You will all fail at this

[Underemployed]

Forgive the vulgar grab for attention that is the title of this thread.

However, I suspect it will be true. None of you will be able to do this thing I ask of you, yet it involves one of the simplest acts in the world. It also has serious implications on our favourite topic - Consciousness - and has made me a convert to Undercover Elephant's take on the subject.

It involves colour (or color for those of you reading this in American). It's a subject dear to my heart because I am a colourblind person. I can't see green at all.

Normally this statement instantly turns any person I am speaking to into the amazing colour-tester.

"Oh really! What colour is this? And this? Ahahahahaaaa! You can't tell what colour it is, can you? Hahahahaha!"

One day I reasoned that despite never having actually seen the colour green, I still have a fully-functioning brain that can perceive, along with a large range of other hues in the electromagnetic spectrum, sensations from other senses too. Can I not draw on my experiences and come up with 'green' in my mind's eye, despite never having seen it in real life?

After all, William Perkin (http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbninquiry.asp?isbn=0393020053) discovered Mauve by accident. Surely I could come up with a colour everyone knows about already?

I sat and thought about green for hours.

I couldn't do it.

So I ask if any of you reading this can picture, inside your mind, an entirely new colour. You might start by picturing what ultraviolet or infra red 'look' like. I do not mean a different shade of an existing colour. I do not mean a new mix of any existing colours. I mean an absolutely new colour, never before seen by human eyes.

Perhaps one of you is a Tetrachrome - a mutant who has four sets of colour receptors in the eye instead of the usual three, and is thus capable of discerning a much larger array of separate colours than the rest of us. Such a mutation is biologically possible but yet to be seen in reality (or do you know otherwise? please post if so).

Intuition says this should be easy...After all, if you can imagine a new shape easily enough, a new sound - why not a colour? But I predict you will not be able to do it.

And if no-one can do this, what does this mean 'colour' is? Doesn't it mean it is more than simply a perception of a certain energy wavelength? It implies non-physical Qualia. It implies....

It hints at...

It might point toward...

...

[Ian Osborne]

Originally posted by Underemployed
Doesn't it mean it is more than simply a perception of a certain energy wavelength? It implies non-physical Qualia.

Why?

Originally posted by Underemployed
And if no-one can do this, what does this mean 'colour' is? Doesn't it mean it is more than simply a perception of a certain energy wavelength? It implies non-physical Qualia. It implies....

It hints at...

It might point toward...

...

See my thread from today on the recent discovery of the mechanism behind color vision. I don't think there's anything mysterious here, it's just that either something is wrong with your brain's green "strips" or it's not getting proper data from your eye.

If it's the latter, you probably COULD be stimulated to "see" green by stimulating those cells.

Before today, your question about imagining new colors would have been a lot more profound; now we seem to know that the reason you can't imagine them, is that there are no cells in the brain dedicated to recognizing them.

Interesting question though. I wonder if this new knowledge will eventually give scientists tools to correct color blindness.

[Stimpson J. Cat]

Underemployed,

Intuition says this should be easy...After all, if you can imagine a new shape easily enough, a new sound - why not a colour? But I predict you will not be able to do it.

You already illustrated why this is not the case when you mentioned how color perception works, with respect to the fact that there are three different color receptors in the eye. You can't imagine a new color, because the entirety of all colors you are capable of perceiving are exhausted by the set of colors you have already seen.

One thing you have to keep in mind is that perception is not just a machine (your brain) responding to arbitrary input in some predetermined way. Your visual cortex literally needs to learn how to perceive colors. For example, if it was possible for you to be "cured" of your color-blindness, say by means of an eye transplant, your brain would still have to learn how to differentiate the information sent to it by the different types of receptors. (Note that I am assuming your color-blindness is due to you only having two types of receptors, instead of three).

Your brain would have to learn how to interpret the new information it is receiving. At first, you probably still wouldn't be able to distinguish colors that look the same to you now. And at first, everything would look a little funny, due the slight differences between the old signals, and the new ones. But gradually, your brain will adapt. Things will stop looking strange, and after a while you will realize that you are able to distinguish colors that you did not used to be able to distinguish.

Quite simply, your brain is not currently physically capable of perceiving other colors, and that is why you can't conceive of them.

And if no-one can do this, what does this mean 'colour' is? Doesn't it mean it is more than simply a perception of a certain energy wavelength? It implies non-physical Qualia. It implies....

It implies only that you are not capable of conceiving of something which you have no frame of reference for understanding. You cannot conceive of what it is like to see green, because you have no information on which to generate such a conception. The brain is not a magical thinking machine. It is an information processing system. And specifically, it is an adaptive pattern recognition system. There are many things which it simply is not capable of doing. Conceiving of what it is like to experience things that are completely unlike anything it has experiences, is something that it is not designed to do.

Dr. Stupid

[arcticpenguin]

Ho hum. Have you ever read Flatland (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/048627263X/qid=1043966783/sr=2-1/ref=sr_2_1/103-2424200-1527834) ?

[arcticpenguin]

Originally posted by sundog


See my thread from today on the recent discovery of the mechanism behind color vision. I don't think there's anything mysterious here, it's just that either something is wrong with your brain's green "strips" or it's not getting proper data from your eye.

If it's the latter, you probably COULD be stimulated to "see" green by stimulating those cells.

Before today, your question about imagining new colors would have been a lot more profound; now we seem to know that the reason you can't imagine them, is that there are no cells in the brain dedicated to recognizing them.

Interesting question though. I wonder if this new knowledge will eventually give scientists tools to correct color blindness.
Maybe, maybe not. It could be that his brain lacks the green strips because they never received any stimulus due to his (presumed) lack of green cones. Whether an adult brain could re-wire itself to make use of a new signal or not is open to question.

I read an article within the last 2 years in either Discover magazine or Scientific American about a blind man who had an operation to restore his sight. He didn't do too well at interpreting the new visual info, especially at first.

Originally posted by arcticpenguin

Whether an adult brain could re-wire itself to make use of a new signal or not is open to question.


You are probably right. I hadn't thought it out that far, but if that group of cells has NEVER been stimulated, it probably wouldn't develop.

[DialecticMaterialist]

Intuition says this should be easy...After all, if you can imagine a new shape easily enough, a new sound - why not a colour? But I predict you will not be able to do it.


I find it interesting that you came to this conclusion because, to me at least, it seems to suggest the opposite.

You are taking the passive empiricist view of the brain, tabula rasa in structure. However the brain is more like an active computer or network with certain hardware made to process a certain way.

The reason you cannot imagine new colors isn't necessarily an enviromental problem but a hardware problem: asking our brain to imagine new colors is like asking a 486 computer to process advanced 3-d graphics. Or a black and white TV to display red and green.

So why does this show that the mind is material to me? By showing the minds physical limitations. If the mind made matter and was really free of physical laws, there's no reason why it couldn't simply "create" new colors. However if the mind is a physical organ, with limitations like a physical organ, then there is a good reason why the mind cannot do this.

That's why I believe materialism is vindicated by the above, it shows how how the mind is like a piece of hardware with limitations like certain hardware.

[Hazelip]

How does this have any bearing at all on consciousness? Am I to assume that all people born deaf or blind are not truly conscious, based on your argument?

[c4ts]

When I was in kindergarten I used to get frustrated because if I mixed red and white fingerpaints I got pink instead of light red. But I am definitely not a tetrachrome, and technically I'm red green colorblind anyway, so how I imagined that there was such a color as "light red" is a mystery.

