[ExI] Red

[Ben Zaiboc]

On 01/07/2026 04:23, Brent Allsop wrote:

Ben Wrote:
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>     My understanding is that the word for any colour ("Red", Blue", etc.) can refer to:
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>     1) The wavelength, or a range of wavelengths, of light reflected by a surface and received by our eyes. You could call this "the colour of light".
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>     2) The propensity of a substance to absorb/reflect various wavelengths of light. You could call this "the intrinsic colour of a thing or substance".
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>     3) The subjective experience (the quale) of 'seeing a colour'. You could call this "the perceived colour".
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>     The first two are physical phenomena that can be measured. The third is not, and can only be experienced by a mind, specifically the mind that creates it.
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> Why do you say the 3rd is not a physical phenomena that can be measured?  We can already objectively measure knowledge of what we see, and produce videos close to what we experience.  The only problem is we ground everything in the wavelength of light, and a blind to the real qualities we might be observing, which could be different for different people (mapped to the same red light).  Surely you would agree that we can observe everything important about what is being subjectively experienced, even if that is maybe a bit beyond the complexity of what we can make out in our objective observations?


The 3rd item is not a physical phenomenon that can be measured /because it's a subjective experience/. It's a private thing that only the person experiencing it has access to. Try and measure or detect in any way the object I'm thinking of now. You can't. Even if you were to cut up my brain into tiny pieces and examine every bit with an electron miscroscope, no matter how long you took, you wouldn't find it. For one simple reason: /It doesn't exist/, except as a fleeting thought in my head. A subjective experience that nobody else has.

"We can already objectively measure knowledge of what we see"
The language you use does make it difficult to understand what you are trying to convey, quite often. What does this sentence mean? I don't understand how the words "knowledge of" add anything meaningful, and you are constantly adding the word 'objectively' when there doesn't seem to be a need.

Let me know if the above can't be adequately translated as "We can already measure what we can see", and if not, try to explain what you mean in simple language.


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>     The third definition is what I first think of when the word is used, and, importantly, does not necessarily correlate exactly with the other two definitions (as illustrated by Magenta). This is the important and seemingly contentious one. Neuroscience tells us that it's one of the many subjective experiences created by our brains as a result of the processing of sensory signals from our eyes via our visual cortex, combined with information from various other parts of our brains (memories, expectations, emotions, etc.). While the other two are physical phenomena, this one is a pattern of information in a mind that, while it could theoretically be measured and recorded, can only be /experienced/ by the mind that is creating it.
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>     I suspect that, in Brent's terminology, the first two could be called 'red', etc., and the third, 'redness', etc.
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>
> yes. 
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>     In the particular case of Magenta, there is only 'magentaness', because 'magenta' doesn't actually exist (as a wavelength of light), it's an 'invented' colour that can only be experienced.
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> Good point there is no magenta, just magentaness in this new terminology.


Ok, Excellent. So, where does this magenta come from? How is it produced in the mind?

If, in order to experience 'red' (without complicating things by being specific about how light or dark, what intensity, hue, etc.), you claim there must be some physical thing in the brain that possesses a 'red quality' (in plain words, 'a red thing'), how is magenta possible when there is no physical thing that exists with a 'magenta quality'?
Your theory needs to explain things that we know exist in our minds as subjective experiences, without there being a corresponding real thing in the outside world. If the experience of redness requires a red molecule (or other physical thing), how can we experience happiness, what is the physical correlate of justice, which molecule is required for us to be homesick, etc., etc.?

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>     What is unclear to me, is what "the physical properties of our subjective knowledge of red things" means. This seems to be a contradictory phrase, as subjective things, by definition, cannot have physical (and therefore measurable) properties. A phenomenon is either objective or subjective, it can't be both.
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> Let's assume glutamate behaves the way it does in synapses, because of it's redness quality. (you can replace glutamate in a synapse with any other objective description of something in the brain) 


Sorry, no, let's not do that.
Why?
Because it's nonsense.
NO PHYSICAL THING IN THE BRAIN HAS A 'REDNESS QUALITY'. No physical thing /anywhere/ has a 'redness quality'. The 'redness' we have been talking about is not physical, it's a subjective experience. All that's required, in physical terms, is a bunch of cell membranes, organised in a particular way, some ATP (the substance that provides energy for cellular processes) and optionally some signals from the eyes, in the form of depolarisation spikes travelling along certain axons in the visual nerve (why optional? We can imagine things without actually seeing them through our eyes).

