Thread: Colour

I've often thought about this, like if we both look out to sea, I see my version of blue, but what you see might be my interpretation of red or green. But still both are called blue.

How do we know that we all see the same colours universally and not completely different colours, or even variations on the colours that us ourselves can't comprehend.

I think about this too.

And it's really just something that can't be solved until everything is known about the eyes and the brain.

Originally Posted by ClassyElf

I think about this too.

And it's really just something that can't be solved until everything is known about the eyes and the brain.

Even then it's dubious to say it could be known. By its nature the experienced color blue is subjective, aka non-objective, aka external to science.

Perhaps the universe is surrounded by frosted chocolate.
/thread

Read about qualia.

I think maybe we all experience the same qualia because people seem to get have the same responses to other qualia such as melodies.

But nobody knows and by definition it's impossile to know. Not until the hard problem of consciousness is solved, perhaps.

Yeah, me and my friend were talking about this a while ago (after smoking a little pot, of course). I guess the truth is, we may never know... there's no telling what the future has to offer us.

But when I come to think about, we all are humans after all, we evolved the same and we have the same organs/body parts... So maybe our eyes also work the same... maybe they dont... who knows?

Originally Posted by WolfeDreamer531

Yeah, me and my friend were talking about this a while ago (after smoking a little pot, of course). I guess the truth is, we may never know... there's no telling what the future has to offer us.

But when I come to think about, we all are humans after all, we evolved the same and we have the same organs/body parts... So maybe our eyes also work the same... maybe they dont... who knows?

Biologists.

All our eyes have cone cells in our retina which detect different wavelengths of light. We get strong Gaussian responses to around about 3 wavelengths of light, from which we then interpret the signals received in our brain. Example including the sensitivity for rod cells:



Saying we see perceive colours differently means that one would experience and react differently to the same picture. In fact, the only people to experience this are often colour-blind, in which they cannot perceive a certain colour. This makes them unable to perceive certain things and thus they get different reactions to certain situations. The fact that between normal people, we experience the same reactions to combinations of colours can be argued to be indicative to us all perceiving things more or less the same. The experience of what is blue may be a subjective experience, determined solely by the brain, however we all seem to share the same perception. Only when you enter the realm of colour-blindness do we start to see differences. Example to highlight this:



Our brains are pretty capable of assigning perceptions to certain information (visual, etc), but we all seem to have that capability. It seems that these perceptions do not change much between people in terms of our brain capacity, but then we still see differences within the population. This has to do with our eyes in the case of colour-blindness, and that certain cone cells in the retina have a deficiency to detect the difference between certain wavelengths of light. Our brains continue to interpret the data received from our eyes in the same way, but since the data is faulty, we fail to perceive certain shades of colour correctly.

I think there's no way to really tell if what someone sees as blue is what someone else sees as red. They would still call it by the same name, but how the brain interprets the actual data is very subjective. Both people can agree on blue things being blue, and red things being red. Interesting to think about.

Originally Posted by Schmaven

I think there's no way to really tell if what someone sees as blue is what someone else sees as red. They would still call it by the same name, but how the brain interprets the actual data is very subjective. Both people can agree on blue things being blue, and red things being red. Interesting to think about.

Different colours though present differences in contrast, so if people did perceive things differently as to which perception is which (regardless of the label we apply), they would pick up on different details due to the differences in contrast in the perceived image. The fact that most people all seem to share the same reactions to perceived images with regards to detail suggests that such perceptions of what blue and red is represented visually is hard-wired into the brain. Otherwise, what one person's perception may seem to be a true-colour image to him, would be a false-colour image to another person.

Originally Posted by Reality_is_a_Dream

Does it exist? Is what I think is "Green", you think is a colour that I will never know the extistance of? You can't describe any given colour without describing somthing else that may differ from person to person. We all seem to think differently, and our brains see more than our eyes. What do you think?

A colour is a representation of the mind of a certain part of the spectrum of electromagnetic waves. We have tons of electromagnetic waves coming inside our eyes. What our brain does is sort these waves into categories. These categories is what we call colors.

And yes, afaik, each brain sorts the waves by wavelength in the same manner, therefore, we most likely see the same colors. The labels of the categories don't really matter, what matters is that they are categorized, so that we can differentiate between all the different energy out there.

Colors of light are quantifiable, but colors as percieved are only qualifiable. Blue has a wavelength of ___nanometers to ___nanometers, and that is irrevocable fact (well, relatively, blue is averaged throughout that range, it's not exact to the nanometer), but it is impossible to see if one sees the same color that another person sees. My idea of blue could be your idea of yellow (though, it would have to be equivalent colours on the color wheel, otherwise some people could see a sort of purplish-blackish-green, as contrasting colors would always have to be opposite each other on the color wheel. THis implies that we all see pretty much the same colours, but does not prove it).

Bluefinger has a point. It is believed that some woman can see a forth colours. What is meant by this, is that normal people can pick up around 1 million colours. That is, 1 million different nuances of blue, red and green. The forth colour allows the person to see 100 million nuances, effectively allowing her to pick up more details in pictures and colours. This ability is limited to women though, because of some business with genes building for the eyes are mainly strapped to X chromosomes.

This was actually mentioned in a thread somewhere else here on DreamViews. I think guerilla made it, but I can't really remember where I saw it.

Also, correct me if I got something wrong

Originally Posted by Marvo

Bluefinger has a point. It is believed that some woman can see a forth colours. What is meant by this, is that normal people can pick up around 1 million colours. That is, 1 million different nuances of blue, red and green. The forth colour allows the person to see 100 million nuances, effectively allowing her to pick up more details in pictures and colours. This ability is limited to women though, because of some business with genes building for the eyes are mainly strapped to X chromosomes.

This was actually mentioned in a thread somewhere else here on DreamViews. I think guerilla made it, but I can't really remember where I saw it.

Also, correct me if I got something wrong

The term is tetrachromatic. And yes, it is observed in only women so far, so genetically it may be tied down with the gene requiring to be expressed on both X chromosomes (possibly a recessive trait). I don't think you've got anything wrong though in the post.

I am so smart :tinfoil: