I perceive pain and pleasure. Pain and pleasure are mental percepts. I perceive smells and tastes. Smells and tastes are mental percepts. I perceive colours. Colours are mental percepts.

My ordinary conception of colours is that of "sui generis, simple, intrinsic, qualitative, non-relational, non-reducible properties ... not micro-structural properties or reflectances." This is how I am able to make sense of coloured dreams and hallucinations, synesthesia, variations in colour perception (some see white and gold, some see black and blue), and cortical visual prostheses; and it is these sui generis properties that I ordinarily talk about when I talk about colours.

Maybe you're different, but I suspect that the overwhelming majority of people are exactly like me (even if the majority do not recognise these sui generis properties to be mental percepts, naively believing them to be mind-independent properties of material surfaces).

So to make this simple, here are two sets of claims:

Naive realism
1. Our ordinary conception of colours is that of sui generis, simple, intrinsic, qualitative, non-relational, non-reducible properties.
2. These sui generis properties are mind-independent.

Dispositionalism
3. Our ordinary conception of colours is that of micro-structural properties or reflectances.
4. These micro-structural properties are mind-independent.

I agree with (1) and (4) and disagree with (2) and (3).

I suspect that the overwhelming majority of people agree with (1), not (3) – even if the majority also believe (2), which the science shows to be false.

And if the overwhelming majority of people agree with (1), not (3), then (1) is true and (3) is false.

That leaves us with:

1. Our ordinary conception of colours is that of sui generis, simple, intrinsic, qualitative, non-relational, non-reducible properties.
5. These sui generis properties are mind-dependent
6. Therefore colours, as ordinarily understood, are mind-dependent.

None of this denies (4) or entails that we can't/don't use the adjective "red" to describe objects with certain micro-structural properties.

This is how I am able to make sense of coloured dreams and hallucinations, synesthesia... — Michael

Those are not so ordinary, and although they are experiences, they are unlike ordinary experiences evoked by the brain's empathic ability to memorize or imagine or hallucinate what things look like or feel like or sound like etc. That's why we call them dreams or hallucinations or synaesthetic experiences.

For example, when we dream of seeing a turtle, it's colours and shapes, we don't see anything. Instead we just feel or imagine it. Dreaming is radically different from actually seeing the turtle.

On your subjectivist account, all experiences are muddled up as "mental percepts" because of a simple but fatally ambiguous use of the word 'perception' (or 'appearance' etc) in two different senses, like Bertrand Russell did in the beginning of the 1900s. We should know better.

Naive realism
1. Our ordinary conception of colours is that of sui generis, simple, intrinsic, qualitative, non-relational, non-reducible properties ... not micro-structural properties or reflectances.
2. These sui generis properties are mind-independent properties of distal objects

Dispositionalism
3. Our ordinary conception of colours is that of micro-structural properties or reflectances.
4. These micro-structural properties are mind-independent properties of distal objects — Michael

Those definitions are way too simple. I defend naive realism and dispositionalism. The ontological status of a disposition is open for discussion, but I think dispositions are real.

Do you deny that percepts exist when we dream? Do you deny that colours are properties of dreams? If you do not deny either then you must accept that colours-as-percepts exist when we dream.

Do you deny that percepts exist when we hallucinate? Do you deny that colours are properties of hallucinations? If you do not deny either then you must accept that colours-as-percepts exist when we hallucinate.

Do you deny that percepts exist when we having waking, "veridical" experiences? If you do not deny this, and if you do not deny any of the above, then you must accept that colours-as-percepts exist when we have waking, "veridical" experiences – even if you want to also talk about mind-independent colours-as-dispositions.

So at the very least you must accept that there are both colours-as-percepts and colours-as-dispositions. My only claim is that the former is our ordinary, everyday conception of colours, not the latter.

It talks about "different individuals view[ing] the same image ... reported it to be widely different colors" and "different individuals experienc[ing] different percepts when observing the same image of the dress".

Different percepts entail different reported colours because color nouns ordinarily refer to those percepts, not the light emitted by the computer screen.

It is a fact that I see white and gold and others see black and blue because it is a fact that I experience white and gold percepts and others experience black and blue percepts. — Michael

You're saying that when I experience black, I'm experiencing an example of black. Everybody who has ever experienced seeing black has had their turn with this same thing: black percept. Right? It's something that transcends the individual?

You're saying that when I experience black, I'm experiencing an example of black. Everybody who has ever experienced seeing black has had their turn with this same thing: black percept. Right? It's something that transcends the individual? — frank

Ask the same question about pleasure and pain.

