sky or sea water in yours. But we would never find out, because I would point at the car and say "red" (I have learned that all objects that look that way from my point of view are "red"), and you would agree that it's "red". There is no way to find out that our perception is different. But I guess my lack of understanding is because I haven't read Wittgenstein, so I hope to do so when I get the time. Thanks!

mabub24 5y ago
> There is no way to find out that our perception is different. Wittgenstein's point is more that there is no way in which a distinction of that kind could even be intelligible in the way that you have presented it. What is intelligible is our public behavior, namely our language use, so to find out if what you perceive is different you can ask someone if you're looking at the same thing, if it has the same characteristics, etc. He would point to the fact that we don't have radical uncertainty in our day to day life and perception. The philosophical question is a question of sense and nonsense around the concept rather than a metaphysical question about an "inside" vs. an "outside". I would really recommend reading Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations if you are interested in these kinds of questions, it's incredibly influential in philosophy precisely because of the way it approaches "age-old" problems in ways that lead to clarity and very interesting results.