Consciousness and the Paranormal — Part 8

[Constance]

Yes, I'll read Strawson's paper but after a bit of poking around Wikipedia it seems that whether one is a materialist, idealist, or dualist matters greatly in their meaning of Direct Realism.

For example, it seems that some believe that perception based on physiological changes in response to environmental events is a form of representationalism and thus a form of Indirect Realism (which has always been my understating).

In the paper Steve linked last night Strawson clarifies what Direct Realism is in contrasting it with the conceptions of the relationship of consciousness/mind and world that have been proposed by earlier Western philosophers, which have presented different and developing ideas about the directness or indirectness of the relationship of conscious beings with the worlds in which they find themselves existing. I think reading this paper, in conjunction with re-reading the papers by Pierre Le Morvan and Kafatos, will enable our reaching a mutual understanding of the grounds for their shared theory of Direct Realism as distinguished from various forms of Indirect Realism and 'Naive Realism'. The insights of phenomenological philosophy have inspired and guided all three of these authors. Among the things we need to understand at the outset is the difference between ' phenomenalism' and 'phenomenology', which Strawson develops in this new paper Steve linked last night.

Two further things we need to understand are, first, the extent to which what you refer to as 'physiological changes' occurring in contact with natural things {and other consciousnesses} in the individual's environment are not merely objectively described mechanical processes but also involve incrementally accumulating knowledge. As Strawson writes concerning the nature of directly felt experience in/of the environing world, 'having it is knowing', and this begins in prereflective consciousness. And second, we need to get clear about the differences between 'representation' and 'presentation' in the experiential contact that both preconscious and conscious living beings have with things and gestalts presented to them through the natural affordances of their senses and their embodied conditions of being as consciousnesses.

Whereas the author we'be been reading says no, but only in the case of TQ is IR invoked.

However, the author of the current paper seems to be a physicalist.

So it seems perhaps that whether one characterized perception as direct or indirect is contingent on whether they are a monist or a dualist?

The more we approach the developing understanding of embodied consciousness the less able we are to accept dualism. Kafatos overcomes dualistic thinking in his scientifically informed analysis of interaction and integration recognizable in quantum mechanics and field theory. The paper I'll link below develops a similar approach in terms of 'chirality' in nature as recognized and explained in the later works of Merleau-Ponty. We might add this paper to our core reading as we continue to work out the nature of consciousness (and thus of mind) as based in direct contact with 'what-is' as presented originarily in the awareness and affectivity of primordial forms of life early in the evolution of life on this planet.

The Chirality of Being: Exploring a Merleau-Ponteian Ontology of Sense

David Morris, Department of Philosophy, Concordia University, davimorr@alcor.concordia.caconcordia.academia.edu/DavidMorris

Published in Chiasmi International: Trilingual Studies Concerning Merleau-Ponty’s Thought 12 (2011): 165-182.

Opening paragraph:

“Being is. But being is also something, it is determinate. The problem of ontology is not only or so much saying how it is that being is, but how it is that being is determinate: how being has orientations, senses, meanings, differences that make a difference, rather than being an indifferent blank void of all sensible determinations. This paper explores the thought that being’s sense stems from an ‘ontological chirality,’ a kind of ontological difference with characteristics kin to differences between left and right hands. The concept of reversibility in Merleau-Ponty’s later ontology led me to this thought, so I begin by briefly showing how chirality lurks within reversibility—especially in a relation between activity and passivity that is crucial to reversibility. I then discuss results in chemistry, biology and geometry to illuminate the importance of chiral differences and to develop a definition of ontological chirality that connects with an ontology of sense. Reversibility, a concept central to Merleau-Ponty’s later works “Eye and Mind” (OE) and The Visible and the Invisible (VI), indicates both a relational structure and its ontology. For Merleau-Ponty the perceiver and the perceived in general are reversible. He often illustrates this with touch. . . . .”

https://www.academia.edu/452362/The_Chirality_of_Being_Exploring_a_Merleau-Ponteian_Ontology_of_Sense


Here is another paper I've come across (but have not yet read) that might add to our understanding of the project of 'naturalizing phenomenology', from which our current discussion has evolved:

Sami Pihlström

Journal of Philosophical Research 35:323-352 (2010)

