🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <BzEvzJ.1s1@cs.bham.ac.uk> ard@cs.bham.ac.uk (Antoni Diller) writes:
>In article <1992Dec15.173641.17791@psych.toronto.edu> michael@psych.toronto.edu (Michael Gemar) writes:
>>In article <1992Dec14.033936.11786@cs.su.oz.au> danny@cs.su.oz.au (Danny) writes:
>>
>>Well, to take the old chestnut of qualia, how do you objectively determine
>>that what I see as red is the same sensation of colour as what you see
>>as red?  How do you know that I don't see red things as being blue? 
>>- michael
>
>So long as we can successfully communicate, then it doesn't matter
>if your experience of the sky is similar to mine.  Colour blind people
>can learn how to use colour words and so, for that matter, can people
>totally blind from birth.  The fact that such blind people cannot distinguish
>red from blue does not mean that they don't understand the meanings of
>those words.

The question is not one of objective communication, but one of subjective
experience.  A blind person could be hooked up to a sophisticated
"vision" machine that used sound to indicate color difference to
the person, and thus the person could be as accurate as I am at
telling the difference between colors.  But this person would not
have the same sensation of color that I do.

- michael