Atla wrote: ↑Sat May 27, 2023 4:58 pmI don't really know what you mean. Color qualia are literally parts of the representational construct in the head. Color qualia are what we "directly" experience. So
Color primarily means color-quale, and then we assign these color-qualia to external objects. So color has two uses.
It's the evolutionary default to treat this construct as the external reality, and that's when we say that an apple is red. If we look at it from this everyday, evolutionary default perspective, then yes color simply means the color of external objects.
An often used example is looking at magenta objects, it's the color qualia experienced inside the head, after it gets processed that blue and red cones are firing simultaneously. But that's red and blue wavelengths "out there", not magenta. They couldn't even find a wavelength for magenta so far (although it might have one).
Color qualia are indeed components of our visual maps of reality. They are visual symbols, in the same exact way that words are verbal symbols, that we use to construct our representations of reality. By definition, they are things that exist within minds, so they are subjective. As such, there is no such thing as color qualia existing "out there" where by "out there" I mean outside of our minds. In other words, there is no such thing as color qualia inside apples. To say otherwise is a logical contradiction -- it's nonsense. That's not an isuse.
The issue is whether or not the word "color" means color qualia, or more generally, whether or not the word "color" is defined as something that is subjective, i.e. existing within minds. It's a language issue that has nothing to do with how our perceptions of reality are formed. ( As such, all talk about indirect realism, how our perception works, how we form beliefs, etc is irrelevant talk. )
When you make a statement such as "This apple is red", what is it that you're actually describing? Are you describing the apple or are you describing your perception of the apple?
The language itself is suggesting that you're describing the apple.
Every proposition is made out of two components: the subject ( or the portion of reality the proposition is describing ) and the predicate ( or the description of that portion of reality. ) Roughly speaking, every proposition has a form of "X is Y" where X is the subject and Y is the predicate.
In the case of "This apple is red", the subject is clearly "this apple" and the predicate is obviously "red". The language is telling us that the portion of reality we're describing is the apple. The predicate further indicates that we're really really only describing a single aspect of that apple, namely, its color. So, if we want to be precise, the subject of the statement "This apple is red" is the color of that apple.
This does not mean that the language that we're using is indicating that the word "color" means "color qualia that exists outside of minds". It merely indicates that the word "color" is defined as a property of physical objects. It indicates that the word "color" does not refer to color qualia, but rather, to an aspect of physical objects that causes us to perceive them in certain ways under certain conditions. Specifically, it indicates that the word "color" means "the texture of a physical object". Red, green, blue, black, white, yellow, orange, magenta, etc are merely different names for different textures. In the same exact way, the visual symbols that our brains use to construct our visual perceptions of reality, what we call color qualia, are merely different visual symbols for different types of light ( color qualia do not represent textures, they merely represent light. )
If you actually wanted to say that your perception of the apple is that it is red, you could have said so by saying "My perception is that this apple is red" or "It appears to me that this apple is red". The two statements mean the same thing but they do not have the same meaning as the statement "This apple is red". This is because they have different subjects. The subject of "It appears to me that this apple is red" is your perception of the color of the apple. The subject of "This apple is red", on the other hand, is the color of the apple. They aren't interchangeable.
You can, of course, argue that when we say "This apple is red", we're actually saying that the color qualia that is located inside that apple is red. But you have to understand that, in that case, we're actually making a non-sensical statement since there are no such things as color qualia inside apples. Do you understand what that means? It means that our statement is not even false. It means it's nonsense. Why would you think this is what we're doing? Why would you do so considering the alternative?