[Tricky]

Originally posted by Hazelip
How does this have any bearing at all on consciousness? Am I to assume that all people born deaf or blind are not truly conscious, based on your argument?
I wouldn't say they weren't truly conscious, but rather that they are not "completely" conscious. This is in no way a knock at color blind people. None of us is completely conscious. If we take the definition of consciousness as:
Having an awareness of one's environment and one's own existence, sensations, and thoughts.
---American Heritage Dictionary
then it merely means they are not capable of being aware of their visual environment as fully as others are. Totally blind people are even less aware of their "visual" environment, although they may be much more aware of their auditory and tactile environment. None of us is capable of sensing the "radio wave" environment without assistance, even though it completely surrounds us. I regard it as a virtual impossibility for any creature to be fully conscious.

Indeed, you are more conscious at some times than others. You probably don't notice ambient noise as much when you are reading as when you are trying to hear a conversation. And of course, your consciousness is lowered greatly when you sleep.

As DialecticMaterialist points out, this suggests strongly the material nature of consciousness. Just as a computer slows down when it tries to multitask, you cannot fully devote your "consciousness" to too many things at one time. If you don't have the "software" for doing certain tasks, like perceiving the color green, then you cannot do it at all.

[Marquis de Carabas]

ummm, ok, fine...I thought of a new colour...

have a nice day

[Cecil]

Originally posted by Marquis de Carabas
ummm, ok, fine...I thought of a new colour... What colour is it? :p

[evildave]

If mauve is a "new color", then I'm thinking of yet another shade of purple, a little off from that, with a little more UV component to it. I think I'll label it "splug".

I'm thinking of a greenish-brown color... I'll call it "turdquoise".

New color. Named it and everything.

Added...
Technically, I failed, however, in that I thought up TWO colors.

[SpaceLord]

There are levels of color-blindness. I did not know I was at all colorblind until I began college. My color blindness is very slight. How is that explained? Do I have a deficiency in those cells required to differentiate between red and green?

[Tricky]

Originally posted by SpaceLord
There are levels of color-blindness. I did not know I was at all colorblind until I began college. My color blindness is very slight. How is that explained? Do I have a deficiency in those cells required to differentiate between red and green?
Certainly there is a difference in your "color recognition software". All humans are different in their ability to perceive certain visual phenomena. I have heard it said (no proof, sorry) that baseball players have a much superior talent at depth perception than "normal" people, which allows them to hit a baseball travelling at nearly a hundred miles per hour. Probably some artists have color recognition abilities far beyond that of "normal" people.

[evildave]

More typically, color blindness is caused by a defect in the eye its self.

There are also glasses/contacts that can correct certain kinds of color blindness.

[SortingItAllOut]

Your challenge to come up with a new color reminds me of a discussion I had when I was younger with a girl who lived down the street. She was blind and unlike some blind people, she didn't even perceive light and dark. Her world was always dark visually.

Now, being able to see, I was very curious what it was like for her to know that other people she knew had this ability to see the people and objects that she could only sense because she could touch, smell, or hear them. We talked about this a bit and I really had a hard time explaining to her what seeing was like. It seemed impossible for me to describe what sight was, what light was, what dark was like. How the sun looked in the morning or how the stars looked. It was strange - and frustrating.

How can you describe something when there isn't really something to compare it to? Sure, I could talk about how colors are arranged in a spectrum and how they vary like tones on the piano or temperature, but does that do it justice? I don't think I've made much progress even doing that.

I guess it would be that way with any of the senses, though. My oldest child (who is young) is always asking me what something tastes like before trying it. I'm supposed to compare it to another food or drink that has been tried before. This is sometimes challenging but a far easier task than trying to explain what the sense of taste would be like to someone who had none.

I don't know. It is late and my brain is trying to wind down. Thoughts?

Take care,
Sort

[synaesthesia]

Stimpson,
You can't imagine a new color

The mind can indeed generate whites that are an impossibly brilliant white, textures that defy all normal classification.

[The Central Scrutinizer]

Cold hearted orb that rules the night
Removes the colors from our sight
Red is Grey
And Yellow White
But we decide which is right
And which is an illusion?

[c4ts]

Originally posted by SpaceLord
There are levels of color-blindness. I did not know I was at all colorblind until I began college. My color blindness is very slight. How is that explained? Do I have a deficiency in those cells required to differentiate between red and green?

Something like that. You can differentiate between the two colors by themselves as long as they are not the same value because you have the right amount of rods but certain red or green cones are missing. Or is it missing rods? I forgot which ones determine color, and which ones determine value.

[Hazelip]

Originally posted by SortingItAllOut
We talked about this a bit and I really had a hard time explaining to her what seeing was like. It seemed impossible for me to describe what sight was, what light was, what dark was like. How the sun looked in the morning or how the stars looked. It was strange - and frustrating.

How can you describe something when there isn't really something to compare it to?

This reminds me of a scene in Mask (elephantiasis movie with Chere, not Jim Carey) when the main character is in a camp for kids with disabilities. One girl is blind. He has to explain colors.

I only remember two things. One, he took a hot rock and put it in her hands and said, "this is red" and then he plunged her hands under ice cold water and said "this is blue".

I have no idea how accurate it is, but I always thought it was inventive.

[Kullervo]

The color receptors in my two eyes are significantly different - the right senses color more vividly than the left. I've known about this for as long as I can remember. Does anyone else have this condition?

[arcticpenguin]

Originally posted by sundog

You are probably right. I hadn't thought it out that far, but if that group of cells has NEVER been stimulated, it probably wouldn't develop.
You realize the implication of this? We are partaking in a discussion of consciousness with someone who is missing a part of their brain!

[mindless]

Having trouble seeing colours, why not feel them instead, Take some LSD and be one with the rainbow :)

edit: I was just joking before, but actualy this could be an interesting point, can LSD or other psycadelic drugs which effect your brain bypass your eyes and allow colour blind folks to percive colours that they can't physicaly see!?

[Crossbow]

To: Underemployed

I apologize for sounding negative, but one cannot imagine a new color since there are no new colors.

To explain, I have already seen hundreds, perhaps thousands, of rainbows which show every color in the visible light spectrum, therefore there are no new colors.

To see a new color, one would have to be able to see into the ultraviolet and/or infrared regions of the visible light spectrum and that is not possible for human anatomy.

I hope this helps!

I was thinking about this last night. I don't think the mechanism exists within the brain to imagine colors outside the visible spectrum, but it should be perfectly possible to imagine colors you've never seen provided that they can be represented by some combination of the color-sensing strips, in other words, that they actually exist somewhere in the spectrum.

But just try and do it! It's very difficult!

[Yahzi]

Red is Grey
I always thought it was "readies grey, and yellow white."

I once read an interesting discussion on the color white, and how what we call white has a lot more blue in it than what some other people called white.

I want to thank Underemployed for coming up with a new question. I think he's wrong about the implications, but it's still refreshing to read something new.

Originally posted by Yahzi

I always thought it was "readies grey, and yellow white."

I once read an interesting discussion on the color white, and how what we call white has a lot more blue in it than what some other people called white.


White is white. White is the equal representation of all wavelengths in the spectrum.

You might have been reading a discussion about color temperature. "White" light from the sun is indeed far bluer than light from, say, an incandescent bulb, which is quite yellow.

Before video cameras had built-in color balancing, you had to be careful to set the camera's color temperature to match the light you were using (I'm talking pro cameras here). The same phenomenon is responsible for the need for indoor and outdoor color film.

The eye (or brain rather) is very good at compensating for this, so we accept a wide range of shades as "white" under different circumstances.

