A Novel Color — A New Symbol
Expanding the Phenomenology of Our Non-Dualist Operational Space
Abstract
The significance of a recent photoreceptors experiment lies in its revelation that color is not an objective property of light but a phenomenon constructed within the mind. By altering the typical rules of cone response, the brain was "tricked" into creating a percept without a correlate in nature. This strongly suggests that qualia in the common sense—our raw experiences—are far more malleable than previously assumed. Color, viewed as an immutable output, can now be considered programmable. This perspective reframes subjectivity as a space of active “engineering” rather than passive reception. From this perspective and in connection with my framework, this shifts the focus from the concept of fixed “qualia” to that of a “species qualia”1, namely—the Symbol—reinforcing the argument that the underlying thesis about the functioning of life and humanity I propose, under these new developments, remains valid.
Introduction
Color is considered a powerful example of subjective experience, a pure quale. The ability to generate new qualia by altering the neural interface suggests that subjectivity can become programmable.
Color is not an inherent property "in the world" but is as much a construct of the brain, derived from differential signals among cone types. By directly manipulating this biological machinery, the experiment suggests that color is a more a software phenomenon rather than a hardware feature. These experiments also demonstrate the malleability of perception, indicating that our subjectivity is contingent on the limits of biology, thorough the unimpended self-assembling natural pathways2, but not rigidly fixed. Consequently, the emergence of new percepts is proposed to lead to new subjective ontologies and phenomenal experiences. This provides empirical support for the notion that qualia are not inherently constrained by nature but are limited by evolutionary pathways and neuronal-embodied architectures. And this would require an update to the notion.
The landmark
A seemingly landmark in perceptual science has arrived. By using adaptive optics to stimulate the eye at the level of individual cone cells, scientists have opened a door to a perceptual phenomenon previously thought impossible: experiencing a novel color (named “olo”)3, one that lies outside the naturally evolved human visual gamut. This color exists outside the naturally evolved human visual spectrum. This event has substantial implications across various fields.
The described breakthrough involved high-precision light delivery targeting M (medium-wavelength) cones while bypassing the typical coordination of the three cone types. This method elicited a new perceptual response in human observers, described as a blue-green with unprecedented saturation, a color that had not existed within the historical boundaries of visible hues. This outcome is a direct result of controlling photoreceptor activity on a cell-by-cell basis, effectively editing the input to the visual system and circumventing the evolutionary design constraints governing cone interactions.
This article pitch at the implications of that event across neuroscience, language, philosophy and also shows how this reinforces the views of our thesis, in favor of the operational units as the Symbol and for the holistically taken, non-dualist operational space they enact, as seen through the Symbols Framework.4
Discussion
Color is one of the most powerful exemplars of subjective experience — considered a pure “quale.” Now, through the use of adaptive optics to stimulate individual cone cells in the eye, researchers have thus facilitated a perceptual phenomenon previously considered impossible: the experience of a novel color.
Conceptually, this breakthrough highlights several key ideas:
• Color is not "in the world" per se — it's constructed by the brain from differential signals among cone types (S, M, L).
• By hacking that machinery directly, you're revealing that color is more like a software phenomenon.
• These experiments show the malleability of perception — our subjectivity is contingent on the limits of biology, but not fixed.
So in this new perspective, new percepts = new subjective ontologies, new phenomenal experience as following:
• You can generate new qualia by altering the neural interface. Thus a new “plateau” through share subjective experiences between individuals—transmitting or exposing someone else to the inner experience of another, thus new ontologies.
• Subjectivity becomes programmable. These qualia modified or altered, possibly hinting at future possibilities where consciousness is manipulable—like editing a memory or perception.
• If qualia aren't fixed and can be influenced, then the entire space of subjective experience might be dynamic, transferable, and mutable—not isolated, private, or immutable as traditionally believed.
So subjectivity is not locked in the skull — it’s a field of potentials, modifiable through technology and language.
Within the Symbols Framework:
• A “color” is a Symbol enacted by the neural-symbolic interface between cone responses and higher-level perception.
• This new perceptual color = a new Symbol that was never imprinted by evolution, never given meaning before.
• The Symboliad through this new color perception just grew a new potential areal. And new generations may be endowed with this new Symbol, top-down imprinted.
So: the brain did not "see" something new in the world — it added to the world by experiencing something never before instantiated. That is subjectivity shaping reality.
Within C. Stefan's Symbols Framework, the emergence of this new color is interpreted as the birth of a new Symbol. It did not previously exist in the Symboliad—the web of enacted (see Symbols definitions) perceptual and conceptual meanings that constitute experience (a non-dual space.) By stimulating novel patterns of activity in the visual field, the researchers have effectively added a new node to the Symboliad. This is viewed as having implications beyond just vision, suggesting an expansion of the very landscape of human meaning. The brain did not merely "see" something new in the external world, but rather added to the world by experiencing something that had never been instantiated before. This process is characterized as subjectivity actively shaping reality. Within this framework, a "color" is understood as a Symbol enacted through the neural-symbolic interface between cone responses and higher-level perception. The novel perceptual color is thus considered a new Symbol that was not imprinted by evolution and lacked prior meaning. Consequently, the Symboliad is seen as having grown a new potential area through this new color perception.
Philosophical views
Subjectivity as Programmable Ontology
Perhaps the most radical implication is the idea that subjectivity itself is not fixed. If qualia, such as color, can be extended, modified, or even invented through technological intervention, then the mind can be viewed as a platform with capacity for expansion from within. The creation of new perceptions is directly linked to the formation of new ontology. Our reality expands through the addition of new experiences. This perspective transforms subjectivity from merely a state of being into a space of becoming. The ability to generate new qualia by altering the neural interface suggests that subjectivity has the potential to become programmable. If qualia can be added, others might potentially be shared or edited, and this goes further in the common space of the colony.
