Philosophy Now Forum

Imp: It's not tenuous unless you think only claims about things we directly observe are non-tenuous. But we make lots of reasonable claims about things we don't directly observe. Even Berkeley, who is an idealist, holds that objects and their properties exist without our observing them. On a more co...

PauloL: You say both that colours are wavelengths, but also that they remain in objects. Those can't both be true unless you think there are two kinds of colours, because objects are not made of wavelengths. The question is: What is the nature of the colours you experience, what are they? If what yo...

There's some tension in how you set up the problem of consciousness. You say consciousness is private, that the consciousness each of us experiences is unique and inaccessible to other people or science. But you also say the problem is that scientific phenomena are observable and consciousness doesn...

Like most people, I do. It's the easiest way of explaining why chairs appear the same when you look back at them again. And just because you can't check that doesn't mean they aren't there. Since you can't check (when you're not looking) there's really no reason to imagine that things evaporate with...

Trees aren't green in the dark? So clothes change colour in the wardrobe when you close the door? This is an odd view.

Some on this forum are sure colours are physical, and other people are just as sure that they are non-physical. I think that makes my point for me! When everyone disagrees like this, maybe the truth is that they are neither. Colours could just be...colours, and not something else. Their being mental...

In addition to the three physical options there is a fourth option, which is that colours as we experience them are non-physical. The point I'm making is that colour-as-we-experience-it has been identified with 1-3, and with 4, by different people, and that this is an ongoing debate. That's what mak...

It would help in this discussion to distinguish a few things; at a minimum: 1. The physical properties of surfaces that modify light wavelengths. 2. Light wavelengths. 3. What happens in the human visual cortex (roughly), typically once one's retinal cells have reacted to 2 and further processing ha...

Not all colour experience is wavelength perception - hallucination and dream colour are evidently not. So that suggests some colour experience at least is a product of the brain. But we have no idea how. Frankly, there seems not to be the difference between different kinds of neuronal activity that ...