The Rediscovery of Meaning is a volume of a collection of essays by Owen Barfield listed here.
Here is a video on Owen Barfield and the meaning crisis. It includes many video clips discussing the history of knowledge from our modern Western perspective. Barfield notes the feeling of meaninglessness that was coming to prominence in the twentieth century and continues on. He asks:
How is it that the more man becomes able to manipulate the world to his advantage the less he can perceive any meaning in it?
The scientific revolution brought with it a time of regarding the universe as mechanical and mindless. We as subjects observe a lifeless objective universe whereas previously through Aristotle there was an understanding of a cosmos filled with intensions. Now any sign of will or purpose has been excluded from most of the history of the universe. The universe is understood using the language of mathematics.
We live in a mathematical universe in which secondary properties like love and beauty are an afterthought. We have become disconnected from the world. We now look out at a mechanical reality as far as our instruments can probe, we have come to regard our own selves as machines. Now even our thoughts are nothing more than wired circuits making and breaking in a few pounds of fleshy microchips and logic gates, All this energetic activity encased in the bony box which nods on the atlas in agreement with this conclusion, just like the nodding dog on the parcel shelf of your grannie’s car.
Blind mechanical laws rule.
Malcom Guite quotes Barfield,
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information, where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
We have, of necessity, become detached and alienated from nature. Guite and Barfield are asking us to learn from the previous participatory relationship, leave behind our exclusive onlooker consciousness, and to gain a participatory understanding with our new found individual self conscious awareness.
Our modern scientific knowledge gives us the letters of nature. Through participation we can form the words and begin to read the script of nature. And that is what Goethe was doing with his “gentle empiricism”. With our mind’s eye we become free from living in the moment and we can make connections that allow us to see the contexts which overcome the idolatry of a restrictive physicalism.
Grasp the knowledge gained by the modern scientific understanding and continue on. Learn to read the script and take the words seriously, “Tat Tvam Asi”, “Thou Art That”.
Douglas R. Hofstadter is obviously a very intelligent man who has many interesting things to say, but by thinking that consciousness is an illusion he is contradicting himself. Thinking by its nature is a conscious act. He is conscious of the notion that consciousness is an illusion.
I don’t think that noumena are unknowable either. The question is, which of Kant’s assumptions should one reject in order to be entitled to assert that noumena are knowable? And on what basis is one entitled to reject those assumptions?
I don’t see how this makes any sense at all.
Sure, OK. I could certainly agree to that. But when I do so, I mean that the natural and social sciences — physics, chemistry, biology, neuroscience, psychology, evolutionary theory, etc. — allow to explain how and why the world appears to us as it does.
I don’t think that’s what you mean, is it?
That can’t be right, if we were to follow Kant in holding that the synthesis of perception and concepts is precisely what generates knowledge of phenomena.
Kant thought that we need both because either on its own leads to skepticism. Perception without conceptualization leads to Humean skepticism, where we would not be justified in asserting that we have empirical knowledge at all. (At most we would have habitually reinforced fantasies.)
But if we were to assume that concepts can reach all the way to noumena, without any constraint from sense-perception, we find ourselves in a different dilemma: we find ourselves confronted with a plurality of metaphysical systems, all of which are internally coherent, but logically incompatible with each other. In this case, reason itself is powerless to determine which metaphysical system is correct.
It is this situation that Kant is determined to avoid, and he does so by saying that all of these metaphysical systems commit the same basic error: that of assuming that reason has the power to know the noumena. If we undertake a systematic investigation in what reason can do and what it is for — the function of reason in human life — we will see (he claims) that reason is for science and for morality, but neither of those requires that we can know the noumenal.
For this reason, in order to maintain that the synthesis of perception and conceptualization generates knowledge of noumena, one would need to demonstrate that perception or conceptualization has powers far beyond what Kant would permit. I know what that demonstration looks like on my side of the debate — but I have no idea what it looks like on yours.
Not necessarily, since we can acquire some concepts by generalizing from experience. But learning how to use a word in a sentence helps stabilize the concept for continued re-classification and inferential use. But I don’t think there are any innate concepts and I don’t think there’s any capacity to acquire concepts except through sensorimotor engagement with the world and language learning.
Ha! When I first heard that Sellars thought that noumena were knowable as fundamental particles, I thought that was bonkers. I don’t think it’s bonkers any more. I don’t think it’s quite correct, either. But it’s not bonkers.
