Vinod, Colin and Tushar, Physics and qualia

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Vasavada, Kashyap V

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Jun 26, 2017, 8:31:20 AM6/26/17
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Dear Vinod, Colin and Tusar,

Thanks for encouragement to the idea that fundamental particles may have qualia at some rudimentary level. May be I went too far in the other direction in saying that it is “wild conjecture”. Thanks Tusar for pointing out “theoretical sanction” of Sri Aurobindo to such ideas. Hopefully science will be able to incorporate such ideas in not too distant future.

Best Regards.

Kashyap

li...@fudan.edu.cn

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Jun 26, 2017, 12:00:34 PM6/26/17
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Dear all,
I think that the idea that the elementary particle has some qualia seems to be normal to me. But only when these qualia's can be combined into some integrated ones then they can be effectively seen as some consciousness. Otherwise, they are still just nothing.

On the other hand, I agree with William James that qualia cannot be combined so the conscious subject should be inseparable. I found his argument is very convincing. Actually,at least for me, no one has really refuted James' argument. They (e.g. D. Chalmers) think the qualia must be combinable only because if the conscious subject is something inseparable like elementary particle, there seems to be no way to stabilize it in our brain for such a long time and no way for the subject to interact with environment to gain such vivid experiences about the external work.

What if Nature indeed does find some way to stabilize some elementary particle with huge inner freedom in our brain and use the phenomenal properties this particle to produce conscious experiences that we experience everyday?  
  
Actually, in one of my 2016 published article in Neuroquantology, I did find a simple physical principle that can be used to act as this role. If you are interested in my work please let me know and I can send you a copy. But I guess no one here will agree with me and will be interested about my work.

Cheers!

Dr Jianfeng Li

Department of Macromolecular Science
Fudan University, Shanghai 200433
CHINA
Phone: 86-21-65642125
Email: li...@fudan.edu.cn



-----原始邮件-----
发件人:"Vasavada, Kashyap V" <vasa...@iupui.edu>
发送时间:2017-06-26 20:18:30 (星期一)
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主题: [Sadhu Sanga] Vinod, Colin and Tushar, Physics and qualia
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Sungchul Ji

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Jun 26, 2017, 4:46:59 PM6/26/17
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Hi Dr. Li,

Your work sounds interesting.
Can you send me the paper?

Thanks in advance.

Sung

On Mon, Jun 26, 2017 at 11:06 AM, <li...@fudan.edu.cn> wrote:
Dear all,
I think that the idea that the elementary particle has some qualia seems to be normal to me. But only when these qualia's can be combined into some integrated ones then they can be effectively seen as some consciousness. Otherwise, they are still just nothing.

On the other hand, I agree with William James that qualia cannot be combined so the conscious subject should be inseparable. I found his argument is very convincing. Actually,at least for me, no one has really refuted James' argument. They (e.g. D. Chalmers) think the qualia must be combinable only because if the conscious subject is something inseparable like elementary particle, there seems to be no way to stabilize it in our brain for such a long time and no way for the subject to interact with environment to gain such vivid experiences about the external work.

What if Nature indeed does find some way to stabilize some elementary particle with huge inner freedom in our brain and use the phenomenal properties this particle to produce conscious experiences that we experience everyday?  
  
Actually, in one of my 2016 published article in Neuroquantology, I did find a simple physical principle that can be used to act as this role. If you are interested in my work please let me know and I can send you a copy. But I guess no one here will agree with me and will be interested about my work.

Cheers!

Dr Jianfeng Li

Department of Macromolecular Science
Fudan University, Shanghai 200433
CHINA
Phone: 86-21-65642125
Email: li...@fudan.edu.cn



-----原始邮件-----
发件人:"Vasavada, Kashyap V" <vasa...@iupui.edu>
发送时间:2017-06-26 20:18:30 (星期一)
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Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology
Ernest Mario School of Pharmacy
Rutgers University
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609-240-4833

www.conformon.net

Siegfried Bleher

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Jun 27, 2017, 5:31:36 AM6/27/17
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Dear Dr. Li,

 

I have not read William James’ account on qualia, but it seems to me inseparability of qualia does not exclude the possibility of new qualia to emerge from the juxtaposition of several.  To whit, juxtaposing the colors blue and yellow create the experience of the color green.  Although, in a kind of hysteresis, once the color green arises, it cannot be separated in awareness into blue and yellow—perhaps that is an artifact of the visual sense, as the auditory sense can hear the unique sound created by juxtaposing several frequencies, as well as it can isolate the separate frequencies. 

