Are there other colors?

Is the mind the same as the body? What is consciousness? Can machines have it?

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kawa
Posts: 2
Joined: Sat Nov 26, 2011 1:23 pm

Are there other colors?

Post by kawa »

I have a weird question on my mind.

In Consciousness Explained Dan Dennett exemplified color perception by the brain as some kind of property detector of surfaces by comparing it with the randomly-cut Jell-O box.

If colors are just functional implementations in the brain of specific kinds of surface property detection schemes, then doesn't this mean that one can design a artificial brain with a Modified-Jell-O-COLOR-BOX detector in order for that specific entity which possesses the brain to experience colors that are unknown to us humans ?

My point is this: If colors are only functional implementations in the brain doesn't that mean that there could be other colors than the one known to us by experience ( other than the ones from the light spectrum ) ?
SlowThinker
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Joined: Wed Nov 23, 2011 11:21 am
Location: Australia

Re: Are there other colors?

Post by SlowThinker »

kawa wrote:I have a weird question on my mind.

In Consciousness Explained Dan Dennett exemplified color perception by the brain as some kind of property detector of surfaces by comparing it with the randomly-cut Jell-O box.

If colors are just functional implementations in the brain of specific kinds of surface property detection schemes, then doesn't this mean that one can design a artificial brain with a Modified-Jell-O-COLOR-BOX detector in order for that specific entity which possesses the brain to experience colors that are unknown to us humans ?

My point is this: If colors are only functional implementations in the brain doesn't that mean that there could be other colors than the one known to us by experience ( other than the ones from the light spectrum ) ?
I suppose that may be possible but how would we know that the artificial brain was detecting different colours? Are you thinking that we might be able to measure some kind of output which we may assume could be a new colour? But how would we speak about it? What would we call it?

Taking a slightly different tack, I am red-green colour blind so my property detecting surface is limited or malfunctioning. Imagine, of you will an artists pallet full of all the colours in the rainbow. Other people can look at this pallet and detect the colours and use the colour names they have learnt. I on the other hand have no way of perceiving and naming the colours on the artists pallet.
kawa
Posts: 2
Joined: Sat Nov 26, 2011 1:23 pm

Re: Are there other colors?

Post by kawa »

SlowThinker wrote:
kawa wrote:I have a weird question on my mind.

In Consciousness Explained Dan Dennett exemplified color perception by the brain as some kind of property detector of surfaces by comparing it with the randomly-cut Jell-O box.

If colors are just functional implementations in the brain of specific kinds of surface property detection schemes, then doesn't this mean that one can design a artificial brain with a Modified-Jell-O-COLOR-BOX detector in order for that specific entity which possesses the brain to experience colors that are unknown to us humans ?

My point is this: If colors are only functional implementations in the brain doesn't that mean that there could be other colors than the one known to us by experience ( other than the ones from the light spectrum ) ?
I suppose that may be possible but how would we know that the artificial brain was detecting different colours? Are you thinking that we might be able to measure some kind of output which we may assume could be a new colour? But how would we speak about it? What would we call it?

Taking a slightly different tack, I am red-green colour blind so my property detecting surface is limited or malfunctioning. Imagine, of you will an artists pallet full of all the colours in the rainbow. Other people can look at this pallet and detect the colours and use the colour names they have learnt. I on the other hand have no way of perceiving and naming the colours on the artists pallet.
thank you for the answer!

I see colors differently myself.

Let's just say that the science of cognition, AI, neuroscience advances so fast that in the future we could possibly modify the wiring and functional architecture of our own brain in whatever possible way we want. My question is : could we invent colors in our brains other than what people could perceive right now?
Impenitent
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Re: Are there other colors?

Post by Impenitent »

perhaps grue or bleen?

but neither right now...

-Imp
chaz wyman
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Joined: Fri Mar 12, 2010 7:31 pm

Re: Are there other colors?

Post by chaz wyman »

kawa wrote:I have a weird question on my mind.

In Consciousness Explained Dan Dennett exemplified color perception by the brain as some kind of property detector of surfaces by comparing it with the randomly-cut Jell-O box.

If colors are just functional implementations in the brain of specific kinds of surface property detection schemes, then doesn't this mean that one can design a artificial brain with a Modified-Jell-O-COLOR-BOX detector in order for that specific entity which possesses the brain to experience colors that are unknown to us humans ?

My point is this: If colors are only functional implementations in the brain doesn't that mean that there could be other colors than the one known to us by experience ( other than the ones from the light spectrum ) ?
No, as colours are "only functional implementations" that means that colours are not present in the environment for us to experience as such. Thus though we might experience the same 'phenomenon' differently - meaning that we could experience another colour, that would be purely subjective and would not be important and could never be realised.
As you have probably considered what I might see as blue - your personal colour experience could be red. Because we have the convention of calling that shared experience colour X, then this is a mute point - i.e. the objective colour is the same for both of us.
chaz wyman
Posts: 5304
Joined: Fri Mar 12, 2010 7:31 pm

Re: Are there other colors?

Post by chaz wyman »

SlowThinker wrote:
kawa wrote:I have a weird question on my mind.

In Consciousness Explained Dan Dennett exemplified color perception by the brain as some kind of property detector of surfaces by comparing it with the randomly-cut Jell-O box.

If colors are just functional implementations in the brain of specific kinds of surface property detection schemes, then doesn't this mean that one can design a artificial brain with a Modified-Jell-O-COLOR-BOX detector in order for that specific entity which possesses the brain to experience colors that are unknown to us humans ?

My point is this: If colors are only functional implementations in the brain doesn't that mean that there could be other colors than the one known to us by experience ( other than the ones from the light spectrum ) ?
I suppose that may be possible but how would we know that the artificial brain was detecting different colours? Are you thinking that we might be able to measure some kind of output which we may assume could be a new colour? But how would we speak about it? What would we call it?

Taking a slightly different tack, I am red-green colour blind so my property detecting surface is limited or malfunctioning. Imagine, of you will an artists pallet full of all the colours in the rainbow. Other people can look at this pallet and detect the colours and use the colour names they have learnt. I on the other hand have no way of perceiving and naming the colours on the artists pallet.
People who are colour blind, like me, are not 'malfucntioning', they simply have a different colour perception. I know the difference between red and green. it would seem our boundaries between colours are set at different limits. In everyday life you would never know I had a problem until someone hands me one of those bloody test cards and I can't see the "8" or what ever.
artisticsolution
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Re: Are there other colors?

Post by artisticsolution »

chaz wyman wrote: In everyday life you would never know I had a problem until someone hands me one of those bloody test cards and I can't see the "8" or what ever.
Then what you have trouble doing is seeing the nuance in value of colors...not so much the actual color...right? I mean you say you know the difference between red and green but can't see the 8? Is that because when the value of 2 colors (the lightness and darkness) are close...the colors blend into each other?
Barbara Brooks
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Re: Are there other colors?

Post by Barbara Brooks »

Colors in their totality is not merely determinateness but is actual difference. Color has immediate difference as affirmed and determined by the idea. Now the primary colors are, yellow, blue and red, they have an immediate obscuration, we also must include green as itself the color obtained by mixture. From sense-perception the relationship is this, the first color is yellow, a bright ground and a duller medium which is illuminated expresses yellow. That is why the sun looks yellow to us, its darkness is slight. Blue the other extreme color, where brighter medium is shaded through by a darker ground, example, the sky looks blue because the atmosphere, where there is not any mist in the sky, the sky looks black, where there is mist it looks blue and deep dark blue, almost black-blue on high mountains. Between yellow and blue the simplest colors lie red and green. Red, to which blue and yellow can be intensified; yellow is intensified into red by a darker tinge and blue when given a lighter tinge turns red. Red, the dominate color, is this active powerful color which is the extreme intensity of both yellow and blue. Green is the common neutrality of yellow and blue when they coincide, as we see the color of plants. Red and green corresponds to fire and water, is the mediating colors. Blue, a dark ground seen through something bright, example the blue sky is the ground form which the earth advances.