Abstract

This paper examines the metaphysical status of the fact-value entanglement. According to Hilary Putnam, among others, this is a major theme in both classical and recent pragmatism, but its relevance obviously extends beyond pragmatism scholarship. The pragmatic naturalist must make sense of the entanglement thesis within a broadly non-reductively naturalist account of reality. Two rival options for such metaphysics are discussed: values may be claimed to emerge from facts (or normativity from factuality), or fact and value may be considered continuous. Thus, pragmatic naturalism about fact and value may be based on either emergentism or Peircean synechism. This is a crucial tension not only in pragmatist philosophy of value but in pragmatically naturalist metaphysics generally.

http://www.nordprag.org/papers/Pihlstrom - Pragmatic Metaphysics of the Fact-Value Entanglement.pdf

 

[Constance]

Let me hazard the following metaphorical statement as an expression of what has been learned by now concerning our relationship with nature {misunderstood and therefore misrepresented for far too long in the dualistic presuppositions sustained by modern science and materialist/physicalist/objectivist philosophies of mind}.

'Mind', in its evolution in nature, its becoming, still swims in a sea of awareness, affectivity, and prereflective and reflective consciousness. All these stages of the evolutionary development of 'mind' have influenced and continue to be instrumental in enabling thought, including philosophies of being, of perception, of mind, and of the ontology of lived experience and mind as our species illustrates it at this point in time on earth.

 

[Constance]

I'm finding one possible issue of contention with Strawson's view that the unconscious and subconscious regions of the mind operate on the basis of representations [as he defines them, with much more subtlety than that expressed by representationalists] but without the other elements of SRE: sensation and experience.

I think that on the basis of insights into the reality of the subliminal collective unconscious and the human subconscious provided by Jung, Freud, and their successors we have to recognize that 'representations' in these regions of consciousnessness had to have been reached through sensations and experience -- note: including the knowledge that Strawson recognizes as accruing in our 'having' experiences in/of the world -- present to/lived by our forebears in evolution in their experienced worlds.

Somehow we carry forward subconscious, and unconscious, traces of the experiences and resulting ideations formed by earlier generations of our own species and possibly of other species. That the latter is the case is indicated by several discoveries with deeply hypnotized persons engaged by their psychological and psychiatric therapists in past-life regressions. But even if one wishes to avoid considering evidence of that sort, Jung's recognition of the major archetypes operating in our subconscious minds is well supported.

My question is: how could such representative figures [and their emotional valences] be present in the subconscious mind of our forebears if they were not based in, drawn from, experience sensed and reflected on in their lived realities?

Moreover, it's possible that many of the paranormal experiences described by humans in our time, and recorded far back in human history, have been triggered by subconscious experiences remembered in our subconscious minds and in the collective unconscious that influences them? All of this remains to be adequately explored in the effort to understand what consciousness is.

 

[Constance]

Cropped from Keith Laney's gigapan of Curiosity's SOL 529 panoramic photo:

Photo by constance523


Another from the same source:

Photo by constance523

 

[Soupie]

I haven't finished the Strawson paper yet but in the meantime:

What Are Colours?

"Thanks to John Schwenkler for the invitation to write about my book, A Naïve Realist Theory of Colour (Oxford University Press, 2016).

Colours are a prominent feature of the perceived world. They are important for us as perceivers, both because they allow us to distinguish and identify objects in our environment—for instance, the red fruit against the green foliage, the ripe yellow banana—and because of their wider aesthetic and cultural significance. They are also a subject of long-standing interest among philosophers. At least part of the reason for this is that colours provide a vivid illustration of some general problems that arise in thinking about the ‘manifest image’ of the world, or the world as it appears to perceiving subjects.

Reflecting on our experience of colours, it is natural to think that colours are mind-independent properties of things in our environment: properties, like shape and size, whose nature and existence is independent of our experience of them. But if this is right, how are colours related to the physical properties of things: the kinds of properties that are described by the physical sciences, such as the dispositions of things to reflect, refract or emit light in different proportions across the electromagnetic spectrum, or their underlying microphysical properties? At least on the face of it, colours have no place within the description of the world provided by modern science. So how, if at all, do colours fit into the world? What are colours? Do they even exist?