 

But perhaps I am misunderstanding your meaning?

 

Best wishes,

 

Siegfried

li...@fudan.edu.cn

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Jun 27, 2017, 10:33:26 AM6/27/17
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Dear Kashyap,

I am very glad that you are interested in my work. Please find it in the attached.

Further explanation about my idea can be also seen on youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TFDed_tUWcw&t=89s
But I have to apologize that this presentation on youtube is not well organized.


Dr Jianfeng Li

Department of Macromolecular Science
Fudan University, Shanghai 200433
CHINA
Phone: 86-21-65642125
Email: li...@fudan.edu.cn


-----原始邮件-----
发件人:"Vasavada, Kashyap V" <vasa...@iupui.edu>
发送时间:2017-06-27 20:49:09 (星期二)
收件人: "li...@fudan.edu.cn" <li...@fudan.edu.cn>
抄送: "Online_Sa...@googlegroups.com" <Online_Sa...@googlegroups.com>
主题: RE: Re: [Sadhu Sanga] Vinod, Colin and Tushar, Physics and qualia

Dear Li,

Yes. I would be interested in an electronic copy of your work. Please send it either to this website or vasa...@iupui.edu. Thanks.

Best Regards.

Kashyap

 

From: li...@fudan.edu.cn [mailto:li...@fudan.edu.cn]
Sent: Tuesday, June 27, 2017 12:57 AM
To: VINOD KUMAR SEHGAL <vinodse...@gmail.com>
Cc: Vasavada, Kashyap V <vasa...@iupui.edu>; C. S. Morrison <cs...@hotmail.co.uk>
Subject: Re: Re: [Sadhu Sanga] Vinod, Colin and Tushar, Physics and qualia

 


I agree with you on this. Actually, in my understanding or in my theory, qualia can be seen as a conscious experience flash for a consciousness. If a subject can have a series of experience flashes or qualias that can further form time-flowing experience then it should be seen as a consciousness.

 

Further, in my theory, qualia or conscious experience is defined as a paring of two quantum states which cannot be reduced to structures. Note that it is not like the physical property that can be expressed as relations between two quantum states which are obviously structural. 

 

 

Dr Jianfeng Li
Assoc Prof


Department of Macromolecular Science
Fudan University, Shanghai 200433
CHINA
Phone: 86-21-65642125
Email: li...@fudan.edu.cn




-----原始邮件-----
发件人:"VINOD KUMAR SEHGAL" <vinodse...@gmail.com>
发送时间:2017-06-27 11:59:57 (星期二)
收件人: li...@fudan.edu.cn, "Vasavada, Kashyap V" <vasa...@iupui.edu>, "C. S. Morrison" <cs...@hotmail.co.uk>
抄送:
: Re: [Sadhu Sanga] Vinod, Colin and Tushar, Physics and qualia

Qualia are one time shut on or shut off events while consciousness is a lifelong perpetuating, unchanging, immutable flow ( of something) or some ontological existence. In view of this, qualia can't aggregate to consciousness. On the contrary, behind every qualia, there does exist consciousness. All qualia arise due to the interface of the consciousness and stimuli signals from environment or memory. Consciousness can exist even without qualia but not the converse.

 

Vinod Sehgal

 

On Tue, Jun 27, 2017 at 1:34 AM, Sungchul Ji <sji.co...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi Dr. Li,

 

Your work sounds interesting.

Can you send me the paper?

 

Thanks in advance.

 

Sung

On Mon, Jun 26, 2017 at 11:06 AM, <li...@fudan.edu.cn> wrote:

Dear all,

I think that the idea that the elementary particle has some qualia seems to be normal to me. But only when these qualia's can be combined into some integrated ones then they can be effectively seen as some consciousness. Otherwise, they are still just nothing.