Ask the same question about pleasure and pain. — Michael

Pain is like color. It comes in a bunch of types: stabbing, dull, electric, etc. We rate it from 0-10 and all that. So if I experience a stabbing pain and rate it at 4, this is a 4-stabbing percept, right? It's the same one everybody else experiences as 4-stabbing. 4-stabbing transcends the individual.

The cause of the percept "transcends" the individual, sure. And we all agree that stubbing one's toe is painful. But pain is nonetheless a mental percept, not a mind-independent property of toes or the table leg.

The cause of the percept "transcends" the individual, sure. And we all agree that stubbing one's toe is painful. But pain is nonetheless a mental percept, not a mind-independent property of toes or the table leg. — Michael

You don't want to talk about the black percept? Why not?

I don't understand what you're asking.

All I am saying is that colours as ordinarily understood are, like pain, mental percepts.

I don't deny that there are mind-independent objects with mind-independent properties that are the reliable and ordinary cause of such percepts. I just deny that these are what we ordinarily understand colours or pain to be.

Yea, I'm not arguing against you. I'm just analyzing the two opposing viewpoints, looking at the assumptions involved. It's about where universals come from. In a way, it's about where language comes from.

Well, as a nominalist I don't buy into universals. But the existence or non-existence of universals seems like matter for a separate discussion.

Well, as a nominalist I don't buy into universals — Michael

Universals are part of the way we speak. Nominalism is a particular explanation for it, not a basis for rejecting the idea altogether.

The theory you described says speech about color and other sensations refers to percepts. This assumes that we all have very similar experiences. You're saying that our ability to talk about these percepts hinges on this similarity.

A challenge to this view is that the similarity that is supposed to be the basis for the way we speak isn't verifiable. What we do verify is the outcome of social interaction that includes color speech. What's your view of that?

What's your view of that? — frank

That it's wrong. The word "percepts" refers to percepts, the word "pain" refers to a subset of percepts, and the word "colour" refers to a different subset of percepts.

This Wittgensteinian approach that wants to explain all language in terms of some public behaviour just doesn't work, so move on from it. Some words refer to other things.

Okey dokey

there are both colours-as-percepts and colours-as-dispositions. My only claim is that the former is our ordinary, everyday conception of colours, not the latter. — Michael

It's neither. The ordinary everyday conception is described in dictionaries, and dictionaries don't say much about the nature of colour, nor the science. I looked up Cambridge dictionary, and there's no mention of percepts, nor dispositions. It says colour is an appearance or substance of paint, dye, make-up, clothes, eyes, flowers etc. That's compatible with naive realism.

Counter-arguments against naive realism are typically based on selective or manipulated or extraordinary conditions of observation (e.g. illusions, hallucinations). In that photo of the striped dress we see not only its colours but how differences in the fabric of the stripes reflect light in different ways depending on daylight or nightlight. One could add fluorescent colours to some of the stripes, show it at night, and falsely claim that the reason we see different colours is to be found in the brain, ignoring the addition of fluorescent colours. Arguments from illusion are that bad.

falsely claim that the reason we see different colours is to be found in the brain — jkop

It is.

I'll finish my time here by quoting the SEP article again. I believe this summary is correct:

One of the major problems with color has to do with fitting what we seem to know about colors into what science (not only physics but the science of color vision) tells us about physical bodies and their qualities. It is this problem that historically has led the major physicists who have thought about color, to hold the view that physical objects do not actually have the colors we ordinarily and naturally take objects to possess. Oceans and skies are not blue in the way that we naively think, nor are apples red (nor green). Colors of that kind, it is believed, have no place in the physical account of the world that has developed from the sixteenth century to this century.

Not only does the scientific mainstream tradition conflict with the common-sense understanding of color in this way, but as well, the scientific tradition contains a very counter-intuitive conception of color. There is, to illustrate, the celebrated remark by David Hume:

"Sounds, colors, heat and cold, according to modern philosophy are not qualities in objects, but perceptions in the mind. (Hume 1738: Bk III, part I, Sect. 1, [1911: 177]; Bk I, IV, IV, [1911: 216])"

Physicists who have subscribed to this doctrine include the luminaries: Galileo, Boyle, Descartes, Newton, Thomas Young, Maxwell and Hermann von Helmholtz. Maxwell, for example, wrote:

"It seems almost a truism to say that color is a sensation; and yet Young, by honestly recognizing this elementary truth, established the first consistent theory of color. (Maxwell 1871: 13 [1970: 75])"