[Underemployed]

Thank you all for your wonderful replies!

You have all made me go back to my basic assumptions and question everything. That is what makes this forum so great!

I have these words to say in reply to your posts. Here we go...

First of all, Marquis de Carabas, congratulations! I hope to see your new colour sometime soon (assuming it is percieveable by dichromes such as myself). Your main problem in spreading the news will be that televisions are incapable of displaying your new discovery. But a live tour should make you a millionaire by the end of the year. Can I have a percentage as I started you off? Or at least some credit in the forthcoming book...?

To Mindless: I freely admit to taking LSD. It was a fantastic experience and certainly led to me seeing some things I hadn't seen before ;) but no extra colours.

Arcticpenguin: Thank you for pointing out Flatland. I have not read it yet but I shall make an effort to do so as soon as possible. It looks very interesting.

Sundog and the frighteningly clever Stimpy:

The link to the monkey experiements was fascinating. There seems to be some confusion amonst the replies about where the initial 'data' of colours come from, so I will clarify from here: (http://members.aol.com/nocolorvsn/color2.htm)

The human eye sees by light stimulating the retina (a neuro-membrane lining the inside back of the eye). The retina is made up of what are called Rods and Cones. The rods, located in the peripheral retina, give us our night vision, but can not distinguish color. Cones, located in the center of the retina (called the macula), are not much good at night but do let us perceive color during daylight conditions.

The cones, each contain a light sensitive pigment which is sensitive over a range of wavelengths (each visible color is a different wavelength from approximately 400 to 700 nm). Genes contain the coding instructions for these pigments, and if the coding instructions are wrong, then the wrong pigments will be produced, and the cones will be sensitive to different wavelengths of light (resulting in a color deficiency). The colors that we see are completely dependent on the sensitivity ranges of those pigments.

So in my case, the lack of 'hardware' is the reason I have no green colour strips in my brain, or if they are there, it is why they have not developed. If such a treatment should become available that would miraculously grant me full colour vision I would be first in the queue, believe me. At least while I'm young enough to try out for Astronaut school!

(the contact lenses and glasses sold on the basis of giving you some colour vision are pure quackery (http://www.solarchromic.com/))

Now for some paragraphs that might be more at home on the various Consciousness threads.

Your posts on the nature of colour perception are closely linked to The Chinese Room Problem. (http://www.cogs.susx.ac.uk/lab/nlp/gazdar/teach/atc/1998/web/wright/index.html)

I have deep reservations about the whole CRP idea as a refutation of Strong AI, particularly as strong AI is indistinguishable from human consciousness. Are we all sitting in Chinese Rooms, churning out answers to incomprehensible symbols? J.R Searle (originator of the CRP) was also concerned about this.

If you take issue against this argument, you are saying that any computational process, be it a human brain, a computer or - to take things to their logical extreme - a sufficiently complicated water-clock, or an arrangement of mice running round wheels. If our computer-pattern-recognition-brain is conscious, then pretty much everything else joins the club.

The monkeys were shown colour X, brain scans showed response in area Y. Data=Input. So far so good. Nothing woo-woo there.

But at some point the data must be interpreted. It must be understood.

What mechanism does that?

Thank you for your teachings in advance.

[Stimpson J. Cat]

Underemployed,

If you take issue against this argument, you are saying that any computational process, be it a human brain, a computer or - to take things to their logical extreme - a sufficiently complicated water-clock, or an arrangement of mice running round wheels. If our computer-pattern-recognition-brain is conscious, then pretty much everything else joins the club.

Not exactly. It doesn't imply that every information processing device is conscious, or even that every sufficiently complex information processing device is conscious. It just implies that consciousness is a type of complex information processing. So yes, I agree that, in principle, a conscious digital computer could be built.

The monkeys were shown colour X, brain scans showed response in area Y. Data=Input. So far so good. Nothing woo-woo there.

But at some point the data must be interpreted. It must be understood.

What mechanism does that?

Another part of the brain. Actually, a lot of the interpretation is done right in the visual cortex.

The thing is, you are always going to run into a conceptual barrier if you insist on thinking of the result of brain-processing to simply be data that still needs to be interpreted. It is, in fact, the processing of that data that ultimately is your subjective experience. Once the brain has completed its processing, you are not left with some final result that still needs to be "experienced" by the ghost in the machine. The "experience" was part of the process.

Dr. Stupid

[SortingItAllOut]

Originally posted by Hazelip


This reminds me of a scene in Mask (elephantiasis movie with Chere, not Jim Carey) when the main character is in a camp for kids with disabilities. One girl is blind. He has to explain colors.

I only remember two things. One, he took a hot rock and put it in her hands and said, "this is red" and then he plunged her hands under ice cold water and said "this is blue".

I have no idea how accurate it is, but I always thought it was inventive.

Yes, that is an interesting way of attempting to describe it.

Take care,
Sort

[SortingItAllOut]

Reading the discussion, I was reminded of a paper I read some time ago and thought it might be of interest to some. It is about the brain and computing.

Take a look (http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Papers/Py104/searle.comp.html) at this. It took me a bit to get through it, but it was an interesting read.

Take care,
Sort

[Max560]

I never liked the CRP. When I heard it the first time, the problem was set up thusly:

A man is sitting inside a box which has an array of knobs and switches. He has been trained to manipulate these controls based on patterns of lights which were displayed inside the box.

The lights inside the box are triggered by someone on the outside the box who feeds in chinese characters. the man inside controls the dials and switches, which generate a printout of chinese characters.

the interaction is such that a person on the outside can converse in chinese with the box. The person inside has only this set of rules (no clue about the nature of the input or output).

So the question of course is whether the guy in the box is "conscious" of what is happening.

I always thought this was absurd, since the guy on the outside is talking to the box , not to the guy inside.

If I talk to you, I am talking to You, not your brain. You can't converse directly with someone elses brain. What language would you speak? Neurotransmitter?

So the the guy in the box is not required to understand what is happening. The box is the conscious entity.

[gentlehorse]

Stimpson J. Cat:
The brain is not a magical thinking machine. It is an information processing system. And specifically, it is an adaptive pattern recognition system. There are many things which it simply is not capable of doing. Conceiving of what it is like to experience things that are completely unlike anything it has experiences, is something that it is not designed to do.

Dr. Stupid

Designed?? I rather like the sound of that.

I'm sure you meant to say, "... is something that it is not capable of doing by virtue of the inherent limitations randomly imposed upon it by the cosmics 'oops' which accidentally brought it into existence for no discernible reason." :D

[Stimpson J. Cat]

gentlehorse,

Designed?? I rather like the sound of that.

I'm sure you meant to say, "... is something that it is not capable of doing by virtue of the inherent limitations randomly imposed upon it by the cosmics 'oops' which accidentally brought it into existence for no discernible reason."

Not really. It would be a gross mischaracterization of evolution to suggest that it is all just random chance. The natural selection process is what imposes order into it.

When I say "something it is designed to do", I simply mean the tasks that it has evolved to perform. I am certainly no suggesting that any intelligent being deliberately "designed" it with that task in mind.

Dr. Stupid

[wraith]

Originally posted by gentlehorse


Designed?? I rather like the sound of that.

I'm sure you meant to say, "... is something that it is not capable of doing by virtue of the inherent limitations randomly imposed upon it by the cosmics 'oops' which accidentally brought it into existence for no discernible reason." :D

lol
classical ;)

[wraith]

Originally posted by Stimpson J. Cat Not really. It would be a gross mischaracterization of evolution to suggest that it is all just random chance. The natural selection process is what imposes order into it.