 

On the other hand, I agree with William James that qualia cannot be combined so the conscious subject should be inseparable. I found his argument is very convincing. Actually,at least for me, no one has really refuted James' argument. They (e.g. D. Chalmers) think the qualia must be combinable only because if the conscious subject is something inseparable like elementary particle, there seems to be no way to stabilize it in our brain for such a long time and no way for the subject to interact with environment to gain such vivid experiences about the external work.

 

What if Nature indeed does find some way to stabilize some elementary particle with huge inner freedom in our brain and use the phenomenal properties this particle to produce conscious experiences that we experience everyday?  

  

Actually, in one of my 2016 published article in Neuroquantology, I did find a simple physical principle that can be used to act as this role. If you are interested in my work please let me know and I can send you a copy. But I guess no one here will agree with me and will be interested about my work.

 

Cheers!

 

Dr Jianfeng Li

Department of Macromolecular Science
Fudan University, Shanghai 200433
CHINA
Phone: 86-21-65642125
Email: li...@fudan.edu.cn




-----原始邮件-----
发件人:"Vasavada, Kashyap V" <vasa...@iupui.edu>
发送时间:2017-06-26 20:18:30 (星期一)

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Sungchul Ji, Ph.D.

Associate Professor of Pharmacology and Toxicology
Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology
Ernest Mario School of Pharmacy
Rutgers University
Piscataway, N.J. 08855
609-240-4833

www.conformon.net

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----------------------------
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Nepal Pragya Pratisthan, Kathmandu, Nepal
http://scsiscs.org/conference/scienceandscientist/2017
 
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927-2691-1-PB-final.pdf

Vasavada, Kashyap V

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Jun 27, 2017, 10:33:27 AM6/27/17
to li...@fudan.edu.cn, Online_Sa...@googlegroups.com

Dear Li,

Yes. I would be interested in an electronic copy of your work. Please send it either to this website or vasa...@iupui.edu. Thanks.

Best Regards.

Kashyap

 

From: li...@fudan.edu.cn [mailto:li...@fudan.edu.cn]
Sent: Tuesday, June 27, 2017 12:57 AM
To: VINOD KUMAR SEHGAL <vinodse...@gmail.com>
Cc: Vasavada, Kashyap V <vasa...@iupui.edu>; C. S. Morrison <cs...@hotmail.co.uk>
Subject: Re: Re: [Sadhu Sanga] Vinod, Colin and Tushar, Physics and qualia

 


I agree with you on this. Actually, in my understanding or in my theory, qualia can be seen as a conscious experience flash for a consciousness. If a subject can have a series of experience flashes or qualias that can further form time-flowing experience then it should be seen as a consciousness.

 

Further, in my theory, qualia or conscious experience is defined as a paring of two quantum states which cannot be reduced to structures. Note that it is not like the physical property that can be expressed as relations between two quantum states which are obviously structural. 

 

 

Dr Jianfeng Li
Assoc Prof

Department of Macromolecular Science
Fudan University, Shanghai 200433
CHINA
Phone: 86-21-65642125
Email: li...@fudan.edu.cn




-----原始邮件-----


发件人:"VINOD KUMAR SEHGAL" <vinodse...@gmail.com>
发送时间:2017-06-27 11:59:57 (星期二)
收件人: li...@fudan.edu.cn, "Vasavada, Kashyap V" <vasa...@iupui.edu>, "C. S. Morrison" <cs...@hotmail.co.uk>
抄送:
: Re: [Sadhu Sanga] Vinod, Colin and Tushar, Physics and qualia

Qualia are one time shut on or shut off events while consciousness is a lifelong perpetuating, unchanging, immutable flow ( of something) or some ontological existence. In view of this, qualia can't aggregate to consciousness. On the contrary, behind every qualia, there does exist consciousness. All qualia arise due to the interface of the consciousness and stimuli signals from environment or memory. Consciousness can exist even without qualia but not the converse.

 

Vinod Sehgal

On Tue, Jun 27, 2017 at 1:34 AM, Sungchul Ji <sji.co...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi Dr. Li,

 

Your work sounds interesting.

Can you send me the paper?

 

Thanks in advance.

 

Sung

On Mon, Jun 26, 2017 at 11:06 AM, <li...@fudan.edu.cn> wrote:

Dear all,

I think that the idea that the elementary particle has some qualia seems to be normal to me. But only when these qualia's can be combined into some integrated ones then they can be effectively seen as some consciousness. Otherwise, they are still just nothing.

 

On the other hand, I agree with William James that qualia cannot be combined so the conscious subject should be inseparable. I found his argument is very convincing. Actually,at least for me, no one has really refuted James' argument. They (e.g. D. Chalmers) think the qualia must be combinable only because if the conscious subject is something inseparable like elementary particle, there seems to be no way to stabilize it in our brain for such a long time and no way for the subject to interact with environment to gain such vivid experiences about the external work.

 

What if Nature indeed does find some way to stabilize some elementary particle with huge inner freedom in our brain and use the phenomenal properties this particle to produce conscious experiences that we experience everyday?  

  

Actually, in one of my 2016 published article in Neuroquantology, I did find a simple physical principle that can be used to act as this role. If you are interested in my work please let me know and I can send you a copy. But I guess no one here will agree with me and will be interested about my work.

 

Cheers!

 

Dr Jianfeng Li

Department of Macromolecular Science
Fudan University, Shanghai 200433
CHINA
Phone: 86-21-65642125
Email: li...@fudan.edu.cn




-----原始邮件-----
发件人:"Vasavada, Kashyap V" <vasa...@iupui.edu>
发送时间:2017-06-26 20:18:30 (星期一)

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http://scsiscs.org/conference/scienceandscientist/2017
 
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Life and consciousness – The Vedāntic view: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/19420889.2015.1085138
 
Harmonizer: http://scienceandscientist.org/harmonizer
 
Darwin Under Siege: http://scienceandscientist.org/Darwin
 
Princeton Bhakti Vedanta Institute: http://bviscs.org
 
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Associate Professor of Pharmacology and Toxicology
Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology
Ernest Mario School of Pharmacy
Rutgers University
Piscataway, N.J. 08855
609-240-4833

www.conformon.net

--

----------------------------
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Nepal Pragya Pratisthan, Kathmandu, Nepal
http://scsiscs.org/conference/scienceandscientist/2017
 
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Harmonizer: http://scienceandscientist.org/harmonizer
 
Darwin Under Siege: http://scienceandscientist.org/Darwin
 
Princeton Bhakti Vedanta Institute: http://bviscs.org
 
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Vasavada, Kashyap V

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Jun 27, 2017, 10:54:50 AM6/27/17
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Dear Li,

Thanks for a copy of your paper. I will read it carefully. But one thing occurred to me right away. Whether consciousness has a weight or not is an interesting scientific proposition but very difficult to verify. In fact I remember and I am sure you know that , there were some bizarre (surely non rigorous ) experiments in past In connection with measurement of weight of a soul! These concluded that weight of a human soul is about 3 ounces! Apart from the fact that weighing a dying person is bizarre, there are several problems. A living person is breathing, air goes in and out and body exchanges heat with outside, water evaporates from the skin etc. It is using energy all the time.Many things happen. A dead person is in equilibrium with the environment. This is just an aside. I am surely interested in the theory that fundamental particles may have some consciousness or qualia whatever you call it even though they do not talk to you and scream!!

C. S. Morrison

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Jun 29, 2017, 4:25:50 AM6/29/17
to Online_Sa...@googlegroups.com, Siegfried Bleher

Dear Siegfried,

I am fascinated by what colours are.  Like you,  I feel my green qualia are a mixture of blue and yellow (though that need not necessarily be so). A lot of colour theorists consider our greenest green as a primary type of qualia. I also think I remember reading an article where some psychologist claimed he had a way of showing a yellowy blue that does NOT appear green!  What I find most interesting though is the fact that violet (the purply colour at the blue end of the spectrum) seems to my mind a mixture of blue and red qualia. In other words,  the visual system seems to have run out of qualia beyond our bluest blue and decided to mix in a little red (the qualia it uses to label the longer visual wavelengths! ). I find that fascinating.  It suggests to me that there were no more primary types of qualia it could adapt!  Then, of course,  I might be unique.  Your violet might not seem in the least bit related to red as mine does!