When one color is seen, the eye instructs the other color; yellow instructs violet, orange blue,purple green, and vice versa. These are called complimentary colors, included are the yellowish and bluish shadows of the morning and evening due to contrast. If a red glass is held behind a candle-light the illumination is red; if a second candle is added the other shadow looks green because they are complimentary to each other. Red and green have an affinity to each other, they are in opposition yet pass readily into each other. In a meadow, where nothing but green is seen and the sky is clear, the trunk of the trees and the path have a reddish sheen. Another example, if a stick of red sealing wax is laid on a piece of paper and one stares at it for some time and then looks away, a green object is seen.
chaz wyman
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Re: Are there other colors?

Post by chaz wyman »

artisticsolution wrote:
chaz wyman wrote: In everyday life you would never know I had a problem until someone hands me one of those bloody test cards and I can't see the "8" or what ever.
Then what you have trouble doing is seeing the nuance in value of colors...not so much the actual color...right?

No, it is people that do not share my type of colour perception are seeing things which are not there.

I mean you say you know the difference between red and green but can't see the 8? Is that because when the value of 2 colors (the lightness and darkness) are close...the colors blend into each other?

Actually - I'm really not sure. I think it goes like this; "normal" people see certain tones of colour as the same - I see them differently. The number 8 is not comprised of the same colour and tone, but is made up of a range of different colours whose tones are seen the same by the "normals" - those tones have the same values in their perception. My perception sees the colours as different so I am immune to the illusion.
This is the last bastion of prejudice and bigotry - people like me are banned from being electricians and fighter pilots - but it would be easy to design colours that I can distinguish as easily as everyone else. Indeed that everyone can distinguish with no problems.

http://www.toledo-bend.com/colorblind/Ishihara.asp

Take a look.

I've always wondered if it would be possible to design a test that people like me can see, but 'norms' could not.


Barbara Brooks
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Re: Are there other colors?

Post by Barbara Brooks »

Another kind of visual coloring is with a cube or square plate of glass, color is seen in a glass that has been rapidly cooled after rapid burning, if we place a glass cube on a black base and it faces the brighter quarter of the sky, we see the image of the glass a reflection of it. This is an additional phenomenon which appears everywhere in the whole horizon. The darkening through the cube glass are at the four corners colored rings, further, if the corners background is whit, coloring gives first the rise of yellow, but if the corners background is black the coloring is blue depending on the pressure. Here, it is merely the mechanical pressure which produces different colors which is the alteration of cohesion. When a lens is pressed on a glass plate, the point of contact is at first one color, but as the pressure is increased the color spreads out into a number of rings of different colors. If the alteration of cohesion goes further, we have colors that become iridescent, as on a pigeon's neck. The body being pressed to a point of a actual break down in its togetherness. This is called pigmentation, the interior color, e.g. , gold is yellow. The question now arises how does color enter into substance, how does color from outside join together to become pigmentation of one. Metalleity is the answer, is the principle of all coloring of things, is the liberation of singularity as being-for-self.

Every metal in its pure state has a particular color, for example, gold is congealed color and iron is loadstone color. If it has color can be represented as a metal pigmentation, even vegetables with their indigo coloring, the redness of blood can be traced to iron. Now, the colors of metals can be altered by chemical processing or by heat. One example of color revealed by heat is silver when heated reaches a point where it attains a bright luster, called silver gleam, it is momentary and can not be prolonged, before this silver gleam, it runs through all the colors of the rainbow in sequence red, yellow, green, and blue. If polished steel is heated it takes on a yellow color, if it is quickly removed from heat it keeps this color, but as soon as it is heated again becomes darker yellow and soon into purple. This color purple is hard to retain and turns into a deeper blue, the deep blue is fixed if taken form the heat and put in ashes, but if heated further becomes bright blue and remains so. Color, therefore is a physical nature of the body which comes forth on ones surface, is appearance. The determinate physical body has color, is pure identity, real identity of bodies. Here the mere alteration of the body produces various colors. The metallic principle, therefore, is this physical likeness with self which has achieved
keithprosser2
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Re: Are there other colors?

