Seeing is believing?

T

typha

Special Member
Registered Member
I always wonder about the way that we see things, and i have this theory about the colors that we see-
We all see colors differnently but we are taught what the color is supposed to look like.. so colors could be all differnt through different peoples eyes... So blue could be green in someone elses eyes, but we're all taught that it is blue. does anyone else have any theories?
 
Yes, Yes, Yes
I have been saying this for the last 10 years and people just think I am crazy, when I try to explain it to them.
 
i see that you are 'pondering what i have been pondering'(reguards to boris)

i first started thinking about it because of color blind people. i was thinking, "how do i know im not colorblind"? because, i ahve been taught that green loox a certain way, how do i know that oher people think it loox the same? but then you have to realize something, the basic colors, like white and black resemble dark and light. now. if everyone saw them as a different color, then how would we diffentuate dark and light? bluw can be a dark color, but it can also be a light color, what is the difference. everything would have to be cordinated in your eyes. it would all have too be the same between everyone.

just try to think about it, it is a very confusing post and i cannot explain it. but how would everyone still match??? (clothing)

ya, watever
 
hmm

lol@ how would everyone still match
yeah i thought about that and light blue and light pink are both going to be the same shade of gray to a color blind person, and how do we know we match? maybe we were taught what is supposed to look good together....
 
EURIKA!!!

Hey! I might be able to help you guys out! I have this social problem with other people, see? And we're always getting into arguments about whether or not my socks match and...
No, seriously. I DO get into a lot of arguments with my brother and friends because I will not be convinced that what THEY say is navy blue is not in reality black. It's like that with certain shades of green and blue, and oranges and reds, yellows and greens. But mostly about navy blue and black. I just don't see ANY blue ANYWHERE on the surface of the material (whatever it is) and they wanna get all pissy...but hey, maybe I have some kind of colorblindness. You know, the mild kind like inability to see between red and green though I can't possible imagine how that could be... :O)~~
However, in reality how we see the color is of no importance when it comes down to it because, "what's in a name? Would a rose by any other name not smell as sweet?" ...did I quote that right?
 
well...

I actually do see the difference cuz i have a stuffed whale (yes i am such a 5 year old) that half of it has this blueish tint and the other half is black, but your quote is pretty much right... it doesnt matter but its somthing to think about. :)
 
To Dexter,
ok, I'll try to explain it.
Let's say that a lemon is a certain colour and we'll call this color "X".now when we are little we are told that color X is yellow, when in fact what you and I are seeing could be two different colors. Lets say that I see a lemon as what you would call green. I would still call it yellow, because I know that X = yellow. but we would both be actualy seeing different colors, and we would never know.
Also if this were tru, it would explain why people like different colors. It could be that we are all drawn to the same color, but to us they have different names.
Well, that's my thought, anyway.
Dolphin
 
heeeey!

Man, Dolphin! That was so inexplicably cool! I mean, the way you put it was marvelous. Man...I just want you to know that you are on my "cool list" of peoples. That was awesome...and Typha, thanks for the subject. My brain had started to atrophy...again. Anybody know a more efficient way to prevent that?

...RHETORICAL QUESTION, ATHIESTHATER...;oP
 
Baloney

Sorry to rain on everyone's parade like this, but the issue of color perception is resolvable empirically with no need for metaphysical meditation.

First off, everyone agrees on the difference between black and white. Black is the perception you get when you're locked in a dark room. White is the perception you get when you look at a blinding light source. Grayscales lie in-between. So at a minimum, all agree on brightness.

Color follows. Green is green and red is red, because when you mix them together additively you get yellow. Add red and blue and you get magenta. Add green and blue, and you get aquamarine. Subtract blue from yellow, and you get green. Add red, green and blue, or magenta and yellow, or yellow and aquamarine, or aquamarine and magenta in equal proportions, and you get white. Add a little green to a lot of red, and you get shades of orange. Mix two parts red, one part green and one part blue, and you get brown. Such additive/subtractive relationships between colors are fixed, and color names are fixed with respect to those relationships. Thus, if someone at first thinks that green is really yellow, they will eventually come across a situation where their name of a color clashes with another color's name -- and so they would know something's wrong.
 