Best wishes,
Colin

C.  S.  Morrison - Author of THE BLIND MINDMAKER: Explaining Consciousness without Magic or Misrepresentation.

https://www.amazon.com/Blind-Mindmaker-Explaining-Consciousness-Misrepresentation/dp/1541283953

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Blind-Mindmaker-Explaining-Consciousness-Misrepresentation/dp/1541283953





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Edwards, Jonathan

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Jul 2, 2017, 4:26:46 PM7/2/17
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I would like to respond to Dr Li first.

William James raised the combination problem for qualia in the context of what he called a ‘mind dust theory’. This is more or less panprotopsychism - the idea that fundamental entities like atoms or electrons carry qualia in some way and that our consciousness must arise from the ‘combination’ of this dust of atoms to get a combination of qualia. 

However, James himself points out that this is not a very sensible place to start. As he says ‘being together’ never really means anything except in the sense of being together for some observer. I can see five oranges in a bowl together that is a togetherness-for -me. But the oranges are not in themselves together in anything other than an arbitrary sense. If one on the left is separated from one on the right by two others why is it ‘together’ with the right one? James’s complaint is that ‘togetherness’ has neither a meaning in physics nor a meaning in ordinary concepts in this way other than by arbitrary fiat of an observer. 

And it is ‘togetherness-for-me’ that we are interested in anyway when it comes to consciousness. We want to understand not why a fundamental unit ‘has a quale’ but how it can experience many many qualia. The answer is extremely simple, and was described by Leibniz. Each fundamental element or monadic unit experiences the world all together. Moreover,this is exactly what Feynman was referring to when he said ‘there is plenty of room at the bottom’, meaning that the relation of an individual fundamental unit like an electron to its environment of field potentials is mindblowingly complex. In fact the quantum level threatens to be much too complicated and rich for our consciousness, which is why there are reasons for thinking that the fundamental unit that is a human subject is something a bit more subtle than one of the modes of the standard model.

So my answer to Dr Li is that Leibniz had refuted James’s concern about a mind dust theory long before, James had great respect for Leibniz, but like almost all his contemporaries did not see clearly what Leibniz was proposing. I think it would be very difficult to see what Leibniz was saying in the context of late nineteenth century classical physics. Now that we have a quantum theory that is a truly monadic theory we can see with hindsight what Leibniz was arguing.

I would like to come back to colours as well but will leave that for another post.

Best wishes

Jo




On 29 Jun 2017, at 07:00, C. S. Morrison <cs...@hotmail.co.uk> wrote:

Dear Siegfried, 

I am fascinated by what colours are.  Like you,  I feel my green qualia are a mixture of blue and yellow (though that need not necessarily be so). A lot of colour theorists consider our greenest green as a primary type of qualia. I also think I remember reading an article where some psychologist claimed he had a way of showing a yellowy blue that does NOT appear green!  What I find most interesting though is the fact that violet (the purply colour at the blue end of the spectrum) seems to my mind a mixture of blue and red qualia. In other words,  the visual system seems to have run out of qualia beyond our bluest blue and decided to mix in a little red (the qualia it uses to label the longer visual wavelengths! ). I find that fascinating.  It suggests to me that there were no more primary types of qualia it could adapt!  Then, of course,  I might be unique.  Your violet might not seem in the least bit related to red as mine does!

Best wishes, 
Colin



On 27 Jun 2017 10:31, Siegfried Bleher <SBl...@msn.com> wrote:
Dear Dr. Li,

 

I have not read William James’ account on qualia, but it seems to me inseparability of qualia does not exclude the possibility of new qualia to emerge from the juxtaposition of several.  To whit, juxtaposing the colors blue and yellow create the experience of the color green.  Although, in a kind of hysteresis, once the color green arises, it cannot be separated in awareness into blue and yellow—perhaps that is an artifact of the visual sense, as the auditory sense can hear the unique sound created by juxtaposing several frequencies, as well as it can isolate the separate frequencies. 

 

But perhaps I am misunderstanding your meaning?

