Re: Does green exist?: how to build a mind (was Identity)

Brent Allsop (allsop@swttools.fc.hp.com)
Tue, 24 Nov 1998 16:20:57 -0700

Michael Lorrey <retroman@together.net> commented:

> If Green did not exist, then there would be a gap in the spectrum
> which would be physically impossible for any matter in this universe
> to emit photons in. Since there is no such gap, then therefore green
> exists.

This "green" electromagnetic radiation of a certain frequency you are talking about has nothing to do with this conversation. If you put a person who has had his eyes surgically removed in a room with absolutely no light of any frequency in it at all, and electro/chemically stimulate his optic nerve identically to the way a normal person's eyes would do to his optic nerve when outside that dark room looking at a green light, the person with no eyes in a room with no light of any frequency will have a "green" visual experience indistinguishable from the person outside the room looking at the light. Light of any wavelength has nothing to do with this experience. We use red to represent 700 nm light. One is the representee, the other is the representor. One is the initial cause of the cause and effect chain of perception, the other is the final result. They are two very different physical phenomenon. One is beyond the eye, the other occurs in the primary visual cortex of the brain and has nothing to do with light other than it is good at intelligently representing it.

There is no color, smell, sound, warmth... or pain beyond our senses; only the electromagnetic radiation, chemical content, acoustical vibrations, kinetic energy of molecules... and bodily damage our brains merely arbitrarily represent with such phenomenon.

Brent Allsop