Philosophy Now Forum

Posted: **Tue Dec 03, 2019 6:04 pm**

"Is this a shade of blue or a shade of red?"

Color

Me, I don't know what the common placeholder is so I'll just call it phugly.

My point (again): we assign names to that which exists. In the light there's information (wavelength) and we assign names to various slices of that spectrum.

Looping back: if all the big brains were blind, the sky (the light) would still be (still contain) blue.

'nuff said (for now, cuz I gotta go make bucks).

Posted: **Tue Dec 03, 2019 6:12 pm**

Skepdick wrote:
How many categories should the spectrum be split up into

I would say as many as the human eye can actually differentiate between
Or as many as actually possible given the available technology of the time

But rather like calculating pi to as many decimal places as possible it may serve no practical purpose
Yet very often specific applications for scientific discoveries are found that were not known of before
One example is laser technology being used to scan bar codes which was not what lasers were initially designed for at all

Posted: **Tue Dec 03, 2019 6:12 pm**

henry quirk wrote: ↑Tue Dec 03, 2019 5:54 pm How much information does the light carry?

If the lightwave's frequency is F Hertz/second, then it carries 2F bits per second.

henry quirk wrote: ↑Tue Dec 03, 2019 5:54 pm As many as I need to suit my purpose.

Well, you know what your purpose is - how many do you need?

Posted: **Tue Dec 03, 2019 6:17 pm**

surreptitious57 wrote: ↑Tue Dec 03, 2019 6:12 pm I would say as many as the human eye can actually differentiate between
Or as many as actually possible given the available technology of the time
But rather like calculating pi to as many decimal places as possible it may serve no practical purpose
Yet very often specific applications for scientific discoveries are found that were not known of before
One example is laser technology being used to scan bar codes which was not what lasers were initially designed for at all

So science is very human-centric?

What happened to the whole idea of "facts" being independent of what anybody says or things?

Posted: **Tue Dec 03, 2019 6:19 pm**

henry quirk wrote: ↑Tue Dec 03, 2019 6:04 pm My point (again): we assign names to that which exists. In the light there's information (wavelength) and we assign names to various slices of that spectrum.

We assign names to the categories we invent.

Light exists. "Red" or "Blue" are just arbitrary categories on the light spectrum.

henry quirk wrote: ↑Tue Dec 03, 2019 6:04 pm Looping back: if all the big brains were blind, the sky (the light) would still be (still contain) blue.

It wouldn't. Because the sky is not blue. It's just what we say about it.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/color/#ProbColo

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])

Posted: **Tue Dec 03, 2019 6:23 pm**

Skepdick wrote:
Well you know what your purpose is - how many do you need

I do not think of it in terms of quantity but in terms of accessibility
So I will use that what is useful to me which is the tiny bit in between ultra violet and infra red
And rather than name every last infinitesimal shade of it I will simply call it visible light instead

Posted: **Tue Dec 03, 2019 6:31 pm**

Skepdick wrote:
surreptitious57 wrote:
I would say as many as the human eye can actually differentiate between
Or as many as actually possible given the available technology of the time
But rather like calculating pi to as many decimal places as possible it may serve no practical purpose
Yet very often specific applications for scientific discoveries are found that were not known of before
One example is laser technology being used to scan bar codes which was not what lasers were initially designed for at all
So science is very human centric

What happened to the whole idea of facts being independent of what anybody says or things

Of course science is human centric since it is a human discipline - albeit a very rigorous one

Facts cannot be absolutely independent because they are determined by us so that is a limitation
But science tries to be as objective as possible - allowing for the fact that it is a human discipline

Posted: **Tue Dec 03, 2019 6:32 pm**

surreptitious57 wrote: ↑Tue Dec 03, 2019 6:23 pm I do not think of it in terms of quantity but in terms of accessibility

Obviously! That's why you categorize things.

You categorize the possibly-infinite light-spectrum into finite categories because you can't access infinities.

surreptitious57 wrote: ↑Tue Dec 03, 2019 6:23 pm So I will use that what is useful to me which is the tiny bit in between ultra violet and infra red
And rather than name every last infinitesimal shade of it I will simply call it visible light instead

No good - same problem.

You have categorized "light" into 3 categories.

UV, Infrared and "Visible Spectrum".

And you've drawn the (arbitrary) lines upon human-centric considerations.

Posted: **Tue Dec 03, 2019 6:34 pm**

surreptitious57 wrote: ↑Tue Dec 03, 2019 6:31 pm Of course science is human centric since it is a human discipline - albeit a very rigorous one

Irrelevant. No amount of rigour can remove the human element.

surreptitious57 wrote: ↑Tue Dec 03, 2019 6:31 pm Facts cannot be absolutely independent because they are determined by us so that is a limitation
But science tries to be as objective as possible - allowing for the fact that it is a human discipline

Do or do not, there is no try. --Yoda

Posted: **Tue Dec 03, 2019 6:59 pm**

Skepdick wrote:
You categorize the possibly infinite light spectrum into finite categories because you cannot access infinities

As a pragmatist that is all I can do because anything else is simply beyond my ability and so is not worth the energy
Science is limited in what it can do but over time scientific knowledge increases and scientific technology advances

All that I can say for now is that I think the visible electromagnetic spectrum is infinite but there is no way that I can test that hypothesis
Pragmatism is superior to theory because it has an empirical foundation underlining it and a theory that cannot be tested is not much use

Posted: **Tue Dec 03, 2019 8:22 pm**

If the lightwave's frequency is F Hertz/second, then it carries 2F bits per second.

