What if you and I see the color we both call "blue" differently?
Say I see it as the color you call green.
We would never know, because we would both consistently call it the same name and identify it with the same objects.
My brain hurts.
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11 comments:
I guess it hurts when you're adding those all important wrinkles to your gray matter---or is it grey?
silly girl! Here's a similar question to make it hurt more: what would it be like if there were another color? One that wasn't any mixture of the colors of the spectrum, or black, or white, but was actually a completely unique and different color? Try to imagine one. :-)
(when's a good to get together?)
That would be- When's a good TIME to get together?
Elric, I don't think you quite get it. You see, of COURSE green is green, but what makes green appear the way it does? Your brain! The only reason green looks the way it does to YOU is because that is the way YOUR brain interprets THAT frequency of light waves. So, since everyone's brain is unique, who is to say that everyone sees green as the same color? On the other hand, the general similarity of tastes in color (everyone likes blue skies and green, lush vegetation, right?) are some pretty good evidence that we PROBABLY see things the same way. I'm pretty sure, though, that whether or not we all saw colors the same, we would continue to exist. :)
By the way, Bria and I both came up with this concept independently of each other. Pretty cool, huh?
The occasional tests for color blindness you take at the doctor's office help assure us that if we're not color blind then at least we see roughly the same shade of color as everyone else who is not color blind. If you have had one, you may recall that they don't ask you to determine what is "green," but rather to decipher shades in relation to others. Thus you can know that your perception lines up with most everyone else's. Beyond that general proof, I'm not sure you can ever prove that every single person perceives a color in the same way as everyone else.
I believe Eric's point about chaos relates to the general idea that without absolutes, you will have chaos, which will probably lead to your death, not that you will instantly go kapoof or something (you might even survive if you're stronger and/or smarter than everyone else, but probably won't if you aren't). If there are no absolutes, there is no God, there is no right and wrong, and we should do whatever we want, which will lead to a chaotic world where only the strongest survive.
But bria and aaron, your general question is one, I think, that philosophers have posed for ages. (Sorry to disappoint if you thought you had come up with some new, radical idea!) That is, how do you know that your reality is the same as everyone elses? What is reality? Or to apply it to your case, what is green? What makes it that way, but the way we perceive it through our senses? And are our senses to be trusted? If they can't be, how do we know what is really real? Men from Plato(yay!) to David Hume(boo!) have dealt with such questions, and come up with various answers.
By the way, aaron and bria, if you're interested in these types of questions (I'm usually not, they fry my brain too much), you might consider majoring in philosophy at a school like Saint Anselm. This is the type of thing that philosophers sit around and contemplate, have conferences on, write books about, etc. Even if you don't major in it,it's the type of thing that you'll get exposure to as part of the required curriculum at that fine institution.
I wasn't thinking about this as much in philosophical terms as anatomical(?). Sure, everyone perceives the same shades because everyone's eyes receive the same amount of light. Whether they perceive the same hues is the real question. It is more a question of whether everyone's eyes are unique than whether there are absolutes.
Nevertheless, I agree that probably everyone sees the same hues for several reasons. First, everyone (with few exceptions, at least) likes trees to be green, and supposedly, finds green to be relaxing. Also, red is an exciting color, and so is orange. Et cetera. Second, the similarities in the other senses are numerous and more easily describable. The same smells are pleasant or unpleasant to most people, and the same surfaces feel the same. There is more variety with taste, but that is beside the point. :)
I think your scenario aaron can suggest people see the same hues, but it doesn't prove we see the same shades. (Personally, I think the definitions of "shade" and "hue" are too close to make much of a distinction, but if you are going to make one, then "hue" has to be a more general color while "shade" is a slight degree of difference between colors. At least this is what my dictionary suggests. However, not being an artist, maybe there's some subtlety in the words about which I am unaware!) :-)
BTW, I think the philosophical question is a small leap away from the anatomical one. It's simply thinking more abstractly about questions that arise from the physical world.
Double check your dictionary:
Shade - The degree to which a color is mixed with black or is decreasingly illuminated; gradation of darkness.
Hue - A particular gradation of color; a shade or tint.
Actually, the better definition for "hue" would be "the property of colors by which they can be perceived as ranging from red through yellow, green, and blue, as determined by the dominant wavelength of the light." Same dictionary, by the way. In other words, shade is determined by amount of light, and hue is determined by kind of light.
I've never read your blog before, but I've stumbled upon it and this post. You know, I've thought about this many times...we'd never know. What if all our favorite colors were actually the same color but we just knew them by a different name?
Weird.
Well, keep blogging (your most recent post says that you neglect this)...it's always good to get stuff out in writing!
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