Sorry Boris, but you're actualy explaining nothing. You see, we are not arguing about what colors make up what color, we are discussing the posibility of not seeing it the same way. We're not talking about shades either. Everything you just put in your reply could easily be translated into the example I gave. You would still mix colors to get another one, and you would learn what it is called, yet it doesn't mean we see it the same.
 
color

Dolphin, I would have to agree with your reply to Boris; I think the problem is a little bit more complex than what colors make up which colors. I believe it might help to rephrase the question like this; "Do the sensory apparatuses of different organisms register, or detect, the external world in the same, or similar, fashions." For example, when we go to an ear doctor to get our hearing checked, he puts a set of earphones on our head and plays different sounds into the earphones, sounds that we describe as high-pitch, low-pitch, loud, soft, etc. What, to me, makes this scenario reliable, is the fact that the sounds are generated by a machine. And the sounds generated by that machine are mearsurable by another machine. That's why we seldom question it when the doctor says, "Well, you have a high-frequency loss in your left ear, and your right ear isn't picking up the medium range sounds. That's why you keep asking people to repeat what they
say." I don't know for a fact that it has been done, but I believe that it is very possible to build a machine that would do with light what the ear doctor's machine does with sound. Then we could push button #1, and it would display on a screen a certain wave-length of light, (I believe they mearsure the wave-length of light in angstroms) and we would call that "Wave-length A". And we would call the light from button #2, "Wave-length B", etc.,etc. Then we would test a great number of people, and we would find some people that said, "I perceive the light from button #1 as a color I call red, and I perceive the light from buttom #2 as a diferent color, which I call purple", etc. And we might find some people that said, "I perceive the light from buttons A,B, and C as being the same color," and we might say these people are color-blind in a centain wave-length.
I think in this way we could say whether or not people see the same color. I hope this helps shed a little light on the question. Thanks for your patience.
jadex
 
Re: color

Originally posted by jadex
D
I think in this way we could say whether or not people see the same color. I hope this helps shed a little light on the question. Thanks for your patience.
jadex
Click to expand...
You're missing the point (as I understand it).
If you pick on anyone and show them a light beam with a wavelength of about 750 nanometres, pretty much everyone will agree that what they're seeing is 'red'. The question is: does everyone see teh same 'red'? It's entirely possible that your idea of red look the same as my green; however, we've both been trained to call the colour of (traffic lights, apples, etc) red. It doesn't mean that we're both seeing the same colour; it just means that we've both been trained to call it the same thing.
Am I making sense?
 
color

rde, I must respectfully disagree with you. It seems to me that if you set two people in front of a screen, and display a light at 750 nanometres, then they are, in fact, seeing (observing ? ) the "same" red. The question then becomes, "Does the same thing go on inside their respective nervous systems?" Another way to experess it would be to say, "They are observing the same red, (nervous system receiving input), but are they perceiving the same red (nervous system processing input)? I don't think we can answer that question in an absolute sense, because we can't get inside each others heads to see what goes on, or to feel what goes on. But when two (or many) people say that the color they perseive at 750 nanometres is the same color they perceive when they see apples and tomatoes, and stop lights, then I think the odds are very good that what goes on inside their respective nervous systems is very similar. And I think, for all practical purposes, we can say that they are "seeing the same red". Does this make sense?
 
Re: color

Originally posted by jadex
But when two (or many) people say that the color they perseive at 750 nanometres is the same color they perceive when they see apples and tomatoes, and stop lights, then I think the odds are very good that what goes on inside their respective nervous systems is very similar. And I think, for all practical purposes, we can say that they are "seeing the same red". Does this make sense?
Click to expand...

In absolute terms, people are inevitably going to see the same colour for traffic lights and tomatoes; after all, what's happening is the tomato is absorbing all light, and sending out only light at a specific set of wavelengths. And these wavelengths will all correspond to a specific colour, which we've been trained to call red. Whether the sensory input is interpreted similarly by everyone is my point. Consider synaesthesia; that to my mind is evidence that our senses are, if not arbitrary, then at least capable of different interpretations.

As it happens, I'm not really disagreeing with you; it's a purely academic point. I suspect you're right when you say we all see the same red; I just happen to think that it (a) is probably unknowable and (b) doesn't matter.
 
To see, or not to see...

The question of whether the inner experiences of perception (the "qualia") are the same for distinct individuals is indeed an old, and a completely meaningless one. Let me explain.

First of all, we all agree that at least as far as distinguishing color-blindness from color-perception, the tests are simple. Someone who perceives in gray-scale would not be able to tell whether they are looking at a color photograph or a black-and-white one; as soon as they start describing the colors of a black-and-white photograph, you know they are color-blind. There are actually several different types of color-blindness, but the simple procedure of displaying a picture and asking the person to identify the color of the various elements in the picture, works to identify any color blindness whatsoever. As concerns the quality of perception, clearly color-blind people live in a partially or completely color-deprived world, so their visual qualia are not the same as for those who can see color. (Incidentally, everyone is color-blind in low-light conditions, so if you want to experience an approximation to color-blindness, pay attention to your visual perception when you are in a dark room with no bright light emitters, or in the middle of nowhere during the night where moonlight is your only source of illumination.)

