'Fine tuning' the universe...

[EarthLife]

2 minutes ago, ollypenrice said:

It is also hard to imagine how the visual arts would work without a common experience.

It wouldn't matter, because red paint would look like red light, green paint would look like green light to a particular artist, no matter how differently we each visualise colour.

[ollypenrice]

39 minutes ago, EarthLife said:

It wouldn't matter, because red paint would look like red light, green paint would look like green light to a particular artist, no matter how differently we each visualise colour.

Would you say that about the musical scale, though? 

Olly

[EarthLife]

11 minutes ago, ollypenrice said:

Would you say that about the musical scale, though? 

Olly

Personally I'd find it hard to imagine how'd we sense audio frequencies differently I think. Strange isn't it.

[vlaiv]

17 minutes ago, ollypenrice said:

Would you say that about the musical scale, though? 

Olly

Yes.

Best we can do is "match" - but we can't determine that they are equal in sensory sense.

If I show you two pieces of red paper - we will both agree that it is the same color and we will name it the same - red. But there is no way to assert if our perception of that color is the same.

Similarly - if we play two notes on a piano - we can say that they are the same (or different and in what sense different - like higher pitch) - but no way to assert if we are "hearing" the same note (here hearing means our perception of the note).

All the properties that we assign to color or note will match - but there is also no way of saying if we actually see / hear the same thing.

Take "warmth" for example. Blue is cold color and red is warm color.

Nothing about cold or warm is related to perception of color - it is rather related to matching of colors. We say that red is warm because fire is red and sunshine is (reddish - on sunset for example), while blue is water and ice and thus is associated with cold.

We just took names of perception phenomena (we similarly can't say if we experience cold or warmth in the same way) and made a relation between them.

Edited March 4, 2023 by vlaiv

[markse68]

music is different though- it’s about frequencies relating to each other mathematically in tone and timing- you don’t “see” sounds unless you have synesthesia. The orange i “see” in my head may be what you would call green but we have no way of telling

also we detect actual frequencies of sound- I don’t think we do with light- we use filters like a mini ccd camera

Mark

 

Edited March 4, 2023 by markse68

[ollypenrice]

4 minutes ago, vlaiv said:

Yes.

Best we can do is "match" - but we can't determine that they are equal in sensory sense.

If I show you two pieces of red paper - we will both agree that it is the same color and we will name it the same - red. But there is no way to assert if our perception of that color is the same.

Similarly - if we play two notes on a piano - we can say that they are the same (or different and in what sense different - like higher pitch) - but no way to assert if we are "hearing" the same note (here hearing means our perception of the note).

All the properties that we assign to color or note will match - but there is also no way of saying if we actually see / hear the same thing.

Take "warmth" for example. Blue is cold color and red is warm color.

Nothing about cold or warm is related to perception of color - it is rather related to matching of colors. We say that red is warm because fire is red and sunshine is (reddish - on sunset for example), while blue is water and ice and thus is associated with cold.

We just took names of perception phenomena (we similarly can't say if we experience cold or warmth in the same way) and made a relation between them.

I'll have to go and read up on this debate but I think the suggestion that we have no common colour experience is not credible. 

You give an explanation for colour warm and colour cold. What about 'acid,' often used to describe yellow and green? Or 'astringent?' Or 'bland.'  The fact that we can and do use these metaphors in art and design strongly suggests a common experience to me. It makes little sense to think that someone might share my perception of a colour being 'acid' without some further commonality of experience. Concidence can only take you so far.

Olly

[vlaiv]

15 minutes ago, ollypenrice said:

I'll have to go and read up on this debate but I think the suggestion that we have no common colour experience is not credible. 

You give an explanation for colour warm and colour cold. What about 'acid,' often used to describe yellow and green? Or 'astringent?' Or 'bland.'  The fact that we can and do use these metaphors in art and design strongly suggests a common experience to me. It makes little sense to think that someone might share my perception of a colour being 'acid' without some further commonality of experience. Concidence can only take you so far.

Olly

Say for example that I don't understand what acid green means (and to be honest, I'm not entirely sure I do).

How would you explain it to me? Try to give me explanation of what the acid green looks like without showing me actual color.

[EarthLife]

I guess you could take taste and smell as maybe an example of how we can each experience a sense differently. The smell and taste of garlic to me is flipping awful, yet others say it's wonderfully lovely.

I'm not saying we do each experience colour in our own way, but it's not something we can actually test is it ?  not sure how science could do such a test.

[markse68]

Acid is obvs isn’t it? lemons and limes?

Mark

[EarthLife]

45 minutes ago, vlaiv said:

Take "warmth" for example. Blue is cold color and red is warm color.

Nothing about cold or warm is related to perception of color - it is rather related to matching of colors. We say that red is warm because fire is red and sunshine is (reddish - on sunset for example), while blue is water and ice and thus is associated with cold.

We just took names of perception phenomena (we similarly can't say if we experience cold or warmth in the same way) and made a relation between them.