Is the natural selection process deterministic?

When I say "something it is designed to do", I simply mean the tasks that it has evolved to perform. I am certainly no suggesting that any intelligent being deliberately "designed" it with that task in mind.

Why would a non-conscious TLOP care about whether a living thing lives or dies?

[Stimpson J. Cat]

wraith,

Originally posted by Stimpson J. Cat Not really. It would be a gross mischaracterization of evolution to suggest that it is all just random chance. The natural selection process is what imposes order into it.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Is the natural selection process deterministic?

Of course not. They are stochastic. But there is a considerable amount of causality involved.

When I say "something it is designed to do", I simply mean the tasks that it has evolved to perform. I am certainly no suggesting that any intelligent being deliberately "designed" it with that task in mind.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Why would a non-conscious TLOP care about whether a living thing lives or dies?

It doesn't. C'mon Wraith, don't you know anything about how evolution works?

Dr. Stupid

[wraith]

Originally posted by Stimpson J. Cat
wraith: Is the natural selection process deterministic?

Stimpy: Of course not. They are stochastic. But there is a considerable amount of causality involved.

Please explain it to me!

wraith: Why would a non-conscious TLOP care about whether a living thing lives or dies?

Stimpsy: It doesn't.

Why create life and evolve?
Seems quite odd that a non-conscious TLOP would go to all that trouble to go and create conscious beings that evolve

C'mon Wraith, don't you know anything about how evolution works?

I know a little bit about a little bit :cool:
watched a documentary about sex and evolution just 2 nights ago actually ;)

----
watched a documentary about sex and evolution just 2 nights ago actually ;)
----


Could you make out the "documentary" through the static?

[Underemployed]

Once the brain has completed its processing, you are not left with some final result that still needs to be "experienced" by the ghost in the machine. The "experience" was part of the process.

Dammit, I'm almost convinced back to the scientific fold! Curse Stimpy and his reasonable explanations!

I shall retreat into the wilderness now and return only when our understanding of the brian and it's workings have been fully explained, either to marvel in wonder at humanity's acheivements, or to say "Ah HA! I KNEW it!"

I shall not whizz on the electric fence. But I will sit on it for now.

[Stimpson J. Cat]

Wraith,

wraith: Is the natural selection process deterministic?

Stimpy: Of course not. They are stochastic. But there is a considerable amount of causality involved.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Please explain it to me!

Oh brother!

Alright, fine. I will humor you.

The tiny mutations that occur from one generation to the next are random. If the mutation makes no difference to the survivability of the organism, then it simply contributes to variability within the species. If it enhances survivability, then the organism will be more likely to pass on that trait to the next generation. On average, such traits will persist, and over many generations, the organism will evolve. If the mutation reduces survivability, then on average the organism will be less likely to pass on the trait.

That's it. The process of natural selection.

wraith: Why would a non-conscious TLOP care about whether a living thing lives or dies?

Stimpsy: It doesn't.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Why create life and evolve?
Seems quite odd that a non-conscious TLOP would go to all that trouble to go and create conscious beings that evolve

There is no reason to think that any of it was intentional. Is fact, there is very good reason to think that it was not.

And you are still describing TLOP as some sort of thing. That is nonsensical. The laws of physics are not some "thing" that exists and controls other things. They are a property of the things that exist.

C'mon Wraith, don't you know anything about how evolution works?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I know a little bit about a little bit
watched a documentary about sex and evolution just 2 nights ago actually

Then why don't you go read a book about it? You might learn something.

Dr. Stupid

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
wraith: Is the natural selection process deterministic?

Stimpy: Of course not. They are stochastic. But there is a considerable amount of causality involved.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Please explain it to me!
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Oh brother!

Alright, fine. I will humor you.

The tiny mutations that occur from one generation to the next are random. If the mutation makes no difference to the survivability of the organism, then it simply contributes to variability within the species. If it enhances survivability, then the organism will be more likely to pass on that trait to the next generation. On average, such traits will persist, and over many generations, the organism will evolve. If the mutation reduces survivability, then on average the organism will be less likely to pass on the trait.

That's it. The process of natural selection.

Stimpy,

The stochastic nature of selection is usually grossly misunderstood by the various brands of vitalists. I think a key point that needs to be made here is that, while the selection process is stochastic, it also has a directional arrow. That is, because it is stochastic does not imply that it is simply a random walk.

Cheers,

[wraith]

Originally posted by Stimpson J. Cat
Wraith,



Oh brother!

Alright, fine. I will humor you.

The tiny mutations that occur from one generation to the next are random. If the mutation makes no difference to the survivability of the organism, then it simply contributes to variability within the species. If it enhances survivability, then the organism will be more likely to pass on that trait to the next generation. On average, such traits will persist, and over many generations, the organism will evolve. If the mutation reduces survivability, then on average the organism will be less likely to pass on the trait.

That's it. The process of natural selection.

So evolution is completely random?



There is no reason to think that any of it was intentional. Is fact, there is very good reason to think that it was not.

And you are still describing TLOP as some sort of thing. That is nonsensical. The laws of physics are not some "thing" that exists and controls other things. They are a property of the things that exist.

They are a property of the things that exist?
What are you saying?
That you control TLOP?

Originally posted by wraith
So evolution is completely random?

What a surprise you would go here. No, stimpy didn't say that. He said selection was stochastic. That means there is a probability that more individuals with a more fit allele will be born in the next generation.


They are a property of the things that exist?
What are you saying?
That you control TLOP?

Can you get off this one-trick-pony show? Emergent properties have been explained to you until you should be blue in the face. If you can't think in terms of "levels" then take some science courses. Or take some systems theory courses.

Cheers,

[Franko]

Can you get off this one-trick-pony show? Emergent properties have been explained to you until you should be blue in the face. If you can't think in terms of "levels" then take some science courses. Or take some systems theory courses.

'... think in terms of "levels" ...'

You mean like a fractal has "levels" (layers of reiteration)?

Are you suggesting that the Universe has "levels" A-Theist? ... or are you just suggesting "levels" apply to evolution? Why can't the Universe have "levels" just like evolution?

Perhaps You are the one incapable of thinking (perceiving) in "levels".

Originally posted by Franko


'... think in terms of "levels" ...'

You mean like a fractal has "levels" (layers of reiteration)?

Are you suggesting that the Universe has "levels" A-Theist? ... or are you just suggesting "levels" apply to evolution? Why can't the Universe have "levels" just like evolution?

Perhaps You are the one incapable of thinking (perceiving) in "levels".

Levels. Reductionism and emergent properties. Systems. Theory. Intelligence. Oh, sorry. Forgot.

[wraith]

Originally posted by BillHoyt


What a surprise you would go here. No, stimpy didn't say that. He said selection was stochastic. That means there is a probability that more individuals with a more fit allele will be born in the next generation.

So the present is based on the past?

Can you get off this one-trick-pony show? Emergent properties have been explained to you until you should be blue in the face. If you can't think in terms of "levels" then take some science courses. Or take some systems theory courses.

ahh... yeah
;)

Originally posted by wraith
So the present is based on the past?


Hardy-Weinberg Equilibrium is the founding null hypothesis of theoretical population genetics. It says that, given numerous mating conditions, a population with two alleles occuring with frequencies p and q will always reproduce those allelic fequencies. The alleles will distribute according to the quadratic: p² + 2pq + q² = 1.

Before you cry I didn't answer your question, let me assure you I just did. I am equally sure you have no idea what I just said, but do keep trolling. Those of us who understand will keep laughing at you.