Post by keithprosser2 »

Let me suggest that when someone - colour-blind or not - looks at the test figures (or anything else) what happens is that light strikes the inside of the eye, resulting in nerve signals travelling to the brain. When they get there they set up a pattern of neuronal activity that encodes the view. What we perceive is not the light but the information encoded into the 'neural representation' that gets set up. Indeed we don't need light - we can perceive things that are only dreams - dreams are essentially 'neural representations' that get set up more or less without sensory input.

If we perceive a red dot as different from a green dot then it must be that the two dots result in different patterns of neural activity. That difference in activity is ultimately due to the different wavelengths of light affecting the retina differently, but we don't perceive the difference in neural activity as being a difference in wavelength (indeed the difference isn't one of wavelength once it gets encoded as neural activity, it's more like a difference in the level of neuronal connectivitity) but as a difference in colour.

It could be that a CB person doesn't make different neural representations for different wavelengths or that they do not perceive the difference in the neural representations. The failure might be in the encoding of wavelength to neural representation or in the decoding of neural representation to colour.

I would suggest it might be possible that there are neural representations - while are only patterns of neural activity - that would be preceived as colours that cannot - or are not - produced by any form of visible light. They would be colours we could dream, but not colours we could see. I can't come up with an experiment to show that either way, though!

The encoding half of colour vision is not really very mysterious - we do something very similar when we record a TV show, turning colours into patterns of 1's and 0's on a DVD, or varying magnetic fields onto a VHS tape. Even the decoding is not totally mysterious - we can play back DVDs and VHS tapes. The mystery is how the decoded colour enters into our consciousness, how we become aware of the redness of a red ball and the blueness of blue ball.

I think that is the crux of the difference between what Chalmers calls the 'easy' and 'hard' problem of consciousness. Upto a point colour vision (or any other quale perception) is not mysterious at all - we can record and play back DVDs and VHS tapes. But we can't (it seems) make a DVD player that is actually conscious of what it is playing back, whatever that might mean!

I am certainly not going to suggest how we might do that here!
Barbara Brooks
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Re: Are there other colors?

Post by Barbara Brooks »

Colors, on one hand, hovers outside shapes and forms, shadowy beings is the mere relation between light and darkness, in short, a spectrum. Colors conjured up by the eye, an action produced by brightness and darkness and the difference of their relationship. The first relation of light is transparency Second, refraction where the medium is not purely transparent but specifically determined and thirdly, the metallic color.

The crystal overcomes darkness; this being-for-self matter is itself transparent simply because it has neutrality common with air and water, but is different from them. Crystals constitutes transparency. Crystals do not shine, but are so much akin to light almost reach a shining, it is to the crystal to which light is given birth it is light the soul of this being-within-self.

And what I have here remarked of the archetypical crystal is the diamond of the earth in which every eye rejoices, the first first-born of light and darkness. The crystal of the earth is air, the subordinate passivity to light and transparent, must be free from earthy flaw, as free and unrestricted, embracing both whole and parts is transparency. Now though the crystal of earth does not shine, it is so much akin to light it almost reaches a stage of shining. To be transparent, air must be free of from earthy flaw, otherwise it its simply opaque to be transparent.

The Element of earth, air, water and fire are transparent they are neither dark nor opaque. The crystal likewise overcomes darkness, e is itself transparent simply because it has brought itself back to light.

Transparency can render obscuration simply by mechanical alteration, such as powdered glass, or water into foam. Even water when crushed is opaque; the continuity of the transparency is destroyed and converted into plurality. This phenomenon is frequent, even ice is more transparent than water and when crushed is opaque. Opaque state becomes neutral crystallization, thus lime and silica are opaque. That is to say, which has more reality within itself, are chemically neutral substances, which are opaque, but not perfectly neutral. To take an example crystallized silica without acid or clay in mica or magnesia in talc or lime we have transparency. There are also colored transparencies such as precious stones, these are not perfectly transparent because the metallic principle to which they owe their color.
SlowThinker
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Re: Are there other colors?