Yes we simply try and associate 'stuff'. In reality a big blue star is hotter than a little red star. Metal turns red before turning blue/white hot, much like a flame, a blue flame is much hotter than a red/yellow flame, although a methanol flame is totally invisible to the human eye yet would turn you a crispy black.

Edited March 4, 2023 by EarthLife

[vlaiv]

7 minutes ago, markse68 said:

Acid is obvs isn’t it? lemons and limes?

Mark

Not sure that it is - I'd associate it with discomfort rather than color of lemons and limes.

But in either case - we associate it with something - but no way of transferring information of how that actually feels.

[900SL]

Then we have the protein folding question, which  simply beggars belief. 10 to the power of 300 permutations, yet life evolved on earth.

10^300 is a mind boggling number, way way beyond the number of atoms in the observable universe

[markse68]

Doesn’t that sort of disprove evolution as being random?

[EarthLife]

I don't think life is random in any way shape or form, it's mind blowingly complex, surpasses any and all tech that we could ever create, and reproduces at the drop of a hat. Yes random mutations do happen, but life appears to have a very definite driving force behind it. Apart from where the universe really came from or what it really is, life has to be the most strangest part of it all - that we know of. And it's a totally natural part/evolution of the universe, else there would be no life. All it seems to need is a suitable environment to exist in, given that it seems to propagate like nothing we know.

Although fire is much the same, it will spread and propagate given the chance to do so. Stars are a good example for that.

Edited March 4, 2023 by EarthLife

[Macavity]

Archetypal Paper re. effect of varying the arbitrary Parameters of the Standard Model.
http://phyweb.lbl.gov/~rncahn/www/rmp-18.pdf
Sometimes just "putting in the numbers" and calculating the *effect* is instructive? 🙃

[Zermelo]

I think two different things being discussed.

(1) The question as to whether the internal sense experiences (qualia) of different people with equally competent senses are the same, for example when perceiving a green object. I maintain that there is no way of knowing, because there would be no functional (external) difference in how those people would behave (for example, if asked "what do you mean by green?" they might both answer that green is the colour of that grass, there", whatever their respective sense experiences). I do agree, though, that this is a philosophical rather than scientific concern - by definition, there is no experiment that could reveal such a difference; the different internal sense models would be at least isomorphic, if they weren't identical.

(2) Differences between categorization of sensory experience. Such differences might occur because of differing sensory competence (e.g. colour blindness), or varying scope of terminology in different languages (apparently, the Dani people of New Guinea have only two words to describe colours, mili for darker/cooler colours and mola for lighter/warmer colours), or different cultural/historical choices. In these cases, the models are not necessarily isomorphic, and so are amenable to research and experiment, and have been studied by Brent Berlin, Paul Kay, Chad McDaniel and others. This is just one example of how categorization in general varies with culture/language/history. I've lifted it from Women, Fire and Dangerous Things by George Lakoff, which I just dug out, and see that I need to finish.

 

[ollypenrice]

46 minutes ago, vlaiv said:

Say for example that I don't understand what acid green means (and to be honest, I'm not entirely sure I do).

How would you explain it to me? Try to give me explanation of what the acid green looks like without showing me actual color.

The term is widely used in design. To explain it, I'd show you one whch, I think, would make my point.

ACID

OCHRE

Olly

[saac]

3 hours ago, Zermelo said:

We can all agree on the name to give light of a certain frequency, but of course I can never know that the sensation I experience as green is the same as yours, and not instead the one that you experience as red. Some philosophers talk endlessly on that point.

On another point, I think it's likely that our reasoning on fundamental matters like space and time is "tainted" by the niche we inhabit in the universe, in particular our scale. Our brains have evolved to deal with objects of the same scale as us, that behave in certain ways, and that is one reason why QM and relativity seem counter-intuitive to us.

I've came across that before but I don't agree with it. Humans have 3 types of cone cells (L,M and S) and within each are found particular proteins (opsin) - proteins of one type being expressed more in each type of photoreceptor.  Each particular protein absorbs the energy of the photon with a greater efficiency of absorption aligned to specific frequencies of light corresponding to 420, 534 and 564 nm peak.  Now baring mutation, that setup is the same in each of us. The same proteins, the same favoured excitation frequency and the same efficiency of absorption.  The response is a biochemical reaction known as the phototransduction (production of ATP  to power the sodium -potassium pump) ultimately producing the electrical impulse which is detected by the brain.  This is the biochemical response of the retinal cells and it has the same mechanism in every human. It is in effect our instrument response, there is no other way it can function.  Appropriately stimulated therefore with a wavelength of light of 534 nm, each of the 3 separate proteins will produce a response, however one particular protein produces a greater proportional response to that frequency. That mode of response, the same in every human, is the response that we label green.  I'm not sure how else it could be interpreted for there is no other mechanism to produce that response. 

Jim 

[saac]

1 hour ago, EarthLife said:

Personally I'd find it hard to imagine how'd we sense audio frequencies differently I think. Strange isn't it.