The book defends a naïve realist theory of colour. According to this view, colours are mind-independent properties of things that are distinct from their physical properties. This means that things in our environment really are coloured (something denied by eliminativists), colours are not dispositions of things to produce experiences in us (as they are according to dispositionalists), and colours cannot be reductively identified with physical properties of objects (as they can according to physicalists).

Naïve realism has not been a particularly popular philosophical position since the scientific revolution of seventeenth century. It has seemed to many that the view is ‘shown’ to be false by our modern scientific understanding of physical objects and the processes involved perception. We can, it is often assumed, explain everything there is to explain about the nature and occurrence of colour experiences in terms of physical objects reflecting, refracting, or emitting light in different proportions across the electromagnetic spectrum, light striking the retina and then being processed by our visual processing mechanisms. We don’t, it is assumed, need to appeal to colours as well.

Recent years, however, have seen an increasing interest in non-reductive theories in the philosophy of mind, and naïve realist theories of colour are similar in many ways to non-reductive theories of the mental. It is therefore unsurprising that there has recently been increased interest in naïve realist theories of colour—although it is perhaps surprising that the interest has not yet matched the interest in non-reductive theories of the mental more generally.

Recent interest in naïve realist theories of colour can also be explained in part by the resurgence of interest in naïve realist theories of perception. According to naïve realist theories of perception, perceptual experiences relate us to things in our environment. Because perceptual experiences are essentially relational, things in our environment are part of our experiences – our experiences ‘extend out’ into the world. So you could not have had the very experience you are currently having if the things in your environment had been different. Naïve realist theories of perception are often presented as providing an account of the ‘phenomenal character’ of perceptual experience, or ‘what it is like’ to have an experience: on this view, ‘what it is like’ to have a perceptual experience is determined by the nature of the things in your environment that you are related to.

Naïve realist theories of colour do not entail, and not entailed by, naïve realist theories of perception; one is a theory about the nature of colour, one is a theory about the nature of perceptual experience. But the two theories fit together neatly. For one thing, naïve realist theories of colour provide a way of responding to a long-standing line of objection to naïve realist theories of perception: that there are no properties of physical objects that could explain what it is like to perceive colour, because science has shown us that colours as we perceive them do not exist. Indeed, combining the two theories promises to offer a solution to one of the deepest problems of consciousness: the problem of explaining why conscious experiences have the phenomenal characters that they do. On this combination of views, ‘what it is like’ to have an experience of red, for instance, is explained by the nature of the distinct mind-independent colour, red, that we are related to in perception.

I will return to the connection between colour and the mind-body problem later in the week. Over the next few days, however, I will outline in more detail the naïve realist theory of colour."

Understanding of the MBP is truly in its infancy.

 

[Constance]

Man Carrying Thing
Wallace Stevens, 1879 - 1955

The poem must resist the intelligence
Almost successfully. Illustration:

A brune figure in winter evening resists
Identity. The thing he carries resists

The most necessitous sense. Accept them, then,
As secondary (parts not quite perceived

Of the obvious whole, uncertain particles
Of the certain solid, the primary free from doubt,

Things floating like the first hundred flakes of snow
Out of a storm we must endure all night,

Out of a storm of secondary things),
A horror of thoughts that suddenly are real.

We must endure our thoughts all night, until
The bright obvious stands motionless in cold.

 

[smcder]

Cropped from Keith Laney's gigapan of Curiosity's SOL 529 panoramic photo:

Photo by constance523


Another from the same source:

Photo by constance523

Did you find anything else about the other photo you posted?

Sent from my LGLS991 using Tapatalk

 

[smcder]

I haven't finished the Strawson paper yet but in the meantime:

What Are Colours?

"Thanks to John Schwenkler for the invitation to write about my book, A Naïve Realist Theory of Colour (Oxford University Press, 2016).

Colours are a prominent feature of the perceived world. They are important for us as perceivers, both because they allow us to distinguish and identify objects in our environment—for instance, the red fruit against the green foliage, the ripe yellow banana—and because of their wider aesthetic and cultural significance. They are also a subject of long-standing interest among philosophers. At least part of the reason for this is that colours provide a vivid illustration of some general problems that arise in thinking about the ‘manifest image’ of the world, or the world as it appears to perceiving subjects.