I would say that we have reasons now, that Sellars didn’t have, for thinking that we don’t know how to reconcile quantum mechanics and general relativity, which is to say that we do not have a single theory of fundamental physics. We have two theories of fundamental physics, each of which is equally fundamental (neither is more fundamental than the other) but they are logically incompatible.
Maybe we will eventually figure out a theory that replaces one or both of them, and that would give us a better model of things in themselves than either of the two models we presently have.
Nowhere in that brief Wikipedia entry does it say that Hofstadter thinks that consciousness is an illusion.
Think about a manned spacecraft on route to the moon. We know that the earth is bathed in sunlight. So why is it that when the astronauts look out they do not see the sunlight between the sun and the earth? All they see is the darkness of space.
You know why that is, Charlie. You learned that in high school.
But that is not what I wish to discuss. What struck me is your peculiar use of the word “see”. Apparently it is impossible to see light “in any sense”, but it is very well possible to see darkness. So what on earth does the word “see” mean? You must be using it very differently from how I use the word.
Love of and enthusiasm for the subject goes a long way when going through a process of learning. Goethe’s love of nature inspired him to try to understand it in a respectful way without destroying it in the process.
We all have the same basic body plan in common and so this is very interesting in considering humans as a species. But what makes us interesting as individuals is our personal biography.
I am far from having an aversion to mathematics and mechanics. I’ve spent all of my adult life working on machines. Topics such as he skeletal and muscular systems of the human body fascinate me. Have you ever taken a good look at the bones that form the foramen triosseum of a bird while the connective tissue is still attached? How these separate structures combine to form such a smooth opening for the tendons of the flight muscles to pass through is a wonderful example of mechanical design.
But if you are interested in the habits and lifestyles of individual avian species, look at features such as their beaks in the context of the whole organism. Looking at beaks will tell you a great deal about the bird’s behaviour.
So you have made meaning a function of your personal preferences and apparently also of your peculiar underestimate of the enthusiasm that scientific researchers are able to muster for their research topics. That sure explains our different views on the meaningfulness of modern scientific knowledge: I do not share your preferences. At all.
What I find bizarre is your conviction that this personal preference somehow correlates with knowledge of a research topic “more in keeping of its reality”. Reality cares nothing for your preferences and aversions. Do you really believe that your youth observation of visible(!) fluorescencent light under blacklight in a disco is an observation of ultraviolet light that is “more in keeping of its reality” than a description in terms of wavelength and photon energy? For starters, you were not actually observing UV. I think this little anecdote of yours is exemplary for why the Steinerean flavour of Goethean science fails as a viable scientific research method. Without experimentation, hypothesis testing and peer review you deny yourself the opportunity to correct all kind of nonsensical misunderstandings.
Are phenomena just our representations of things-in-themselves and if so what reality do we attribute to these representations? Is their reality confined to the inside of our skulls?
I’m not so much concerned with Kant’s actual position on noumena, but on how his views have filtered down to the popular belief that the things-in-themselves behind the phenomena are somehow closer to reality.
Maybe ‘noumena’ is the wrong word to use, Think of observing a rose. We become aware of the phenomena, the colours smell, textures of the plant. We can build up a series of mental images representing these perceptions over time, but without inner activity they would remain separate. By means of thinking we can combine these images in a dynamic way that transcends our sense experience. Instead of looking to apprehend reality as consisting of things behind things, we understand reality to be a dynamic living process. In reality there are no ‘things’ as such. Or perhaps I should say no perceived ‘thing’ has any reality in and of itself. No ‘thing’ is isolated from the greater context. Behind everything that is perceived to belong to the external world, instead of positing an underlying ‘thing-in-itself’ there is an overarching process in which it resides. I think this is where we should be looking if we are trying to get at reality.
They tell us how the physical world is organized, but there is much more to it, especially regarding the ‘why’ question.
I don’t think we should be looking at noumena as things-in-themselves, I prefer to think of them as encompassing dynamic processes. Our thinking imagination needs to be mobile to grasp the concept ‘triangle’.
If we can apprehend reality directly then we have no need for models. The concept ‘triangle’ is not something I as subject own. It is beyond subject and object and any physical triangle partakes of it as much as I do. Perhaps we have the ability as individuals to turn noumena into phenomena. This is basically what Goethe was claiming with regard to the archetypes.
I hope all of this makes sense as I don’t have time to go over it but I don’t want to delay any longer in posting it.