Why, both visual and auditory are biochemical responses producing a neural signal. The biochemical mechanism is common, identical in all humans. I honestly do not see where this interpretation comes in.

Jim

[EarthLife]

8 minutes ago, saac said:

I've came across that before but I don't agree with it. Humans have 3 types of cone cells (L,M and S) and within each are found particular proteins (opsin) - proteins of one type being expressed more in each type of photoreceptor.  Each particular protein absorbs the energy of the photon with a greater efficiency of absorption aligned to specific frequencies of light corresponding to 420, 534 and 564 nm peak.  Now baring mutation, that setup is the same in each of us. The same proteins, the same favoured excitation frequency and the same efficiency of absorption.  The response is a biochemical reaction known as the phototransduction (production of ATP  to power the sodium -potassium pump) ultimately producing the electrical impulse which is detected by the brain.  This is the biochemical response of the retinal cells and it has the same mechanism in every human. It is in effect our instrument response, there is no other way it can function.  Appropriately stimulated therefore with a wavelength of light of 534 nm, each of the 3 separate proteins will produce a response, however one particular protein produces a greater proportional response to that frequency. That mode of response, the same in every human, is the response that we label green.  I'm not sure how else it could be interpreted for there is no other mechanism to produce that response. 

Jim 

I don't think it's the physical method of colour detection/sense that's in doubt, it's more how we each perceive the colours and the various combinations of them once the signals reach the brain.

[Zermelo]

4 minutes ago, saac said:

I've came across that before but I don't agree with it. Humans have 3 types of cone cells (L,M and S) and within each are found particular proteins (opsin) - proteins of one type being expressed more in each type of photoreceptor.  Each particular protein absorbs the energy of the photon with a greater efficiency of absorption aligned to specific frequencies of light corresponding to 420, 534 and 564 nm peak.  Now baring mutation, that setup is the same in each of us. The same proteins, the same favoured excitation frequency and the same efficiency of absorption.  The response is a biochemical reaction known as the phototransduction (production of ATP  to power the sodium -potassium pump) ultimately producing the electrical impulse which is detected by the brain.  This is the biochemical response of the retinal cells and it has the same mechanism in every human. It is in effect our instrument response, there is no other way it can function.  Appropriately stimulated therefore with a wavelength of light of 534 nm, each of the 3 separate proteins will produce a response, however one particular protein produces a greater proportional response to that frequency. That mode of response, the same in every human, is the response that we label green.  I'm not sure how else it could be interpreted for there is no other mechanism to produce that response. 

Jim 

 

I agree with all of that, but arguably it still leaves open the possibility that subjective "redness" to one person isn't the same as it is for another. It could be considered an aspect of the more general problem of explaining how consciousness arises.

As I said, from a scientific perspective it can justifiably be ignored as irrelevant. A positivist would no doubt dismiss it as literally meaningless.

[saac]

1 hour ago, EarthLife said:

I guess you could take taste and smell as maybe an example of how we can each experience a sense differently. The smell and taste of garlic to me is flipping awful, yet others say it's wonderfully lovely.

I'm not saying we do each experience colour in our own way, but it's not something we can actually test is it ?  not sure how science could do such a test.

We can now visualise and map individual neurons in the brain firing when triggered by external stimuli.  Comparisons would show whether it is the same group of neurons that are responding to colour stimuli. Common pathways would suggest a shared response.

Jim

[vlaiv]

7 minutes ago, saac said:

Why, both visual and auditory are biochemical responses producing a neural signal. The biochemical mechanism is common, identical in all humans. I honestly do not see where this interpretation comes in.

Jim

This is beautiful example of how perception can be different in different individuals.

We know that all senses end up as being electrical impulses in our brain, right?

Why does one produce color, other smell and third note of certain pitch?

They are all just electrical impulses at the moment they "enter" our brain, right? It is the brain and structure of the brain that determines what each electrical impulse will be felt like.

Now, we, in general, have very similar brain structure - but there is enough differences to raise question if what we experience is also different. Different people do have different wiring in their brain. Chess player will have different wiring in their brain compared to say rock climber or precision optician (our brain rewires itself to some extend based on our experience - that is how we learn and acquire skills).

[vlaiv]

3 minutes ago, saac said:

We can now visualise and map individual neurons in the brain firing when triggered by external stimuli.  Comparisons would show whether it is the same group of neurons that are responding to colour stimuli. Common pathways would suggest a shared response.

Jim

I wonder how similar / different would be certain parts of the brain?

Number of neurons and their connections ....

[EarthLife]

6 minutes ago, saac said:

We can now visualise and map individual neurons in the brain firing when triggered by external stimuli.  Comparisons would show whether it is the same group of neurons that are responding to colour stimuli. Common pathways would suggest a shared response.

It might well be a group of neurons and connections that are triggered in the same rough areas, but those neurons can be totally wired differently in each of us, and so create a very different experience. If we were all wired the same, we'd be identical drones.

Some people love pain, some people can't cope with pain, some people have no pain/touch sense at all.

Edited March 4, 2023 by EarthLife