Mephisto2

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

Seer666

There may be no red, but there is the IDEA of red. Even if what you say is red, I see as blue, we both call it red, so the idea stays the same, and holds the same power as the reality. Is it there red? Maybe, maybe not, but does it matter in the end?

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Master_Shake

The colours are just wavelengths of light intepreted by our brains. I've always been amused that although we claim certain things have the property of a colour those things actually have every other colour property except that one we claim it has.

For example, when we claim a chair is blue, we are mistaken. It is actually every other colour except blue. Every other visible light wavelength is absorbed by the chair, it only reflects the wavelength we associate with blue.

I also don't buy into the idea of the world of the forms colour nonsense. Colours aren't anything more special than our method of interpreting data. When the digital camera turns those same wavelengths into 1's and 0's, do we claim the 1's and 0's reveal some truth about the object? I don't, it's all perceptual and subjective. That we humans happen to share the same biological apparatus to allow us to experience similar perceptions does not reveal some truth about the object, it only allows us to communicate and cooperate.

Common perception is a survival mechanism, not an inherent truth.

So long as our perceptions are consistent.

This brings us to the differece between idios kosmos (one's own world) and the koinos kosmos (shared universe). Everybody's idios kosmos is a little different from everybody else's, and that's usually fine. But when someone's idios kosmos differs from the general koinos kosmos too much, then he/she is treated as defective. (i.e Colour blindness, or some other perceptual problem)

From http://fusionanomaly.net/synaesthesia.html

synesthesia also synaesthesia (sîn´îs-thê´zhe) noun
1. A condition in which one type of stimulation evokes the sensation of another, as when the hearing of a sound produces the visualization of a color.
2. A sensation felt in one part of the body as a result of stimulus applied to another, as in referred pain.
3. The description of one kind of sense impression by using words that normally describe another.
- syn´esthet´ic (-thèt´îk) adjective

"Franz Liszt, the19th century composer, pianist, and conductor, saw colors in his mind's eye when he heard music? He experienced a "rare phenomenon called color hearing, (in which) the senses become crossed and every musical sound is shadowed by colorful, formless visual imagery. And so, Liszt would instruct an orchestra, 'Please gentlemen, a little bluer if you please. This key demands it.'"

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Mephisto2

Bingo!

So it seems that whether colours exist or not is irrelevant, but that we have common terms of reference with which to communicate.

All well and good (and I think we're touching on subjects that bear further consideration later), but I still am tempted to ask.

Do colours exist? Do you believe there is such a thing as red? As blue? As yellow? Does the object have an inherent characteristic, independent of its observation by a conscious observer, that can be described as a colour?

I think not.

We can say "Such an object is 10kg in weight" and (ignoring the issues of different scales of measurement) such a statement is true. But how can we say "Such an object is red"? The only reason we believe it to be red is because our mind interprets the light reflected from that object as being red.

Mr Mephisto

zen_tom

You can say - "that object reflects light in the frequency range of 610 - 659THz " - or you could say - "that object is blue."

Personally, I'd use the colour-label.

As for whether it exists? What do you mean? It exists as much as any human-defined property exists.

Kalnaur

Well, since what we see as color is actually the light reflecting off the object, any object we see actually has the color of what we do not see. Therefore what is red is not really red but everything except red, because the object absorbs all the colors accept red.

But the color that we see is light, which has been proven to exist. Therefore, color does indeed exist, just not assigned to any one object.

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Charlatan

I had this conversation with my 10 year old son last night...

We both decided that because the wavelength of light is different from colour to colour that indeed colours do exist as different wavelengths of light.

That said, we also agreed that while we agreed upon the fact that the word "red" described that wavelength we could not completely confirm that what we were seeing was the exact same thing (i.e. if I were to somehow be able to see through his eyes with his brain, the colour the we agree to call "red" might look like the colour that in my mind with my eyes we have agreed to call "blue").