I was going by other comment I have read on the ‘net.
For example this piece from John Horgan who interviewed Hofstadter and quoted him:
The words within quotation marks are from Hofstadter as related by Horgan.
I’m sure Hofstadler has much more to say on this subject and nothing is black and white.
This is such a disappointment: You completely missed the opportunity to link to your own comment.
It’s more likely that I’ve seen photographs that have been taken from similar positions.
Maybe you are over-thinking things here, thinking philosophically instead of practically.
There is a quiz show on TV here where the contestants are asked to ‘say what they see’. Look up at the night sky on a clear moonless night and what do you see? A black starry sky. You will see stars and maybe a planet or two, but mostly inky darkness.
This demonstrates the polarity of light and darkness. Light radiates out from a point and darkness encompasses from the periphery.
The only way you can claim to see light is if it has been attenuated by matter.
Hells yeah! Fastest self-pwn yet!
Congratulations!
Haha. Yeah, that’s me. Always thinking philosophically instead of practically.
Here is a thought: Why don’t you make life easy for yourself and just accept the fact that the colour ultraviolet is inaccessible to phenomenological approaches?
In the disco I had knowledge beyond that which perception alone gave me and thus I could understand how the lighting could produce the effect I saw. Observation plus thinking leads to understanding. I don’t count myself as exceptionally wise by any means but Blake made a very good point when he said, “A fool sees not the same tree that a wise man sees.”
You wish to defend science against what you imagine to be criticism from me. Let me assure you that I have the highest regard for the scientific method. Any criticism I I do have is not against this way of investigation which provides us with a great deal of knowledge. But we would not want to get stuck in a rut.
What I do object to is in the belief that this is the only way of approaching reality. The Goethean method does not contradict the Newtonian method, it expands on it. Two heads are better than one as they say.
The attached image by William Blake, (The William Blake Archive, Public Domain), shows Newton focused on measuring the image on a scroll, quite unconcerned with everything else around him. At some point we have to expand our perception to include the greater reality than that which is provided by the study of ‘things’.
Any scientific researchers who are seeking to expand their knowledge through love of the subject and not because of personal financial gain, or prestige, or whatever, is already working in the Goethean way.
I am sure there are very many scientists who fall into this category.
So in order to understand Hofstadter’s thinking on consciousness you would prefer to get my opinion rather than a comment Hofstadter himself was said to have made?
I have never spoken to Hofstadter directly, Horgan has.
If someone claims they are seeing light when it is attenuated by matter, they are not seeing pure light, they are seeing the effects of light and darkness interacting.
Look at the blue of the sky. What do you see? Light? Coloured light? Photons? Waves? Is the blue of even intensity everywhere you look? OR is it darker in some places?
We could have a productive discussion here or we could just argue for the sake of it. Which would you prefer?
As is the light between the sun and the earth unless it is interrupted by anything which has a darkening effect. Without this interruption it is invisible to our senses.
Yeah, so you keep telling us. Except, I think that’s a completely backward way of looking at the whole situation.
We don’t first begin with a sequence of static sensory-images that are then combined by some “activity”, and certainly not an “inner” activity.
Instead, we experience the world as flowing, interconnected wholes that stand out against fields — one sees a tree standing out from against a perceptual background of forest or sky, a specific person standing out from a perceptual background of other generic people (a crowd), etc. We can, if we wish, abstract from perceptual wholes and produce isolated “sensations”, “sense-impressions” if we want — and sometimes doing so is useful.
But to say that sensations are what is first and that they are combined into experiences is exactly the reverse of what’s really going on: we experience the world in terms of wholes, and we may sometimes find it useful to abstract from those perceptual wholes in order to arrive at isolated sensations.
The account that you are presenting here, that perception of wholes is a consequence of how thinking is applied to sense-images, is basically Kantian. And I think it’s gotten things completely backwards. It begins with making the empiricist error of assuming that sense-experience comes in the form of atomic sense-impressions — and then asks what needs to be added to those sense-impressions in order to produce experience.
But if one rejects the empiricist error to begin with, and recognizes that perception is not atomic sense-impressions to which anything must be added, but rather to perceive is to bodily perceive a world in which self and environment are always dynamically coupled.
Put otherwise: if one begins one’s theory of perception from a theoretical articulation of what Goethe was doing, there is simply no need to retain any of Kant’s empiricist baggage at all.
