Psychologically, this question has always had me confused. Back to childhood:
I see the colour green. My teacher says: “That’s green.”
But there’s nothing, surely, to say that we’re not seeing two completely different colours, but that when we see that colour, we both agree that it has the name “green”.
So, my overriding question is: Is this true?
But, couldn’t this then be true of objects as well?
There are a lot of both psychological and philosophical theories about the transforming that the brain might do with the physical world into something we can more easily understand…
Actually, there is. A certain stretch of the electromagnetic spectrum (quantifiable wavelengths of light) have been defined as “green”. Show different people those wavelengths, ask them what they see, and they should all say “green”. (unless, of course, they’re color blind )
But perhaps you still have a point in that different people’s brains may interpret those wavelengths of light differently. But I don’t know of any evidence for this (anyone?) plus we’re all built from the same instruction manual (DNA) - - so I doubt it.
**No way to tell; this is an age-old philosophical question.
**Less likely; I see a square, I percieve it’s edges as straight, I can verify this by placing another straight edge along them. Oversimplified version - we could shine beams of light along the edges and since light travels in straight lines, we could draw conclusions that way, what’s that you say? what if light doesn’t travel in straight lines? well, maybe it doesn’t bu in order to test things, we need to have some starting point.
**Undoubtedly perception happens in the brain/mind rather than the eyes; objects/light don’t have colours, that’s just our sensory apparatus’ way of telling us something a bit more detailed than ‘there’s light here’ or ‘there’s no light here’.
This has been tackled a few times in other threads, but I’m not feeling well today and am too lazy to search for them.
IIRC, the general consensus was that two given people are probably giving the same name to the same portion of the spectrum. Culturally, however, there are significant differences in color labeling. Cultures tend to “recognize” colors in a certain order–they might have a word for “blue” and “red” but not “orange,” and if they do have “orange,” they probably have “pink,” etc.
Cool. Thanks for the answers - informative and thought provoking.
I appreciate the whole “spectrum” thing is going on, but (and I think you kind of allude to this, so sorry if I’m stepping on toes!) this doesn’t really make any difference. The part of the spectrum we both agree is called green may look completely different to the two of us. We just agree on what it’s called.
But I have been provoked to think further…oooh, dangerous, etc.
The way I see it from this is that it’s not just that we see green, specifically, as being different, we’d have to see the whole spectrum as being different, but not randomly so.
Otherwise, I don’t see how we’d ever agree on shades, colour co-ordination or in fact how we could have black and white being opposites.
If I undersrtand you correctly, you’re asking if what you see and I see as “green” are really the same color. What if I saw what you would call “blue” as “green”?
Answer: If there is no functioinal way to distinguish the way what you see as “green” and what I see as “green” as different, there’s no way to tell. The reason that we know some people are colorblind is because they can’t distinguish between colors that a person with normal color vision can see. There are many tests that can be used to find this out.
But if I “really” see BLUE where you see GREEN, but my “blue”-vision allows me to pass all the tests that you use for “green” vision, there’s no way you would ever know that my color vision differs from yours. This makes it all something of a moot point. I’m not a big fan of Dewey’s verification theory of “truth” (see Martin Gardner’s book The Whys of a Philosophical Scrivener), but it certainly applies here.
The issue of color vision by spectrum is more complicated than you make it out to be – color theory is wonderfully complex. Look up Edwin Land’s “retinex” theory of color vision, and the Land Effect. Hard to explain on the basis of “tristimulus” theory alone.
But even tristimulus theory is complicated – there are many spectral different combinations that look like the same “green” to your eyes. A monochromatic laser and white light through an interference filter have the same spectrum and look the same, but so might a broad-band spectrum that peaks near the same wavelength, but has red and blue in it.
I remember a class in college that I took about linguistics. The professor travelled extensively around the world, learning rather obscure languages; some were only spoken within a small portion of a certain country. He recounted a tale of a people who had one word for blue and green. When asked if the sky and the leaves were the same color, they responded “Yes.” After much interviewing, he was able to get them to admit that perhaps they were different shades of the same color. (I probably would do the same to a foriegner who tried to convince me that apples and fire engines were not the same color. )
Thec Master himself has covered the question of “primitive” color terminology. What I say (and the OP says)is a bit different – not that blue and green are the same, but that what you see as Green I see as “blue”. I hope that’s clear. And if it’s not, what difference does it make?
