Does Light Actually Illuminate?

durangodawood

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Through intersubjective communication, I suspect that we all suspect that our experience of "red" independent of cars and apples are much the same. If we were able to neutralize confounding variables (like when statisticians control for income and race and gender, etc.), and we saw that the exact (for some useful degree of exactness) same areas of the brain were lit to the same degrees of intensity, etc., we might reasonably conclude that we all experience red the same way--At least the "we" that don't suppose some sort of mind-body duality.

I rather suspect that it won't be that and we'll be left wondering how "durangodawood experiences red". I think either answer is interesting. But as I said earlier, as long as we can meaningfully communicate about "red" it's not that important. But I'm shortsighted; there may be consequences and implications whatever the answer that I can't foresee.
Intersubjectivity only works for consistency of color experience. There is no intersubjective communication possible for what the color you experience actually looks like to you. It seems like you think so too.

I agree similarity of experience among people seems like a reasonable assumption, just because multiple instances of the same process in any arena generally produce similar results.
 
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SelfSim

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As Philip K Dick said, "Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away".
Yes .. the 'it' part of that mysteriously persists alongside human consciousness.

I wonder how Dick was testing for his beliefs, though? :|
 
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SelfSim

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I agree similarity of experience among people seems like a reasonable assumption, just because multiple instances of the same process in any arena generally produce similar results.
The thing is, what's real for the healthy-minded outliers, (who perceive what's red (or real) for them differently from the general majority), is also persistent for them. So who is right about 'what persists' is the actual red (or reality) - the majority, or the outliers?

Are we to completely ignore the outliers and cast them away as though they don't possses what evolution also endowed them with - ie: active healthy (and unhealthy) human minds?

Generalising away from the example of 'what red is', the Philip K Dick argument that what persists must be the (physical) reality, is falsified when considering the full gamut of what human minds mean when they describe physical reality. (I mean some folk will point to something orange when asked to point to something red and orange still persists to them).
No .. the only testable in that instance, when it comes to querying the mysterious persistency, is the persisting presence an active shared human mind type doing the observing .. and never 'what exists in nature .. external to those minds', (the latter of which is untestable because it takes a human mind to do the testing, an influencing factor which cannot be discounted from the test setup, or the conclusions).
 
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durangodawood

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The thing is, what's real for the healthy-minded outliers, (who perceive what's red (or real) for them differently from the general majority), is also persistent for them. So who is right about 'what persists' is the actual red (or reality) - the majority, or the outliers?

Are we to completely ignore the outliers and cast them away as though they don't possses what evolution also endowed them with - ie: active healthy (and unhealthy) human minds?
We have no idea who is really seeing color properly, if anyone. My argument was just that, generally, its typical that similar processes produce similar results given identical inputs. We observe that. So we can say its reasonable to suspect the same with human sense perception.

Generalising away from the example of 'what red is', the Philip K Dick argument that what persists must be the (physical) reality, is falsified when considering the full gamut of what human minds mean when they describe physical reality. (I mean some folk will point to something orange when asked to point to something red and orange still persists to them).
No .. the only testable in that instance, when it comes to querying the mysterious persistency, is the persisting presence an active shared human mind type doing the observing .. and never 'what exists in nature .. external to those minds', (the latter of which is untestable because it takes a human mind to do the testing, an influencing factor which cannot be discounted from the test setup, or the conclusions).
I think youre elevating "testable" to a bit of a fetish.

If exterior reality is untestable in principle, thats no reason to think it doesnt exist. We just have to apply other means of judging whether its existence is reasonable.
 
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FrumiousBandersnatch

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The thing is, what's real for the healthy-minded outliers, (who perceive what's red (or real) for them differently from the general majority), is also persistent for them. So who is right about 'what persists' is the actual red (or reality) - the majority, or the outliers?

Are we to completely ignore the outliers and cast them away as though they don't possses what evolution also endowed them with - ie: active healthy (and unhealthy) human minds?
Not quite sure what you're asking here, but the reason colour is considered a secondary quality is that it is subjective, so we don't, in general, know how others perceive it, only that we generally agree about it. We know that colour-blind people don't perceive or experience colour the way fully-sighted people do because they don't agree with them about certain aspects of it.

Generalising away from the example of 'what red is', the Philip K Dick argument that what persists must be the (physical) reality, is falsified when considering the full gamut of what human minds mean when they describe physical reality. (I mean some folk will point to something orange when asked to point to something red and orange still persists to them).
No .. the only testable in that instance, when it comes to querying the mysterious persistency, is the persisting presence an active shared human mind type doing the observing .. and never 'what exists in nature .. external to those minds', (the latter of which is untestable because it takes a human mind to do the testing, an influencing factor which cannot be discounted from the test setup, or the conclusions).
ISTM that there's a choice between accepting external/objective reality, and solipsism...
 
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Kylie

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We don't know what kind of image, or reaction a dolphin imagines when it uses echolocation for instance. But if it creates a kind of imagery in the dolphins mind, then is that image real..?

It is real in the sense that it is based off some external stimulus.

In the same way, when humans detect light, by photons passing through our eyes, is the light *actually* as real as our minds perceive it to be?

Yes. Our eyes are responding to photons that actually exist.

IOW, perhaps the sun is *actually* very dark, and perhaps, the world is pitch black in reality... But we perceive it differently because of our brain's unique ability to interpret photons in a useful way.

Depends what you mean by "dark."

If you mean it does not emit or reflect photons, then no, it is not dark. It emits a huge number of photons.

But from the perspective of a creature that senses through some other means, then you could say it is dark. The sun would be dark to a creature that sensed its environment purely by touch, for example, since it can not touch the sun.
 
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FrumiousBandersnatch

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Just thought that this video is relevant to the topic.
Nice one! It 'illuminates' another problem of trying to accelerate to near light speed - the light from the stars in the direction of motion would be increasingly squeezed to a central point as the field of view is compressed, and would increase in frequency until you were being bombarded by an intense point source of highly energetic gamma rays... not healthy.
 
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