Post by SlowThinker »

artisticsolution wrote:
chaz wyman wrote: In everyday life you would never know I had a problem until someone hands me one of those bloody test cards and I can't see the "8" or what ever.
Then what you have trouble doing is seeing the nuance in value of colors...not so much the actual color...right? I mean you say you know the difference between red and green but can't see the 8? Is that because when the value of 2 colors (the lightness and darkness) are close...the colors blend into each other?
Actually I think it is something different to that. Let me try and explain how it works for me with two examples.

First: whenever we had to draw a tree in art class, I would invariably end up drawing one that was brown. I knew that trees were green but I could not tell the difference between the brown and green pencils just by looking at them. If I was lucky enough to be using a set of those wonderful Columbia Lakeland pencils that had the colour name embossed on them and I remember to look at the colour name I would draw a green tree as convention required. BUT (and I think this is crucial) I could see no difference between that tree and the brown one I drew next to it. Thus I knew trees should be green but unless I appealed to the experience of an outsider it was hit and miss whether I drew a green one.

Second: my father (who was also colour blind) was a golfer. Invariably he would choose to buy red golf tees because the colour seemed bright to him. However one he had hit the golf ball and had to find the tee he couldn't see it in the green grass.

I could give other examples but these two should suffice for the moment.
chaz wyman
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Re: Are there other colors?

Post by chaz wyman »

SlowThinker wrote:
artisticsolution wrote:
chaz wyman wrote: In everyday life you would never know I had a problem until someone hands me one of those bloody test cards and I can't see the "8" or what ever.
Then what you have trouble doing is seeing the nuance in value of colors...not so much the actual color...right? I mean you say you know the difference between red and green but can't see the 8? Is that because when the value of 2 colors (the lightness and darkness) are close...the colors blend into each other?
Actually I think it is something different to that. Let me try and explain how it works for me with two examples.

First: whenever we had to draw a tree in art class, I would invariably end up drawing one that was brown. I knew that trees were green but I could not tell the difference between the brown and green pencils just by looking at them. If I was lucky enough to be using a set of those wonderful Columbia Lakeland pencils that had the colour name embossed on them and I remember to look at the colour name I would draw a green tree as convention required. BUT (and I think this is crucial) I could see no difference between that tree and the brown one I drew next to it. Thus I knew trees should be green but unless I appealed to the experience of an outsider it was hit and miss whether I drew a green one.

This is a lie. No one on earth has that amount of colour blindness. You are either having a laugh or trying to play devil's advocate with a phenomenon you do not understand.


Second: my father (who was also colour blind) was a golfer. Invariably he would choose to buy red golf tees because the colour seemed bright to him. However one he had hit the golf ball and had to find the tee he couldn't see it in the green grass.

This is just bullshit.


I could give other examples but these two should suffice for the moment.

You would be better to tell the truth.
SlowThinker
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Location: Australia

Re: Are there other colors?

Post by SlowThinker »

SlowThinker wrote:
artisticsolution wrote:
chaz wyman wrote: In everyday life you would never know I had a problem until someone hands me one of those bloody test cards and I can't see the "8" or what ever.
Then what you have trouble doing is seeing the nuance in value of colors...not so much the actual color...right? I mean you say you know the difference between red and green but can't see the 8? Is that because when the value of 2 colors (the lightness and darkness) are close...the colors blend into each other?
Actually I think it is something different to that. Let me try and explain how it works for me with two examples.

First: whenever we had to draw a tree in art class, I would invariably end up drawing one that was brown. I knew that trees were green but I could not tell the difference between the brown and green pencils just by looking at them. If I was lucky enough to be using a set of those wonderful Columbia Lakeland pencils that had the colour name embossed on them and I remember to look at the colour name I would draw a green tree as convention required. BUT (and I think this is crucial) I could see no difference between that tree and the brown one I drew next to it. Thus I knew trees should be green but unless I appealed to the experience of an outsider it was hit and miss whether I drew a green one.

Second: my father (who was also colour blind) was a golfer. Invariably he would choose to buy red golf tees because the colour seemed bright to him. However one he had hit the golf ball and had to find the tee he couldn't see it in the green grass.

I could give other examples but these two should suffice for the moment.
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