concepts - perception - knowledge

[articul8]

Can someone totally blind from birth have a concept of colour, know what people are referring to when they use terms like "red" or "green"? How would they know? Clearly they can use the concepts meaningfully still - eg. "Can I have a red apple rather than a green one" - makes total sense still.

And can different societies have radically different systems for dividing up colours or what about people who experience synaesthesia and feel heat when they see red, say, or cold when they see blue - couldn't a whole society experience the significance of the visual stimulus we refer to as colour in a very different way?

 

[revol68]

what is this 1st form philosophy?

 

[revol68]

"like, how do you know that what you see red the same way as me, man"

I think I preferred your pseud's corner anti poetry thread.

 

[articul8]

what is this 1st form philosophy?

why too hard for you is it?

 

[articul8]

"like, how do you know that what you see red the same way as me, man

I specifically didn't ask that - I'm not talking about solipsism etc here but the how radically language/culture can shift the way in which we experience "reality" at a sensual level - the instance of blind people and the discourse of colour is about how the terms can be used without any direct reference to immediate sense data. In which case, what ties the discursive construction of colour to any particular sense data at all, or why not multiple forms of sensual perception - eg why not different words for "yellow and cold" to "yellow and hot"?

 

[revol68]

Is your little lefty gravy train job really this boring?

 

[love detective]

his party's missing shade of blue

 

[articul8]

Is your little lefty gravy train job really this boring?

if you've nothing of any relevance to say, move along....

And what on earth gave you the impression that I'm "anti-poetry"? I'm anti worn out old literary forms.

This thread is about the very basis of poetry - as Rimbaud once put it

The poet makes himself a seer by a long, prodigious, and rational disordering of all the senses... – For he arrives at the unknown! Because he has cultivated his own soul – which was rich to begin with – more than any other man! He reaches the unknown; and even if, crazed, he ends up by losing the understanding of his visions, at least he has seen them!

 

[deke t lefel]

Can someone totally blind from birth have a concept of colour, know what people are referring to when they use terms like "red" or "green"? How would they know? Clearly they can use the concepts meaningfully still - eg. "Can I have a red apple rather than a green one" - makes total sense still.

And can different societies have radically different systems for dividing up colours or what about people who experience synaesthesia and feel heat when they see red, say, or cold when they see blue - couldn't a whole society experience the significance of the visual stimulus we refer to as colour in a very different way?

can anyone have a concept of what black and white are?
where are they on the spectrum?

 

[danny la rouge]

And can different societies have radically different systems for dividing up colours

Well, not radically different, but different, yes. To the point of dividing them in different places.

There are books on this.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

someone totally blind from birth will not experience the quale colour, no. For that you need the appropriate neural activity.

As for different societies experiencing colour in a qualitatively different way, no that is not really credible. We're all born with human brains, the result of a long, shared process of evolution. It would be interesting to know whether rates of synaesthesia vary across cultures. My guess would be that they probably don't very much, and that if they do, that will be down to genetic factors rather than cultural ones. I could be wrong about that though.

 

[fractionMan]

Can someone totally blind from birth have a concept of colour, know what people are referring to when they use terms like "red" or "green"? How would they know? Clearly they can use the concepts meaningfully still - eg. "Can I have a red apple rather than a green one" - makes total sense still.

And can different societies have radically different systems for dividing up colours or what about people who experience synaesthesia and feel heat when they see red, say, or cold when they see blue - couldn't a whole society experience the significance of the visual stimulus we refer to as colour in a very different way?

"like, how do you know that what you see red the same way as me, man".

There's an episode of horizon or similar on this exact subject. I suggest OP goes and gets it for the iPlayer, it's quite good.

 

[Ibn Khaldoun]

synaesthesia

I used to assume it was normal to see sounds as shapes and names as colours etc..

There's something called the Synaesthesia Battery that's quite fun to do.