Correction: We are not having this conservation because I believe that modern science provides the only way of approaching reality. This is not my position. I was examining your claim that the contemporary way of practicing science (what you call “the Newtonian method”) has resulted in a view of the universe that is lacking in meaning. It was also your claim that the Goethean method provides a picture of study objects that is “more in keeping of its reality”. So far, your support for those claims boils down to “I like the findings from Goethean science better”.
So the phenomenology, holism, participatory experimentation and exact sensory imagination are suddenly optional? I somehow doubt it.
Haha, no I was making a playful reference to Hofstadter’s popular book “Gödel, Escher, Bach”. One of the main themes in the book is self reference.
I thought it was funny.
If I go outside and look up, I can see it just fine.
ETA: But briefly: better not look into the sun directly.
Your flowing interconnected whole is but a snapshot of the reality behind this fleeting perception. Your example of a tree in the field of vision is a good one. The Blake quote I posted yesterday is apt, “A fool sees not the same tree that a wise man sees.” How complete an understanding of the tree do we get by perceiving this, ‘flowing interconnected whole’?
As we take in this flowing interconnected whole how can we tell if the saplings that are sprouting up around the tree are beginning a life that will potentially develop into the same form as the tree we see before us? As we stare at the view a very complex image is projected onto each retina but how does this allow us to make a connection between individual saplings and the mature tree?
Babies have to learn how to focus their eyes and how to use them in a coordinated way. To begin with each eye takes in a single blurred meaningless image. As they learn to control their vision they will be able to focus on a tree, a seed, a sapling, a bud or anything else that takes their interest. As you say this will stand out from a perceptual background. But how do they make the connections between these various images?
The photo below is of a tree sapling. How would we know how it was associated, if at all, with the tree in our field of vision? Should we keep looking at it for a year or two until we begin to see a resemblance?
I am not talking about first seeing a complete complex picture and from this initial view discriminating the individual parts, separating out whichever object we wish to focus on. I am talking about combining a series of memory pictures into a meaningful whole to give a panoramic view of the processes in time. This act of combining will get us closer to reality than any one time visual experience no matter how mobile the scene becomes. The mobility within our visual field might involve switching focus between the sapling and the tree, but we will still be none the wiser as to the connection between the two
How many people consider that the “Newtonian spectrum”, which is such a recognizable image, such as on the cover of the brilliant album “Dark Side of the Moon”, as shown below, is an inaccurate image that purports to portray the result of his famous experiment?
The actual experiment involved setting up artificial conditions in order that the edge spectra came together by the right amount in order to produce green. Goethe played with the prism under a variety of conditions, such as with a dark central strip which produced a spectrum with magenta in the middle.
The way that Newton’s spectrum has been popularized encourages people to have a very narrow understanding of how darkness and light interact to produce colour.
Of course they are optional. But I highly recommend them.
Yes, very funny. But I have provided a trail which links to my previous comments. 🙂
Would you care to tell us what you see?
I cannot make sense of that.
Well, I would be deeply worried for you if you could make sense of that.
We covered this ground in 2018 and again in 2021, but Charlie loves to recycle them favorites.
Ignoring the fact that “darkness and light interacting” is a fabricated and incorrect portrayal of the underlying physics, you still have to explain why Goethe’s view has more meaning and why you consider it to be “more in keeping of its reality”. Why would Goethean physics be more in keeping with reality when it dissuades investigators of thinking of light in terms of wavelength? Are the wave-like properties of light not real? Does thinking about light in terms of wavelengths diminish its meaning?
Any other person I would give a simple answer. But you I have to ask to define “see” for me. What exactly do you mean by that term?
How did Blake envision Newton’s way of seeing compared with his own experience?
(Beulah is a state of higher cosmic consciousness in which the petty cares of everyday life fall away and lose their perceived significance.)
The picture below, by Loco Steve from Bromley , UK, is of the statue of Newton (after Paolozzi) in the British Library courtyard (London).
Notice how compared to the painting by Blake I posted earlier, Paolozzi’s statue depicts Newton as being more like an android than a living person. The universe becomes a giant machine and even Newton himself is seen as a machine.
Through Newton, the living world of Blake becomes a lifeless husk.
Blake on the ways nature and a tree are perceived:
Blake like Goethe argued against the restricted vision that Newton gave us.
People such as as Douglas R. Hofstadter update Newton’s ‘single vision’ whereby computers take the place of clockwork mechanisms.
This explains it all.
CharlieM gets meaning from poetry rather than from reality.
