xepherys

I saw this quote in another thread, and didn't see anything simliar, so I'd like to pose a request for proof one way or another that what I see is the same as what you see, what I sense any way is the same as what you sense.

I pose this question with the following knowledge:

If we both look at something and call it "red" it simply means that we agree that it is the same color as other things we individually see as red. What you see as the actual color interpretation of red may appear green or orange to me. Can it be proven otherwise?

If we both taste chocolate, one of us may like it, another not. Are we tasting the same thing? Are the nerve wired in our brains exactly the same?

Human sensory perception is a thing of great mystery, even today. With the theory/discovery of tetrachromatic females we deepen our lack of understanding.

Any thoughts?

zen_tom

The problem with the question is that there is no way to describe a sensation, except in terms of other sensations. I don't think it's possible.

If it is impossible to step into the same river twice, is it possible to step into two different rivers at the same time?

On tetrachromatics, I'd guess that the brain does a damn good job of cross-referencing whatever information it gets, making connections and associations from all and any information it recieves, and that it wouldn't matter (from birth) whether a 3-colour, a 4-colour, or a 62 colour, multi-lensed web-cam were providing visual information. Our sensations would only be as similar as our learnt associations were similar.

Suave

While I've had a lot of fun considering this question, and bringing it up in arguments to irritate whomever I was disagreeing with, I'd say that the vast majority of the time, we sense things SIMILARLY to others. I just say this primarily because of biological reasons, and the fact that it allows for ease of understanding. There are likely small differences, and sometimes even large ones (just as an example, some partially colourblind people can't tell the difference between two colours, and see them as one, but they might not know that they're not seeing the proper colours). However, if we decide not to assume that on the whole, most people experience sensation in a similar manner to one another, then there's really no point in discussing sensation at all, as we cannot compare the differences in sensation between people, and all discussion involving any of our senses would become moot.

Zeraph

In short, I don't think we share the same realities. But it probably will never be possible to prove it either way.

ScottKuma

Please don't take this the wrong way - but I don't think it matters!

If, in my "frame of reference", I see RED as you would see GREEN in your frame of reference...why does it matter?

What does matter is that we can sit down & agree externally on what to call what we're seeing, feeling, tasting, etc.

What I think is interesting is that on a whole, what we see, hear, feel, taste, etc. affects us similarly in many cases! IMHO, This lends credence to the whole "we experience the world similarly" argument.

LeviticusMky

In a sense, this question centers on a failure on language, more than a faliure of expression. Yes, we can come very close to proving that what you see as red is what I see as red, since it activates the same areas of the brain at the same time, in the same manner. We can observe this through medical patients in psycological testing when hooked up to MRIs.

The problem of language comes into play when we try to describe "red"

I can't do it, aside from scientifically, and that doesn't mean anything to anyone 'cept light energy waveform physicist folk. What comes out of our mouth as words are really just a supremely inadequate representation of our real thoughts. Once we come out with direct thought trading between brains (aka matrix "jacking in") I think questions like this will become a mute point.

docbungle

I feel that most people see red and green pretty much the same. It is an established understanding. Stop lights are red. Blood is red. My face turns red when I'm angry, etc, etc...

However, when reading a book, even though reading the same descriptions, I believe all of us see completely different things. What room we see, regardless of how descriptive the prose is, is dependent on what rooms we've been in, or what rooms we've seen in movies, or what rooms we've had described to us before, etc, etc... What characters look like, based on their descriptions, is very dependent on who is reading the story and what that person prefers to see.

Hmm....

__________________
Bad Luck City

mo42

I've thought of this often when I was growing up, so it's good to see a thread about it. While it's a moot point for practicality, it's stilll a very interesting question.

I think that it's quite likely that what I see as red is what everyone else sees as red; chemically, the mechanism for seeing red and the pathways to the brain are essentially identical.

Taste is a very interesting point, though. Some people hate lima beans, I love them. Am I tasting something different than they are? I would guess no, and that it's only in the interpretation of the flavor that we differ. I have my own taste in music and art, why not in flavorings?

I think with the advent of computer technology able to directly interpret brain activity into mouse movements, color translation might not be too far off and we can find out the answer to this question for sure.

__________________
It's not getting what you want, it's wanting what you've got.

d*d

I agree with what your saying there, so theoretically I could use your brain and whilst it may be a bit wierd getting used to it essentially red would still be red and lima beans would taste the same (but I've already decided i don't like them). i think what this question attempts to address is what is it about me that makes me me(make sense?) if our brains big chemical processors where does the sense of being come from?

zen_tom

I disagree with mo42 - the brain works by making associations, with everything. Red is not the same chemical mechanism, and the pathways that understand red are not essentially identical (sure they may be from the eye to the brain, but the mechanism for understanding red, or having a feeling about the sensation of seeing red are not).

Extreme example: You bring a child up on an abbatoir floor, and it is going to associate red with things dying and suffering, perhaps beggining to form associations linking redness to wetness, redness to twitching movements, redness to a certain set of smells, redness to slipping, mechanical noises etc.
Now bring up another child on a chille-pepper farm, he might associate redness with growth, ripeness, hotness, and an entirely different set of other associations.

The abbatoir child is going to have a very different sensation when he sees a red rose, than the chille-pepper child.

To address another point here, the brain is not *just* a chemical processor, it is a dynamicly changing system. Every time you see, feel, taste or otherwise experience something, the shape of your brain changes, new pathways are created, old ones cleared. You are nothing more than the *shape* of your brain. It would be impossible to move into someone elses brain because there's no you to move. You are the side-effect of the process that lives in your brain.

d*d

ok it's not *just* a chemical processor I adimit to over simplification there, but the idea that the brain is just about association is another one as is the quote above. The way you feel about the colour red does not affect the physical colour of it- wether abbatoir blood or ripe chilli it's still red because it's physical properties are such that when light hits it all the spectrum except the red part is reflected (thats how it works). our eyes pick up this red in the same way our brains processess it to tell us it's red in the same way, then association can begin.

zen_tom

sure, we're in agreement, but what I'm getting at is that the 'sensation' of redness, or whatever (touch, taste, smell etc) is going to be loaded with the associations we've built up in the past. Another extreme example, if every time you heard a whistle, the room lights turned red, or every-time you saw the colour red, someone blew a whistle, you might learn to 'hear' red rather than see it (even after someone stopped fiddling with the lights and blowing whistles). Sensation, or the feeling of a thing I'm sure is very plastic, since the brain has very little to actually go on in working out the real world, and can be shown to rapidly deal with deviations from the norm (i.e. the tetrachromatic females mentioned above)