Magical Realist
Valued Senior Member
So however it is that our brains experience color, we can at least say that it is something we hallucinate in our own brains. We don't "see" color per se. We dream it!
It's you that is inserting "third person" here, not Pigliucci. Since our thoughts are patterns of nerve impulses in the brain, so is our experience. That seems obvious to me. The "problem" only arises if one clings to Cartesian dualism and insists on separating "experience" from the physical phenomenon responsible.From above article:
I'm familiar with the category mistake argument against Cartesian dualism and the hard problem. The philosopher Gilbert Ryle proposed it originally, arguing that expecting physical or empirical processes to exhibit properties that are essentially mental or phenomenal in nature is to confuse the two. He uses the example of someone giving you a tour of the university-- the science bldg, the english bldg., the dormitories, the cafeteria, and so forth--and then you asking at the end, "But where is the university?" The mistake here is in confusing an example of the category of collective entities with an example of the category of individual discrete entities. Is that what is happening with the hard problem? Pigluicci continues:
That does make initial sense to me. But with an explanation of consciousness , of experience itself, we seem to have entered new territory. In this case we are trying to explain how the experience arises--as in the perception of color or any other qualia--from physical explanations. The explanation is expected to show how it is that the brain can have phenomenal experiences at all. It's a question not of confusing experience with explanation, but of how a categorical difference between the explanatory and the experiential comes about at all. IOW, if scientific explanations are by definition only accounts of physical third person events, and experiences are by definition only phenomenal first person events, how do we bridge that gap?
What ballocks. I've seen this kind of thing before and it is strikes me as an extremely unhelpful idea, to put it mildly. You can't claim that experiences rationally derived from physical inputs are "hallucinations". That's just not what hallucination means. The point about hallucination is that it is either not related to a physical input, e.g the "voices" heard by schizophrenics, or is an irrational interpretation of an input, like seeing an alligator's face on a police officer because you have taken LSD.So however it is that our brains experience color, we can at least say that it is something we hallucinate in our own brains. We don't "see" color per se. We dream it!
You can't claim that experiences rationally derived from physical inputs are "hallucinations". That's just not what hallucination means. The point about hallucination is that it is either not related to a physical input, e.g the "voices" heard by schizophrenics, or is an irrational interpretation of an input, like seeing an alligator's face on a police officer because you have taken LSD.
It's you that is inserting "third person" here, not Pigliucci. Since our thoughts are patterns of nerve impulses in the brain, so is our experience. That seems obvious to me. The "problem" only arises if one clings to Cartesian dualism and insists on separating "experience" from the physical phenomenon responsible.
That is not what a hallucination is.Just because the colors are about your immediate physical environment, unlike colors that are hallucinated without that input like say when you take LSD, does not mean they are being directly seen by the eyes. So that's why I call it a hallucination. An accurate and visually updated hallucination to be sure, but still a hallucination.
When someone is hallucinating it means whatever they are seeing or hearing is not there in reality.
Cobblers.Even if color and other visual properties correlate to and are an accurate representation of the immediate physical environment, they are still hallucinated inside the brain. For example, let's say you hook up a video camera to your TV set. The images that appear on the screen are clearly an accurate representation of the room you are capturing live on your camera. Now say you unhook your TV from the video camera and activate the TV's own internal video function. This time images will appear on the screen that do not correlate to or represent the immediate environment. But in both cases the images that appear on your TV screen are still just images generated internally by the TV are they not?
Likewise, the colors that your brain is generating that accurately represent the immediate physical environment are still hallucinations in the sense that they are not being directly seen by your eyes. Just because the colors are about your immediate physical environment, unlike colors that are hallucinated without that input like say when you take LSD, does not mean they are being directly seen by the eyes. So that's why I call it a hallucination. An accurate and visually updated hallucination to be sure, but still a hallucination.
This is silly. Next, you'll be telling us the smell of a banana is a hallucination, or the sensation of stubbing one's toe on a chair. Abusing terms like this deprives them of meaning and makes discussion pointless.Color is not "there" and just being passively seen in any physical sense. The apple's redness is not an inherent physical property of some external object called an apple. It is a brain-generated sensation that is projected on the apple. All the other qualities derived from other senses, such as the tone of a musical instrument or the warmth of a nearby fire, are also sensations generated inside our brains. They are also not physically there independent of our brains.
