Hey, Vsauce. Michael here. This appears blue. This appears yellow.
And this appears green. Those of us with normal color vision can probably agree.
But that doesn't change the fact that color is an illusion. Color, as we know it, does not exist in the
outside world, beyond us, like gravity or protons do. Instead, color is created inside
our heads. Our brains convert a certain range of the electromagnetic spectrum into color.
I can measure the wavelength of radiation, but I can't measure or observe
the experience of a color inside your mind. So, how do I know that when you and me look
at a strawberry, and, in my brain, this perception occurs, which I call "red," that, in your
brain, a perception like this doesn't occur, which you have, of course, also learned to
call red. We both call it red. We communicate effectively and walk away, never knowing just
how different each of our internal experiences really were. Of course, we already know that not everybody
sees color in exactly the same way. One example would be color blindness. But we can diagnose
and discuss these differences because people with the conditions fail to see things that most of us can. Conceivably though, there could be ways of
seeing that we use that cause colors to look differently in different people's minds, without
altering their performances on any tests we could come up with. Of course, if that were the case, wouldn't
some people think other colors look better than others? Or that some colors were more
complimentary of others? Well, yeah, but doesn't that already happen? This matters because it shows how fundamentally,
in terms of our perceptions, we are all alone in our minds. Let's say I met an alien from a far away solar
system who, lucky enough, could speak English, but had never, and could never, feel pain.
I could explain to the alien that pain is sent through A delta and C fibers to the spinal
chord. The alien could learn every single cell and pathway and process and chemical
involved in the feeling of pain. The alien could pass a biology exam about pain and
believe that pain, to us, generally is a bad thing. But no matter how much he learned, the alien
would never actually feel pain. Philosophers call these ineffable, raw feelings "Qualia."
And our inability to connect physical phenomenon to these raw feelings, our inability to explain
and share our own internal qualia is known as the "Explanatory Gap." This gap is confronted
when describing color to someone who's been blind their entire life. Tommy Edison has never been able to see.
He has a YouTube channel where he describes what being blind is like. It's an amazing channel.
In one video he talks about colors and how strange and foreign of a concept it seems
to him. Sighted people try to explain, for instance, that red is "hot," and blue is "cold."
But to someone who has never seen a single color, that just seems weird. And, as he explains,
it has never caused him to finally see a color. Some philosophers, like Daniel Dennett, argue
that qualia may be private and ineffable simply because of a failure of our own language,
not because they are necessarily always going to be impossible to share. There may be an alien race that communicates
in a language that causes colors to appear in your brain without your retina having to
be involved at all. Or without you having to have ever needed to actually see the color
yourself. Perhaps, even in English, he says, given millions and billions of words used
in just the right way, it may be possible to adequately describe a color such that a
blind person could see it for the first time. Or you could figure out that, once-and-for-all,
yes or no, in fact, you and your friend do not see the same red. But for now it remains the case that we
have no way of knowing if my red is the same as your red. Maybe one day our language will
allow us to share and find out, or maybe it never will. I know it's frustrating to
not have an answer, but the mere fact that you guys can ask me about my internal experiences,
and the mere fact that I can ask my friends and we can all collectively wonder at the
concept of qualia is quite incredible, and also quite human. Animals can do all sorts of clever things
that we do. They can use tools, problem solve, communicate, cooperate, exhibit curiosity,
plan for the future, and although we can't know for sure, many animals certainly act
as if they feel emotions - loneliness, fear, joy. Apes have even been taught to use language
to talk to us humans. It's a sort of sign language that they've used to do everything
from answer questions, to express emotion, or even produce novel thoughts. Unlike any
other animal, these apes are able to understand language and form responses at about the level
of a 2.5 year old human child. But, there is something that no signing-ape
has ever done. No ape has ever asked a question. Joseph Jordania's "Who Asked the First Question?"
is a great read on this topic and it's available for free online. For as long as we've been able to use sign
language to communicate with apes, they have never wondered out loud
about anything that we might know that they don't. Of course, this does not mean that apes, and
plenty of other animals, aren't curious. They obviously are. But, what is suggests is that
they lack a "Theory of Mind." An understanding that other people have separate minds.
That they have knowledge, access to information that you might not have. Even us humans aren't
born with a "theory of mind," and there's a famous experiment to test when a human child
first develops a "theory of mind." It is called the "Sally-Anne" test. During the test, researchers tell children
a story about Sally and Anne. Sally and Anne have a box and a basket in their room.
They also happen to have a delicious cookie. Now, Sally takes the cookie and puts it inside
the box, and then Sally leaves the room. While Sally is gone, Anne comes over to the box,
takes the cookie out and puts the cookie inside the basket. Now, when Sally comes back,
the researchers ask the children "where will Sally look for the cookie?" Obviously,
Sally will look in the box. That's where she left it. She has no way of knowing what Anne
did while she was gone. But until the age of about 4, children will insist that Sally
will check the basket because, after all, that's where the cookie is. The child saw
Anne move the cookie, so why wouldn't Sally also know? Young children fail to realize
that Sally's mental representation of the situation, her access to information,
can be different than their own. And apes who know sign language, but never
ask us questions, are doing the same thing. They're failing to recognize that other individuals
have similar cognitive abilities and can be used as sources of information. So, we are all alone with our perceptions.
We are alone in our own minds. We can both agree that chocolate tastes good. But I cannot
climb into your consciousness and experience what chocolate tastes like to you. I can never
know if my red looks the same as your red. But I can ask. So, stay human, stay curious
and let the entire world know that you are. And as always, thanks for watching.
Untrue https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_(parrot)
Looking at a mirror, he said "what color", and learned "grey" after being told "grey" six times.[15] This made him the first and only non-human animal to have ever asked a question (apes who have been trained to use sign-language have so far failed to ever ask a single question).[16] Alex's ability to ask questions (and to answer to Pepperberg's questions with his own questions) is documented in numerous articles and interviews.
Wasn't there a parrot that asked an existential question, referring to the color of its feathers?
Do we ask them questions? Do we ever disagree with them? I struggle to see how any animal smart enough to learn to communicate could then not understand that others have different perspectives if these two things were done.
u/fillsyourniche
This gets reposted, debunked in comments, still makes the front page, wait a week, post again.
Humans ate the fruit of the tree of knowledge and paradise was gone. Perhaps an old allegory but we asked "what if?" and changed ourselves from animals to humans in the process.