Do we all see colors the same way? For instance, to me, red is red. But is it possible that someone else could look at red and see what I would percieve as blue? Or even more troubling . … a color that I can’t even imagine?
If not, how do we really know?
Are there colors that exist that we can’t see? Or does the light spectrum limit the combinations of colors there can be? Like dogs hearing things that human can’t hear? What do they look like?
Oh thats right- you cant answer because you are human!
I’ve wondered about that as well (the color part). Basically someone points out a color and says “this is blue”. Whether or not we see exactly the same “color” we can’t be sure, because if I accept your statement that that color is blue, then everytime I see it I will name it “blue”, regardless of its “true” color.
But what happens is that many many people see the same things as “blue”, and not just one. So more likely than not we are seeing (approximately) the same color.
Basically, it comes down to is are our brains interpreting the light wavelengths in the same manner. Well, I’m sure there are many other interpretations as well.
the cones are further sub-divided up to receive different wavelengths of light. the ratios of of the receptors are obviously genetically determined but injury and genetic error may cause differences in distribution. hence colorblindness (?)
is that correct or did I just mangle a major section of Psych 101?
There are indeed colors we can’t see. Human vision extends roughly from 400nm to 700 nm (4000 Angstroms to 7000 Angstroms). You actually can see a little farther than this if the source is bright enough, and I’ve been surprised to see into what I would have thought of as very near infrared when the source was a laser (hitting surface, of curse – not looking down the barrel of it). We can’t see ultaviolet or anything o shorter wavelength, going down to vacuum UV and extreme UV to X-rays and gamma rays, nor can we see nar Infrared or mid-infrared or longer wavelengths, going to radio and submillimeter waves. Animals CAN see in these regimes – bees, for instance, can see in the UV. (They demonstrate this by illuminating artificial “flowers” with purely UV sources, by the way, and seeing that bees can, indeed, recognize them). Pit vipers can sort of “see” in the infrared – their “pits” act as very rough “pinhole cameras” for the IR detecting organs they have.
As for whether what ou call “blue” is what I call "blue, the question is thornier. People certainly can distinguish between the same colors (in the main, but see below), so that we can agree that one color is “red” and another is “blue”, but that doesn’t address the question of whether we perceive them he same ay. One can cop out and say that, as there’s no way of answering this question, it doesn’t realy make a difference.
But people demonstrably do have different color responses. Color-blind people can’t distinguish between certain colors that the rest of us can. That’s how we know they see things differently. I’d bet that there is a slight difference between the way we all perceive color, so that my blue is a shade off from yours. But I don’t think we’d be able to emonstrate it except with very careful tests.
the whole issue of color vision and even color language is a weird and non-obvious one. If you want something to really screw up your mental picture of the world, look up the Land effect and Edwin Land’s “Retinex” theory of color vision.
This doesn’t answer the OP, because I’m not sure if there is any way even in PRINCIPLE to determine the answer to the OP! It’s a bit of background on how we see colours.
You have three kinds of colour-sensitive cells in your retina. They are often referred to as red, green and blue-sensitive. That is not quite true, however. They are MOST sensitive to those colours, but are stimulated by other colours as well to a lesser extent.
This can be quite interesting. Yellow light will stimulate the “red” and “green” cells equally, and so you see yellow. However, a mixture of red and green light does the same thing, so you also see yellow in this case. Red and green light mixed together does NOT make yellow light, it’s just that our eyes see it as yellow.
As to colours which we can’t see - there are frequencies above and below the visible light range which we don’t use for vision. Many insects use ultra-violet for vision, and rattlesnakes use infra-red. As to what they “see” when looking at these colours, your guess is as good as mine!
There is also the possibility of resolving more colours within the visible light spectrum. For example, between red and orange there is a colour you could call orangy-red. And between orangy red and orange, there is orangy-orangy-red. But you come to a point when you can’t distinguish between one shade of orangy red and another. Some animals can, however. Ducks have five types of colour-sensitive cells in their retinas rather than three. They use the same range of visible light as us, but they can see more colours. I can’t imagine what that’s like either.
A final point - the “blue” cells in your retina are stimulated by ultra-violet light, so you should be able to see ultra-violet. You can’t normally because the lens in your eye filters out ultra-violet, but the artificial lenses used to replace them in cataract operations don’t. So people who’ve had a cateract operation should be able to see a pure UV lamp come on, whereas the rest of us would think it was still off. It would look violet to them though, they wouldn’t see it as an “extra” colour.
As I mention on the other thread, there have been experiments done in distinguishing colors, and the participants all had close enough results that the CIE (internation organization of colorimetry) used the results to create “standard observer” for use in color measurement.
So in one sense, if we can all discriminate colors the same way, and combinations of colors tend to have the same effects on people, its probably fair to say that we all see colors similarly (with the exception of color blind people)
It’s been a while since my psych class too, so I hope I don’t screw this up…
After the cone cells turn light into a set of red, green, and blue intensities, the next layer of cells converts these intensities into color differences. Some of the cells discriminate between red and green, and some discriminate between blue and yellow (red plus green).
I think its at this point that the most common forms of color blindness occur. Either the red-green or the blue-yellow cells don’t function correctly.
If it were just a different distribution of the cone cells, I think the brain could accomodate it, but you would notice that the eye would have less spatial resolution for some colors than others. So pure red text might be harder to read than pure blue text of the same brightness, or something.
the same question would apply to any of our senses. How do you know we perceive the same sound the same way? There is no way of knowing this. But what about taste? I love chocolate. If you don’t like chocolate it probably means it tastes different to you, not that it tastes the same and you don’t like that taste.
Has there ever been, however, a recorded case of a human able to see into these ranges due to a chance mutations? Seems like it would be a really cool n useful mutation. If not, I wonder if it would be possible to genetically engineer such an effect…
The map isn’t the territory. In this case the abstract terms “Orange” or “Blue” are the maps, and the actual wavelengths of light are the territories. Each person’s map is different, but thanks to abstraction you can talk about them interchangeably.
This is something I wondered about for a while and then I finally figured it out. Even though I’m a fashion nightmare (blue pants/black shirt/etc.), enough people recognize which colors go together versus which colors don’t to make it obvious that most people see colors the same way.
Example: if two people see a dark blue and green dress that’s fine - but when one sees light pink instead of dark blue there’s conflict. Not in that one likes it and the other doesn’t - but to one person the colors go together and to the other they don’t. I have hardly ever heard of this.
Or when a fashion designer puts a blazing streak of red across a piece of clothing to stand out. Enough people can tell that it is intended to clash. If everyone saw it differently then to some people it would probably match and go practically unnoticed.
Even though I look back and I’m rambling and drunk - I think that enough people agreeing on which colors go together in clothing proves that most people see colors the same way.