Well, there’s no objection from me about the importance of poetry in enriching one’s appreciation of life! And while William Blake does not quite speak to me personally, there is no doubt of the significance of his work as a criticism of the early phase of the Industrial Revolution.
So while I disagree with the thought that art and poetry give us any kind of deep insight into the nature of reality, let alone insight which is deeper, higher, or better than that of science, I have nothing against the importance of aesthetics for reorienting and refining our perception of the world.
Thanks for the links. I find that looking back at old posts can give me a different perspective on the discussion.
From one of your links you explained spectral effects as being due to “inadequately collimated light”. Isn’t that the same thing as saying colour is produced because light gets disrupted by matter? Colours are visible, is adequately collimated light visible?
Thankfully, there is no need to go down that particular rabbit-hole, as it was Charlie himself who noted
. which is similarly “unattenuated” by matter, despite the greater distance traveled.
Dude, you seriously believe that the only way to make coloured light is to refract white light? Didn’t they teach you about emission spectra in high school?
In the street I lived in as a youth there were sodium-vapor lamp posts. When they switched on they emitted a red glow. After a few minutes they would shift to yellow. I never opened one, but I assume there was no prism inside.
There seems to be a deep and abiding failure to understand here.
Charlie, I never said that “spectral effects” were due to inadequately-collimated light. I pointed out that your “magenta ray” was caused by inadequately-collimated light. One can view a beautiful, complete spectrum (including green) at all distances if you use a narrow beam of light. Just like the Dark Side of the Moon album cover.
We can also distinguish between optical effects and neurophysiological effects. Astronomers use spectrometers to study the spectra of starlight, chemists flames.
Check out Fraunhofer and Bunsen.
Or, you could just look at a CD.
DNA_Jock prompted me to look back, and I remembered this video which I had linked to. At the end of the video they say:
The interaction of light and darkness produce two pairs of complimentary spectra. And they show in the video that together with Newton’s experiments on light rays, rays of shadow produce an effect which is equal and complimentary.
The physicist Dr. Pehr Sällström features in a few youtube videos in which he discusses the relationship between Goethe’s and Newton’s theories. You can read a piece by him, “Goethe, Newton and the physics of colour”, here. Four short videos are embedded here also.
I mean can you describe in words your visual experience when yo look up. I have just gone outside and looked up and I saw a blue sky with grey and white clouds moving across it. The sun was obscured by a cloud but I could tell where it was because of the brightness of the cloud in front of it.
I was just asking you to do the same from your perspective.
I get meaning from my experiences. You think I should get meaning from reality? Can you explain what you mean by ‘reality’?
Charlie, all light is colored. “White” describes any mix of colors that mimics the hue of sunlight. It’s a color too. If you came from a planet orbiting Betelgeuse, you would have a different definition of “white”, and would consider our sun distinctly blue.
Interestingly, while all humans agree that “unattenuated” sunlight is “white”, there are some spectra that my youngest’s boyfriend thinks are white, but she and I don’t. Can you figure out why? [No, he’s not from Betelgeuse.]
Yes very cool, but I fail to see how any of this answers my questions. Why does Goethe’s view have more meaning and why do you consider it to be more in keeping of reality?
You fail to have a visual experience with light “in any sense”? You are definitely using the word differently from me.
But to humor you: When I went outside and looked up, I had a visual experience of a blue sky and a bright disc surrounded by a collar of rays.
I sure wonder where this is going.
All forms of art including poetry are a method of communication and so have a dual aspect. The artist gives the world something that they feel cannot be expressed in mundane language. The person who takes in the work might be inspired by the work itself and if so the artist ‘speaks to them’ as you might say. Blake resonates within me but he does not quite speak your language. That’s okay, we’re all individuals.
Perhaps his portrayal of Institutionalized religion in this poem below is more to your liking than some of his other work.
I went to the Garden of Love,
And saw what I never had seen:
A Chapel was built in the midst,
Where I used to play on the green.
And the gates of this Chapel were shut,
And ‘Thou shalt not’ writ over the door;
So I turn’d to the Garden of Love,
That so many sweet flowers bore.
And I saw it was filled with graves,
And tomb-stones where flowers should be:
And Priests in black gowns, were walking their rounds,
And binding with briars, my joys & desires.
Even if we get very little out of a work of art, at least it gives us an understanding of the mind of the artist. Homer makes it clear where his inspiration comes from when he invokes the Muse.
