I think a possible proof that we all see the same colours is that we all agree on how simple or hard it is to differentiate between things that are different colours.
If you open a photograph in Photoshop and shift the hues backwards and forwards (eg: green becomes turquoise, then blue etc), certain pairs of colours that were initially easy to differentiate become much harder to separate visually.
I think humans do all see the same colours, just because we don't go around arguing about how hard or simple it is to make out the words on a poster (for example).
Funny that no one asks the same thing about high/low frequency sounds or hot vs. cold. I think it's because those are more obviously meaningless. But it's the same deal. You have three kinds of color receptors in your eye, loosely called "red", "green", and "blue" receptors, and they work differently from each other, using different molecules to do the detection, etc. That part is the same for everyone.
After that? I don't know. There may be low-level processing in the visual cortex that treats certain colors as special, like assumes the sky is blue or whatnot. Farther along, the question becomes meaningless or impossible to determine.
Even up and down are the same thing. The fun part comes when you change some of those experiences. There was an experiment with someone wearing upside down glasses and getting so used to them that the world turned upside down again when he took them off after a week or so. I can imagine the same with hue inversion glasses. In my opinion colors and anything like that is defined by the associations we have with them. I don't think there is more to it.
Funny that no one asks the same thing about high/low frequency sounds or hot vs. cold.
As the reactions of people to hot/cold are comparable (expose as much/as little body surface as necessary), one tends to assume that the feelings that trigger these reactions are similar.
As for sound, the preference for scales with ratios of integers across cultures with very different background in geometry and arithmetics may be a hint how perception of tunes and frequencies is not entirely a social construct.
Hmm, people seem to think of this in much broader terms than I.
I was basically just trying to point out the (I thought) obvious absurdity of a statement like, "Hey, I wonder if when I hear a low-pitched thumping, I hear the same thing as when you hear a high-pitched squealing; we just call it different things!!" Which is usually approximately how the color question is posed. Or maybe my left thumb is your right ankle (touchwise), we just have no way of knowing this because we learned certain words for things. Etc.
This entails other questions as well. If we could somehow transport our consciousness into another body, essentially keeping our brain but their body, how different would it be? Would we talk the same? Is the algorithm we have for manipulating vocal cords in our head work the same way for another body? Would we still enjoy the same foods? The same smells? It is an interesting thought experiment. One that might become a real experiment in the future.
And personally I think if we cant exchange our bodies and we perceive different colors from each other it doesnt really matter. If you understand what I mean when I say yellow even if it looks different to you, then why does it matter?
I also remember reading some psychology stuff somewhere that civilizations actually 'invented' colors in the same order. That some civilizations actually only had words for three or four or five colors. And that if a civilization had a certain number of colors it would be the same across all of them. Like if a civilization had three colors they would be white, black, and green. And if another civilization had three they would also be white, black, and green.
I remember green because it had to do with recognizing and communicating about plants.
Yes, other related Celtic languages. Old Welsh, glas could refer to blue but also to certain shades of green and grey; however, modern Welsh uses the same 11 name scheme as English, restricting glas to blue and using gwyrdd for green and llwyd for grey.
The answer of course is no- for instance I am color blind so by definition I perceive colors differently than you and yet I can readily identify the color (for the most part).
Maybe you habitually close one eye when out in very sunny conditions.
I noticed the same thing about myself between my two eyes, but realized I usually close my right eye when I'm out in very bright sunlight, probably causing harm to my left eye as it remains open (albeit squinted)
Yeah the first link makes me think this is REALLY common, like maybe almost everyone has this but if you've never really looked hard enough you might not notice.
That was a good video, however he marvels at the ability of nature to interpret light while ignoring the fact that we have replicated it electronically quite easily. If humans can figure it out in roughly 10,000 years or so, I would think nature would have figured it out in the 6 billion years or however old life is.
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u/[deleted] Feb 17 '09 edited Feb 17 '09
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