Cheers,

[MartinGibbs]

The new color, never seen before is

SPLORF

[alfaniner]

Here's a website devoted to the problems of the color-blind, and a way to verify that your web pages are viewable to them as intended.

Most people are quite surprised that both pictures look almost exactly the same to me.

Vischeck Color-blind article (http://www.vischeck.com/info/wade.php)

[wraith]

Originally posted by BillHoyt


Hardy-Weinberg Equilibrium is the founding null hypothesis of theoretical population genetics. It says that, given numerous mating conditions, a population with two alleles occuring with frequencies p and q will always reproduce those allelic fequencies. The alleles will distribute according to the quadratic: p² + 2pq + q² = 1.

Before you cry I didn't answer your question, let me assure you I just did. I am equally sure you have no idea what I just said, but do keep trolling. Those of us who understand will keep laughing at you.

Cheers,

No, I dont think you did ;)

Originally posted by wraith


No, I dont think you did ;)

I must be psychic. I will repeat:
It says that, given numerous mating conditions, a population with two alleles occuring with frequencies p and q will always reproduce those allelic fequencies.

Cheers,

[sethaburton]

I created an account here because I recently foudn a friend who's a tetrachrome.

She sees UV as blue.

[Furi]

The color receptors in my two eyes are significantly different - the right senses color more vividly than the left. I've known about this for as long as I can remember. Does anyone else have this condition?

Oh yes indeedly, and it is an absolute pig

Deuteronopia (Total Green Colourblind) in both
Weak Protoanomaly in my right eye (weak red response)
Strong Protoanomaly in my left eye, also has a shifted response (Can see Onger Wavelengths than most)
Complete suppressed vision in my right eye due to a V Lazy eye.

Shifted expected Responses due to my Mum being not only a colour blind carrier but is also tetra/penta chromatic as are most of the Fems descended from my Nan (They tend to Have an additional response band between existing M and L types and an additional longerwavelength response L band) this causes PLENTY of arguments between me and my mum about what colour stuff is.

I do however have quite amazing lowlight vision, in my left eye, Dunno about my right as it is suppressed and only becomes used (bout 2-5 seconds later) if I physically block out my left eye. my Blue response seems a little hyper as well.

To Answer the OP, I can imagine many additional colours when suffering from a migraine or on Halleuciegenics, I call it seeing things.

I used to be able to perceive near infra red, it was picked up by my additional (shifted) L-Cones, so at first so was mostly only perceieved as a red colour, however due to the fall off in response it was only visible when little or no other Red colours would saturate my vision.

However as I was sensing it via the Red Cones I perceived it as a form of deep red, and so although others could not see the reflections from security lights, or thought cooling heating elements where now cold. It was just another flavour of what I call Red, but by that matter So is Green :p although I have learned to sort of discriminate some greens, I can see people/vehicles with certain synthetic pigment camoflage quite easily for example due to the Lack of colour response, but Natural dyes or foliage in scrimnets completely fox me.

[Tricky]

This is the problem with bumping old posts. Most of the people you are talking to are, as Crosby Stills & Nash say, "Long time gone".

[Furi]

:eek: I never noticed the OP date...
Sethaburton must have used some seriously powerful voodoo for the necromancy.

[Beerina]

See my thread from today on the recent discovery of the mechanism behind color vision. I don't think there's anything mysterious here, it's just that either something is wrong with your brain's green "strips" or it's not getting proper data from your eye.

While something could, in theory, be messed up in the brain, almost certainly it's a retina defect. Specifically, the color is sensed by red, green, and blue sensors, each separate. One type can be defective, and hence the color blindness for that color. Of course, 2, or all 3 can be, too. In the worst case, only the light/dark sensors work (a 4th type yet), in which case you see black and white. This 4th type works in much darker situations than the color ones, and hence in low light situations, you only see black and white.


Given nobody really knows how the conscious experience arises (the greenness of green, the painfulness of pain), nobody knows how directly or indirectly light frequencies (or more accurately, the encoded neural pulses triggered by said frequencies, which probably look nothing like that) map onto the mysterious "consciousness" space, specifically the color space.

Has evolution latched onto all the possible colors a conscious mind could experience? Or only some of them? If the former, then a bee, which can see ultraviolet, mights see purple instead, in its "mind", evolution distributing the full, limited, color range we experience over a wider swath of frequencies. (Assuming a bee actually has a conscious experience, which is also doubtful.)

If the latter, then there might be other colors possible, but nobody has experienced them because evolution hasn't figured out yet how to produce them in the mind.

I often wonder if there are other senses besides the (admittedly losely grouped) standard 5 of sight, sound, touch, taste, and smell. Some fish have a sensation of electrical charges. Some birds and animals have a sense of the magnetic orientation on the Earth. What base feeling might these give rise to? Something derivative of one of those 5? Or something completely different we can't imagine?

[A Christian Sceptic]

I've always been partial to flourescent brown.

By the way:

Does anyone know of any studies done on dreams by people born completely blind? I assume they only dream in sounds, touch, emotions and not colors and images.

[sackett]

The color receptors in my two eyes are significantly different - the right senses color more vividly than the left. I've known about this for as long as I can remember. Does anyone else have this condition?

My right eye seems to give everything a slightly greenish cast, at least in incandescent-bulb light. Or maybe it has slightly less light-gathering power than the left eye? The effect is of seeing everything a little "darker" with my left eye closed.

Like yours, mine is a lifelong condiiton, trivial in impact (yours sounds rather exciting, and possibly useful to a visual artist), and only briefly interesting to the opthalmologists I finally described it to some years back.

Is it in our brains? Our eyes? Given the anatomy and physiology of vision (the eye can be considered a projection from the brain!), the question is not as clear-cut as we'd like.

Is it even the same condition for both of us? Maybe one of us is a mutant!

ETA: 2003?!? Gah! I'm the mutant, no question about it!

[Beerina]

The color receptors in my two eyes are significantly different - the right senses color more vividly than the left. I've known about this for as long as I can remember. Does anyone else have this condition?

Maybe you can find a researcher who'd be interesting in digging into this case. I'm sure there are standard tests to measure color sensitivity (not just color blindness per se). Most likely the one eye is weak, but perhaps you're lucky and the other eye is the fabled "tetrachromat", where the 4th color receptor gives a much more vivid color experience.

Indeed, if your one eye is "normal" and the other a "super-eye", you would be worth your weight in gold to a researcher, because you could look at something with the "normal" eye and then with the other one and describe the differences. Someone with two "super-eyes" wouldn't be able to do this very well because they've never seen "normally", so to speak.

[bokonon]

I have already seen hundreds, perhaps thousands, of rainbows which show every color in the visible light spectrum, therefore there are no new colors.
Magenta is a color which is not in the rainbow, therefore your conclusion is a non-sequitur.

[Furi]

My right eye seems to give everything a slightly greenish cast, at least in incandescent-bulb light. Or maybe it has slightly less light-gathering power than the left eye? The effect is of seeing everything a little "darker" with my left eye closed.

...

Is it even the same condition for both of us? Maybe one of us is a mutant!

Sounds like a lower red response in the Righteye, Icandescent lighting is very heavy in the Longer wavelenths, I might be even more noticable with Krypton halogen bulbs.

Colour blindness in a some of cases can be benifical, a lot of green blind people are not as distracted by foliage in spotting animals or other coloured plants etc. and most Chromatically challanged peops tend to have a higher visual acuity or light respose, and tend not to get 'blind sideded' by colour by looking at the object or picture as detail and analysing it rather than letting the colour take over their perception, seeing the horrendous compression artefacts when watching field based sports on low bandwidth sattelite TV rendering it unwatchable for example .

