Sunday, March 1, 2015

"The Dress Isn't Blue or Gold Because Color Doesn't Exist"



I didn't say that.  But Professor of Neuroscience, Beau Lotto, basically says as much:
Color is, quite literally, a figment of your imagination, Lotto said. It only exists in your head. Bevil Conway, a neuroscientist who studies color and vision at Wellesley College [where Hillary Clinton went], explained it this way: “Color is this computation that our brains make that enables us to extract meaning from the world.”
“A color only exists in your head,” Lotto said. “There’s such a thing as light. There’s such a thing as energy. There’s no such thing as color.”
So let's get this straight: Color only exists in your head.  It ain't on that thing you're looking at; it's a computation in your head. And there's no such thing as color--that is, color doesn't exist.  It exists in your head and it doesn't exist in your head because there is no such thing as color.  Got that?

That wall you painted blue, the blue was in your head.  You put paint on the wall but not blue paint.  As well, if you have ever seen a brain--presumably what you have seen are colors arranged in a certain brain-shaped pattern.  If you've seen a brain, the brain was in your head.  The brain was a computation in your brain.  (Except that the brain you've seen doesn't exist).

And you thought philosophy was nuts!

[A new liar's paradox? This statement is both blue and false.]

2 comments:

  1. the author is not saying colors aren't real, but the perception of colors are an illusion.
    but colors do exist in the outside world completely independent of us
    Color is the part of light that is reflected by the object we see: (first reflected in the eye). If the object never had color, we would NEVER see any color.
    Objects appear a certain color because they absorb (or subtract) all the visible light colors except the color that is reflected back to your eye, A red apple absorbs all wavelengths of light except red, which it reflects, A blue ball absorbs all wavelengths of light except blue, which it reflects, A yellow filter absorbs all wavelengths of light, except yellow, which it transmits.
    That's why every object has Its own unique objective color.

    ReplyDelete
  2. "the author is not saying colors aren't real"

    Lott says "A color only exists in your head" and "There's no such thing as color." That's a contradiction. The former makes an existential claim about color--it exists (Where? In your head.) The latter second denies that color exists.

    Color, it seems to me, is pretty mysterious. You say it's a part of light--but light (photons) is invisible. Red is visible.

    ReplyDelete