Searching for GOD...

[SteveH]

Steve H,

As is the hypothesis that we all interpret light wavelengths in the same way.

No, it isn't. Everyone with normal vision agrees that red things are red, blue hillsides are blue, etc. The dress is a very unusual exception.

[torridon]

No, it isn't. Everyone with normal vision agrees that red things are red, blue hillsides are blue, etc. The dress is a very unusual exception.

Have a look at this one then

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Checker_shadow_illusion#/media/File:Grey_square_optical_illusion.svg

Squares A and B are exactly the same colour, but humans perceive them as distinctly different shades of grey.  This demonstrates that colour perception is subjective interpretation and not an objective phenomenon.

[SteveH]

Have a look at this one then

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Checker_shadow_illusion#/media/File:Grey_square_optical_illusion.svg

Squares A and B are exactly the same colour, but humans perceive them as distinctly different shades of grey.  This demonstrates that colour perception is subjective interpretation and not an objective phenomenon.

It proves nothing of the bloody sort. As I said easrlier, "hard cases make bad law". An optical illusion is amusing, but proves nothing.

[bluehillside Retd.]

Steve H,

No, it isn't. Everyone with normal vision agrees that red things are red, blue hillsides are blue, etc. The dress is a very unusual exception.

But how do you know that your experience "red" is the same as my experience "red"? We may both say, "that's red" when confronted with the same sensory input, but we cannot say that we necessarily interpret "red" in the same way. It's the "other minds" problem.
 
Incidentally, my guess is that we do (or at least that there's considerable intersubjective overlap between us) because our neural architecture is substantially the same, but I cannot test that.

[torridon]

It proves nothing of the bloody sort. As I said easrlier, "hard cases make bad law". An optical illusion is amusing, but proves nothing.

No, it demonstrates a profound truth about the nature of perception and in the previous example, how perception works in humans.  It is not a case of some neurons inexplicably misfiring in the brain, all humans experience this incorrectly, therefore we conclude this gives us an insight into the regular working of mind.  Our perceptual systems evolved not to show us what is out there, that would be far too costly; it turns out that most of our vision and hearing is derived from personal memory using a best-guess-based-on-past-experience paradigm.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

If anyone can salvage a cogent thought from that wreckage would they let me know please?

Ta.

It's quite simple Hillside it's a case of you being a monist when it suits and a dualist when it suits. If red is information then it is real for whoever whenever. Ultimately for you my physicalist friend there is no real appeal to ''true for me' so stop it, please.

[bluehillside Retd.]

Vlad,

If red is information...

It isn't, it's interpretation. There's no such thing as "red" outside outside our interpretation of the wavelengths of light we perceive.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Vlad,

It isn't, it's interpretation. There's no such thing as "red" outside outside our interpretation of the wavelengths of light we perceive.

But it is information Hillside and it was you who said the current paradigm was that everything in the universe is information. Red, when last I looked is information.....are you suggesting it is special non real information that doesn't exist but which we are aware of?

This confusion on your part is what comes when you hold up anything contrary.

[SteveH]

Steve H,

But how do you know that your experience "red" is the same as my experience "red"? We may both say, "that's red" when confronted with the same sensory input, but we cannot say that we necessarily interpret "red" in the same way. It's the "other minds" problem.
 
Incidentally, my guess is that we do (or at least that there's considerable intersubjective overlap between us) because our neural architecture is substantially the same, but I cannot test that.

You've already asked that, and I've already answered that we can't know, but the idea that we may see them differently is absoutely unfasifiable, and therefore may as well be ignored.

[bluehillside Retd.]

Vladdo,

But it is information Hillside and it was you who said the current paradigm was that everything in the universe is information. Red, when last I looked is information.....are you suggesting it is special non real information that doesn't exist but which we are aware of?

This confusion on your part is what comes when you hold up anything contrary.