[Beerina]

It occurs to me that someone with such a condition (one normal, one "super" eye) could take a color drawing, look at it with the super-eye, then reproduce it such that it looked identical, but with the normal eye, assuming there are no new colors the normal eye can't see (which is why a detailed test of that "normal" eye vs. the average human eye would be essential.)

In other words, looking at the original with the super-eye gives him the exact same visual experience as his re-colored copy did with the normal eye. In this way, "normal" people could see what "super-vision" looked like.

And if the following situation develops, wow! "Hey, there are some colors this rainbow pallet of crayons doesn't have! This box of "all the colors" doesn't have something I can see with my normal eye that matches something in my super-eye!"

[Furi]

Magenta is a color which is not in the rainbow, therefore your conclusion is a non-sequitur.

Magenta is also a secondary colour R&B mix and not a wavelength, purples and cyans* (Turquoise WTF!!!) are a conspiracy theory spread by Interior designers and women.

and I also would like to add whoever came up with that rainbow song and listed the colours as Red, Yellow PINK, Green ORANGE and Purple and blue

PINK! Green then Orange, PURPLES. They should be stoned, (maybe they were)

*I know that perceived cyan is an area of the increasing spectrum, and that our mixes of RGB etc are due to the standard trichromatic responses in a narrow band of the EM spectrum, but even so MAgenta is a response from the S and L cones so is a technical secondary colour

[bokonon]

:eek: I never noticed the OP date...
Sethaburton must have used some seriously powerful voodoo for the necromancy.
I was wondering what was causing all that "Posts n/a" and missing user name stuff. Guess things were different way back when...

[Furi]

Does anyone know of any studies done on dreams by people born completely blind? I assume they only dream in sounds, touch, emotions and not colors and images.

I very very rarely dream in colour, and if colour does appear it tends to be used to highlight what would be normally non visible things like Energy movement, loading on objects, wind speed, etc

If I do have a dream in colour it tends to be in Comic book panel format, in 2000AD style (Jamie Hewlitt is a favorite). (this also happens in B&W Line art format dreams as well)

I almost never experience dreams that sound or smell plays any part either, impressions of sensory touch and abstracted vision is pretty much all I get, any interpersonal dream images are conducted in silence with opposing persons speech being represented as being processed as either speech bubbles or tele-emotional.

[Dancing David]

Forgive the vulgar grab for attention that is the title of this thread.

However, I suspect it will be true. None of you will be able to do this thing I ask of you, yet it involves one of the simplest acts in the world. It also has serious implications on our favourite topic - Consciousness - and has made me a convert to Undercover Elephant's take on the subject.

It involves colour (or color for those of you reading this in American). It's a subject dear to my heart because I am a colourblind person. I can't see green at all.

Normally this statement instantly turns any person I am speaking to into the amazing colour-tester.

"Oh really! What colour is this? And this? Ahahahahaaaa! You can't tell what colour it is, can you? Hahahahaha!"

One day I reasoned that despite never having actually seen the colour green, I still have a fully-functioning brain that can perceive, along with a large range of other hues in the electromagnetic spectrum, sensations from other senses too. Can I not draw on my experiences and come up with 'green' in my mind's eye, despite never having seen it in real life?

After all, William Perkin (http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbninquiry.asp?isbn=0393020053) discovered Mauve by accident. Surely I could come up with a colour everyone knows about already?

I sat and thought about green for hours.

I couldn't do it.

So I ask if any of you reading this can picture, inside your mind, an entirely new colour. You might start by picturing what ultraviolet or infra red 'look' like. I do not mean a different shade of an existing colour. I do not mean a new mix of any existing colours. I mean an absolutely new colour, never before seen by human eyes.

Perhaps one of you is a Tetrachrome - a mutant who has four sets of colour receptors in the eye instead of the usual three, and is thus capable of discerning a much larger array of separate colours than the rest of us. Such a mutation is biologically possible but yet to be seen in reality (or do you know otherwise? please post if so).

Intuition says this should be easy...After all, if you can imagine a new shape easily enough, a new sound - why not a colour? But I predict you will not be able to do it.

And if no-one can do this, what does this mean 'colour' is? Doesn't it mean it is more than simply a perception of a certain energy wavelength? It implies non-physical Qualia. It implies....

It hints at...

It might point toward...

...


It might point to the fact that exposure is required for sensation, and that perception develops from sensation, cognitions from perceptions and so on.

No mystery required.

Point to qualia in the absence of a body.

I am not sure about the tetrachrome but will have to look it up. We should have the four to begin with red, green, yellow and blue. But it has been a long time since I was in school.

[A Christian Sceptic]

I very very rarely dream in colour, and if colour does appear it tends to be used to highlight what would be normally non visible things like Energy movement, loading on objects, wind speed, etc

If I do have a dream in colour it tends to be in Comic book panel format, in 2000AD style (Jamie Hewlitt is a favorite). (this also happens in B&W Line art format dreams as well)

I almost never experience dreams that sound or smell plays any part either, impressions of sensory touch and abstracted vision is pretty much all I get, any interpersonal dream images are conducted in silence with opposing persons speech being represented as being processed as either speech bubbles or tele-emotional.

Hmmm ..... don't know you enough to know what to make of this. :)

[lupus_in_fabula]

Ramachandran had a very interesting case: http://cosmicvariance.com/2007/11/05/martian-colors/




We also observed one case in which we believe cross activation enables a colorblind synesthete to see numbers tinged with hues he otherwise cannot perceive; charmingly, he refers to these as “Martian colors.” Although his retinal color receptors cannot process certain wavelengths, we suggest that his brain color area is working just fine and being cross-activated when he sees numbers…




Ramachandran also mentions that case in this talk:http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4684607596399338611&q=Ramachandran+duration%3Along&total=29&start=0&num=100&so=0&type=search&plindex=4

[Furi]

I am not sure about the tetrachrome but will have to look it up. We should have the four to begin with red, green, yellow and blue. But it has been a long time since I was in school.


Most People have 3 Cones, for Short Medium and Long wavelengths (S, M, L), these are commonly mis labelled as Red Green and Blue, as there can be quite significant areas of over lap between them, espescially in the M and L area.

High yellow response sort of amazingly corresponds to the average spectral appearance of the sun for people in that area (woo Must be that intelligent Design stuff we hear so much about :p) comes out at a high crossover point between the response curves of the L type (curve on the decline) and the M type (Response curve rising) (Might even be both curves still rising will have to check back into it on monday) this causes those frequencies to be registered quite intensly by twice as many cones than normal which gives a higher response, the same can be said for Cyans M&S and to a degree (although not due to overlap) Magentas.

Tetra or higher chromats might have extended response types normally within the M range, this tends to allow the L and S ranges to either shift in their respective direction and provides greater colour acuity within natural colours. I think it would probably not do much with a traditional 4 colour printing method as this subtractive process uses the expected response from the traditionally centered SML cones and rod response as the choice of CMYK pigments. how it would effect with the Additive method of a TV I cannot quite imagine.

This is why although I am only Dichromatic (no M types) I still "see" a lot of the M spectrum as the L curve is still declining but the dye is still triggered at those frequencies, it is just a far lower response, and if it is in the area where the S starts to respond then although detected with different cells I have learned to deduce colour, rather than rely on detection this leads to some interesting clothing choices, I have several Black t-shirts that are Emerald green, torquoise, and Brown (apparantly).