Reflecting on our experience of colours, it is natural to think that colours are mind-independent properties of things in our environment: properties, like shape and size, whose nature and existence is independent of our experience of them. But if this is right, how are colours related to the physical properties of things: the kinds of properties that are described by the physical sciences, such as the dispositions of things to reflect, refract or emit light in different proportions across the electromagnetic spectrum, or their underlying microphysical properties? At least on the face of it, colours have no place within the description of the world provided by modern science. So how, if at all, do colours fit into the world? What are colours? Do they even exist?

The book defends a naïve realist theory of colour. According to this view, colours are mind-independent properties of things that are distinct from their physical properties. This means that things in our environment really are coloured (something denied by eliminativists), colours are not dispositions of things to produce experiences in us (as they are according to dispositionalists), and colours cannot be reductively identified with physical properties of objects (as they can according to physicalists).

Naïve realism has not been a particularly popular philosophical position since the scientific revolution of seventeenth century. It has seemed to many that the view is ‘shown’ to be false by our modern scientific understanding of physical objects and the processes involved perception. We can, it is often assumed, explain everything there is to explain about the nature and occurrence of colour experiences in terms of physical objects reflecting, refracting, or emitting light in different proportions across the electromagnetic spectrum, light striking the retina and then being processed by our visual processing mechanisms. We don’t, it is assumed, need to appeal to colours as well.

Recent years, however, have seen an increasing interest in non-reductive theories in the philosophy of mind, and naïve realist theories of colour are similar in many ways to non-reductive theories of the mental. It is therefore unsurprising that there has recently been increased interest in naïve realist theories of colour—although it is perhaps surprising that the interest has not yet matched the interest in non-reductive theories of the mental more generally.

Recent interest in naïve realist theories of colour can also be explained in part by the resurgence of interest in naïve realist theories of perception. According to naïve realist theories of perception, perceptual experiences relate us to things in our environment. Because perceptual experiences are essentially relational, things in our environment are part of our experiences – our experiences ‘extend out’ into the world. So you could not have had the very experience you are currently having if the things in your environment had been different. Naïve realist theories of perception are often presented as providing an account of the ‘phenomenal character’ of perceptual experience, or ‘what it is like’ to have an experience: on this view, ‘what it is like’ to have a perceptual experience is determined by the nature of the things in your environment that you are related to.

Naïve realist theories of colour do not entail, and not entailed by, naïve realist theories of perception; one is a theory about the nature of colour, one is a theory about the nature of perceptual experience. But the two theories fit together neatly. For one thing, naïve realist theories of colour provide a way of responding to a long-standing line of objection to naïve realist theories of perception: that there are no properties of physical objects that could explain what it is like to perceive colour, because science has shown us that colours as we perceive them do not exist. Indeed, combining the two theories promises to offer a solution to one of the deepest problems of consciousness: the problem of explaining why conscious experiences have the phenomenal characters that they do. On this combination of views, ‘what it is like’ to have an experience of red, for instance, is explained by the nature of the distinct mind-independent colour, red, that we are related to in perception.

I will return to the connection between colour and the mind-body problem later in the week. Over the next few days, however, I will outline in more detail the naïve realist theory of colour."

Understanding of the MBP is truly in its infancy.

So ... Basically "colors" are still "colours" without you in it?

Sent from my LGLS991 using Tapatalk

 

[Soupie]

So ... Basically "colors" are still "colours" without you in it?

Sent from my LGLS991 using Tapatalk

Haha.

Although he's calling this NR, it almost seems like he's inserting a TQ-type intermediary.

Re my response above, although focusing on color is very "simplistic" it is at the same time very "tangible." It's easier for us to all be on the same page, so to speak.

So the fact that we don't know or agree on what colors are, how they relate to physical objects nor how they relate to the mind, it just underlines for me how primitive our understanding of the MBP truly is.

I'm going to spend a bit of time on this issue. (If you look at my posts in this discussion, I bet a majority of them concern (visual) perception.)

Are physical objects, physiological processes, colors, minds and perceivers ontologically the same or ontologically distinct? How many primitives are there? One, two, many?

Colours as Observational Properties

Colours as Observational Properties

KEITH ALLEN JANUARY 11, 2017 COLOR / KEITH ALLEN: A NAIVE REALIST THEORY OF COLOUR / NATURALISM / PERCEPTION


The second main claim made by the naïve realist is that colours are distinct from the physical properties of objects.

