[ExI] Red

[John Clark]

On Tue, Jun 30, 2026 at 3:38 PM Brent Allsop via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

* > there is some reason the redness quality is behaving the way we
> objecetively observe it behaving.*


*Observation is a subjective act, so I don't know what you mean by
"objectively observe". And light with a wavelength of 700 nanometers
produces the redness qualia in the human mind either because it's a brute
fact and therefore needs no "reason" to do what it does, OR an iterated
sequence of "how" or "why" questions goes on forever. Logically one of
those things must be true, but as I said in another post, I don't think you
like either possibility very much. Was I wrong?*


*John K Clark*









> Hi Ben,
> Exactly, qualities like redness are 'mental construct' rendered into our
> subjective knowledge of the world in our head
> <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=suTugEv9F-U&t=8s> .
>
> There are all kinds of evidence, like magenta, that there is a LOT of
> difference between patterns of reflected light and the qualities of our
> knowledge of such.
>
> What is a 'mental construct' if not something objectively observable in
> our brain?  In addition to our objective descriptions of those mental
> constructs (we don't know which is a description of redness, but it must be
> something), there is some reason the redness quality is behaving the way we
> objecetively observe it behaving.
>
>
> On Tue, Jun 30, 2026 at 5:39 AM Ben Zaiboc via extropy-chat <
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>
>> On 30/06/2026 11:45, John K Clark wrote:
>> > On Mon, Jun 29, 2026 at 5:39 PM Ben Zaiboc via extropy-chat <
>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>> >
>> >     > We have a colour called Magenta, but it doesn't correspond to any
>> wavelength of light, or any band of wavelengths.
>> >
>> >
>> > According to Google: "Magenta is a unique, extraspectral color that
>> does not exist as a single wavelength of light in the visible spectrum.
>> Instead, it is created by the human brain filling in the gap to bridge the
>> opposite ends of the color spectrum—mixing short-wave blue light and
>> long-wave red light"
>> >
>> > And if you decrease the amount of red light a little and increase the
>> amount of blue then your brain interprets that as purple instead of magenta.
>>
>>
>> Indeed. So, I'm wondering what Brent will have to say about this. Magenta
>> doesn't seem to fit into his view of things, as it cannot be a 'physical
>> property' of anything, it only exists as a mental construct, or a
>> hallucination of our brains.
>>
>> --
>> Ben
>>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20260630/8c7e74de/attachment.htm>