Could everyone in the world see in different colors??? Yeah, we all look at the sky and say it’s blue, but maybe blue looks different to every single person, but they just call it blue because that’s what they’ve come to know it as. We all say the grass is green, but maybe to someone else it looks purple but they just call it green. Don’t think I’m crazy.
Moved to General Questions.
Moved to Unanswerable Questions.
No as a matter of fact CA answered this in one of his columns. I can’t find it now but it related how each society has words for colors. I will see if I can find the link
I didn’t mean to belittle the question, I just said that because I don’t think there is any way to verify that we all do in fact see the same color. Now, somebody is likely to chime in with “but we can measure & record wavelengths of light with sensitive instruments”, but this just means that these instruments all “see” the same color, and it gets no closer to answering the question.
The image-to-name correlation is made deep in our brains, and I don’t think there is any way to intercept that link and verify its integrity or accuracy against that of another’s.
Why do you think the wavelength response is not important? It does tell us that except for the color blind, we all have receptors that respond to light in identical ways. We can all be tricked the same way, e.g. use the same 3 colors to simulate all possible colors.
In addition, we all have similar responses and associations to certain colors - red=danger, etc. I think this suggests that we are born with the knowledge of what each color is. In fact, if animals weren’t born with some sort of universal color idenfitication, how would they identify their mates or their food? Do they learn it all from experience?
This has crossed my mind before too, but I don’t see anyway of verifying it one way or another of course. I’ve read other philosophers that pondered this one, too.
The thing is, to red, for example, we attribute danger, heat,… and other things, depending on the context. Those attributes will still get mapped onto the individual’s perception of red, regardless of whether or not his perception of red is the same as another’s–one person may perceive red as I perceive blue, for example, but he would still associate heat, danger,… to “my” blue (“his” red).
I may be quite confused if I perceived the world as another perceives it. Then again, maybe not; hell if I know. A good Vulcan mind meld might possibly answer your question.
i think so, maybe. my very first car was an old OLDS Delta 98. It was a mint green color. The ugliest car you’ll ever see. One of my female friends swears to this day it was white. I define my friend as being a female because males are usually the ones who are color blind. Im not sure if she really thought the car was white or if she was trying to make me feel better.
I should also add that, that same female friend swears my hair is black, not dark brown. There is no such thing as black hair. She also swears that the ink in a black marker is black. I think it’s a really dark shade of purple.
scr4 said:
In addition, we all have similar responses nd associations to certain colors - red=danger,
Sorry, but that’s just not true. That’s a learned behavior. For example the Chinese associate white with death, not black as Western countries do.
People have different levels of color perception, just as they hear differently, smell differently, etc. I had a very good friend with blue-yellow color blindness (not the more familiar red-green.) He said he could tell certain shades, while other shades simply looked gray. Some of us can not tell the difference between blue, azure, lapus, etc., just as some people can’t tell the difference between D and D# on a musical scale.
This thought has occurred to me before as well.
My own two eyes receive colors slightly differently. I can look at an object with one eye closed, then look at it with the other eye, and I get a very slight shading difference in the colors. The difference is most pronounced in the blues, which are deeper and more rich with my left eye, but have a slight tinge of green when seen with my right eye.
Noticing this difference led me to the same speculation as DEXI***.
“My own two eyes receive colors slightly differently.”
Give me a break. What have you - two different brains, one per eyeball?
I suppose someone will now come along and insist one eyeball tells them: white, the other: black.
[Note: This message has been edited by Nickrz]
How do you know it’s ten months old? What is the serial number on the bottom? What numerb shows when its turned on the screen?
“Men are like parking spaces, the available ones are handicapped.”
Here’s a link to a Cecil column which doesn’t necessarily answer the OP, but does make for interesting reading on the subject of color perception in humans.
Here’s mud in yer eye!
Yer pal, UncleBeer.
There is no color, only the perception of color. The concept of color exists only in the human brain; the outside world contains radiation in various wavelengths, but we have visual receptors and a visual cortex that perceives them as colors. Think about it; what color do you see when something is illuminated with X-rays or gamma rays? That’s right, nothing, because you have no receptors for those wavelengths, thus no visual reference or perception of them as colors. That doesn’t mean that some lifeform elswhere in the universe doesn’t see these wavelengths as “color”; we are just not equipped.
TT
“Believe those who seek the truth.
Doubt those who find it.” --Andre Gide
Nickrz wrote:
Geez, Nickrz, why the hostility? You think I’m making this stuff up??? What would be my motive in doing so? I am simply reporting a fact. You can choose to believe it or not, as you please, but spare me your rant.
The fact is, my eyes “see” colors slightly differently. Obviously, I do have but one brain. Therefore, a logical deduction is that there is some slight difference between my eyeballs themselves, or between the optic nerves conveying the messages from my eyeballs to my brain.
That does not strain credibility. Humans are not absolutely symmetrical. You can look at the two sides of your face and observe slight (or even great) differences. Why then can’t the eye on one side (or the optic nerve on one side) function slightly differently from that on the other? (And again, why would I make this stuff up?)
Sheesh!
Oh boy! Another “Sheesh” thread!
This sig not Y2K compliant. Happy 1900.
Spoke- … this is vague, but:
I’ve heard that some painter whose name I cannot now recall had something wrong with his eyes (cataracts, possibly). He painted a scene from his garden using only his left eye, and the same scene using only his right eye. Then he had an operation, and when he looked at those paintings with his newly corrected vision he was horrified. The colors were all wrong, but he hadn’t been able to tell that before.
Like I said… vague. But does anyone recognize that story? It was a relatively famous painter (i.e. I’d heard of him before).