In saying that colours are distinct from the physical properties of objects, the naïve realist is not necessarily saying that are ‘perfectly simple’ properties whose nature cannot be described further; indeed, on the face of it this is inconsistent with the claim, outlined in yesterday’s post, that colours are mind-independent properties. (It is partly for this reason I prefer to call the position ‘naïve realism’ rather than ‘primitivism’.)

Rather, to say that colours are distinct from the physical properties of objects is to say that they cannot be reductively identified with properties that can only be described using vocabulary from the physical sciences. So, for instance, colours are not dispositions to reflect light in different proportions across the electromagnetic spectrum (‘surface reflectance profiles’), or microphysical properties of objects, as they are according to common contemporary forms of colour physicalism.

I spend three chapters of A Naïve Realist Theory of Colour defending the claim that colours are distinct from the physical properties of objects. One line of argument for this claim is grounded in the idea that our colour concepts are concepts of observational properties.

A property is an observational property when it is not possible for something to look to normal perceivers in normal conditions to have the property, but not in fact have it. The property of being an apple, for example, is not observational in this sense, because whether something is an apple depends upon properties that cannot be perceived. It is possible for something to look like an apple to normal perceivers in normal conditions, but not be an apple: for instance, if it is a perfect plastic replica of an apple. The same is arguably not true of properties like colour or shape. If something looks yellow, or looks spherical, to normal perceivers in normal conditions, then it tempting to say that it must be yellow or spherical. It isn’t clear that we can make sense of the idea of ‘fool’s colours’ or ‘fool’s shapes’: things that share the appearance of colours or shapes, but which aren’t really colours or shapes because they differ in their non-perceptible properties.

One way of presenting the general challenge to the colour physicalist is as follows: to square the claim that our colour concepts are concepts of observational properties with the claim that colours can be reductively identified with properties with a complex physical essence.

Consider, by way of illustration, a form of colour physicalism that identifies colours with types of ‘surface reflectance profile’. Most physical objects reflect light in different proportions right across the electromagnetic spectrum, and what determines the colour they will appear is the proportion of light that they reflect at different parts of the electromagnetic spectrum that is visible to humans, between roughly 400 and 700 nanometres. This is called their ‘surface reflectance profile’.

Colours cannot be identified with individual surface reflectance profiles, unless there are many more colours than we normally assume there to be. Objects that differ in their surface reflectance profile—often quite radically—can nevertheless appear identical in colour (at least under certain conditions). This is a phenomenon known as ‘metamerism’. Our reaction—or more specifically, lack of reaction—to the discovery that objects that differ physically can be identical in colour reflects, I suggest, the fact that our colour concepts are concepts of observational properties. Even after we have discovered that objects that appear identical in colour can differ physically, we nevertheless continue to treat them as identical. In this respect, our judgments about colours do not display a deference to science in the way that judgments about whether, say, whales are fish do.

Contemporary physicalists like Alex Byrne and David Hilbert accommodate the phenomenon of metamerism by identifying colours, not with individual surface reflectance profiles, but with types of surface reflectance profile that all appear identical in colour. But it seems possible to imagine that there could be objects that differed still more radically in their physical properties – for instance, perhaps they acted directly on the visual cortex – but which still appeared to be coloured. My sense is that we would treat these objects as coloured, too. The reason for this, I suggest, is that we ordinarily take colours to be observational properties that form a largely autonomous domain. Whether or not a colour ascription is true depends on the way an object appears to normal perceivers in normal conditions, not on its unobservable physical properties.

In the book, I develop this argument via a variation on Kripke’s modal argument against physicalist theories of mental states like pain. I also provide responses to two lines of objection to the claim that colours are distinct from the physical properties of objects: that colours understood in this way can play no role in causing colour experiences, and that there are no properties of physical objects that instantiate the appropriate structural properties of the colours (for instance, properties which stand in the right relations of similarity). These are interesting and important issues. In my final two posts, however, I want to step back from debates about the nature of colour and try to give a sense of some of the more general issues that thinking about colour can help to illuminate: questions about the nature and possibility of philosophical inquiry and the problem of consciousness.

 

[smcder]

@Soupie were you able to finish the Strawson paper?