Good grief. The underlying substrate of reality is information, but our brains have no direct access to it when it's external to us so construct “sound”, “colour”, “smell” etc as functional working models of it. These perceptions are actually just our interpretations of electromagnetic radiation, air compression waves and aromatic molecules that our brains model as colour, sound and smell.

Any confusion here is in other words all yours old son.

[bluehillside Retd.]

Steve H,

You've already asked that, and I've already answered that we can't know, but the idea that we may see them differently is absoutely unfasifiable, and therefore may as well be ignored.

That's called special pleading. You can't object to one hypothesis on the ground that it's "absolutely unfalsifiable" and argue for another that's also absolutely unfalsifiable.

[SteveH]

Steve H,

That's called special pleading. You can't object to one hypothesis on the ground that it's "absolutely unfalsifiable" and argue for another that's also absolutely unfalsifiable.

I'm not doing, as far as I'm aware.

[bluehillside Retd.]

Steve H,

I'm not doing, as far as I'm aware.

You told us that most people with normal vision agree about what colours objects are. I asked you how you’d know that different people experience, say, “red” in the same way even if they use the same label “red” in response to the same external stimuli. You told me that the idea that they might not is unfalsifiable, and therefore “useless”.   

My reply was that the same could be said of the idea that they do experience “red” in the same way, so each hypothesis is equally useful or useless. Thus asserting one unfalsifiable idea to be true while dismissing the other unfalsifiable idea as false because it’s unfalsifiable is special pleading.

QED

[floo]

I'm not doing, as far as I'm aware.

It appears that you are.

[bluehillside Retd.]

Just by way of some musing for a mo by the way, so much of what we take for granted is actually astonishing when you think about it. I might for example have in mind a Shakespeare sonnet. While standing at one side of a room my brain can then tell my larynx to create differential pressure waves in the air that someone else on the other side of the room will perceive and then interpret back into the sonnet, with all that entails in the way of an emotional response to it. There was no "sonnet" in the space between us though - just air.

It's incredible really.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Vladdo,

Good grief. The underlying substrate of reality is information, but our brains have no direct access to it when it's external to us so construct “sound”, “colour”, “smell” etc as functional working models of it. These perceptions are actually just our interpretations of electromagnetic radiation, air compression waves and aromatic molecules that our brains model as colour, sound and smell.

Any confusion here is in other words all yours old son.

Oh here we go the fucking substratism crock.If the substrate is real then you are conjuring up an Irreal in magical and mystical fashion. If you really paid attention to one hand of what you are proposing you wouldn't contradict it on the other.

There can be no such thing as irreal information if you are proposing that information is the substrate of reality.

[Stranger]

You told us that most people with normal vision agree about what colours objects are. I asked you how you’d know that different people experience, say, “red” in the same way even if they use the same label “red” in response to the same external stimuli. You told me that the idea that they might not is unfalsifiable, and therefore “useless”.   

My reply was that the same could be said of the idea that they do experience “red” in the same way, so each hypothesis is equally useful or useless. Thus asserting one unfalsifiable idea to be true while dismissing the other unfalsifiable idea as false because it’s unfalsifiable is special pleading.

But, looking back, as far as I can see, Steve never proposed the the conjecture that we experience "red" in the same way - he said "everyone with normal vision agrees that red things are red" - which isn't the same thing at all. You even reported it here as "most people with normal vision agree about what colours objects are" - which is true and also not the same as saying we experience them in the same way.

BTW it would help those of us trying to pick up a conversation immensely if you used the rather wonderful quote feature of this board, that provides a link back to the post you're quoting from (it also has the added advantage of preserving any formatting used in the original message). What have you got against it?

[torridon]

Just by way of some musing for a mo by the way, so much of what we take for granted is actually astonishing when you think about it. I might for example have in mind a Shakespeare sonnet. While standing standing at one side of a room my brain can then tell my larynx to create differential pressure waves in the air that someone else on the other side of the room will perceive and then interpret back into the sonnet, with all that entails in the way of an emotional response to it. There was no "sonnet" in the space between us though - just air.

