We perceive colours, black and white. Our brains construct them, based upon the way the visual system draws distinctions.
Black and white form an oppositional pair, and so do each of the three primary additive and subtractive colours. Each pair member is perceived in the alternative to the other, but both are required for the visual system to work. Neither can be perceived if you are blind: no distinction is being drawn to generate the pair members. However, this explanation relies on a distinction being drawn to generate the oppositional pair members sighted and blind, both of which are also constructs of the brain.
The important take home message here is that biology does not work like the maths we have been taught at school. When a first member of an oppositional member is perceived as being present, such that the second is not, there is a side hidden from the conscious mind where the second member is present, such that the first is not. Chiralkine counting works in this way.
By way of example, let us return to the example of four circles.
In the maths we have been taught at school, we perceive and count four circles: four distinct objects, treating the space separating them as not a circle, so not countable.
In chiralkine counting we accept that our perception of a circle results from the drawing of a distinction between what is and what is not a circle, and treat the two sides of that distinction as if we are switching our perception between them. On one side, a circle is perceived as “me” and the crossing as “not me”, while on the other side the crossing is perceived as “me” and the circle as “not me”.
Chiralkine counting appears to fit very well with the oppositional theory of colour perception, because the three oppositional pairs a a, b b and c c match up with the three pairs of primary additive and subtractive colours and the scalars (in which there is no distinction drawn between the three) match up with black and white.
So each member of an additive and subtractive colour pair matches up with opposed pairs in a chiralkine counting circle. For example 1a is 1 yellow and 1a is blue. The opposed colourless pair, black and white matches up to where no distinction can be drawn between the quantities of all three additive and subtractive colour pairs, as for example in 1a, 1b, 1c and 1a, 1b, 1c. Note that the terms “additive” and “subtractive” come from thinking in terms of an equation, but there is actually no way to sum three signed integers of equal magnitude (e.g. +1 and -1) to zero. So perhaps it is better to think of white and black in terms of the oppositional pair coloured and colourless: the presence and absence of colour.
It is striking to see that there is a very deep connection between the way in which the brain constructs our perception of colour, black and white and the way in which meaning arises from the way in which logic gates work.
It is an intriguing thought that we code colour digitally using 1s and 0s, black and white, based on how equations work, but mathematics constructed based on treating the two sides of a distinction symmetrically inherently has colour! In this connection, particle physicists draw an analogy between additive and subtractive colours and the properties of fundamental particles known as quarks. The mathematical model constructed for quarks (based on equations) has them carrying an electrical charge of +2/3 or -1/3, such that the charges of three together can sum to 1 or 0. Might it be possible to develop new physics by working with distinctions symmetrically instead of using equations?