The Irreducibiliy of Qualia
Philosophers of mind have long debated qualia as irreducible atoms of conscious experience—indivisible units like the 'redness' of red. But the novel color experiment seem to defy this foundational view. All colors we see are mixtures constructed by the relative activation of three cone types. This new method bypasses that system, directly stimulating individual photoreceptors to produce percepts that were never part of human experience.
This shows that qualia are not “sacred” or atomic. They are constructed. If we can unmix the visual system and produce a new percept, then the percept itself is not a pre-given essence—it is an emergent result of systemic interaction. And the essenceness lies in the value, the potential it has within the operational space, and not absolute. A space that ever-evolves as the Symbols Framework proposes, as a space of potentiality, not of a truly objective reality.
Qualia becomes programmable units, relational outputs, or attractors in a constructed “detached” and unitary space of operation of the resonant instances. This aligns with the Symbols Framework: a Symbol is enacted between the environment and instance’s (the observer) perceptual machinery. When the rules of that machinery change, so do the Symbols. So does the world.
This is a paradigm shift. The concept of qualia as inexplicable atoms of consciousness is no longer tenable. We are entering a new age where perception, subjectivity, and reality are not discovered—they are constructed. Thus the view that the Symboliad proposes: the non-dual space of operation both of subjective and concrete (inseparable) qualities. The holistic nature of the ‘real’ real lies above, open to being imprinted with new meaning. In this process, the resonant observer—an instance of the environment—is gradually unified with a conscious perception level through an orthogonal potentiality space. Meaning is formed through the bending of energetic potential, not toward an objective reality, but toward the shared space of enactment: the Symboliad in its whole meaning.
Schrödinger vs. Wittgenstein on the Nature of Color
While this new color may ultimately turn out to be a truly new qualia, this does not strictly speaking invalidate the insights of past thinkers but instead it expands. Erwin Schrödinger, in his lectures collected in Mind and Matter, argued for the primacy of color experiences in understanding consciousness. For Schrödinger, the subjective immediacy of color—the thisness of red, blue, green—was fundamental and irreducible. He took these percepts as given, as the foundational building blocks of mind. What has fundamentally changed is that the boundary of the finite range of qualia, which Schrödinger accepted, has been breached.
Wittgenstein, on the other hand he approached color through language, through our semantics. In On Color, he examined how the grammar of our color discourse constrains what can be said—and therefore thought—about color. His emphasis was on the logical space in which color concepts live, not on the perceptual atoms themselves.
The novel color breakthrough highlights the value of both perspectives. Schrödinger's view reminds us that qualia are significant and that the experience of a new color constitutes a legitimate ontological event. Wittgenstein's perspective reminds us that the way we linguistically frame and discuss this new color influences its integration into the shared life and language. Furthermore, Wittgenstein's grammar must now expand to accommodate this new entry in the color spectrum. This development does not eliminate qualia but rather gives rise to new ones, and in a metaphysical sense, through this views, it expands and even dissolves the meaning of “qualia” into the concept of “Symbol.”
Conclusion
This breakthrough may mark a significant pivot in our understanding of perception and meaning making spaces. Color, which was once conceived as a closed system defined by cone types and natural spectra, is now presented as an open field. The implications of this, extend across science, art, language, and philosophy and reframes the notion of qualia. When a human perceives a color never before seen by others, it is not merely the eye that changes—it is the phenomenal world itself that is reshaped, propagating its valence throughout the colony.
From this perspective, ultimately this paper proposes a "post-qualia stance," characterized by the following points:
• Qualia are dissolved into Symbols: no fixed grounding, exactly due their energetic potential (they can store any “tag.”5) The new Symbol (the novel color) is described as gathering its "Omniload" through the meaning making orthogonal space in Symboliad.
• They emerge within the Symboliad in relation to other perceptual and conceptual structures, which are themselves Symbols (again, not fixed, but under the pressure and sustainment within the potentiality structure.)
• What is perceived as "Redness" is not an absolute quality but rather a stable attractor within the only holistically taken "real" real space, resulting from repeated biological and cultural entrenchment. The novel color is similarly seen as a new attractor, a Symbol that eliminates the need for a metaphysical explanation of "redness."
The ability to create a novel color through technological intervention fundamentally changes the understanding of perception and subjectivity, suggesting that reality is, in part, designed and shaped by experience within the dynamic space of the Symboliad, which in turn makes our only reality.
The novel color is just a new attractor, a Symbol that demands no need for further metaphysical redness-magic. The Symbol itself “a non-dualistic entity embodying both energetic/material potential and operational/meaningful function that it is relevant to the instances at their level of generativity and frame of reference.”6
From the Symbols Framework perspective: a “Symbol” differentiates from conceptualized fixed forms of qualia and it is seen as “a species qualia” with its properties as in Thesis Commons | Life, the Observer, and Consciousness
These aspects are treated on a separate thesis where self-assembling is expanded and freedom in the metaphysical sense is reframed.
More about it on: On the Symbols Framework—C.Stefan & ai.essentiamundi.com
See the possibility of dissolving the “hard problems” of consciousness through our framework. The view that the energetic (broadly electricity, etc. see thesis) potentials in Symbols can store also what we call “abstract” while why would they be in a “more privileged” position than other Symbols (as part of the Symboliad like a web of potentialities, attractors, there is no differentiation to a status of “meta” Symbols rather in the potence of the potential, current “truths.”) Thus, through this view we put under question a “meta-cognition.”