How do you define colours?

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If you have read my previous post,I've been coming up with theories and and stuff like that.
So last night when I was at my bed,I started thinking about how you define colours.I wanna hear ppl's opinions Razz

(*This isn't anything serious it isn't bothering me,just curious)

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Type: Question • Score: 6 • Views: 1,638 • Replies: 14

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@AnonymousMan123,

As in like the actual colour,not the word "colour"

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@AnonymousMan123,

I think you mean do we see them the same way? Is what I se as red the same as what you see as red? Nobody knows. I call something red when it looks the same as something that I have been taught was red. The colors go in a certain order, so the next one is orange. But there are thousands of shades between red and orange. At what point do you call it orange? Maybe a different shade than I would... My wife and I have had disagreements on whether a paint sample was blue or green.

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The following link is very interesting.

http://www.sciencealert.com/humans-couldn-t-even-see-the-colour-blue-until-modern-times-research-suggests

There are other similar articles if you google.

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@AnonymousMan123,

Why would you even try to defind colours?

I suppose I can see it as a sport.

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@AnonymousMan123,

Colour is a seminal issue in philosophy, psychology and physics For example, it was the consideration of Goethe's phenomenological colour theory in opposition to Newtons Optiks, which led Wittgenstein to reject his own earlier acclaimed Tractatus. The latest models for colour vision include total visual field, physiology and cultural conditioning , as well as the physics of the visual spectrum. For more, google Varela on 'color vision'.

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@chai2,

Persian and Gaelic don't make the distinction between blue and green. There's probably many more languages like that.

And then there is this:

Quote:

"Across most of the visible spectrum males require a slightly longer wavelength than do females in order to experience the same hue," the team concludes in the latest issue of the journal Biology of Sex Differences.

Since longer wavelengths are associated with "warmer" colors, an orange, for example, may appear redder to a man than to a woman. Likewise, the grass is almost always greener to women than to men, to whom verdant objects appear a bit yellower.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2012/09/120907-men-women-see-differently-science-health-vision-sex/

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Are you asking how people SEE colors or how they define them?

I love greens - soft green, deep evergreen, lime green, etc.

I am fascinated with the names paint companies come up for their colors. My door color is Behr, "Perfect Penny, " a beautiful coppery orange.

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I do not how to define all the shades of a colour.
I was given a box with left over yarn for embroidery. There are about 100 shades of colours. Now I have almost finished a cushion in a abstract pattern with around 35 shades of red. One which is finished is in about 35 colours and shades of colours.
When I use crayons I can create a few shades with just one colour.

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@Olivier5,

Olivier, I found it wild that the Himba people had difficulty seeing the blue square in the first picture, but were easily able to distinguish the different green in the 2nd. I'm good with colors, but it was almost impossible for me.

There have been various studies conducted to try to work this out, which you can read more about in Loria's feature, but one of the most compelling was conducted by Jules Davidoff, a psychologist from Goldsmiths University of London, who worked with the Himba tribe from Namibia. In their language, there is no word for blue and no real distinction between green and blue.

To test whether that meant they couldn't actually see blue, he showed them a circle with 11 green squares and one painfully obvious blue square. Well, obvious to us, at least, as you can see below. But the Himba tribe struggled to tell Davidoff which of the squares was a different colour to the others. Those who did hazard a guess at which square was different took a long time to get the right answer, and there were a lot of mistakes.

Note: font above is blue Laughing

http://www.sciencealert.com/images/blue.jpg

http://www.sciencealert.com/images/Green1.jpg

http://www.sciencealert.com/images/GreyGreen.jpg

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Oh, and of course there is that infamous "dress"

However, I am personally confused by what people see as the 2 different variations.

All I can find is some people see the dress as blue (a dark blue) and black. Otheres see white and gold.

I personally see very light blue, and dark tan, almost brown.

Weird.

http://www.stokesentinel.co.uk/images/localworld/ugc-images/276370/Article/images/26094432/9562475-large.jpg

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Here is the actual dress

http://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/kelz6hbf9fqlnqwlot7a.png

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@chai2,

Well, colors are evidently in the mind; they are mental construct, "qualia". They don't exist out there objectively. So it should not be surprising that culture and language affects them.

Quote:

In philosophy, qualia (/ˈkwɑːliə/ or /ˈkweɪliə/; singular form: quale) are what some consider to be individual instances of subjective, conscious experience. The term "qualia" derives from the Latin [...] quālis meaning "of what sort" or "of what kind"). Examples of qualia include the pain of a headache, the taste of wine, or the perceived redness of an evening sky.

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@Olivier5,

I like that. New word. Qualia.

The part about a headache is a perfect example.

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@chai2,

Qualia are a (somewhat) hot philosophy topic. A sort of elemental piece of all this mental stuff. An atom of the mind.

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How do you define colours?

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