neuroscience, philosophy, art
Essays
The felt quality of perception, the blueness of blue, the warmth of red, comes not from properties of light but from learned neural associations. Each colour's qualia condense a lifetime of encounters: blue feels calm and distant because it has always appeared with sky and water; red feels urgent because it co-occurs with fire and blood. Qualia are not ineffable primitives but the compressions of experience. These essays work the idea out across neuroscience, philosophy, and art.
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Essay
The Blue Is Sky
A structuralist, experiential theory of colour and consciousness
The blueness of blue is not a property of light. It is the memory of the sky made internal.
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Paper
An Empiricist Connectionist Theory of Consciousness and Qualia
Qualia and consciousness as learned associations between perception and the world
Qualia emerge from learned associative networks; consciousness emerges when content-specific networks intersect self-associative ones.
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Essay
The Relational Brain
Toward a new neuroaesthetics
Perception is relational; art works directly on the brain's network of associations. A programme for a neuroaesthetics of relation.