It's incredible really.

Awesome in'it; the things we take for granted, unthinkingly, are often the most incredible complexities. 

Here's another : during the time it has taken me to write this line, I breathed in around 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 atoms of oxygen and already they are in process of being finely distributed to the 50,000,000,000,000 energy hungry cells that I am made of.

Awesome in'it

[bluehillside Retd.]

Vladdo,

Oh here we go the fucking substratism crock.If the substrate is real then you are conjuring up an Irreal in magical and mystical fashion. If you really paid attention to one hand of what you are proposing you wouldn't contradict it on the other.

There can be no such thing as irreal information if you are proposing that information is the substrate of reality.

You seem to think that you’re making a point of some sort here, but either your thought processes or you ability to communicate them are so wrecked that’s it’s impossible to work out what it might be.

What do you even think you’re trying to say here?

[bluehillside Retd.]

Stranger,

But, looking back, as far as I can see, Steve never proposed the the conjecture that we experience "red" in the same way - he said "everyone with normal vision agrees that red things are red" - which isn't the same thing at all. You even reported it here as "most people with normal vision agree about what colours objects are" - which is true and also not the same as saying we experience them in the same way.

Not sure whether you're talking to me or to Steve H here? My "reporting" was a direct quote from his post, and the point I was making was that people using the same label "red" means only that we use the same label for our interpretations "red". Agreeing "about what colours objects are" as he put doesn't mean that there are colours of objects just "out there" to be identified as he implies - what we actually agree to is to use the same labels for the colours we model in response to certain stimuli, which is true but only relatively trivially so. Whether the models we experience are the same as the wavelengths of light that trigger them are the same is unknowable.

[Alan Burns]

Awesome in'it; the things we take for granted, unthinkingly, are often the most incredible complexities. 

Here's another : during the time it has taken me to write this line, I breathed in around 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 atoms of oxygen and already they are in process of being finely distributed to the 50,000,000,000,000 energy hungry cells that I am made of.

Awesome in'it

Yes, and it is a pity that you can't acknowledge the unimaginable intelligence which is responsible for bringing this awesome machine into existence.

[Nearly Sane]

Yes, and it is a pity that you can't acknowledge the unimaginable intelligence which is responsible for bringing this awesome machine into existence.

Your logic has created an infinite regress here.

[SusanDoris]

Yes, and it is a pity that you can't acknowledge the unimaginable intelligence which is responsible for bringing this awesome machine into existence.

If it is unimaginable, how can you imagine it?

[Nearly Sane]

If it is unimaginable, how can you imagine it?

I think this is a form of argument by verbum.

[torridon]

Yes, and it is a pity that you can't acknowledge the unimaginable intelligence which is responsible for bringing this awesome machine into existence.

That would be to totally misunderstand what this demonstrates, which is that high order complexity naturally derives from iower order complexity.  In a theistic account a god would be at the summit of this pyramid making it the most derivative of all things and yet theism paradoxically envisages a god as being non derivative. Even if that circle could be squared it still leaves the further paradox of why this being with such powers to defy logic would choose to create humans in a naturalistic scheme of bottom up mind boggling complexity totally as if it were actually beholden to principles of logic after all.

As a further reflection on complexity, I'd say that one of the underlying psychological drivers of god beliefs is escape from complexity.  When we try to contemplate the internal complexity of a biological cell or try to conceive of the number of stars that make up the universe we are overwhelmed by facts and figures, we don't have the calorific resources nor sufficient neural architecture to imagine such vast dimensions.  We are all totally out of our depth and to some extent, we start to glaze over. In a sense, god beliefs I think are born as a consequence of this glazing over, they provide a simple way of understanding that cuts through all that complexity while their own aura of authoritativeness mitigates our guilt at indulging such a cheap cop out.