Color

Good question! No, I'd have to say that it's based on perception. One may see it as green, and another may see it as blue or teal.

Whether it be just colors or pertaining to everything in life and nature, people have different perceptions on all facets.

It is a good point to ponder. Maybe someone can break this down as far as colors go.

I guess you could break this down into groups:
1) What person A sees
2) What person B sees
3) What person C sees
4) What everybody calls it

Person A might see black, person B might see white, person C might see red, and everybody would call it blue.

Maybe everybody has the same favourite colour. It might be that we all are attracted to the same colour, but we call it different things, depending on what we see.

Hmm.... Interesting thought, amenotatsujin. Perhaps (I believe) this all depends on someone's honed perception; for example, someone sees 'cerulean' while another merely sees 'blue'.

Apart from the philosophical problem of

Qualia - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

the hope of everybody perceiving color in the same way fails from the start because of phenomona such as

Synesthesia - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

and

Color blindness - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

--- RH.

BTW, the answer is NO.

I wouldn't think there is any way to tell whether we all see the same thing or not. Maybe everyone has different perceptions of everything, we just experience the same effect.

Consider looking at a painting, amenotatsujin. When an art expert is showing his apprentice the intricacies of colours and how they meld. It would not seem different to two people when you think of it that way, would it (at least, not in the way you put it)?

And the answer is 'NO' to what, Angst? To 'does every one see the same colour'? Why so?

Given this:



Why would would you ask this:



Are these to you the same questions?

Indeed, but perhaps I should put it a different way for you.
'Does the exact same tint strike everyone's retinae the same way so their occipital lobe transmits signals that produce the same effect to the human?'

There are a lot of the word 'same' in there, but I think it produces the same effect (merely leaving no room for confusion).

In which case this would appear to be a physiological issue rather than a philosophical one.

It is generally accepted in any case that the same signals are definitely not always transmitted to brain; via the nerve connections there is a filtering effect; ergo perception is an active process, not passive, a fact occasionally especially evident to individuals subject to the effects of hallucinatory drugs, known to interfere directly with the chemistry of the filtering process.


The more intriguing problem is the philosophical one, which applies beyond the arena of scientific truth provable by experimental observation, i.e. the perceptual model that we somehow construct to represent a color to ourselves, to feel which is which:

"qualia":

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qualia/.

--- RH.

Perhaps, but I have to ask; why do we care? This site was founded (to the best of my poor knowledge) for discussions to unveil mysteries of the mind and earth; to attempt to slake curiousity's endless bounds; I don't believe this is a 'purists philosophy only' site.
Anyhow, colour is indeed diffrent things to different people; ergo the reason why all of us will have a different favourite tint of a different colour than another one of us; we associate various shades generally with different attitudes and moods.

"... Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them?"

I am fascinated as much by the method as by the curiosity itself, by the challenge of attempting to arive at a means to progress toward an answer.

-- RH.

If I understand your last statment correctly, this is what I call 'tools' which make it possible to generate a method to find answers. Yes I think it is my fascination also as it gives me a sence of 'one step closer'. maybe it could be a discusion point all of its own!

Hmph. Talk about giving an answer without really giving an answer, perplexity. What fuels this curiosity of the method?

The inadequacy of the result, the giving of answers without really giving an answer, thus is the necessity apparent, which is in turn the mother of invention.

--- RH.

It is my opinion that people generally see the same colors the same. I know it's fun and clever to think that maybe everyone sees colors differently and just calls them by the same name because of the way we learn language, but that doesn't mean it's true.

I think people see colors the same because people are largely the same physiologically and psychologically.

I also think so because people tend to associate the same colors with the same emotions - for example, blue is perceived as calming. I can already see someone objecting that perhaps blue is perceived as calming because of the places it's found in, such as the water and the sky, while still appearing differently to different people, but I think the experience of color itself is very emotional. It's vivid, strong, and unlike anything else. So I think the experience itself will cause certain feelings, not the associations provided by where colors are normally found. (Perhaps where colors are found played a part in their emotional meaning on a species level per evolution and maybe even morphic resonance.) Here is a list of color associations which also speaks on discrepencies in color associations across different cultures: Color symbolism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I think some people might see some colors differently, within bounds. Some people classify the same shade of bluegreen as blue while others classify it as green, for example. In the same way that language could account for everyone naming colors the same, language could account for people naming the same colors differently in this case, but it could also be due to the actual experience of the color.

Tests have revealed that the language used to classify color in a given culture correlates with how they group colors that are on a continuum as being most similar. This seems to indicate that perception of color, to some degree, depends on culture, and possibly on language. (I say possibly because correlation is not causation.) This effect is interesting but does not prove that people see color -completely- differently, and if it does suggest that, then it suggests that people of the same culture or language do see colors the same. I don't have a link to that study, but here is an interesting link I found just now by accident: Colour Words

Obviously color-blind persons and tetrachromats don't perceive colors in the same way. I am personally fascinated with tetrachromacy, which only happens in females and in a ratio of about one in 17 million.