Sent from my LGLS991 using Tapatalk

 

[smcder]

I'm finding one possible issue of contention with Strawson's view that the unconscious and subconscious regions of the mind operate on the basis of representations [as he defines them, with much more subtlety than that expressed by representationalists] but without the other elements of SRE: sensation and experience.

I think that on the basis of insights into the reality of the subliminal collective unconscious and the human subconscious provided by Jung, Freud, and their successors we have to recognize that 'representations' in these regions of consciousnessness had to have been reached through sensations and experience -- note: including the knowledge that Strawson recognizes as accruing in our 'having' experiences in/of the world -- present to/lived by our forebears in evolution in their experienced worlds.

Somehow we carry forward subconscious, and unconscious, traces of the experiences and resulting ideations formed by earlier generations of our own species and possibly of other species. That the latter is the case is indicated by several discoveries with deeply hypnotized persons engaged by their psychological and psychiatric therapists in past-life regressions. But even if one wishes to avoid considering evidence of that sort, Jung's recognition of the major archetypes operating in our subconscious minds is well supported.

My question is: how could such representative figures [and their emotional valences] be present in the subconscious mind of our forebears if they were not based in, drawn from, experience sensed and reflected on in their lived realities?

Moreover, it's possible that many of the paranormal experiences described by humans in our time, and recorded far back in human history, have been triggered by subconscious experiences remembered in our subconscious minds and in the collective unconscious that influences them? All of this remains to be adequately explored in the effort to understand what consciousness is.

Fascinating ... We've talked a bit about the unconscious mind but I think never in full depth nor the reincarnation/past lives evidence.

I'm aware of some of this work ... but it's been since we last talked about it here.

Many documented cases, some with physical evidence. I think we have to consider this and other evidence of mind as non-local and what that would mean for the theories we are looking at and the relationship of mind and body.


Sent from my LGLS991 using Tapatalk

 

[Constance]

Did you find anything else about the other photo you posted?

Ah, the critter. I forgot to over the holidays. I'll try to find an entymologist at the university who might be willing to look at the photo and speculate about it.

 

[Constance]

Fascinating ... We've talked a bit about the unconscious mind but I think never in full depth nor the reincarnation/past lives evidence.

I'm aware of some of this work ... but it's been since we last talked about it here.

Many documented cases, some with physical evidence. I think we have to consider this and other evidence of mind as non-local and what that would mean for the theories we are looking at and the relationship of mind and body.

I agree, and we could take that discussion up again now, alongside these discussions based in attempts to understand consciousness in terms of its natural evolution in living organisms on earth, such as in Kafatos's quantum interaction-based theory. We still don't have an adequate understanding of the origin of life, though the quantum-based interaction and entanglement theory [relational qm theory] makes a great deal of sense in 'scientific' terms. But indeed, the evidence for reincarnation, along with extra-sensory perception and telepathy, more than suggests a larger ontological reality than Kafatos's assessments of subject-object relations as natural extensions of q substrate interactions can demonstrate, and as Kafatos and Theise propose in their coauthored papers. Thinking in terms of a larger ontological reality than we can measure seems to me to be supported by the change in physical theory in our time from the concept of a closed universe to the concept of the universe as open.

 

[smcder]

Weird weather effects on people here ... 71 degrees in January ... We closed for snow last Friday and it was 8 degrees that weekend. Just broke up a fight at the library ...

Sent from my LGLS991 using Tapatalk

 

[smcder]

Not 100% on target but fascinating ...

The Mind of an Octopus

Sent from my LGLS991 using Tapatalk

 

[smcder]

Haha.

Although he's calling this NR, it almost seems like he's inserting a TQ-type intermediary.

Re my response above, although focusing on color is very "simplistic" it is at the same time very "tangible." It's easier for us to all be on the same page, so to speak.

So the fact that we don't know or agree on what colors are, how they relate to physical objects nor how they relate to the mind, it just underlines for me how primitive our understanding of the MBP truly is.

I'm going to spend a bit of time on this issue. (If you look at my posts in this discussion, I bet a majority of them concern (visual) perception.)

Are physical objects, physiological processes, colors, minds and perceivers ontologically the same or ontologically distinct? How many primitives are there? One, two, many?