Is that a lot?

Well, you know what your purpose is - how many do you need?

Irrelevant. All that matters in this lil discussion is: I (we) name that which already exists. Nuthin' comes into being cuz I (we) name it. BLUE (any shade) is the placeholder we apply to a particular slice of light. We originated the placeholder, not the particular slice of light we assign the placeholder to.

Posted: **Tue Dec 03, 2019 8:45 pm**

We assign names to the categories we invent.

And we assigns names to things. 'Apple' can refer to a category or to the specific example I bite into. As category name 'apple' is a bit abstracted, as signifier for a specifc example, it's concrete.

#

Light exists. "Red" or "Blue" are just arbitrary categories on the light spectrum.

Light exists and 'red' and 'blue' are placeholders arbitrarily assigned to specific slices of the spectrum. All seven billion plus of us could decide to rename 'red' as 'gnarfle' and the the particular slice of light (formerly known as 'red', now known as 'gnarfle') would not change at all. The quality we call 'gnarflness' (formerly 'redness') is in the light, not in our heads.

#

It wouldn't. Because the sky is not blue. It's just what we say about it.

Sure, we can change the placeholder 'blue' to whatever we like, but the quality most of us currently name 'blue' does not change just cuz we decide to call that quality 'lindytwist'. 'Lindytwistness', formerly known as 'blueness' is in the light, not in our heads.

Posted: **Tue Dec 03, 2019 9:15 pm**

henry quirk wrote: ↑Tue Dec 03, 2019 8:22 pm Is that a lot?

Rounding down - it has 40 zeroes.

henry quirk wrote: ↑Tue Dec 03, 2019 8:22 pm Irrelevant. All that matters in this lil discussion is: I (we) name that which already exists.

That's not how things work at Quantum scale. Physics tries to guess what exists.

if a mathematical equation works - the objects used as inputs to the equation are said to "exist".

In physics "existence" is notion pertaining to Mathematical objects, not to whatever it is you call "reality".

henry quirk wrote: ↑Tue Dec 03, 2019 8:22 pm Nuthin' comes into being cuz I (we) name it.

Things come into being because they are defined as mathematical objects. And the maths works.

When the math works we say "it exists".

henry quirk wrote: ↑Tue Dec 03, 2019 8:22 pm BLUE (any shade) is the placeholder we apply to a particular slice of light.

A "slice of light" is called a band. It's defined Mathematically: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bandwidth ... rocessing)
Light is thought of as a wave - waves "exist" because they are defined mathematically.

henry quirk wrote: ↑Tue Dec 03, 2019 8:22 pm We originated the placeholder, not the particular slice of light we assign the placeholder to.

Light is just a phenomenon you perceive. Physics speculates that light is caused by photons. Light doesn't exist - photons exist.

Photons are mathematical objects: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photon#Ph ... properties

Posted: **Tue Dec 03, 2019 9:20 pm**

henry quirk wrote: ↑Tue Dec 03, 2019 8:45 pm And we assigns names to things. 'Apple' can refer to a category or to the specific example I bite into. As category name 'apple' is a bit abstracted, as signifier for a specifc example, it's concrete.

The thing you bite into is concrete, but it's not an "apple".

At the level of biology - it's a bunch of cells.
At the level of molecular biology - it's a bunch of complex proteins.
At the level of chemistry - it's a bunch of atoms and molecules.
At the level of classical physics - it's protons and electrons.
At the level of quantum physics - it's quarks, leptons and quantum fields.

You are only calling it an "apple" at human scale/perception

henry quirk wrote: ↑Tue Dec 03, 2019 8:45 pm Light exists and 'red' and 'blue' are placeholders arbitrarily assigned to specific slices of the spectrum. All seven billion plus of us could decide to rename 'red' as 'gnarfle' and the the particular slice of light (formerly known as 'red', now known as 'gnarfle') would not change at all. The quality we call 'gnarflness' (formerly 'redness') is in the light, not in our heads.

It's not in the light - it's in the way your brain processes the information from your retinas.

henry quirk wrote: ↑Tue Dec 03, 2019 8:45 pm Sure, we can change the placeholder 'blue' to whatever we like, but the quality most of us currently name 'blue' does not change just cuz we decide to call that quality 'lindytwist'. 'Lindytwistness', formerly known as 'blueness' is in the light, not in our heads.

Even IF qualia exist - they are entirely subjective. Qualia are about experiences. Colors are most definitely in your head.

Posted: **Tue Dec 03, 2019 9:33 pm**

"Physics tries to guess what exists"

I don't need physics to know the coffee I'm drinkin' is real, exists, and exists independent of me (like the quality in light we call color).

Philosophy Now Forum

Is morality objective or subjective?

Re: "o what color would the sky be if all scientists were visually impaired?"

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Re: "o what color would the sky be if all scientists were visually impaired?"

Re: "o what color would the sky be if all scientists were visually impaired?"

Re: "o what color would the sky be if all scientists were visually impaired?"

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we apprehend the world, we don't create it

Re: "o what color would the sky be if all scientists were visually impaired?"

Re: we apprehend the world, we don't create it