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Do colours really exist?
I had an argument with a friend of mine once over whether colours really exist.
"Of course they exist!" he exclaimed. "This is red" he said pointing at a painting I had on the wall.
"No", I replied. "The light reflected from that painting has a frequency such that it has a particular characteristic, is interpreted by your brain in such a way, as to be perceived as 'red'. But red as an inherent, fundamental characteristic does not exist anywhere outside of your brain."
"Poppycock!" he responded.
"Indeed," I continued, "there is no reason to believe what you interpret as red, what you see as red, is what I see as red."
"What?"
"Well, the colour that you call red could just as easily be blue in my mind. As we live in an inherently isolated consciousness, and there are no independent terms of reference, then you have no idea how I perceive certain colours."
"You're hurting my head" he said.
"Does that mean I'm making you see red?" I asked?
We laughed.
So what do you think? I believe that there is no such thing as colour. Not in any verifiable, fundamental way. Furthermore, there is nothing to say that the red I see is the same as the red you see. For all I know, you could be looking at tomatoes that are "blue" in my world...
Mr Mephisto
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