Colours as Observational Properties

Colours as Observational Properties

KEITH ALLEN JANUARY 11, 2017 COLOR / KEITH ALLEN: A NAIVE REALIST THEORY OF COLOUR / NATURALISM / PERCEPTION


The second main claim made by the naïve realist is that colours are distinct from the physical properties of objects.

In saying that colours are distinct from the physical properties of objects, the naïve realist is not necessarily saying that are ‘perfectly simple’ properties whose nature cannot be described further; indeed, on the face of it this is inconsistent with the claim, outlined in yesterday’s post, that colours are mind-independent properties. (It is partly for this reason I prefer to call the position ‘naïve realism’ rather than ‘primitivism’.)

Rather, to say that colours are distinct from the physical properties of objects is to say that they cannot be reductively identified with properties that can only be described using vocabulary from the physical sciences. So, for instance, colours are not dispositions to reflect light in different proportions across the electromagnetic spectrum (‘surface reflectance profiles’), or microphysical properties of objects, as they are according to common contemporary forms of colour physicalism.

I spend three chapters of A Naïve Realist Theory of Colour defending the claim that colours are distinct from the physical properties of objects. One line of argument for this claim is grounded in the idea that our colour concepts are concepts of observational properties.

A property is an observational property when it is not possible for something to look to normal perceivers in normal conditions to have the property, but not in fact have it. The property of being an apple, for example, is not observational in this sense, because whether something is an apple depends upon properties that cannot be perceived. It is possible for something to look like an apple to normal perceivers in normal conditions, but not be an apple: for instance, if it is a perfect plastic replica of an apple. The same is arguably not true of properties like colour or shape. If something looks yellow, or looks spherical, to normal perceivers in normal conditions, then it tempting to say that it must be yellow or spherical. It isn’t clear that we can make sense of the idea of ‘fool’s colours’ or ‘fool’s shapes’: things that share the appearance of colours or shapes, but which aren’t really colours or shapes because they differ in their non-perceptible properties.

One way of presenting the general challenge to the colour physicalist is as follows: to square the claim that our colour concepts are concepts of observational properties with the claim that colours can be reductively identified with properties with a complex physical essence.

Consider, by way of illustration, a form of colour physicalism that identifies colours with types of ‘surface reflectance profile’. Most physical objects reflect light in different proportions right across the electromagnetic spectrum, and what determines the colour they will appear is the proportion of light that they reflect at different parts of the electromagnetic spectrum that is visible to humans, between roughly 400 and 700 nanometres. This is called their ‘surface reflectance profile’.

Colours cannot be identified with individual surface reflectance profiles, unless there are many more colours than we normally assume there to be. Objects that differ in their surface reflectance profile—often quite radically—can nevertheless appear identical in colour (at least under certain conditions). This is a phenomenon known as ‘metamerism’. Our reaction—or more specifically, lack of reaction—to the discovery that objects that differ physically can be identical in colour reflects, I suggest, the fact that our colour concepts are concepts of observational properties. Even after we have discovered that objects that appear identical in colour can differ physically, we nevertheless continue to treat them as identical. In this respect, our judgments about colours do not display a deference to science in the way that judgments about whether, say, whales are fish do.

Contemporary physicalists like Alex Byrne and David Hilbert accommodate the phenomenon of metamerism by identifying colours, not with individual surface reflectance profiles, but with types of surface reflectance profile that all appear identical in colour. But it seems possible to imagine that there could be objects that differed still more radically in their physical properties – for instance, perhaps they acted directly on the visual cortex – but which still appeared to be coloured. My sense is that we would treat these objects as coloured, too. The reason for this, I suggest, is that we ordinarily take colours to be observational properties that form a largely autonomous domain. Whether or not a colour ascription is true depends on the way an object appears to normal perceivers in normal conditions, not on its unobservable physical properties.

In the book, I develop this argument via a variation on Kripke’s modal argument against physicalist theories of mental states like pain. I also provide responses to two lines of objection to the claim that colours are distinct from the physical properties of objects: that colours understood in this way can play no role in causing colour experiences, and that there are no properties of physical objects that instantiate the appropriate structural properties of the colours (for instance, properties which stand in the right relations of similarity). These are interesting and important issues. In my final two posts, however, I want to step back from debates about the nature of colour and try to give a sense of some of the more general issues that thinking about colour can help to illuminate: questions about the nature and possibility of philosophical inquiry and the problem of consciousness.