[A Christian Sceptic]

Sort of related:

I've got music → color synesthesia to an extent. I actually just learned about this term last summer. My wife just thought I was being creatively odd when I would tell her I didn't like certain music because it wasn't colorful enough. Then she saw some Discovery channel special where they were describing this very same phenomonon.

[porch]

When I was in kindergarten I used to get frustrated because if I mixed red and white fingerpaints I got pink instead of light red. But I am definitely not a tetrachrome, and technically I'm red green colorblind anyway, so how I imagined that there was such a color as "light red" is a mystery.


Pink is light red. For some reason, red is the only colour that we rename when we add white to it so that we categorize it as non-red. I'd be interested to know if other languages make this distinction. If I were ask someone to help me find my blue sweater and they found one that's powder blue, they'd probably say they found it. If it was a pink sweater and I described as red, they'd probably say, "I can't find it, all I see is this pink one," instead of "Hey I found your pastelle red sweater!"

If you make a wash out of a red pigment, however, and put it on a white surface, I think more people would perceive that as a "light red" instead of pink.

Greetings from the future, 2003.

[Beerina]

I always dream in color. I don't even know where this "you only dream in black and white" meme came from.

[cyborg]

I dream in Supermarionation.

[Normal Dude]

Random trivia:

There is a species of shrimp that has ten different types of cones.

And cephalopod retinas can distinguish polarized light.

Carry on...

[Furi]

I always dream in color. I don't even know where this "you only dream in black and white" meme came from.

I didn't even know it was a meme, I just mostly dream in black and white, normally very highly contrasted as well. this may be a result of my colour vision or might be the result of excessive LSD or Shroom taking, (although I dreamed in monochrome before then as well)

maybe a product of mispent youth, but often I will put various styles over the top, mostly from my favourite 2000AD Artists or particular styles I have noticed in various graphic art or comics .

[LordoftheLeftHand]

So I ask if any of you reading this can picture, inside your mind, an entirely new colour.

I can but not a normal colour. "An unearthly colour, impossible to describe, not black, not white so it must be some colour; but a colour out of space"! (http://artcpodcast.org/index.php?post_id=167517)

LLH

[Dancing David]

Most People have 3 Cones, for Short Medium and Long wavelengths (S, M, L), these are commonly mis labelled as Red Green and Blue, as there can be quite significant areas of over lap between them, espescially in the M and L area.

High yellow response sort of amazingly corresponds to the average spectral appearance of the sun for people in that area (woo Must be that intelligent Design stuff we hear so much about :p) comes out at a high crossover point between the response curves of the L type (curve on the decline) and the M type (Response curve rising) (Might even be both curves still rising will have to check back into it on monday) this causes those frequencies to be registered quite intensly by twice as many cones than normal which gives a higher response, the same can be said for Cyans M&S and to a degree (although not due to overlap) Magentas.

Tetra or higher chromats might have extended response types normally within the M range, this tends to allow the L and S ranges to either shift in their respective direction and provides greater colour acuity within natural colours. I think it would probably not do much with a traditional 4 colour printing method as this subtractive process uses the expected response from the traditionally centered SML cones and rod response as the choice of CMYK pigments. how it would effect with the Additive method of a TV I cannot quite imagine.

This is why although I am only Dichromatic (no M types) I still "see" a lot of the M spectrum as the L curve is still declining but the dye is still triggered at those frequencies, it is just a far lower response, and if it is in the area where the S starts to respond then although detected with different cells I have learned to deduce colour, rather than rely on detection this leads to some interesting clothing choices, I have several Black t-shirts that are Emerald green, torquoise, and Brown (apparantly).


:cool:

That would change what i was taught in perception calss in 1985, at that time they were talking about the ceneter and circle wiring of the retina where the red cone will be linked to red cone circle and the green cone circle, one to potentiate the other to attenuate.

The cones stay where they are the center and circle came from the nerve network.

[Furi]

quite probably, I just picked up enough for me to assist in understanding physical limitations of my colour vision, and how to adjust for it rather than perception mechanisms.

It maybe that they are normally wired in various pairs or networks to assist in colour perception and that this is what helps get the over a more complete and increase colour resolution, however if I physically have no green cones, how would that vary the visual signal response, if they are hardwired into specific perception processors that are requiring a pair of signals to process as data, then I must also be lacking the balancing additional input, if they are specific to cell types. (or have I misread that and that they are locale specific inputs, and the Green Red Circles just comes from a prediliction of that Cell type within that area)

[3bodyproblem]

Underemployed,

You reminded me of a time when I realized that people who spoke many different languages must think in one and translate to another. Or do they think in all the languages they know? I think in English, always will and can't imagine thinking in another language.

Anyways... I think I thought a colour no one has ever seen before. I know I'd never seen it before. Hard to say if anyone else has though. I did it by combining blue and orange in my head.

So what happens when you combine blue and yellow in your head? Try combining red and blue first, just to get warmed up.

I'm going to lie down now, my head hurts.

[3bodyproblem]

duplicate

[cyborg]

You reminded me of a time when I realized that people who spoke many different languages must think in one and translate to another. Or do they think in all the languages they know? I think in English, always will and can't imagine thinking in another language.

Fluency generally means you can think in your language of choice.

"Je pense en Français."

In order to write the above I didn't need to think, "I think in French," than translate - I just know what it means. And I wouldn't consider myself particularly fluent in French.

[roger]

I guess this is sort of on topic - but I find it very hard to imagine visually in general. I can remember scenes, but just creating ones? Nuh uh. I just tried to visualize a bunny - what came up was a rabbit I saw on my college's lawn (an event that happened over 20 years ago, and one I doubt I have thought about since then). I just tried to superimpose this, or any rabbit on my visual memory of the front lawn of the home where I grew up. No go.

I think this is why I'm helpless when somebody asks what I think of a shirt that is being held up, or if they would look good in short hair, or basically any kind of vision based speculation.

Having typed all that, I have no idea why I thought it would be interesting to anybody. Oh well, off into the ether regardless.

[soylent]

I have deep reservations about the whole CRP idea as a refutation of Strong AI, particularly as strong AI is indistinguishable from human consciousness. Are we all sitting in Chinese Rooms, churning out answers to incomprehensible symbols? J.R Searle (originator of the CRP) was also concerned about this.

If you take issue against this argument, you are saying that any computational process, be it a human brain, a computer or - to take things to their logical extreme - a sufficiently complicated water-clock, or an arrangement of mice running round wheels. If our computer-pattern-recognition-brain is conscious, then pretty much everything else joins the club.

The monkeys were shown colour X, brain scans showed response in area Y. Data=Input. So far so good. Nothing woo-woo there.

But at some point the data must be interpreted. It must be understood.

What mechanism does that?

Thank you for your teachings in advance.

How do you distinguish between really understanding something and merely acting like you do, believing that you do, being capable of parsing that information into various representations(e.g. speech, pictures, graphs, sounds, emotions...) and being capable of incorporating and extending theories and conclusions based on that information? I.e. how would a strong AI know whether it is really conscious or whether it simply fakes it well enought to convince itself and other strong AIs that also believe themselves to be conscious?

Perhaps consciousness doesn't really exist and is just a symptom of a strong AI capable of introspection that passes it's own internal turing test for consciousness and concludes that it really must be conscious after-all.

[3bodyproblem]

Fluency generally means you can think in your language of choice.

"Je pense en Français."

In order to write the above I didn't need to think, "I think in French," than translate - I just know what it means. And I wouldn't consider myself particularly fluent in French.

