[themafia]

> Try to explain what it's like to hear a major and a chord to a deaf person, or what it's like to see magenta to someone who's blind.

I know this isn't what you wanted, but the dualism struck me:

A major chord is like a blend of two base colors that give rise to a pleasant composite color. Mix the wrong bases and the result is sensibly wrong.

Magenta is like when you play a D and an F# together. When you see it at sunset it's like a major D chord surrounded by the sound of babies laughing. When you see it on the battlefield it's like a minor D chord wrestling against the noise of wind and rain.

[pygy_]

What is it like to experience synesthesia :-)

These are very good analogies (and possibly experiences for those who are natural synesthetes), but even then, that won't make the who doesn't have the corresponding perceptual modality person experience that exact sensation.

[throw_m239339]

> A major chord is like a blend of two base colors that give rise to a pleasant composite color. Mix the wrong bases and the result is sensibly wrong.

why does a major chord sounds pleasant? and why does a minor chord sounds "sad"? Why does the locrian mode sound so unsettling? is it due to our anatomy or purely cultural?

[pygy_]

And even then, in different contexts, a major chord can sound jarring and a minor one satisfying.

That being said the nature/culture duality is often not the right way to frame these issues. It's both, intertwined.

[jfyi]

Well, right, it's contextual. We each have a series of inputs that add up to these contexts. This doesn't mean it can't be explained, it just means there needs to be context.

If you give the blind man a sensor that converts color data to something he can input, and then provide inputs giving the feeling you want to portray associated with that color, you have explained it.

If you feel red is angry, all you need to do is play 400 to 484 THz into his instrument and yell at him angrily enough times for him to associate it. It doesn't seem too subjective to me.

[pygy_]

Color perception has nothing to do with light wavelength. Color is a subjective perceptual space.

If you zap your occipital cortex with electromagnetic pulses, you'll experience color flashes (phosphenes).

If a blind person who can read baille does the same, they'll experience tingling sensations in their fingers [1].

People can have visual experiences through somesthesic stimuli (you can give muddy waters divers sonar-based sight by stimulating their skin with an electrode array).

AFAIK, it is not however know whether someone who was blind at birth and whose brain didn't learn to see could have such experiences.

1. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00221-007-1091-0 full text: https://d1wqtxts1xzle7.cloudfront.net/50371662/s00221-007-10...

[pygy_]

Re. color and wavelength, some of the colors one can experience are only accessible in after-images, not through direct retina stimulation.

[jfyi]

Show me what is subjective about it then. What makes one illusion created out of flesh more real than another? How are any of these experiences subjective if you can already relate their nature so easily and universally? You are describing biomechanics, not subjective experience.