Do you see the stars twinkling? I’d like to know where you are viewing the night sky from so that no matter is interfering with the starlight. 🙂
If I recall correctly, Charlie denies that visible starlight / sunlight is unattenuated, claiming the “pure light” becomes visible only by interacting with the atmosphere. Apparently, he learned this by remaining within the experience without speculating on what lies beyond.
ETA: Ah, I see that Charlie indeed just posted that argument.
Actually, I don’t see the stars twinkling, most of the time in my back yard. Trees obscure the stars near the horizon, where twinkling is most prominent, and I guess there’s often a pretty unturbulent atmosphere overhead.
So what?
If I hived myself off into space, I’d be able to see sun and stars with nothing in between. No “attenuation” at all. Back when this conversation started (and it was about what astronauts saw from space, ROFLMAO) I made the private prediction that Charlie would be reduced to the deepity of claiming that the light Charlie sees has interacted with Charlie’s corneas. We’re nearly there. I can feel the tension…
Naah, they see stars.
Charlie’s original point was that light that is not scattered is not scattered. That’s super deep.
Read Goethe’s ‘Theory of Colours’ and you will find that he discusses three aspects of colour, which he designates physical colours, psychological colours, and chemical colours. I have been discussing Goethe’s findings in relation to Newton’s prism experiments, but I’m happy to widen the discussion to include these other ways of experiencing colour.
In ‘Importance of Holistic Concepts in Colour Science’ Pehr Sällström asks, ‘why are buttercups yellow?’, and then discusses various answers. He comments on the relationship between colour sensation and wavelength:
He provides three diagrams of wavelengths which correspond to the sensation of yellow which I have included below.
As he says, “You never meet spectrally pure light in nature, so why expect that the highly artificial spectrum should determine colour perceptions?”
Goethe was very interested in coloured shadows and their place in colour perception. That would also be good to discuss.
Goethe did not just look at spectral effects in some small, dark room; he studied them wherever he could find them in nature, in the atmosphere, in the heavens, in the landscape and in living world.
He goes on to talk about colour constancy and colour as reflectance. This piece is worth reading in full as it could open up many areas we could discuss.
So is magenta the only spectral colour you consider to be produced by inadequately-collimated light?
Here is an excellent video I may have linked to in a previous thread.
From this point they demonstrate the use of a cleverly designed prism which shows the dynamic nature of light, darkness and colour.
You seem to misunderstand. I was responding to your comment that “colour is produced because light gets disrupted by matter”. In response, I pointed out that there are light sources that produce light we perceive as having colour when peering directly at them.
Oh Good Heavens! Not at all!
Once I am allowed to have non-parallel beams of ‘white’ light incident on my little diffraction grating — that’s what is responsible for the magenta ray, Charlie — then with two such beams (individually well-collimated, of course, only because it’s prettier that way) I can produce any of the ‘rainbows’ should below.
With three (non-parallel) beams of ‘white’ light, I could produce every color that you are capable of perceiving.
Only two beams are needed to satisfy my youngest’s boyfriend, the little weirdo.
Do you think that there is sunlight in the space between the sun and the earth’s atmosphere? If so what colour would you say it is?
I agree, white is a colour, as is black. White represents light and black represents darkness.
There have been interesting experiments done with tinted goggles. While wearing, say pink googles, the world appears to have a pink hue. However after some time the the world appears to be coloured as normal. But then when they are removed the world is seen at first to be tinted in the complimentary colour.
I would say that your daughter’s boyfriend had a colour perception deficiency. My best man had a similar deficiency. He failed his medical when applying to become an electrical engineer in the RAF. They deemed it dangerous if he could not distinguish between certain wires because of the colour of the insulation. He did however get a job with British Telecom where he spent every day working with different coloured wires without any problem.
That’s right! So sometimes we disagree about what is “white”.
Already answered.
Oh dear, no. Black is not a color, unless you are perhaps describing a pigment. You keep asserting this equivalence between ‘light’ and ‘dark’, but it’s about as stupid as asserting an equivalence between hot and cold.
I think this qualifies as the single most uninteresting experiment in the history of visual perception. From this response of yours, it appears that you fail to understand the point about the Betelgeusian: it has nothing to do with acclimation or color aftereffect, which lasts for a minute or so. If he was raised near Betelgeuse, he will maintain that our Sol is blue for his entire life. His definition of ‘white’ will differ from ours. We will however, agree about “black” and the definition of absolute zero.