"Do You See What I See?" reports on the work of neuroscientist Beau Lotto, beginning with the fact that colour is not a fact about the world, but something created in human brains, which is demonstrated using optical illusions based on colour (2011). What is an objective, mind-independent part of the world is light, however differently the brains of different observers might interpret that light as a colour. However, it isn't just humans for whom this subjective experience of colour is of extreme importance: its evolutionary origins go all the way back to primitive animals like jellyfish, which don't even have eyes but still detect and respond to light of different qualitites. Lotto also reports his research results suggesting that men and women have differing sensitivities to light, and the similarities and differences of emotional and musical associations with colour across different cultures and ages. Finally, he sums up by saying that "none of us see the world as it is" (Deluded Species sect., ¶ 2).
Although I really liked Dig's example this morning, I was also a bit worried because it could easily have led to a very messy philosophical puzzle about the nature of colour and how the human brain works. As it turned out, I think his example of a colour blind person seeing a yellow board was very useful. When I was pushing my question for what sort of support you would use to support an opinion that the board was yellow, I wanted someone to say measure the light with an instrument, or even a camera, because that makes clear the same distinction that Lotto insists on: light and the reflective properties of different objects are facts about the world, but what happens in our brain, which is where colour exists, is not. We can, however, make factual statements about what's happening in our brain, which again you made clear in this morning's discussion. For example: Dig can correctly report the fact that some colour blind people will see the board as yellow, and this is a true statement (it matches a fact) about that person, who is an object in the world. Teh board does not change, the light being reflected does not change, but different human brains might process it differently, so the facts about the brains might be different for different people. To make true statements about the world (including ourselves as objects in the world) that accurately express our ideas, it is important to precisely state those ideas.
I think that's enough. There is an enormous and continuing philosophical argument about these issues, but I think you have already explored the important points in them that relate to academic writing, which was the only reason I was happy to spend so much time on that discussion on the blog over the weekend and in class this morning.
But feel welcome to comment more. I was not going to write a new blog post today, but when I saw that title and read the article 30 minutes ago, it was too good not to respond to.
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And I followed the rules we are blogging by:
ReplyDelete- My introduction is very short - just one sentence.
- The summary paragraph is only four sentences, although a little longer.
And more than 50% of the post is my response.
My comment may not relate to the main idea that you try to discuss on your response but it reminded the phrase that I have heard from somewhere longtime ago,however, I can remember it by heart and it changed me the way I think of others. It is "We do not see the world as it is, we only see the world as we are".
ReplyDeleteWe all interprete situation and anything that happens with us by relating them to our own previous experiences. If there is a person laugh at you, you may interprete that behavior positve or negative like you may think he enjoy being with you or he looks down on you. It depends on situation and your former experience.
By the way, talking about color, many phenomena can be evidences of our visual perception is what happens in our brain rather than what the world exactly is; for example, Hermann grid which is a picture of several horizontal black lines crossing several vertical black lines on white background or vice versa. When you see the crossing lines in extremely hi-contrast background, at each crossing point of two line you will see a gray spot appear.