Is my "red" your "red"?: Unsupervised alignment of qualia structures via optimal transport
PsyArXiv January 7, 2023 preprint DOI: 10.31234/osf.io/h3pqm (opens in new tab)
Summary
AI-generated from the abstractThe work explores whether different individuals' subjective experiences of color (qualia) can be aligned without shared labels. Using optimal transport, a mathematical method for matching distributions, the authors show that qualia structures—the relational patterns among color experiences—can be unsupervisedly aligned across individuals. This suggests that despite private subjective differences, the structure of color qualia may be sufficiently similar to allow cross-person mapping, offering a potential answer to the long-standing philosophical question of whether one person's red is another's red.
Study at a glance
| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper |
|---|---|
| Key finding | Proposes that optimal transport can align qualia structures across individuals, making interpersonal comparisons of subjective experience tractable under specific structural assumptions. |
Abstract
Is my "red" your "red"?: Unsupervised alignment of qualia structures via optimal transport