 

Best wishes,

 

Siegfried

 On Behalf Of li...@fudan.edu.cn

Edwards, Jonathan

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Jul 2, 2017, 4:26:46 PM7/2/17
to Online_Sa...@googlegroups.com, Siegfried Bleher

On 2 Jul 2017, at 20:09, Edwards, Jonathan <jo.ed...@ucl.ac.uk> wrote:

Dear Siegfried,

I think we have to be careful about colour. Colin has actually written very clearly on this in his book.

If you print yellow and blue dots on a sheet of paper small enough to merge you do not get green, you get a grey without any hue. If you shine yellow and blue light at someone together they see white light. The fact that you obtain a green colour if you mix cadmium yellow with Prussian blue paints is a quirk of combined absorbency, or absence of colours, not combined colours. In fact if you mix cadmium yellow with cobalt blue you get a rather nasty yuck colour. 

The colours we are used to are nothing to do with specific physical properties of the outside world. They are concocted codes that our brains use to indicate clusters of dissimilar dynamic dispositions that happen to be usefully coded together. The dispositions that we ‘see’ as redness include a disposition to preferentially reflect long wavelength light, a disposition to preferentially transmit such light, a disposition to preferentially emit such  light and the quite unrelated disposition of light itself to activate certain retinal receptors. None of these dispositions in themselves involve any qualia. And it is important to note that we do not even see the redness of a tomato because we are receiving mostly long wavelength light. If the illumination is predominantly short wavelength we will still see the tomato as exactly the same red (the colour constancy phenomenon) despite mostly getting ‘blue’ light from it. The brain shows its internal subjects what it has inferred about the disposition of the tomato, not what it is reflecting at a particular time.

There have been some quite useful studies of 'pure colour' categorisation in a wide range of cultural groups. It seems that all humans are programmed to see four ‘primary’ colours - red, yellow, green and blue. Artists think there are three - red, yellow and blue, because you can mix any hue with those three if you choose carefully. Biology textbooks tend to tell us there are three - red green and blue, because it is assumed that three types of cone will give us three colours and the peaks of response fall roughly in red, green and blue bands. 

But recent work has pointed out that the school biology account is quite wrong. We have rods that give us white for stimulation and black for not (two qualia note). If we add one colour cone we should get a quale for more stimulation than expected given the rod input and one for less. The first in evolution is the short wavelength cone, which should give us blue and yellow. It should be yellow because that is what undifferentiated longish wavelength light is like. Except that in this situation of a lizard or fish brain we are not even entitled to say what ‘non-blue' should be called. In many mammals a second cone is added, which should give maybe another two colours, but things start to get complicated and one might argue that the number of colours increases geometrically with the number of receptors (n receptors giving 2 to the power n ‘pure’ options).

As far as I know there is no definitive account of how the system works but there is no doubt that it is complicated and a Kluge (a mix of a bit of this and a b it of that). As Colin indicates there are some quirks, like purple seeming to be close both to red and blue when nothing in physics is closer to red and blue than to yellow or green. Basically the brain rewrites everything in its own preferred code, nothing to do with spectra.

But standing back, what seems pretty uncontentious now is that there is o reason to think colours are ever ‘overlaid’ or ‘mixed’. If a nerve cell signals that the brain has deduced a disposition of a cloth to reflect mostly magenta the signal will signal that deduction. There is no mechanism as far as we know for it signalling two ‘overlaid’ deductions.

Best wishes

Jo


On 29 Jun 2017, at 07:00, C. S. Morrison <cs...@hotmail.co.uk> wrote:

Dear Siegfried, 

I am fascinated by what colours are.  Like you,  I feel my green qualia are a mixture of blue and yellow (though that need not necessarily be so). A lot of colour theorists consider our greenest green as a primary type of qualia. I also think I remember reading an article where some psychologist claimed he had a way of showing a yellowy blue that does NOT appear green!  What I find most interesting though is the fact that violet (the purply colour at the blue end of the spectrum) seems to my mind a mixture of blue and red qualia. In other words,  the visual system seems to have run out of qualia beyond our bluest blue and decided to mix in a little red (the qualia it uses to label the longer visual wavelengths! ). I find that fascinating.  It suggests to me that there were no more primary types of qualia it could adapt!  Then, of course,  I might be unique.  Your violet might not seem in the least bit related to red as mine does!

Best wishes, 
Colin

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