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Does colour only exist in our brain? Book argues it is simply a construct of the mind
Daily Mail ^ | May 22, 2015 | Ellie Zolfagharifard

Posted on 05/23/2015 6:28:43 AM PDT by rickmichaels

Roses aren't red and violets aren't blue.

At least that's the premise of a new book, 'Outside Color', which puts forward the debate that colour is, in fact, an illusion.

Author Dr Mazviita Chirimuuta uses the book to explore the historical debates that suggest colour doesn't exist - at least not in the literal sense.

Light, however, does exist, and it's the mind that transforms that light into colour.

'Of all the properties that objects appear to have,'writes the University of Pittsburgh professor, 'colour hovers uneasily between the subjective world of sensation and the objective world of fact.'

Optical illusions, such as the blue and black dress that went viral this year, show how objects have colours that observers perceive differently.

(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...


TOPICS: Science
KEYWORDS: blackdress; bluegrass; color; idiotic; mazviitachirimuuta; opticalillusions; outsidecolor; pages; revokehistenure; uofpittsburgh
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To: rickmichaels
... it is simply a construct of the mind

Yeah, like gender. /s

41 posted on 05/23/2015 8:47:25 AM PDT by Albion Wilde (The "legacy of slavery" is not an excuse for inexcusable behavior. --Thomas Sowell)
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To: cuban leaf
-- And when you press your hands together, nothing really touches. It is only the force of the atoms repelling each other that our brain interprets as "touching". --

Not just our senses, but every physical construct short of neutron star density. What we experience is the Pauli exclusion principle, roughly (but incorrectly) stated as no two electrons may occupy the same state. It's not the atoms repelling, it's electrons preventing atoms from merging.

42 posted on 05/23/2015 8:54:22 AM PDT by Cboldt
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To: rickmichaels

Are you gonna believe this guy or your own lying eyes?


43 posted on 05/23/2015 9:05:53 AM PDT by Doomonyou (Let them eat Lead.)
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To: cuban leaf
And when you press your hands together, nothing really touches. It is only the force of the atoms repelling each other that our brain interprets as “touching”. And for all practical purposes, they ARE touching, except they’re not.

Read a book one time, it may have been "In Search of Schrodinger's Cat", that asked does the universe exist if there is no one to observe it. Sentient beings may, by observing, collapse the probabilities, and instantiate the Universe.

44 posted on 05/23/2015 9:11:49 AM PDT by Flick Lives ("I can't believe it's not Fascism!")
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To: Oliviaforever

What “ancient texts” are you referring to? The ancient Greeks, Romans, Egyptians, Hebrews, Persians, and Indians all had words for blue.


45 posted on 05/23/2015 9:27:03 AM PDT by wideawake
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To: rickmichaels
It suggests that colour doesn't exist - at least not in the literal sense Instead it exists in our minds, or in the way that people interpret light

Color is not in our minds in any sense.From the standpoint of the subject, color is not in or a feature of his perceptual awareness. The physical facts show that color is a relational property of objects, arising from an interaction between them and our visual systems.

Also,colors are not separate objects of awareness, or qualities in inner objects, but aspects of the way external objects appear to us in respect of their reflectance properties.They are thus aspects of the means by which we are directly aware of those properties.

Finally, these reflectance properties could be perceived in different forms,if our perceptual apparatus were different.

46 posted on 05/23/2015 9:28:16 AM PDT by mjp ((pro-{God, reality, reason, egoism, individualism, natural rights, limited government, capitalism}))
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To: wideawake

http://modernnotion.com/could-the-greeks-not-see-color-blue/


47 posted on 05/23/2015 9:33:48 AM PDT by Oliviaforever
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To: Dark Knight
As I săid. The whole thing is silly, a matter of definition. There is no philosophy or science involved at all, only definition.
48 posted on 05/23/2015 10:21:28 AM PDT by arthurus (It's true!)
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To: who_would_fardels_bear

What has classical liberalism got to do with the definition of color and its perception?


49 posted on 05/23/2015 10:22:24 AM PDT by arthurus (It's true!)
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To: who_would_fardels_bear

I really appreciate that you disagreed with me and didn’t launch into a venomous attack on what a dumb idiot I am. That is the only way a few people on this site can think.


50 posted on 05/23/2015 10:38:52 AM PDT by odawg
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To: rickmichaels

Just like gender...


51 posted on 05/23/2015 10:58:35 AM PDT by Organic Panic
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To: Oliviaforever
That's not accurate.

Gladstone and Geiger apparently did not realize that glaucos in Greek, t'khelet in Hebrew, vinlla in Sanskrit, etc. refer to blue.

Generally the older the language the less clearly defined the vocabulary for colors is - but this applies to many categories: number, animals, and so on.

The ancients were able to see the sky as well as we can. They saw the same color we do. As each culture got better at creating blue dyes and paints, a technical vocabulary to describe color distinctions more distinctly developed.

Primitive tribes in South America and Polynesia will often use one word to describe all bright colors - but when asked to differentiate between the various primary and secondary colors through gestures they can do so as well as any Western housepainter.

52 posted on 05/23/2015 3:55:33 PM PDT by wideawake
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To: 9thLife

Of course you are correct. An objective fact - a repeatable and uniform observation.


53 posted on 05/23/2015 6:37:31 PM PDT by JimSEA
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To: who_would_fardels_bear

“Occasionalism”

Interesting, thanks. Read some of this, more later. It seems to be a good way to explain things to a western mind, although free will needs to be considered. That may differentiate Christianity (non-Calvinist) from some of the Islamic philosophy in here.


54 posted on 05/24/2015 3:28:59 AM PDT by ReaganGeneration2
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To: rickmichaels

These academics are always seeking a major communist goal: make people doubt what they think they know, break down the certainty in what people believe in. This is a required foundation for a society to be ruled by totalitarians.


55 posted on 05/24/2015 6:28:32 AM PDT by backwoods-engineer (Blog: www.BackwoodsEngineer.com)
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To: AdmSmith; AnonymousConservative; Berosus; bigheadfred; Bockscar; cardinal4; ColdOne; ...
Distinction without a difference ping. Reminds me of the BS, "there's no such thing as hypnosis".

56 posted on 06/01/2015 7:12:54 AM PDT by SunkenCiv (What do we want? REGIME CHANGE! When do we want it? NOW!)
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To: rickmichaels

Ummm, it’s ALL only constructs of our minds...


57 posted on 06/01/2015 11:07:44 AM PDT by GOPJ (If the MSM stops lying about conservatives, we'll stop telling the truth about them.)
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To: Oliviaforever

Maybe they had a word for blue but it was sacred and tabblue to talk about it.


58 posted on 05/04/2020 8:29:12 PM PDT by piasa (Attitude adjustments offered here free of charge.)
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