Interesting. I've read his posts too. Maybe I'll practice naivety for a while.

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[smcder]

Other similarities are even more abstract, such as recognizing individual humans. This ability makes sense if an animal is social or monogamous, but octopuses are not monogamous, have haphazard sex lives and do not seem to be very social.

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[smcder]

"The octopus is sometimes said to be a good illustration of the importance of a theoretical movement in psychology known as embodied cognition. One of its central ideas is that our body, rather than our brain, is responsible for some of the “smartness” with which we handle the world. The joints and angles of our limbs, for example, make motions such as walking naturally arise. Knowing how to walk is partly a matter of having the right body.

But the doctrines of the embodied cognition movement do not really fit well with the strangeness of the octopus's way of being."



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[Constance]

So the fact that we don't know or agree on what colors are, how they relate to physical objects nor how they relate to the mind, it just underlines for me how primitive our understanding of the MBP truly is.

The color issue does not seem to me to be so mysterious. The naieve conception your author refers to of 'color being spread out upon the world' has been overcome by our increasing understanding of visible color as being a phenomenal result of the available light falling on things. We talked earlier in this thread about differences in perceived colors as sensed/seen by other species of life, particularly insects [noting that in general things as seen through the eyes of insects also differ markedly from the ways in which we see them]. It seems to me that the differences among what is visible to individuals of different species are the results of the natural affordances provided to various species in their evolution, enabling their survival and even their thriving in their environmental niches on earth by guiding them to the colors (as they perceive them) of the foods they survive by consuming, and to the visibility for them of the colors and shapes and movements of other species preying upon them. [isn't this part of @Pharoah's 'berrybug' example?]

Among our own species, differences in the hues and intensity of colors seen and described seem to be accounted for by the differing visual capacities in individual physiological sensitivities to light -- and thus to color. Maybe Steve will describe for us the different ways in which he sees color in general (and does not see certain colors most of us see and identify in common). It might be that some members of our species do not see color at all but only see things in a grey scale, as I think it's been judged that cats do.* I don't know whether or not this is true, but nevertheless those of us who are capable of visual access to our environing world do seem to see the same world, manuevering successfully in it despite differences in color perception. My cat and I alike, when moving about in our common world, see and avoid the same physical obstacles {she does this better}. So-called 'color blind' humans also drive cars and sail boats, etc., in the same world shared with those of us who see perhaps a fuller spectrum of colors. The point seems to be that we live in the same world with others of our species and of other species despite experiencing phenomenal/phenomenological differences in color perception {and apparently also different in terms of other perceptive capacities, such as the ability to see 'auras' around other persons}.

Also, visual experiences had by some humans, while labelled 'hallucinations' by objectivist/materialist-oriented scientists and physicians, might in fact be viridical perceptions. Cases in the SPR archives include cases in which two or more individuals have simultaneously, in the same location, perceived the appearance of a deceased person, or one halfway around the globe. Many books, articles, and archived studies concerning these types of phenomena are available to be read and evaluated, along with the extensive studies concerning evidentiary cases of reincarnation. That entire background of 'psychical' research must be read before one can comprehend the evidence contained and expressed in near-death experiences and past-life regressions.

 

[Constance]

Other similarities are even more abstract, such as recognizing individual humans. This ability makes sense if an animal is social or monogamous, but octopuses are not monogamous, have haphazard sex lives and do not seem to be very social.

I've recently read a number of papers concerning a now widely recognized phenomenon in a sizeable number of humans who cannot remember faces, even the faces of their parents, siblings, and close associates. (People with this condition often have to fake recognition of people they meet up with outside of the situations in which they've known themn or are accustomed to seeing them, e.g., at work). This condition persists into adulthood and there is as yet no explanation for it, though it's likely to be the result of deficiences in the brain's capacity to connect memories of faces.

I think something similar operates in the inability of an estimated one-third of humans to recognize the shapes and characteristic physical attitudes and movements of humans and animals in photographs taken at a distance. Some analysts of the panoramic photos of locations on Mars photographed by the rovers (including some citizen researchers who think that life might be extant on Mars in forms evolved beyond microbes) are unable to recognize in these photos human-like beings and animals similar to animals we are familiar with on earth, while others of us can and do recognize them, in sculptures and in current activity on Mars.