When it comes to color-aware people, their perceptions arise from the three types of "cone" photoreceptors in the retina; these respond, respectively, primarily to the "red", "green" and "blue" bands of the visible spectrum. Wavelengths that stimulate mostly the red receptors, correspond to shades of red, and likewise for the other two. This is why combinations of red, green and blue light can generate any other perceived color (e.g. that's why TV and computer screens use RGB color coding and display technology.) While there may be genetic variations in the color receptors across individuals, the general characteristics of those receptors (and the general structure of the eye) ensure that light is at least detected equivalently across color-aware individuals.

As to what happens to the visual signals as they travel through the various visual brain nuclei and cortex, is anyone's guess -- but asking whether any two individuals have the same inner experience with respect to color perception is as pointless as asking whether any two individuals could ever be in exactly the same cognitive state; the obvious answer is: of course not! No two brains are exactly alike, and therefore no two minds are exactly alike either. However, what we can be sure of, is that all the color-aware individuals indeed perceive the same (at least largely the same, depending on genetic variability) range of colors, and consistently identify particular electromagnetic frequencies within that range via mutually agreed-upon names.

But trying to imagine yourself in someone else's shoes (i.e. "how would the world look if I saw it through Joe's eyes?") is completely nonsensical. That's because your brain doesn't work the exact same way that someone else's brain does, and therefore either it is you who is perceiving, or it is someone else. Your perceptions and memories thereof are only valid information in the context of your own brain -- so it is impossible to translate someone else's experiences into a format that would be equivalent to yours without altering their essense in the process. So to ask whether your perception of red is the same as someone else's perception of red, does not make any sense at all. You both agree that a certain wavelength of light is red, and that's as much as can be reasonable.
 
Re: To see, or not to see...

Originally posted by Boris
The question of whether the inner experiences of perception (the "qualia") are the same for distinct individuals is indeed an old, and a completely meaningless one. Let me explain.
[snip]
But trying to imagine yourself in someone else's shoes (i.e. "how would the world look if I saw it through Joe's eyes?") is completely nonsensical. That's because your brain doesn't work the exact same way that someone else's brain does, and therefore either it is you who is perceiving, or it is someone else. Your perceptions and memories thereof are only valid information in the context of your own brain -- so it is impossible to translate someone else's experiences into a format that would be equivalent to yours without altering their essense in the process. So to ask whether your perception of red is the same as someone else's perception of red, does not make any sense at all. You both agree that a certain wavelength of light is red, and that's as much as can be reasonable.
Click to expand...
Meaningless? Possibly. But certainly not in the sense of 'nonsensical'. Why? Let me count the ways...
First of all, cast your mind back to the beginning of the twentieth century, when Einstein asked a question that at the time seemed meaningless and nonsensical; what would happen if the speed of light were constant? This is a theory that flies in the face of all common sense, and it's accepted these days solely because it's withstood the rigours of the scientific method. There are hundreds of equally radical theories these days, most (if not all) wrong. But until those theories are tested, they are merely wild hypotheses to sneer at or dismiss as nonsensical.

As for the question at hand: do well see red the same way? You say meaningless and nonsensical, and I said academic. After a little pondering, I suspect that we're both wrong. True, there are no uses for such knowledge today; nor is there even the hope of a means of testing. But the lack of a method of testing doesn't invalidate the question; it just means that we can't subject it to the scientific method.

Supposing, five years from now, someone identifies something in the body - a gene, a protein, whatever - that confers on its owner a significant benefit or disadvantage. This object would be studied greatly. Supposing as a result of this study it came to be known that this particular (we'll say gene for now) gene also affects the way the brain interprets light. Suddenly, the question is not promoted from meaninglessness, but may become of vital importance to a significant portion of the human race.

Both of the points above are, admittedly, a little too blessed with hyperbole, but I hope you'll see my point.
 
point taken

rde,

Sure I see your point. But it's one thing to ask how the brain perceives light, and another to ask what the subjective experience of the sentience manifested by the brain is like. It's one thing to understand descriptively what is being perceived; it's another thing to actually perceive.

It's true that we are all biochemically similar, so at least to some degree our perceptions and conscious experiences must be similar. That much is verified by the very existence of our civilization; it means that at least some things we do agree on. But even for a single individual, the qualia change with age. So the quality of perception is a function of the here and now, and of the particular individual. At least so much is the case while we remain the biochemical humans that we are.
 
Re: point taken

Originally posted by Boris
It's one thing to understand descriptively what is being perceived; it's another thing to actually perceive.
Click to expand...
Okay, fair point.
So the quality of perception is a function of the here and now, and of the particular individual. At least so much is the case while we remain the biochemical humans that we are.
Click to expand...
Now you're losing me. Why is the quality of perception a function of the here and now?
Thanks, btw, for adding 'qualia' to my vocabulary.
 
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