Thread: A color to Me, A color to You....

It's a thought that occurred to me as well, but there is no answer I have yet been able to conceive of that would allow two people to understand any potential difference in the colors they are seeing between themselves. I imagine that this is more difficult even than trying to have a computer comprehend emotion.

I think we can at least safely assume that we do see the same shades. Color is taken in through the eyes and interpreted by the brain, and the receptors for light are based off of the same genetic code that was passed down to you by your parents. Whether or not the mind can interpret colors even further, though, I can not say.

Yep it's pretty bizarre... another interesting thing is that via induction it seems that there could be infinitely more possible colour qualia. If somebody had never seen the red spectrum their entire lives, and then saw red... they would be adding a quale they had previously considered nonexistent. You can extend this to parts of the EMS which we can't perceive either... however the EMS is continuous wheras the mind works using discrete logic, so the reasoning there is dubious.

We're only going to find proper answers once we work out the neural correlates of qualia.

The joy of Qualia huh ?

We all see in different shades, though mostly unmeasurable.

The perspection of colour can be vastly different: Not the same amount of cones, lack of one colur cone, B/W vision, colour blindness (many variations)

Some vitamins and other substancens can increase the shade or vividness or colour and etc.

Here is an example of how colour can be percieved diffrerent.

Normal colour vision:


No red cones:


No green cones:


No blue cones:


Then we have animals, with 1, 2, 3 cones (we have 3), and then some with 4 and 5. For example Zebrafish have 4 cones, which makes them see ultraviolet light!

The most advanced eyes in the animal kingdom are owned by these guys: Mantis shrimp


They have 12 colour cones!! Each of their eyes are divided into different specialities, one part of the eye track motion, another one see colour, one for infrared light and one for ultraviolet light.

I don't think we even can imagine how they percieve the world.

Every human eye interprets colour differently. Probably unnoticeable, but this is a cool situation you have created.

That Mantis shrimp must see the most bizzare shit.

WOW

This is VERY interesting.

Its crazy how science can't really pinpoint this either. An optitrician can test your vision but they can't see how you percieve colors. Wow, I'm amazed even more now.

There has been many times when I've talked to friends and family about, lets say, a color of shirt and there is an argument over oh its navy blue, its black, its purple.... We are all right.... crazy

I would love to be able to see what a Mantis shrimp sees. I wonder if color can be created in dreams?

I thought of that once, and tried to explain it to a friend, but he kept on being a dipshit and saying stuff like, "So you might think it looks orange, but I see it as red?" Retard.

But it is intriguing, that perhaps what I see as orange you see as the color I see as brown.

Brown is technically dark orange. :0

Colour is as a result of difference in wave-lengths, they are not subjective themselves (because they exist regardless of interpretation) but what you view is subjective, however if we can not tell the difference does it matter?

If we both agree that this is pink it doesn't matter if you are actually interpreting a different colour from me because for all intensive we ARE seeing the same colour. If you interpret it differently it is safe to assume you interpret all colours differently relative to how I see them so saying they are different is arbitrary when we agree they are the same,.

We can only describe colours relative to other colours so if my colour scale is the same but offset from yours we will always agree that the sky is blue and leaves are green because we are working off the same scale.

This reminds me of a koan. Who is the master who makes the grass green?

I also had a conversation about this with a friend mine the first time I took LSD.

Given that the process involved is very complex, it's entirely possible that individuals subjectively experience color differently. Something like this might even be influenced by developmental conditions. On the other hand, I don't know of any cases where someone's perception of colors changed over their lifetimes, so maybe the colors we see are uniform. Just one of those things we can never be completely sure about.

Sapientia- I'm confused... why does the "no green cones" and "no blue cones" contain the colors which are supposed to be absent (?) ?

I've thought about this a lot over the years because I have some reasonable difficulty with some colors. Because my hubby's an Ophthalmologist, I've asked him about it and he's always explained but it goes right over my head and I forget lol.

I perceive certain shades of blue/green, blue/purple, red/orange, orange/yellow differently than some people. My most confusing spectrum is blue/green and blue/purple.

Originally Posted by Zhaylin

Sapientia- I'm confused... why does the "no green cones" and "no blue cones" contain the colors which are supposed to be absent (?) ?

I've thought about this a lot over the years because I have some reasonable difficulty with some colors. Because my hubby's an Ophthalmologist, I've asked him about it and he's always explained but it goes right over my head and I forget lol.

I perceive certain shades of blue/green, blue/purple, red/orange, orange/yellow differently than some people. My most confusing spectrum is blue/green and blue/purple.

I think this post might cover it: http://dreamviews.com/community/show...3&postcount=19

If you compare the graph and my posted pictures, there seems to be similarity between them. As you see, if you remove the blue graph line from the graph, the red and green still covers the blue spectrum, though not as good if the blue was there. When giving colours to the cones, a "--" around it may be appropriate, depends on if you want to use the layman term or not.

Interesting....interesting..

Zhaylin - I get what your saying about how you percieve different shades differently. My mom and I have had a long running battle about colors; I had this deep dark purple comb once, she always referred to it as black, she could not see the other pigment. She's very stubborn and we fought about it haha. She also can't tell the difference between navy blue and black, everything is black to her.

I also notice this among my friends; I had, what I thought was, a light purple shirt on; my friend said "that shade of blue looks great on you". I was baffled, how could she percieve that as blue, it was clearly purple! Then, we took a picture later on and on the camera it showed up as blue!!

It seems like there hasn't been much research on this and it's clear that there really is no way to proove how and why people see colors a certain way.

I also wonder if mood, environment, what someone ate, drank etc.... effects color perception??