This combination of eliminativism—the view that physical objects do not have colors, at least in a crucial sense—and subjectivism—the view that color is a subjective quality—is not merely of historical interest. It is held by many contemporary experts and authorities on color, e.g., Zeki 1983, Land 1983, and Kuehni 1997. Palmer, a leading psychologist and cognitive scientist, writes:

"People universally believe that objects look colored because they are colored, just as we experience them. The sky looks blue because it is blue, grass looks green because it is green, and blood looks red because it is red. As surprising as it may seem, these beliefs are fundamentally mistaken. Neither objects nor lights are actually “colored” in anything like the way we experience them. Rather, color is a psychological property of our visual experiences when we look at objects and lights, not a physical property of those objects or lights. The colors we see are based on physical properties of objects and lights that cause us to see them as colored, to be sure, but these physical properties are different in important ways from the colors we perceive. (Palmer 1999: 95)"

This quote, however, needs unpacking. Palmer is obviously challenging our ordinary common-sense beliefs about colors. Specifically, he is denying that objects and lights have colors in the sense of colors-as-we-experience-them (or colors as we see them), As far as this goes, it is compatible with objects and lights having colors in some other sense, e.g., colors, as defined for scientific purposes. Secondly, he is saying that color (i.e., color-as-we-experience it) is a psychological property, which in turn, might be interpreted in different ways.

I trust physicists and neuroscientists over Wittgenstein.

don't think the OP, for example, is asking if atoms reflecting light is mind-independent. He's referring to the mental percept and asking if it's a mental percept or (as the naive colour primitivist believes) something mind-independent. — Michael

It is strange to ask if mental percept are mind-independent, seems like we have already defined it as mind-dependent by calling it “mental”. You keep mentioning that science supports such notion, but I don’t see it. As you mentioned in previous posts, you are not clear if you are committing to some sort of dualism. If you don’t , are you saying mental percepts are identical with brain states. Problem with this is you are no longer talking about mind dependent concepts but mind independent (brain neurons etc I would think you would call mind independent). But if you go the dualism route, you out of the science realm and moving into the metaphysical realm, and we both know the many problems with this view since Descartes.

It is strange to ask if mental percept are mind-independent — Richard B

You're misunderstanding.

The Morning Star is a planet, but it is perfectly appropriate to ask if the Morning Star is a planet or a star (e.g. if one is unsure).

Our ordinary conception of colours is that of colours-as-we-experience-them, which contrasts with such things as colours-as-dispositions-to-reflect-light. The "common-sense" naive view falsely posits that colours-as-we-experience-them are mind-independent properties of trees and pens and chairs, but the science shows us that they are not; that they are mental percepts related to neural activity in the visual cortex.

Problem with this is you are no longer talking about mind dependent concepts but mind independent (brain neurons etc I would think you would call mind independent). — Richard B

If the mind is brain states then to say that something is mind-independent is to say that it is independent of brain states. Brain states are not independent of brain states.

So if colours are mental phenomena and if mental phenomena are brain states then colours are brain states. Brain states are not properties of trees and pens and chairs, and so colours are not properties of trees and pens and chairs.

The "common-sense" naive view falsely posits that colours-as-we-experience-them are mind-independent properties of objects, but the science shows us that they are not; they are mental percepts related to neural activity in the visual cortex. — Michael

The “common-sense” naive view truly posits that colors are mind independent properties of objects because when I change the color of my room’s wall and get another bucket of paint with a different color, not a different mental percept. A scientific view truly posits that there is a correlation of brain activity when I look at my room’s wall color, and how that activity changes when I change its color.

Mental percept drops out of the conversation.

The “common-sense” naive view truly posits that colors are mind independent properties of objects because when I change the color of my room’s wall and get another bucket of paint with a different color, not a different mental percept. — Richard B

Some paint reflects 700nm light, which causes us to see red. Some paint reflects 450nm light, which causes us to see blue. Painting your room changes which wavelengths of light are reflected.

But colours as ordinarily understood are colours-as-we-experience-them, not micro-structural properties that reflect various wavelengths of light, and these colours-as-we-experience-them are mental percepts that various wavelengths of light cause to occur.

I intended this post above to be my final post, so I'll leave it there.

It is. — Michael

Yet it is more plausible to believe that it is the addition of a substance that causes the variation. There is no good reason to believe that the variation occurs without the added substance.

Previously your "only claim" was the claim that ordinary everyday conception of colours refer to mental percepts, but that's obviously false as was shown. But that was not your only claim.

