What if the colors you see are different than what I see?

@fresco,

No big news, no one needs disagreeing with that in fact I just said it a couple of posts ago. None of it changes the matter at hand. Perception is subject to interpretation n active data selection but it does not change percepts.

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In fact it is the data processing that allows for pro active construction of meaningful information.

Back to the point an taking it one step further:

While people from different backgrounds can be oblivious to each other cultural focused preferences of colour no one is blind to direct sun light. Your eye will blink n react as much in here as it would in Africa.
Your account of facts would require it otherwise.

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@fresco,

Let me make it short n easy for you Fresco, are you denying the existence of crude raw percepts or not ?
Yes or no suffices for an answer.

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@nap40,

Nap tht's a good q and something I've long wondered about.

I'm guessing Krump's #478 is off the mark. I'd lean somewhat to Fres' #402 reaction

Of course those suffering color-"blindness" probably see many somewhat different than we perfectly "normal" folk but there's no way to know for sure

Intuitively tho I'd agree with Wan #162 that we're "pretty much" alike in this respect. Otherwise we'd occasionally read a report of someone whose one eye gives radically different color perception than the other

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@dalehileman,

In fact statistical agreement convergence of opinion on colour makes it far more easy n plausible to argue that raw perception is similar in everybody so long the eye and brain operate within normal parameters. As krumple explained minor variation can be justified with some physical discrepancies regarding the number of cones sensitive to a given colour spectrum, and rods sensitivity to brightness.

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@dalehileman,

dalehileman wrote:

Nap tht's a good q and something I've long wondered about.

I'm guessing Krump's #478 is off the mark. I'd lean somewhat to Fres' #402 reaction

Of course those suffering color-"blindness" probably see many somewhat different than we perfectly "normal" folk but there's no way to know for sure

Intuitively tho I'd agree with Wan #162 that we're "pretty much" alike in this respect. Otherwise we'd occasionally read a report of someone whose one eye gives radically different color perception than the other

We do have ways of measuring the degree of color blindness a person has. When a person is colorblind it doesn't mean they don't see a particular color. Instead what happens is another color becomes more dominant over the color that is missed. This is due to the ratio of red, blue and green cones.

So if a person has a difficult time seeing green, red might actually take over but only at certain degrees. They don't see blackness where the green should be instead the next dominate color of cone takes that data. In other words a person who can't see green very well, is lacking green color sensitive cones. It doesn't mean they are missing them all, it just means another color type is more dominant and takes residence when they brain interprets the data.

In fact in a few more years researchers are thinking that colorblindness can be solved through implants that correct for the missing color sensitive cones.

If experiencing colors were purely subjective there would have been absolutely NO way to verify this distinction. You would have absolutely bizarre data that didn't make any sense.

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@Krumple,

Dogs, for example, are proven to not be able to register colors the same way humans do. However, this does not mean that the colors we see aren't visible to them. The dogs still receive the same colors through their eyes, but because of the way their brains are structured they perceive them differently than people.
http://images.sussexpublishers.netdna-cdn.com/article-inline-half/blogs/1987/2008/10/2111-75460.png
So for instance what we see as red they see as dark grey. If a dog could talk and you asked it about how it sees color it would not say it sees it any differently, because it was taught what red is and knows how it looks even if it only looks that way exclusively to itself. Therefore, I believe humans could be experiencing this also, but without being able to access each others minds we may never be able to know for sure how we each perceive and interpret the same color.

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@Fil Albuquerque,

Fil Albuquerque wrote:

I think no one is arguing against distinct colour perception when framed from the pov of a disturbance of the perceptual apparatus...
Personally I disagree culture can change raw perception. Although I agree culture can change n filter the rational framing and focus of perception.
I also agree perception without a rational filter/ordering is not much as it lacks meaning.
...nevertheless n given the fantastic extent of the claims in this thread the distinction seems worth mentioning.

But we don't really have access to raw perception, really, do we?

Just as one example, the image on our retina is "upside down" but our brain has processed this out by the time we are conscious of seeing anything.

The nearest we have to data about raw perception, as far as I can tell, is stuff like what people who were born blind report seeing when sight is given to them via some sort of surgery...which is very rare and which changes quickly. (Gosh, that is an unspeakably awful sentence....sorry)

I take it as a logical given that we can have no final knowledge about whether we see things in a very similar way, but as we seem to work fine together it doesn't seem to be an especially significant fact.