Zhaylin and dreamingofdreaming.

Maybe you are tetrachromats, which are individuals who have 4 cones, and not the normal 3. Studies have shown that it is possible, but still more studies are needed to tell about how wide-spread it is. One of the studies suggest 3% of women have tetrachromacy, and the other one 50% for women.

There is really to little research on this, but an individual with tectrachromacy will see different colours than a trichromat. This might explain the difference in shades and hues that you see.


I think this paper is interensting if you wan't to know more about this, birds are tetrachromats, notice the spectrum sensivity graph on page 6.
Bird vision and tetrachromacy

Thanks for the links! I'll look at them later tonight when my mind is more clear (I'm very sleepy right now).

All I know is that the thread "jinxed" my television lol. When I returned from a doctors appointment and turned on my computer/TV, the colors were royally screwed up. (too much green and not enough blue and more bright than usual).
I had to mess with my TV's settings but it's tollerable now ;P

I used to have arguments with people about colors all the time, and still do every now and then.
I've also butt heads with people who see black instead of the color it "really" is.

Colors in general amaze me. I didn't learn until recently that even cameras, at one time, couldn't capture the spectrum that people see.
I imagine it must have been very frustrating to ancient civilizations who wanted to duplicate the burmese color of a sunrise but not be able to find the material to make the color needed.

**Edit**
I quickly scanned the last link and noticed the scale of color on the 2nd or 3rd page. Is there a variance to the red spectrum? Starting at around "640" I see "red" all the way to the end with no change at all.

Originally Posted by Zhaylin

**Edit**
I quickly scanned the last link and noticed the scale of color on the 2nd or 3rd page. Is there a variance to the red spectrum? Starting at around "640" I see "red" all the way to the end with no change at all.

If you zoom in to 1600 %, you can clearly see it's the same colour. I think if we analyzed each pixel colour in a computer program we should pretty much get the same result.

This is one of the topics that my mind conflicts about constantly. If I see blue, someone else might see green, but then someone else might see orange or white. Like if I don't look really close, -to me- the UPS truck is black, but to others, -even if they're far away- it's brown. Also, is reflective a color?? How about transparent?? Can I see through something but others can't?? I know that some geology books will call quartz transparent but I for one can't see anything (except whatever kind of quartz they use in clocks).

No transparancy and reflectivity etc. are objective things which can be given physical values. Something is transparent because it lets the visible light pass through it unaltered; who you are can't possibly change that.

Colour is merely different wavelengths of light. The only reason we would each perceive an individual colour scheme would be if the signals from the eye to the brain painted a different picture for each person due to individuality. But other than that, all our eyes work the same and the signals from the eye to brain work the same, minus a few exceptions, i.e. colour blind people. You can't really prove we all see things differently, nor can you prove that we see things the same.

If there's a colour blind person and a person that isn't colour blind, and the colour blind person claims ball is red whereas the person who isn't colour blind claims it's brown, who's right? The real answer is neither because in the external world there is no colour. There is merely different wavelengths of light.
It's the same with sound and smell. Sound is merely vibrations that we perceive as noise. But in the external world, there is no noise. Smell is merely certain shaped particals touching the fine hairs inside our nose. There is no smelly particals in the external world.

so what is really behind our senses and perception? if there is anything at all...

Originally Posted by b!ll

Colour is merely different wavelengths of light. The only reason we would each perceive an individual colour scheme would be if the signals from the eye to the brain painted a different picture for each person due to individuality.

So in the first half you are saying that it is possible for each person to percieve color differently due to individual signals from the eye to the brain; because everyone is unique. But you also mention that all eyes work the same and therefore we all see the same.... What do you really think?

I think there is so much unknown about this and so much unknown on just brain activity alone, that it would be impossible to truely say how each person percieves color.

Originally Posted by b!ll

so what is really behind our senses and perception? if there is anything at all...

I'm still curious how whether mood, diet, illness, drugs etc... can effect perception. Its clear that alcohol throws your equillibrium off and people/places/things seem more attractive and "happy". With psychedelics (LSD, shrooms....) senses get very distorted. Colors appear that are not usually there i.e. rainbows on walls, color prisims in clouds.... Smell is intensified and sound is increased and distorted. You can blame this on the drugs or an illness (feverish) but how do we know that this is not how the world really is?

Perhaps it is in these frames of mind that we see the world how it is to really be percieved. Our dreams contain the same kind of imagary; crazy colors, strange sounds, instense smells.... So it seems that when our mind is "free" we are able to truely see things in a new light.... Well I can go into a bunch of things from here, I better stop I'm feeling quite feverish at the moment anyways....

Thoughts? Arguments? Theories? Reponses?

Originally Posted by dreamingofdreaming

So in the first half you are saying that it is possible for each person to percieve color differently due to individual signals from the eye to the brain; because everyone is unique. But you also mention that all eyes work the same and therefore we all see the same.... What do you really think?

I was just suggesting what could be the case. In my personal opinion I think it's not worth worrying about. If we can't prove it or disprove it and it doesn't really effect our lives, then i personally am not going to meddle with it.

Subjective not objective.
Yes, we do all recieve the same wavelengths of light, but we cannot tell whether we percieve this information exactly the same (we do know that we see somewhat similar colours). Still, it is impossible to answer for sure.

Colour does not actually exist. It is just our brains presenting us with interpretations of different wavelengths of light. You cannot perceive other people's perception of these wavelengths.

yea iv had this thought before.
It would most likely work if some people see in "negative" you would never know.

Eh, I think we see the same colors. What I think is different is how we associate the color. If you see red and think of love, it would be different then someone who thinks of death.