For example, you claim that the colour variation in the dress is caused by the brain. I've so fat given you two reasonable counter arguments against the plausibility, and you evade/ignore both.

quoting the SEP article again. I believe this summary is correct: — Michael

A summary of what? The article contains many different sections and summaries, and you picked one that partly (debatable) suits one or two of your single-minded assertions. :roll:

Yet it is more plausible to believe that it is the addition of a substance that causes the variation. There is no good reason to believe that the variation occurs without the added substance. — jkop

And adding cold water to boiling water means I no longer feel pain when I put my hand in the water. That doesn’t entail that pain is a mind-independent property of (boiling) water.

All you are explaining is what I already accept; that mind-independent properties are causally responsible for percepts, and so changing those properties will change which percepts are caused to occur - because the brain reacts differently to different stimuli.

For example, you claim that the colour variation in the dress is caused by the brain. — jkop

Because it is. I’ve already referenced actual scientific studies on the matter.

My colleague and I are looking at the same computer screen and the same light is striking our eyes. Yet we see different colours because our brains process the stimulus differently. This is a proven empirical fact.

A summary of what? The article contains many different sections and summaries, and you picked one that partly (debatable) suits one or two of your single-minded assertions. :roll: — jkop

I agree with the part I quoted, which is why I quoted it as being what I believe is correct. I don’t agree with the competing theories that I didn’t quote. I trust physics and neuroscience over armchair philosophy.

Now that we're talking philosophy and not strictly science, I'll re-enter:

So to make this simple, here are two sets of claims:

Naive realism
1. Our ordinary conception of colours is that of sui generis, simple, intrinsic, qualitative, non-relational, non-reducible properties.
2. These sui generis properties are mind-independent.

Dispositionalism
3. Our ordinary conception of colours is that of micro-structural properties or reflectances.
4. These micro-structural properties are mind-independent.

I agree with (1) and (4) and disagree with (2) and (3). — Michael

I don't think you can consistently hold 1 and 4 without adopting a non-emprical epistimology. I say that because I don't see where the property of color is ontologically different than any other property such that you can draw a distinction between how you can know micro-structures any better or worse than colors. Both are properties and both are gained through perception, and we have already determined that perception is flawed due to mediation with the mind.

So, if you know that micro-structures are mind independent, your justification for that knowledge must be based upon something other than perceptions. It could be raw faith, it could be just a foundational belief to avoid solopsism, it could be a pragmatism, and it could be something else, but it can't be based upon empirically based information because such information is inherently subjective. From subjective perceptions you are concluding something objective and absolute, and I don't see how that can be done.

.

You are back to using the adjective "red". I am talking about the nouns "red" and "colour". Do you understand the distinction between an adjective and a noun? — Michael

Sure. The relevance of that distinction here, however, escapes me. In both cases we would most simply parse "red" as a predicate: "There is a red ball" becoming "There is an x such that x is a ball and x is red". We can treat these both extensionally, as simply that the bunch of things in the class"red" and the class Ball" is not empty.

Pain and colour are different. I can hand you the pen, but not the pain.

That certainly doesn't make much sense at all. — Michael

I agree. You somewhat missed the point, again. Why should there be a singular thing to which the noun "colour" refers, and which must therefore be either in your head or in your hand? Why shouldn't the word refer to various different things? Indeed, that's how it is used.

I've already agreed with this. — Michael

If we agree that colour is neither completely mind-dependent nor completely mind-independent, then we have made some progress.

Being red is possession of the quality plus reference to the word 'red'. The quality is for example a pigment that systematically reflects or scatters wavelength components around 700 nm under ordinary conditions. — jkop

I had a look at the interesting blog you cited previously. I gather you want to differentiate between, on the one hand, things that selectively reflect light of 700nm under white light, and things that reflect light of 700nm when that's all that is available on the other, with the former being called "red things" and the latter being "things that look red". Sounds fine to me.

This seems to be what @Michael is fussing about in talking of nouns and adjectives.

I'm not seeing how it answers the OP.

The analogy fails.

Pain is like color. — frank

, and . If you have a red pen in your hand, you can pass the red pen to me. If you have a pain in your hand, you cannot pass the pain to me.

The analogy between pain and colour fails because there is a public aspect to colour that it not available for pain.

There is this article about colour concepts and experience. Maybe it is of interest.
Colour concepts and colour experience
Christopher Peacocke
Published: March 1984
Volume 58, pages 365-381, (1984)
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF00485247

you cannot pass the pain to me. — Banno

It is called stabbing.

:/ -- ye olde "pay 40 pounds for an article" lol. If there's a bit in there that you think should be said please share it: I'm still reading along, just have nothing to say.