I read the question as “would I call green what you would call aqua” – in other words, do we perceive the same spot on the EM spectrum in the same way?
Obviously it’s hard to tell, but I think not. Obviously people have different sensitivities to heat and cold, to smell or taste. Some people hear certain sounds “better” than others.
Why should it be any different with our sense of color? All you have to do is watch two art directors arguing over how to correct the colors in a photograph.
This is not a question of physics, physiology, or even psychology, but fundamental metaphysics–basic beliefs about reality.
All the things we have words for, all the things we can speak of, are shareable entities. It MUST be so: we must both be able to indicate a “same thing” that will be the reality that our words represent. (Words for abstractions involve being able to specify a procedure that we will both engage in, taking as given that we will adopt the result of that procedure as the referent of our term).
Words for colors thus stand for shareable things.
But a word is a tool. The question is: Does our agreement on word reference include everything that our concomittant experiences contain? In addition to knowing how to point to a green-colored object, do I also have a completely private experience of a “seeming,” a “what-it-is-like” that is part of what green-ness is for me?
I am inclined to say that I do. This is green considered entirely as phaenomenon, not “noumenon.”
DNA or no, there is no reason to believe that my phaenomenal experience of reality is IN ANY WAY similar to yours. The concept of similarity has no application in such a case. Experiential phaenomena AS SUCH are not comparable.
Not only do I not see the “same green,” I do not even “see” what you would think of as a color–or a visual experience–or a sense experience at all. It is only an ineffable “something.”
Every color corresponds to a wavelength. IIRC, green is somewhere in the range of 550 nm, but don’t quote me on that. Cal raises a valid point about our ability to resolve differences in slight changes of wavelength. One must also consider how that physically specific phenomenon is perceived. Considering the fact that we have different physiologies, our perception of color is indubitably different. We have different numbers of rods and cones in our eyes, and therefore, resolve the light perceived differently. The result of this fact may be that one person sees one hue of green and another person sees either a more resolved or slightly askew hue of green.
The next question that arises is that of inverted qualia. Aagin, as Cal mentioned, since inverted qualia, should they exist, are functionally equivalent to normal qualia, it is impossible to ascertain whether on is subject to spectrum inversion. Yes, it pisses me off too.
[ul]That is one groovy potential sig.[/ul]I always thought it could go beyond colours too. Ray Bradbury wrote or anthologised a story about a couple who give birth to a small blue pyramid with one eye. It turns out it IS their baby, but he’s been born into a different dimension. He can’t be brought out, because (insert stupid sci-fi plot forwarder), so the parents decide to go into his dimension, and with the help of some gizmo or other they become large blue rectangles. In their dimension, though, they all see one another as human. And all other humans as shapes.
For some reason all this makes me think of the question about how much of your world you can explain to distant aliens using words alone, with no common ground to go on: apparently you can do everything, even on a molecular level, except the concepts of left and right. So they might well build an antimatter spacecraft to come and get you, in which case you’re toast.
These are concepts I’ve followed for years in a very pop-science kind of a way. What we need is a scientist to come and explain gently, while allowing our childish… sorry, CREATIVE minds to continue exploring.
I once had a teacher say to me, upon learning I was color blind to certain colors, “What color are the leaves on that tree over there?” Uh, green, idiot.
The only time I have ever noticed that what I am seeing is different that what everyone else is seeing is in very subtle shades, and at the optometrist. You know those books with the circles that have different sized and colored dots, with another color of dots forming numbers? I can go through several pages and not see any numbers.
Even when we think something like “Maybe other beings would see us as pyramids,” we are still adhering to the background assumption that it is logically intelligible to use language (needless to say, “public” language) to assess and compare private experiences.
It seems to me that, once an experience has been defined as private, absolutely nothing can be said about its content: it is simply a “blank occasion.”
We DO in fact talk about what we CALL the content of some experience–whether a shade of green is light or dark, etc. I interpret such talk (to the extent it is meaningful) as reference to parts of the public, shareable elements of perception, not to the private phaenomenal experiences associated with those occasions.
It’s not a question of what other-dimensional visitors might see, but what it means to claim that the person sitting next to you “sees what you see”-- or “sees” at all.
Well, if the color I saw was different than The color you saw, these tests would be MEANINGLESS. but we know they work, so I can say with a certain amount of confidence that we all see the same colors (in general). OF course there are differences in luminance depending on your rods & cones, and whether you’re color blind or not… But green will always be green.