I understand, but when you think about getting a hair cut or going grocery shopping do you do it in French or English? Most likely English i'm guessing. I have Bi-Lingual friends, equally fluent in French or English, and the conversing or reasoning they do in their own heads is different. One in French and one in English. I live in Ontario, where most of us speak English so the one who thinks in French has to convert it to English almost immediately then begin to speak. The one who thinks in English can remember a time when she thought in French. It's kinda weird to think about how other people think in different languages that may not have word for word translations. Does the word "Me" invoke the same thought as the similar word for ones self in Japanese or Russian? Is this similar to cultures that have no concept of numbers? Thinking about how other people think, for whatever reasons, male/female, young/old, poor/rich etc. is dizzying.

[soylent]

There has been at least one report(by Ramachandran and Hubbard) of a colour blind grapheme synesthete who was capable of experiencing colours he cannot see with his eyes(which he refered to as "martian colors").

[Robin]

So I ask if any of you reading this can picture, inside your mind, an entirely new colour. You might start by picturing what ultraviolet or infra red 'look' like. I do not mean a different shade of an existing colour. I do not mean a new mix of any existing colours. I mean an absolutely new colour, never before seen by human eyes.

Perhaps one of you is a Tetrachrome - a mutant who has four sets of colour receptors in the eye instead of the usual three, and is thus capable of discerning a much larger array of separate colours than the rest of us. Such a mutation is biologically possible but yet to be seen in reality (or do you know otherwise? please post if so).

Intuition says this should be easy...After all, if you can imagine a new shape easily enough, a new sound - why not a colour? But I predict you will not be able to do it.

And if no-one can do this, what does this mean 'colour' is? Doesn't it mean it is more than simply a perception of a certain energy wavelength? It implies non-physical Qualia. It implies....

It hints at...

It might point toward...

...
Ian Osborne got it right in the very second post of this thread. Why?

Why does an inability to imagine a new colour suggest that qualia are non-physical?

Would it be too much to ask to hear the reasoning behind this assertion.

[sethaburton]

Wow. Amazingly fast response, and a lot of apprently non-standard chromatic responses.

Also, I didn't even realize till AFTER I posted that I was 5 years in the future. Or something.

Fear my amazing voodoo skillz! Or is that meme old too?

So I had her describe the colors of light she saw come out of a prism. I'm going to see if I can recreate it for normally visual people using... ASCII art.

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Assuming non-colored bars are "invisible" wavelengths, that's essentially what she described to me. So UV basically shows up as "blue" to her, though "it's a different shade of blue." Also, there's a band of a "purple, almost" before the red, which sounds almost exactly like mauve or magenta, which I can never keep straight anyways.

We went through different things, and we're pretty sure she just picks up UV and processes it as though it were blue. So she doesn't have a different color space, just a greater span of wavelengths occupying the same area.

As far as how it affects her: unlike most normally-visioned people, who find fluorescent lights to be "washed out," she finds they make things more colorful. I think this is likely because she probably has two sets of blue (L?) receptors, sees them as the same, but they're at two different wavelength spreads. I really have no idea though.

As for colors in dreams, I'll have to go back to my early childhood meories. I clearly remember a few nightmares where everything was in three colors: black, white, and red. They were spooky. Still creep me out, too. As for other colors, well, the power of suggestion would go to work. I'd see something, assume it would be a color that made sense, and perceive it as that color. IE, a merry-go-round would be white with (shiny) gold trim and blue and pastel purple diamonds around faces of cartoon bears. Who were, incidentally, the colors of the rainbow in THAT dream, and you ought to be able to identify them. Yeah. My dreams made up theme parks for me to play in sometimes. Awesome rides, too, and I clearly remember experiencing motion as well.

A new color: gred. It appears different from red in the same way pink does, only gray instead of white was added. Or grey, rather, since that'd work better for the new colour name even though I'm not British. I am from New England, though.

Senses I could imagine having:

-- A magnetic sense. You couldn't tell the dimensions of a field without moving, you'd feel a force gradient in one direction because of the earth's magnetic field and such, but aside from that I assume it'd be similar to the feeling you get when you try to move a magnet against another, or try to suddenly maneuver (manoeuvre?) a car with a tire that just blew out. The act of moving within the local environment lets you discern local magnetic fields. I've also read, somewhere, uncited, that every eukaryote (are we still using that to differentiate lifeforms?) has a gene that codes for a magnetic protein. No reference. Could be WAY off there.
-- A sense for an electric field, i.e., static electricity. I mean, you can already tell when a charge builds up on your body because it will cause your hair to raise, which is a rather unique sensation. Given that it happens in response to distance to the source of the field, I imagine the magnetic sense would be similar to this one, different only in whether it was localized like balance or distributed across the skin like touch.
-- Echolocation. I imagine it to be like black and white that only lights up when there's loud noises around, but that could coneivably confuse you with certain frequencies in certain spaces.
-- Gravity. To know exactly where the sun, moon, etc are in relation to me, simply by feeling something move a bit inside of me as the earth turns. I already feel my organs shift under my skin anyways, but I've always found it fascinating how people are generally only aware of their skin, and none of their internal body parts. Apparently I'm the only one who enojys knowing what their skeleton would look like were it in the same pose they are currently (also, huzzah for using 3rd person plural rather than a possibly inappropriate gender-based 3rd person singular or a new-fangled "gender neutral" pronoun; in my childhood, they taught that "his" and "he" were gender neutral, with regards to law, for example, but men are more often criminals).
-- Time. I already have a time-sense, but it's lacking. I think I have a deficient superchiasmatic nucleus. According to the hamster brain professor at my ex-college (NOT alma mater, noteworthy difference).
-- Heisenburg sense. IE, I know when I'm being watched, when I'm more particle-ish and when I'm more wav-ish. This one I already sort of believe I have, because I'm a crazy person. I yell at people who think about me that they're the reason I'm late, and tell people I enjoy trvelling more as a wave than a particle. I also prefer being awake and/or active when as few people as possible around me are.

As one final sensory note, I once drove from my home state into the city. Windows were rolled up because it was a tad chill but not enough to have the heat on. I got in the city, parked the car at school, got out, and BAM, smelled a smell I'd never before noticed nor ever forget: people. Not Sweat, not dust, just... people. Pheromones and such. All the freshman had apparently gotten out of their sweltering classes en masse and I was imeediately in it, going from "fresh" air to air saturated with their scent. To this day, close-in crowds drive me crazy, and it all started with that one experience.

THERE. That's a TOTALLY linear chain of thought.

[Furi]

A Magnetic sense URRRRGGGGH, I would have to ditch my CRT, my Discharge Coils, and my faulty wiring, I would have to fit myself with chokes

A heisenberg sense would be cool it would bring a whole new meaning to "I never saw you there"

[Almo]

Intuition says this should be easy...After all, if you can imagine a new shape easily enough, a new sound - why not a colour? But I predict you will not be able to do it.

And if no-one can do this, what does this mean 'colour' is? Doesn't it mean it is more than simply a perception of a certain energy wavelength? It implies non-physical Qualia. It implies....

MY intution does not say it's easy. Your sound analogy doesn't work. I can imagine a new sound, but NOT a new pitch. As such, I can definitely imagine a new combination of colors.

It is just a perception of a wavelength of light.

[Elind]

So I ask if any of you reading this can picture, inside your mind, an entirely new colour.

I can't, but I believe people with synaesthesia can. Another possible, temporary, approach might be to smoke some good weed; preferably green.

[balrog666]

What colour is it? :p

I call it Bleem.


:rolleyes: