How do we know that places like Narnia do not exist?

[Tricky]

A (human, again) retina contains between zero and four different types of colour-sensors. The fourth type only appears in women. In effect, all men are colour-blind.
You know, this may explain why Mom would always know when you were lying or guilty, but you could fool Dad easily. It's that damn fourth color sensor.

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Tricky, when you lied, you turned a subtle bluish-green. Only your mom could see it.

~~ Paul

[Anders W. Bonde]

Ian,

If our level of understanding of the physical world and human perception was equivalent to yours it wouldn't be possible to make computer renderings and animations. Have you never seen a computer animation?

[PixyMisa]

Really? Cool! How do they describe the color? I'll see if I can dig up some information. I think they said it looked very, very blue, but it's a while since I read about it.

Edit: Whoops. It's an unsaturated blue colour. See links in the next post.

[PixyMisa]

Ah, here's a first person account (http://starklab.slu.edu/humanUV.htm) of someone who can see UV light in one eye after cataract surgery. He's published several papers in medical journals on the subject.

Here's a newspaper article about him and UV vision (http://education.guardian.co.uk/higher/medicalscience/story/0%2C9837%2C724257%2C00.html). And here are paintings of water lilies by Monet (http://starklab.slu.edu/Monet.jpg) - before and after his cataract surgery.

[PixyMisa]

This reminds me of something that happened over Christmas.

My brother's family was visiting, and at one point my brother asked his four-year-old son to bring him "the orange bottle". My nephew looked around but didn't do anything. My brother got a bit annoyed and insisted that his son bring him the orange bottle. My nephew said "What bottle?" "That bottle! The orange bottle!" "It's not orange, it's red!" "It's orange!"

The bottle was vermilion.

One day Ian is going to get into a terrible accident when he runs an "orange" light.

[Jeff Corey]

I had replacement lens (not cornea) surgery last year and have noted some anomalous flashes which I figured were produced by pressure on the retina.

[PixyMisa]

Or it could be UV! Depends on the material they're using for lens replacements these days.

The cornea and the lens each filter out a percentage of UV light; my original post on this subject was wrong, and it is in fact lens-replacement surgery (for cataracts) that is associated with people seeing UV.

[Z]

Only the subjective is real, only the subjective matters.

And this is why it is useless, Dear Reader, to bother with Ian.

Ian is not here to discuss. He is not here to reach an objective consensus, or an objective understanding of the truth. He is here only to preach his subjective enlightenment, in the vague and distant hope that someone confirms his subjective intellect and soothes his tortured self-esteem. This is why the website is so appealing to him; the website cannot argue against his subjective knowledge. The website can't keep battering him with objective truths that he cannot, will not face.

The objective is all that matters; the objective is all that counts. By discovering objective truth, we can understand our own, faulty, subjective awareness, and overcome those limitations enforced upon us by our subjective process.

But Ian doesn't want that future to come to pass; he prefers to revel in the subjective and deny the objective, and in spite of all he tries, the world continues around him unabated.

By his own choice, he is being left behind in the wake of progress, of science, and of truth... and he hates it deeply.

So, Gentle Reader, consider this before replying to Ian: unless you're here to stroke his subjective ego, you might as well address the sky, for all the good it's going to do you.

[PixyMisa]

Yep.

Objective reality is a jealous reality. It will kill you if you believe in a different reality; the only way to placate it is by acting at all times as if you believe in it. Jealous, but dumb.

[Bodhi Dharma Zen]

Colour is what we experience. I am aware that scientists have hijacked the term for their own purposes, but I'm using the word in the same sense as the vast majority of the human race. A wavelength of light is a wavelength of light. It is not colour.

Hold on, according to you there cant be light (light should be an experience, why colour and not light?). Furthermore, there cant be any wavelengths (because they would be objective and external to the experience).

So, thanks for playing. NEEXT!

[Taffer]

Ah, here's a first person account (http://starklab.slu.edu/humanUV.htm) of someone who can see UV light in one eye after cataract surgery. He's published several papers in medical journals on the subject.

Here's a newspaper article about him and UV vision (http://education.guardian.co.uk/higher/medicalscience/story/0%2C9837%2C724257%2C00.html). And here are paintings of water lilies by Monet (http://starklab.slu.edu/Monet.jpg) - before and after his cataract surgery.

An interesting side note, I read somewhere that a very small amount of UV light does, in fact, get through the cornea. The thing I read described how you could make some "UV" glasses, which were, in all actuality, simply glasses that blocked everything except UV light (one way to make these, IIRC, is to expose film negatives to sunlight until saturated). It is reported that you can, during daytime, see faintly the world around you simply through very blue UV wavelengths. One of these my brother and I are going to make a pair. :D

[Belz...]

By his own choice, he is being left behind in the wake of progress, of science, and of truth... and he hates it deeply.

So, Gentle Reader, consider this before replying to Ian: unless you're here to stroke his subjective ego, you might as well address the sky, for all the good it's going to do you.

Thanks, Zaary. Now I know what Ian means when he calls us "stupid". Obviously, the word means something different in his dictionary; something along the lines of: "you know too much and it threatens my world-view."

[Interesting Ian]

Hold on, according to you there cant be light (light should be an experience, why colour and not light?). Furthermore, there cant be any wavelengths (because they would be objective and external to the experience).

So, thanks for playing. NEEXT!

no

[Belz...]

Maybe ?

[Bone_Vulture]

Certainly.

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Thanks for the info, Pixy. Very cool!

~~ Paul

[aggle-rithm]

grapefruit [f. GRAPE n.1 + FRUIT n.; so called because it grows in clusters.]


Bah! Pesky facts. ;)

[aggle-rithm]

Ian, are you familiar with the phenomenon of blindsight? I was just reading about this in "Phantoms of the Brain" yesterday. A woman with this affliction had the more highly evolved vision centers in her brain damaged, leaving the primitive areas intact. She was able to detect an object's position perfectly, could see it's color and texture, but was not consciously aware of seeing anything. She was blind, but if asked, could reach out and grasp objects with perfect precision. She could distinguish between a banana and a yellow squash by the color and texture, even though she couldn't see either of them (at least not consciously).

How does this fit into your ideas on visual qualia? In this case, she can see yellow, but doesn't experience yellow.

[uruk]

I think Gabby Johnson is right, too.
And gol dang them gol dang "scientists" fer hijacking the term "bolour"!

An' there aint no way, no how any cracker croaker is going to break my biscuit cutter!

Rarrit!

[Belz...]

http://floatingsignifier.boudist.com/archives/demon_cat.jpg

I don't think anything more need be said.

[PixyMisa]

no
:)

[Interesting Ian]

:)

LMAO

[Bone_Vulture]

Yep, guess we can call it a day then.

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

I think we can call it an entire topic, Bone. Now that we know Ian believes there are no mechanisms involved with idealism, it's pretty clear that we are never going to get any further than we have over the past three years. It shall be nothing but repeat theatre.

~~ Paul

[Belz...]

We also know that he thinks evidence is useless because it is "merely" objective.

[Kell]

it's pretty clear that we are never going to get any further than we have over the past three years.

Excuse me, three years? It took you three f**king years to work out Ian places subjective experience over objective observation?
That's like saying you only just realised the brick wall you've been banging your head against for three years is hard.

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Oh, I knew he values subjective over objective. But I hadn't heard him state so emphatically that there is no need to consider the mechanisms in idealism. I see nowhere for the conversation to go now.

You're right, though, I could easily have come to this conclusion a couple of years ago. Call me a cockeyed optimist.

~~ Paul

[Bodhi Dharma Zen]

I see Ian as the last bastion of the "old school woo's" that has populated this site. The sad thing is that he is not amusing at all, just obtuse.

[Soapy Sam]

If Narnia existed, my mother would have a souvenir tea towel she bought there.

She has no such tea towel.

Therefore Narnia does not exist.
QED.