Then you are left with extreme solipsism, and can never leave your phenomenological experience to confirm anything. This is a very tough stand to defeat, but it is also useless in explaining anything other than the phenomenon.
If we accept that an abstract idea like “color,” “government,” or “love” can be understood even if it fails to be a public experience AND it fails to be explicitely definable that doesn’t make it any less shareable as we do have phenomenon to compare.
To the extent that people can point to an object and say, “That is red” then by golly we all share the same definition of ‘red.’ For an admitted private phenomenon, what else does anything matter? To the OP:
That is… to what extent would knowing that we actually perceive color differently even if we call them the same thing (through habit) affect anything?
To anyone
Aren’t the colorblind tests themselves indicative of the phenomenon of color perception? If not, how about this:
When we reub our eyes we “create” color perception without the explicit presence of light (ie- the pressure causes color sensation). As such, we may ask anyone what colors they see. Since this entire experience is private it CANNOT be clouded by discussion of wavelength or anything; in fact, it seems to me to rely purely on how specific nerves react to pressure, which should be physiologically fundamental or excessively common. As such, it should be a great guide to telling whether we all “really” see the same color.
I see yellows and purples and reds. As do, I suppose, everyone else.
When I was in college and taking color classes, they talked about an experiment that proved that some individuals do see colors differently.
THere was a white hollow ball sort of thing with a hole on one side for the subject to look through and a color swatch at the opposite side (but outside of) the ball.
The subject had knobs to control the color of the inside of the ball and they were instructed to adjust the color until it matched that of the swatch. When the subject reported a “perfect” match, the researchers could check the knob settings for their perception of the color.
They discovered that some subjects could have very different ideas of what color “matched” the color swatch.
It might have more to do with the subject’s sensitivity to matching the color…after all, some people can look at a tree-covered hillside and see maybe 3 shades of green whereas someone with more training/sensitivity/experience/whatever might see dozens of shades of green and someone else may see hundreds.
But in the test, some subjects called a “match” what some other subjects would report and not even being in the same family…ie, not just a difference between “lime green” and “hunter green” but the difference between green and purple.
There was also a theory that the reason Van Gogh’s colors were the way they are was because he had the same sort of vision issues as the people in the test who would see purple as a perfect match for a green swatch. He painted in electric yellows and sick greens but actually saw them as something more “realistic” or “normal.”
I am not colorblind, but I do seem to be color-impaired.
It’s not uncommon that I use a color to describe something, only to find out that I am the only one who thinks it’s that color. Other times, my sense of color seems to match up with the rest of the world. I’m not really talking ‘iffy’ inbetween colors like aqua & teal, either. Something looks obviously blue to me, but is evidently green to everyone else. Or gray and blue, or whatever. They’re always adjacent or similar colors, it’s not like the red/green thing.
[sub]Either that, or it’s a giant conspiracy and you’re all out to get me. You won’t get away with this, I tell you!!![/sub]<peers around furtively>
P.S. This is also why I will accept almost anyone’s advice on color coordination.
I once knew a guy that could see red just fine, he just couldn’t differentiate between reds. Anything in the orange/red/pink range looked the same to him. I discovered this when he asked me to help him select a tie to match a shirt - needless to say, given the above, I declined.
On one specific instance, I remember spending a couple of hours in Payless Cashways trying to match my siding sample to their paint samples (this was before the mondo-cool color-matching computers were around). Well after passing my point of ultimate frustration, I left, ready to do murder. On the way home, I suddenly realized the solution to my crisis: I went and got my sister. She has an exceptional color sense and has since we were toddlers. She took my sample, walked up to the wall of paint chips, glanced at them and pulled out a few, spent a few minutes comparing everything, then handed me two cards and my sample. “It’s about halfway between these two,” she says, pointing. Looking at the backs (where they gave instructions on how to mix each of the three colors on each card), she made some calculations and formulated the proportions needed. We went and argued with the clerk (he was reluctant to make anything that wasn’t spelled out on the card) until he agreed to mix the paint her way. Voila, perfect match. The whole thing took about 15 minutes, excluding travel time. ARRRGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH! Somebody gave her all of my color skills! (Actually, I suspect she may be a tetrachromat.)
So, I’m absolutely sure there are differences in the way different individuals perceive and name colors.
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