I have no idea; I’m not a neurobiologist. I’d guess that colors arise in experience by virtue of being fundamentally indexical; what a color “is” is merely a defined unique association in our brains that links sensory data to a bunch of learned responses. It’s like the human soul—any property of it that you’d use to make it “unique”, to differentiate your soul from another’s, or to differentiate red from green, can be described as neurological activation of an associative pattern. Memories—neurological. Instinct, learning, feelings, hormones, habits—all biological or neurological. What is red? It’s like fire, like roses, like blood. All associative. Could you build a brain that perceives red meaningfully differently from green while having no such associations, built-in or learned? I suspect that if I was such a being, I would not even be able to differentiate red from green, because my brain would never have been given occasion to treat a red thing with a different response than a green thing. How would you expect there to be nerves for that kind of differentiation if there was never a need for it?
Colors are associated responses and groupings for certain kinds of sensory data. They have no further identity.
That’s my take.
[edit] The real stupid thing is that mysteriousness is a property of the question, not the answer! Even if we weren’t able to put out a good guess as to how colors work that wouldn’t make it a topic to call the entirety of reductionism into question. The correct answer should then be “We don’t know yet, but it’s probably something in the brain and not magical and/or mysterious”. Haven’t we learned our lesson with consciousness?
And this view seems to be consistent with this bbc documentary excerpt, relevant part starts at 03:00. The Himba have different and less color categories, probably because they don’t need more or others.
I have no idea; I’m not a neurobiologist. I’d guess that colors arise in experience by virtue of being fundamentally indexical; what a color “is” is merely a defined unique association in our brains that links sensory data to a bunch of learned responses. It’s like the human soul—any property of it that you’d use to make it “unique”, to differentiate your soul from another’s, or to differentiate red from green, can be described as neurological activation of an associative pattern. Memories—neurological. Instinct, learning, feelings, hormones, habits—all biological or neurological. What is red? It’s like fire, like roses, like blood. All associative. Could you build a brain that perceives red meaningfully differently from green while having no such associations, built-in or learned? I suspect that if I was such a being, I would not even be able to differentiate red from green, because my brain would never have been given occasion to treat a red thing with a different response than a green thing. How would you expect there to be nerves for that kind of differentiation if there was never a need for it?
Colors are associated responses and groupings for certain kinds of sensory data. They have no further identity.
That’s my take.
[edit] The real stupid thing is that mysteriousness is a property of the question, not the answer! Even if we weren’t able to put out a good guess as to how colors work that wouldn’t make it a topic to call the entirety of reductionism into question. The correct answer should then be “We don’t know yet, but it’s probably something in the brain and not magical and/or mysterious”. Haven’t we learned our lesson with consciousness?
And this view seems to be consistent with this bbc documentary excerpt, relevant part starts at 03:00. The Himba have different and less color categories, probably because they don’t need more or others.