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Lyndsey C's picture

Very Confused!

This might be backtracking a little, but I am still stuck on our discussion about light and color, and how the world is, in reality, colorless. I am so confused! Basically what I have taken from our discussion last week is that color is constructed by our brains and is assisted by functioning cones and rods. this color perception appears to be a creation of the I-function, at least according to what I've gathered from class. now i am REALLY confused because originally i conceptualized the I-function as being that which enables our voluntary awareness, and clearly color perception is coded in the unconscious (i can't force myself to become unaware of color and at the same time it is interesting that i have always perceived color involuntarily.) so now i wonder if the I-function is really what we described it to be in past classes and i wonder if this ever evolving process of defining the I-function is actually getting us anywhere, or bringing us closer to "getting it less wrong." Not to be cynical, but I've almost forgotten our original question for this class and i feel as though we have moved in a completely different direction than we intended. perhaps this is the whole idea! we are SUPPOSED to explore these different pathways of thought in order to come to different conclusions even if they do not necessarily wind up answering our original questions.
I was also confused about the idea of color and how when we see a color, it means that all the light waves are being absorbed EXCEPT that which we see. in other words, an orange is orange because all of the light waves are being absorbed in that particular body of matter except for orange. is this observation correct? and if so, what implications does it have for our current discussion about color being a construction of the brain and not necessarily reality? does this mean that dogs (who only see gray shades) are RIGHT since the world is actually gray in reality? this makes me think of that terrible movie Pleasantville where everything in the world is gray until the society acquires knowledge (or is it sin?) which enables them to eventually see in color. is seeing color better? why, evolutionarily speaking, do we see color and other animals do not?

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