luvluv

Let us suppose that the sense of sight is an accident, and not a universal one.

Let us further suppose that there is a planet on which the sense of sight never emerged; i.e. a totally sightless planet. Let us suppose that on this planet, sightless intelligent creatures evolved. Given Occams razor, would these creatures have any reason to believe in the phenomenon we call color?

Would they not, by their limitations, have to be illogical (their logic being constrained by their senses) to believe in color, since they would have no means of detecting it's existence. In short, though they would literally be surronded by color, they would consider it as illogical and imaginary a concept (a pink unicorn, the pet celebre of this board) as you folks believe God to be.

Isn't the belief that we can detect everything which exists, and even the belief that we have no reason to believe that anything exists which we cannot detect, a bit chauvinistic? If all of our senses are the result of random and accidental process, who is to say that we have evolved every means of detecting the universe?

I suppose you could say that we can explain all the phenomenae in the universe without need of some unseen force or property, but could not the sightless beings say the same thing about the "pink unicorn" of color?

(I hope this is recieved in the purely non-confrontational manner in which I am intending it. Whenever I start these things around here, people get mad at me.)

KeithHarwood

[quote]Originally posted by luvluv:
<strong>Let us suppose that the sense of sight is an accident, and not a universal one.

Let us further suppose that there is a planet on which the sense of sight never emerged; i.e. a totally sightless planet. Let us suppose that on this planet, sightless intelligent creatures evolved. Given Occams razor, would these creatures have any reason to believe in the phenomenon we call color?
[\QB][\QUOTE]

Yes, they would. Just as we can extend our senses using instruments, so can they. Electricity and magnetism are easy to detect. Once they have them sorted out properly electromagnetic waves drop out of the equations naturally. Generating EM waves of different frequencies would come easily. A bit of random experimentation would show that some EM waves affect chemical systems. They could deduce that there could exist chemical based life-forms that directly perceiver EM radiation. If that perception varies with frequency, such life-forms would experience colour.

Short cut, assuming their world is not completely dark, the rate and direction of certain chemical reactions depends upon whether the door to the outside is open or closed. They follow that through.


If there is no way in principle to detect something then there is no way it can affect us in any way and the question of whether it exists is silly.

If something can affect us in any way then that way provides us with a means of detection, so, yes, if something exists we can necessarily detect it.

Philosoft

What would prevent them from building a machine that mimics a retina? Could they not mechanincally 'translate' the absorbed photons into some kind of sound or smell?

luvluv

"They could deduce that there could exist chemical based life-forms that directly perceiver EM radiation. If that perception varies with frequency, such life-forms would experience colour."

But they would have no more reason to believe such creatures exist as we do to believe that pink unicorns exist, and there is no reason why the supposition that a creature could directly detect EM radiation should ever come to them. Even if it did, that is still along distance from the recognition of a phenomenon called color, which they would still have no reason to believe in. It would just be hypothetical speculation, it would never rise to a belief unless they came into contact with sighted beings.

"If there is no way in principle to detect something then there is no way it can affect us in any way and the question of whether it exists is silly."

This is the chauvinism to which I refered. Are you saying that we can detect anything that exists and anything we can't detect, while it may exist and may be surronding us, is irrelavent.

Color, if the sightless beings could detect it, could effect them in as many ways as it effects us. Color does not fail to exist because they fail to perceive it, so why do the things that we cannot perceive necessarily fail to exist?

"If something can affect us in any way then that way provides us with a means of detection, so, yes, if something exists we can necessarily detect it."

How can you say this? In the hypothetical sightless world, color does exist and yet the sightless intelligent beings cannot detect it. Besides that, radiation has always existed but we only discovered it's existence recently. Isn't it premature to declare, on the present status of human knowledge, that we can right now positively determine everything in the universe which exists and which doesn't exist?

"What would prevent them from building a machine that mimics a retina? Could they not mechanincally 'translate' the absorbed photons into some kind of sound or smell?"

There could be telepathic beings who wonder why we can't builda machine that could replicate their ability to directly perceive thoughts. Because lacking the sense we lack the ability to even conceive of such an apparatus. We can build machines that mimic sight because we have sight as a template. And even that is not a good analogy, because we know that thoughts exist. The sightless beings would indeed know that a spectrum exists but they would have no reason to believe that they could be "seen" at all since they would have no real concept of what it means to see, much less a concept of color. At any rate, to translate photons into sound or smell would not bring them to believing that "color" exists.

[ June 19, 2002: Message edited by: luvluv ]</p>

smugg

In this example, they would have to be unable to feel as well in order to be truly unaware of the electromagnetic energy emitted by their local star. If they were aware of the heat emitted by the star, it wouldn't be difficult to understand and measure that energy at different wavelengths.

On our planet, the information of energetic wavelength is important enough to have strongly affected the biological selection for organs which can measure it. I've never heard of the 'accidental organ hypothesis,' could you explain?

But if the question is can we disprove something just by not being able to prove it, no. Of course not. That's why puny Yeshuah ben Yoseph will never be a match for the power and glory of Shiva! And Ashteroth at the center of the universe as source of all madness must be resisted. Just the other day, the invisible and massless forty-ton seraph which lives under my bed told me that the Cobra King didn't know what he was doing when he gave Siddhartha his blessing. Have you hugged your leucrotta today?

...or maybe we shouldn't just accept the existence of mythological things just because we can't prove (whatever that means) they don't exist.

philechat

Here I would take the phenomelogical approach. Experience is treated as the interaction between the object and the mind. Objects that are not "sensed" is not to said to be existing in experiential form.

That would mean, the world before the existence of a "meaning giver", namely a mind, is meaningless. The so-called "color" is an experiential form (phenomena), therefore a universe without a "light-wavelength-detector" is said to be without color.

With Kant I think the numena (the world as it is) is unknowable. I would even say that anything that has not been perceived(thus not interpreted) is meaningless until it is given meaning by the perceiver.

In this way we avoided the problem of "unperceived existence", since such an existence is, by definition, unknowable until it is to be perceived in the form of phenomona.

[ June 19, 2002: Message edited by: philechat ]</p>

luvluv

Well, I reckon that I could have posed the question saying that if there were a planet that was entirely deaf, how could they ever believe in a thing called music? You would then say that they could probably still feel vibrations and from that perceive that there were beings who could conceive of beings able to directly detect these vibrations in some way other than the way in which they were currently perceiving them. But they would still have no real concept of music. I think vibrations is to musich as perception of the existence of an EM spectrum is to color. To discover the existence of an EM spectrum would not in anyway NECESSITATE the belief in color. Even feeling heat and knowing that it had different wavelengths would not NECESSITATE a belief in the existence of color. It could be posited theoritically but Occams razor could be applied to it: there would be no reason for them to believe that the EM spectrum could be directly perceived if they had never had any contact with anything that could perceive it.

philechat

Luvluv:

Music, sound, color, coldness, etc. are all phenomena derived from experience. Therefore, without a perceiver, there's no phenomena (only numena), and all these phenomenal terms could be said to "not exist".

Numena is unknowable and meaningless, since our knowledge is derived from the interpretation of the phenomena. Therefore, if the universe has only deaf beings, sound and music does not exist by definition.

Theli

Luvluv...

The problem here is that if you believe in something that is undetectable/unobervable then the base of that belief must have be invented by humans, not based on a reliable observation.

[ June 20, 2002: Message edited by: Deggial ]

[ June 20, 2002: Message edited by: Deggial ]</p>

Theli

Luvluv...

Obviously, music is simply a concept invented by humans. It doesn't exist independent of humans.