A theory I was thinking about
 

Not sure if this should be in this forum or not but here goes.

Ok earlier today I thought about this theory again, as it has been brought up many a times in my mind, only this time I remembered to make it a topic in the forums, to see what all of you guys think.

Colour Theory

Ok so I see my colours as blue, red, black, white, green, pink and so forth, as do most of you (except for those of you who may be colour blind). The theory is that all the colours that I see, you don’t. As in your colours are different to mine but we both respond to the same colours as they are the same. (I know it’s confusing but just bare with me here) So the colour blue that I see could be the colour red that you see. But since we have both known these colours to be blue (that is what our parents and teachers have told us) that is what we believe the colour to be.

(OMG it’s so hard to explain >_<)

So looking through my eyes the colours could look like this:

blue, red, black, white, green, pink

But if I were to look through your eyes it could be:

blue, red, black, white, green, pink

I know that there is no way to prove this theory unless you borrow someone’s eyes for a day, and if you did that and the theory is true you’d probably think that you had just taken a tab of acid and wondering why the sky is bright pink and the road is red. But if you think about it, it could be true.

This is quite interesting, and I would love to konw if we could test this out, think of the possibilites that science could advance apon if this was found to be proven... now we just have to find a way.

That's a good mental exercise to philosophize about the complexities of perception but it does not pan out as valid. Colors are simply the wave length of light that are reflected or absorbed from an object they are always the same. So if we establish that the wave length of light from a particular object is always the same we can then look at the receptor for that light, our retina. Well the retina has things called cones. Each cone has a certain pigment that can detect one of the three base colors (red, green, blue). The pigments allows certain wave lengths of light to be absorbed and therefore seen. So the red pigment absorbs light from a certain wave length x to wave length y, peaking at 100% absorbancy somewhere inbetween x and y. So we all recieve, with variation of course, basically the same light wave lengths into our brain. So in essense, with slight variation again, your red looks like my red, because our physiology works the same. But that line of though does get us thinking about how different our preceptions can be, which is a good way to keep open minded and humble.

The perception of colour is actually very heavily studied.

First, we have (basically) 3 different "pigment" detectors in our eyes. Every persons "pigment" detectors are slightly different. This means we all actually do see different colours when we look at a sample of light.

The colours we see are (mostly) just a linear combination of those pigments. As light shines on our "pigment" detectors, it excites each chemical differently, and the balance of these signals is interprited as colour.

You can play with frequencies of light and people will agree that a continuous change in frequency-mix results in a continuous change in colour.

This means that we basically see 3 colours. Every colour we percieve is just our brain interpriting these 3 colours.

Which means that it is possible that those 3 colours might "move", but the relative mixes of the colours in between should stay somewhat simular.

There are loads of additional effects: our brains do a load of processing on what we see at a sub-conscious and physical level. Optical illusions are a good way to experiment with this. You will not that most people have somewhat simular responses to most optical illusions, another sign that we are having a simular visual experience.

Yell if I'm wrong but isn't this related to this movement of philosophy or linguistics (maybe Saussure, can't remember right now) that for example colours are actually just taxonomically agreed facts in cultural areas - and for example in most asian cultures this differs from western standards (something to do with an absence of blue?). Better example (or simpler) would be that people from different cultures don't actually taste similarly. Or take tibetan music that sounds monotonic because western ear doesn't listen to variations that tibetan ear detects.

Sorry for rambling, I might have drunk too much beer/vodka.

That isn't crazy at all. Perceptions can vary greatly. Eastern music often completely ignores what we look for. They often use fretless instruments that rely on bending, and play notes that are out of tune in the 12 tonal system. Like playing inbetween a C and a C sharp.

I do know that when moving pictures were first introduced to several North African nomadic cultures, the nomads could not see them. They just saw white to gray to black patterns on the screen.

One way to measure this would be to examine brain and nerve activity. Presumably if two individuals were sent the same information through the ocular nerves, they would interpret and see the same image. Right?

I remember reading that people are all wired incredibly differently, and the way they are wired plays significantly into what we perceive and how we act.

Cool thought excercise.

this is amazing could you eloberate more?

Everyone's perception is unique. EVERONE'S.
It's cool you bring this up, I know I have read/heard something of the sort before.
This can be applied to anything- religion, life, family, food, parenting, crime, racism, war, beauty..........you name it. We all have our own perception- but most tend to subconsiously, if not consciously, rely on the perception of others.

It's a very interesting question, I think that perhaps some people's test are bit elaborate though. The one I thought of isn't nearly as complex but it also wouldn't be nearly as accurate. What I thought is "Then why do we all pretty much agree what colors go together?" You know, for clothes, or wallpaper or other mundane things. Granted there are people who seem to have no sense of style or coordination but there are still basically the same perception of what colors clash and which work. Something else like wearing white or black clothes in the sun may also be a key to figuring it out. We know that black tshirt will make you feel warmer than wearing a white one right? We also know that's because of the attraction and absorbtion of heat right? (I could be wrong about this though, am I?). Anyways, everyone had different perceptions than someone might pick up a standard black t shrit percieving it as white no? Wouldn't they feel different temperatures? I don't know. Just throwing it out there.

That's weird because I remember pondering that same thought when I was in grade school or junior high. I am always thinking of stuff like that, we might think alike.

Yeah, I thought of that on my own as well.

I've thought about that before.

We'll never know... It's one of those myteries that only God knows...

Unless they successfully transplant a brain's image perception area. BUT what I wonder:

Do we even see the same colors at all? Maybe we all see totally different colors. There are two things no human can ponder:
What nothing (the absence of everything) would look like, and what colors we've never seen would look like.

Well it may well be that such people actually exist in the real world. There are genes which cause Red retinal cones to act as if they were G-cones, and there are genes which cause green retinal cones to act as R-cones. Individually these genes are responsible for Red-Green colour-blindness. But when they are both present, the subject shows no behavioral abnormalities! It is likely that these people are experiencing (what I call) red when they point at green things and utter the words, "that is green", and vice-versa.