However, I do suspect that enculturation has quite an effect upon how we interpret raw visual data.

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@fresco,

fresco wrote:

Quote:
I'm interested in what makes our appreciation or dislike of certain colours so strong. For instance, a friend of mine loves a certain combination of dark green and a deep, blue based, red that makes me extremely uncomfortable. It's interesting that we can have such different emotional reactions to colours.

Yes. This is precisely an issue which illustrates the inadequacy of a traditional "data processing" model of perception. Perception tends to be active, not passive.

Absolutely. A whole lot of processing goes into the image we create from the light waves entering our eye.

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@dlowan,

Interestingly, an ancient model of visual perception consisted of something akin to "rays"" coming from the eye and "feeling" external objects !. Current concepts of active perception embody aspects of this.
( Smile

A whole lecture course might follow at this point, involving Piagetian adaptation, Signal Detection Theory, Embodiment Theory, Goethe's Theory of Colour, Rosch's Prototype Theory, cross species studies of the dimensionality of colour...etc)

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@fresco,

Not that ancient!! Still much referred to in Elizabethan and jacobean times. Not sure when that theory was superseded.

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@dlowan,

From a constructivist position, its logic has not been superseded !
Philosophically, attempts have been made to eliminate the dichotomy "subject-object" as a Cartesian cul-de-sac. Rorty takes a Heideggerian line on this in his "Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature".

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@Fil Albuquerque,

Quote:

In fact…...plausible to argue that raw perception is similar in everybody…..minor variation can be justified…... regarding the number of cones sensitive…….. to brightness.

Yea, thanks Fil but I thought that's pretty much what I had asserted

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@Krumple,

Quote:

If experiencing colors were purely subjective there would have been absolutely NO way to verify this distinction.

Thanks Krump though I'm not quite sure to what distinction you have ref

As I had said however, the "subjective" aspect might be settled some day if someone were to see colors radically different or reversed from the opposite eye. As Dio says,

Quote:

But we don't really have access to raw perception, really, do we?

but again I don't think it will ever happen

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@dlowan,

Quote:

Just as one example, the image on our retina is "upside down" but our brain has processed this out by the time we are conscious of seeing anything.

Dio it's interesting to observe in this connection that if one wears upside-down glasses long enough, things begin to look righted up once more. Then when you remove the glasses things go upside down again for a while

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@dalehileman,

Yep.....as I said, perception is a very active process.

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@nap40,

Quote:

For instance what if how I saw blue is how you see green?

Only recently has the potential misnomer of the "inverted spectrum" possibility starting receiving some scientific support.

"I would say recent experiments lead us down a road to the idea that we don't all see the same colors," Neitz said.
http://www.livescience.com/21275-color-red-blue-scientists.html

Quote:

You would never be able to tell unless we switched eyes.

Barring certain clinical conditions like color blindness, varying differences between individuals would seem mostly dependent upon the brain, especially in light of the latter trying to maintain what the former [eyes] loses as they deteriorate.

"Cone receptors in the human eye lose their color sensitivity with age, but our subjective experience of color remains largely unchanged over the years. This ability to compensate for age-related changes in color perception rests in higher levels of the visual system, according to research published May 8 in the open access journal PLOS ONE by Sophie Wuerger from the University of Liverpool, UK."
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-05/plos-bne050113.php

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@nap40,

Quote:

What if the colors you see are different than what I see?

You have to want to understand to see correctly.

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@anonymously99,

Quote:

You have to want to understand to see correctly.

I wonder how may understand that "similarity" and "difference" are functional and relative to acts of human cognition and social agreement.

Trivially, any two focal items can simultaneously be classified as both similar and different. They are "similar" since they are both subject to comparison, and they are "different" because there are two of them. Between these two sides of a coin, the only deciding factor is functionality - whether they both satisfy the contextual conditions for inclusion in a human category label acquired through socialization.

Note that in medieval times a rainbow had four colors (in correspondence with the four Gospels). Later this increased to seven to correspond the the notes on a musical scale (..."music of the spheres"...) with the help of the invention of the category "indigo".

Physical sameness=Functional equivalence.
As context changes, so do the criteria for "sameness".

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@fresco,

What in the world are you talking about.

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What if the colors you see are different than what I see?

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