This is silly. Next, you'll be telling us the smell of a banana is a hallucination, or the sensation of stubbing one's toe on a chair. Abusing terms like this deprives them of meaning and makes discussion pointless.
It would indeed be deeply stupid to ascribe a sensation to the external object being sensed, but as nobody is suggesting any such thing, the point is entirely moot.How does any sensation occur outside the body? Is that what you are proposing? That sensations somehow magically inhere inside physical objects themselves and aren't really being felt inside our brains? Think about pain. Wouldn't it be silly to ascribe that sensation to the physical objects causing it? That a knife is a painful object or fire is a painful incandescent gas?
The sensation is the effect produced in the brain by the signal from the sensory nerves that detect the object.
What's the point of quoting this stuff? Obviously both the sensory system and the interpreting system can give false signals under some circumstances. So what? That's not some profound mystery.There is no necessary connection between the sensation of color and the sensory nerves connecting the retina to the brain. This can be seen in cases where color is experienced by taking drugs or by rubbing your closed eyes really hard.
"Most of us have experienced it. You rub your closed eyes, or sneeze, and suddenly notice some flickers or sparks of light in your vision. But, by the time you open your eyes, they’re gone. These small lights are usually phosphenes, a visual phenomenon caused by mechanical stimuli resulting in pressure or tension on the eye when the eyelids are closed.
The internal lining of the eyeball is called the retina. The retina’s job is to take visual information entering your eye through the pupil and convert this information into an electrical signal. The electrical signal is then sent to the brain to provide us with the visual image we see of the world. Phosphenes are generated by the retina after there’s some sort of stimulation, even with the eye closed.
Some activities that stimulate the retina in this way include:
Usually, phosphenes are described as sparks, twinkling lights or pin-prick light shapes that can be brightly colored. Phosphenes will subside quickly, in less than a few seconds, and don’t cause any change to vision."--- https://wexnermedical.osu.edu/blog/why-do-you-see-colors-when-rubbing-your-eyes
- sneezing
- standing up too quickly
- head trauma
- looking at the sky
- moving the eyes quickly
What's the point of quoting this stuff?
Obviously both the sensory system and the interpreting system can give false signals under some circumstances. So what? That's not some profound mystery.
No.I'm backing up my claims with facts and data. If you don't like it don't read it.
It shows that color can be generated inside the brain without even being seen by the eyes. That color is hallucinated and not "seen". Was that not what we were debating?
No.
There can be hallucinations, under certain circumstances, sure. That obviously does not mean the sensation of colour is a hallucination, as you were claiming.
This is too stupid. I'm out.
Just because colour can be hallucinated does not mean colour is therefore an hallucination.That color is hallucinated and not "seen". Was that not what we were debating?
Just because colour can be hallucinated does not mean colour is therefore an hallucination.
An hallucination is a false perception. Experiencing the yellow from a banana is not false, but rather an accurate perception. Experiencing that banana as a bowl of grapes would be an hallucination.
What you seem to be arguing, and correct me if I'm wrong, is that the perception is not the thing itself. Colour, for example, is an interpretation by our brains of EM radiation with a certain wavelength hitting our eyes. We experience it as a colour. But that does not make it an hallucination, as the experience is correct, in as much as it is an experience that matches reality as closely as humans can.
Experiencing a banana as a singing snake would not be a correct perception.
The issue, therefore, is that you're using the term "hallucination" incorrectly, and it is causing confusion and disagreement where none may actually lie.
Then you're not using the word as understood by everyine else. You're defining it in a manner that makes every sensory experience an hallucination, and thus makes it a rather meaningless word. To define it as such not only confuses people who think you mean something more akin to how hallucination is more commonly understood, but adds nothing to our understanding.I am defining hallucinated as any sensation generated internally by the brain.
Then you're not using the word as understood by everyine else. You're defining it in a manner that makes every sensory experience an hallucination, and thus makes it a rather meaningless word. To define it as such not only confuses people who think you mean something more akin to how hallucination is more commonly understood, but adds nothing to our understanding.
Rather than progress discussion it serves to disrupt, due to having to navigate your unusual usage.
Which is unfortunate.
Rather than progress discussion it serves to disrupt, due to having to navigate your unusual usage.