There's no need for any assumptions about the way glutamate, or any other neurotransmitter, behaves, because we know in great detail how they work. Without getting into a lot of largely irrelevant details, they are released from an upstream neuron's synaptic vesicles in response to a wave of depolarisation in that cell's membrane, drift across the synaptic cleft by diffusion, dock with the appropriate receptors in the downstream neuron's cell membrane, which produces, via some molecular maneouvring, a change in the voltage across the membrane at that location.

This is a simplified summary of how neurotransmitters behave in synapses. It doesn't matter if the neurons in question are involved in perceiving a colour, an itch, moving a muscle, or fantasizing about the girl over the road, it's always the same.

So, having established that you're not talking about neurotransmitters in synapses, what else could you be talking about? ("any other objective description of something in the brain"). 'Anything in the brain', I translate that as meaning. Anything in the brain 'with a redness quality'.

Can you think of anything? I can't. In fact, there are no /things/ in the brain with a 'redness quality', there is only (at certain times) redness produced as a subjective experience. Which is the very thing you're trying to explain.



>  We are objectively observingn everything about that behavior, the only problem is, we don't know that the description of that behavior is a description of the behavior of subjecdtive redness.  Any description of behavior tells you nothing of what it is like.  You need to take glutamate, and subjectiverly bind it into your subjective experience, so you can then say: oh THAT is why glutamate behavaes the way it does in a synapse.

I have no idea what that means.

"Any description of behaviour tells you nothing of what it is like". This is one of the more puzzling statements, because it's actually comprehensible, but completely false. The whole point of a description is to give information about what something is like. If I describe myself as 6 feet tall, with a pale complexion, muscular build and a massive beard, can you claim to know nothing about what I look like?

"subjectively bind it into your subjective experience". What does that mean? It sounds like it should mean something, but I can't tell what.

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> That is why the neurosubstitution argument is such a fallacy.  Because it assumes the system lacks the ability to detect, or more accurately stated, directly apprehend qualities.

I tried looking up 'the neurosubstitution argument', but got nothing relevant. What is this?

Whatever it is, it has one thing right: "the system lacks the ability to detect, or more accurately stated, directly apprehend qualities". As I've said, the only thing neurons detect, is signals from other neurons (and certain chemicals in the local environment, such as hormones, which is just another version of neurotransmitters, broadly speaking).


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>     Unless it refers to the physical patterns of neural activation that embody the information that forms the subjective experience. If so, fair enough, 
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> Yes, this is my working hypothesis.
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>     but it's not much use. We can't distinguish which patterns of neural activity embody which subjective experiences, 
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> I have more faith in our abilities than this.  Currently they can make cortical neural prostheses that directly stimulate the brain, but they only can currently make white 'sprites' that are like stars.  Now, most of the work is going into making colored stars, and they are getting very close to making colored stars.

Well, you may be right. I hope you are.
Note how this direct stimulation works. It's electrical stimulation of nerves. Forcing a change in the polarisation of the cell membranes.

>   I think this field is where the greatest discovery of all time will be made, the discovery you doubt can happen here.  And it will be the discovery of the true physical qualities of at least something in the brain.

This work has nothing to do with discovering physical qualities in the brain. We already know what those are (electrically-excitable squishiness, mostly). This is about discovering neural pathways and interconnections, and what kinds of processing happens at what points in various neural circuits.

>   And this kind of subjective binding will be a revolutionary more powerful way of doing computation.

What??

  
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> There are at least 3 ways to eff the ineffable.

I suppose there are just as many ways to vis the invisible, pos the impossible and term the interminable.

>  ...

> Not to mention knowing the true color qualities of physical reality, instead of the false 'seeming' qualities (mapping everything to just light) ...

No idea what that could mean, it looks like sheer gobbledigook. Are you saying that colour has properties independent of light? What does that mean? Colour is one of the properties /of/ light, it can't exist independently.

-- 
Ben