Consciousness and Color

If a person has even experienced electromagnetic radiation -- light -- in the visible range of the spectrum we can be conscious of the presence or lack of light. But if that person was born without a functional optical sensory system they can never have any consciousness of light. They can only be conscious of the temperature increase in the body when light is captured by the body and converted from light energy into thermal energy.

But the sighted person can also experience light through our optical sensory system by absorbing light in the sensory cells in the back of our eyes (the retina) and converting the light energy into an electrical signal .-- sensory data -- which moves along a series of neurons -- nerves -- to the brain where the signal is processed as the sensation perceived by the brain as light. And, if the brain is functioning in a wakeful -- conscious -- state, the presence of light may be consciously perceived as the sensation of "light" in the mind. 

All light is not materially the same and varies according to the amount of energy it possesses.  The eye is capable of sensing light over a relatively narrow range of these energy levels which is sensed in the brain and presented in a conscious mind as the phenomena we perceive as color. As shown in the above photograph of light emerging from a glass prism we recognize these colors as ranging in order of energy from red, to orange, to yellow, to blue. And while we are capable of sensing and recognizing light of these colors we are unable to verbally describe them; they are ineffable. We can only materially describe them by the energy level of the light that results in the sensation of each color. 

So look at the image above with all its "colors of the rainbow" and then shut your eyes. You immediately lose all consciousness of the colors. You eyes no longer receives the light of varying energies, no sensory signal is sent from the eyes to the brain, the brain no longer has awareness of the light reflected off the images, no sensation of color is formed in the mind and you no longer have consciousness of either the image or the colors in it. 

 

You can, of course, retain a memory of the image, recall that it was there, and describe it as an image of "light of emerging from a glass prism" or as a rainbow but you cannot describe the colors themselves. The best you can do is say that it has the red color of an apple, the orange color of an orange, the yellow color of a lemon, the green color of grass and the blue color of the sky. But color itself does not exist except as a sensation in the brain and mind. Light simply has no material attribute of color. All light is as colorless as x-rays or radio waves which exist at energy levels above and below those levels "visible" to our eyes.

We say an apple is red but in reality it has no color at all. What we see is light of the energy level of the color red being reflected off the apple into our eye producing a sensory signal corresponding to the color red being processed in our brain as the sensation of the color red and presented in the consciousness mind  as the sensation of the color red. All the other light not of the energy level of light corresponding to the color red are either not present or are absorbed by the skin of the apple and converted into heat energy. The apple itself, like a piece of clear glass, has no observable material property of "color" whatsoever. Unlike the apple, the piece of clear glass simply allows all the light to pass through unimpeded by the physical glass itself. An as can be seen above in the spectrum of light emerging for the glass prism, light of any and all energies visible to the human eye can pass through a piece of clear glass.Like the apple, the piece of clear glass has no observable material property of "color" whatsoever.And like the apple and the piece of pure glass, light itself has no observable material property of "color". For, indeed, "color" itself is an illusion of the conscious mind with no material existence of its own ...

... unless, of course, you hold that the illusion is the reality of existence.