It ’s a question that stump philosophers , scientists , and elementary shoal child likewise : is my “ red ” the same as your “ red ” ? It ’s a interrogation that ’s potentially impossible to answer for sure – but a fresh study has provide some middling potent evidence that the answer is “ yes ” .
“ The question of whether sensory experiences are intersubjectively tantamount is a primal concern in the study of knowingness , ” begins the newfangled subject field . “ Some researchers deliberate the question unacceptable to answer because of the intrinsic , ineffable , and private nature of immanent experience . ”
Basically , the question of “ what doesredlook like to you ? ” is so difficult to respond objectively – potentially completely inconceivable , in fact – that many experts have written it off as a non - newcomer . But the squad behind the new study does n’t jibe – they just think a different approaching is needed .
“ Although verbatim verbal description of our experiences in a mode that allows for intersubjective comparability may be impossible , collateral depiction of experience is empirically feasible and is considered a hopeful research programme , ” they compose . “ One notable approach is to take apart reports of immanent law of similarity between sensory experiences . relationship between sensory experience , such as similarity , let for the structural probe of phenomenal cognisance . ”
In other word : we may not be able to straight off comparemy ruby to yours , but wecanfigure out whether your red sits in the same perceptual space as mine . All we need to do is ask the ripe motion .
“ If the unsupervised comparison of two different mortal ’ qualia [ … ] results in an exact one - to - one mapping ( e.g. , red - to - red ) , what can we extrapolate about their subjective experience ? ” poses the paper . “ [ It ] should serve as one of the necessary conditions to be slaked for two player to own the same experiences , which were antecedently called morphologic constraint . ”
“ We also theorise that the contraposition is true , ” the authors append – “ i.e. , if two bodily structure are not exactly mapped , two people would needs have unlike experiences . ”
So , we roll in the hay what your first question is : what are “ qualia ” ? It ’s the expert terminus for a specific case of quality of experience – the form you find by enquire “ what is it like to … ” . The object of the investigation , therefore , was to ask participants to rate the law of similarity of various colors – 93 in sum , to better provide for more complex and nuanced differences than work with fewer hues – and see how well their answers agree overall .
To add an surplus layer of independence , the researchers even included a step where the colors were unlabelled . “ Instead , we seek to find the skilful matching between qualia anatomical structure based only on their interior relationships , ” the team explains . “ This leave us to determine whichcolorembeddings match to the same color embeddings across individuals , and which do not . ”
So , what were the results ? Well , it turns out that … yeah , we believably do mean the same thing when we say “ flushed ” – at least , assuming one of us isn’tcolorblind . And yes , we do meanone – if we ’re both colorblind , as about one - third of the study participant were , the disparity seems to clear up : “ We showed that the color similarity body structure within color - neurotypical or vividness - atypical participant can be aligned base only on law of similarity family relationship of colors without using any external label , ” the paper reports , although “ we could not unsupervisedly array the coloring similarity structures between color - neurotypical and colour - atypical participants . ”
Now , it ’s worth take over that this subject area does n’t conclusively prove that one person ’s red is n’t another’sblue or green – but it does make it less plausible . And , more crucially , it determine up the fabric for succeeding research , which may be able to trap down the answer even further : “ To appraise individual differences based on single - level alignment , we plan to channel experiments in which we pick up full similarity judgments of pairs of 93 colour from single participants as next enquiry , ” the team writes .
Importantly , it ’s a methodology that can be applied to subjective experiences outside the kingdom of color and perception . “ While we focused only on gloss similarity , our method has the potency to be hold to a broad range of immanent experiences and different sense modality , ” the paper points out .
“ Our unsupervised approach declare oneself a powerful tool for assess the intersubjective correspondence of various qualia construction and for heighten our understanding of qualia from a structural decimal point of thought . ”
The bailiwick is write in the journaliScience .