In the end, words are just signifiers of the original object.

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d*d

No colour exists, otherwise we would not be able to make value judgements between two colours, red is called red because it reflects every part of the spectrum except the part WE CALL red, which is the same word but attributed to a scientific principle, the fact is we agree through communication that surfaces having light absorbing properties within the parameters of what has, in our language and culture been called red, we can argue about the blurry edges of these parameters (I see it more as an orange) but these surfaces "exist" so colour exists.

cyrnel

From cg color-space work I came to think of "color" as more verb than noun except in the sense of a radiating object.

Radiation of whatever source can be said to have a color value (name, numeric, or equation). Dead objects are nothing but filtering reflectors which color (verb) existing radiation. Energetic objects however may filter and reflect but also contribute their own wavelengths, so radiating objects have their own color value.

asaris

Certainly colors exists, otherwise when I say "This book is blue", I would not be making a true statement. Since this book is in fact blue, I am making a true statement. Now, you want to push a bit further and say "Well, that book isn't really blue, it just appears blue to you." But that's not quite correct. It's not simply that the book appears blue to me, it's the fact that the book appears blue to almost everyone who can see it. This is the only way a constructivist can get out of a radical skepticism; intersubjectivity. Color doesn't exist in the real world, but then again, I don't think anything exists in the 'real world', so it seems to make more sense to me to say that this book is blue, rather than to think up contorted ways of saying the same thing.

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"The Germans believe that power must reveal itself in hardness and cruelty and then submit themselves gladly and with admiration[...]. They do not believe readily that there is power in meekness and calm."

-- Friedrich Nietzsche

CSflim

Exacty.


Do tables exist?

Of course they do! Look there's a table right here....

...but thats not a table! Its just a few pieces of wood stuck together. And in fact those pieces of wood are nothing more than huge bunches of atoms!

Therefore tables don't exist.

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Yakk

Ignoring part of this problem, people's eye pigments are actually different from each other.

Colours actually look different to different people, and I mean this in a formal, testable way.

You can have two lights which one person sees as identical, but another sees as two different colours.

This is most clear when you think about colour blindness -- they'll see fewer colours, and more colours will be identical for them than for you. But, it happens in every person.

As such:
There exists a book that looks blue to you, but doesn't look blue to someone else. Or, at the very least, looks like a quite different shade of blue to someone else.

We don't actually see wavelengths of light. We see how three (or so) distinct pigments in our eyes react to all of the light that enters our eyes and reaches a point on our eye.

Each pigment has a response curve. If you graph the light emitted, then multiply against the response curve of the pigment, then integrate the result, you get a value that describes how much the pigment will be excited by the incoming light.

The ratio and magnatude of the excitation of the 3 pigments, together with some other (far far more complicated) effects, is then used to determine the colour we percieve.

The 'more complicated' effects include effects that are used by optical illusions.

Now you are being silly. We use the term 'blue' to mean 'when looked at, we see blue'.

It exists as much as weight exists. That object in that particular space-time region does emit photons.

Now, the standard description of the photons it lets off (redish, blue, yellow, etc) aren't all that percice. It is like saying "it is a heavy rock" or "it is a rock that is lighter than a car, but heavier than a person". A very rough measurement.

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Last edited by JHVH : 10-29-4004 BC at 09:00 PM. Reason: Time for a rest.

CSflim

This is just incoherrant.

Rejecting the existence of colour is at least consistent (if not particularly useful) in the case of radical scepticism. This would then make denying the existence of ‘weight’ a forced move.

But you then go on to say that the statement "Such an object is 10kg in weight" as having a truth value, but "this object is red" as not having a truth value.

We determine the weight of an object by using a measuring device, such as a scales. We can do the same with the colour by measuring the wavelength of the light it reflects when white light is shinned on it. I fail to see the fundamental difference here, that makes ones of these activities meaningful and the other one not so.

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CSflim

You assume, without argument, a rather bizzare usage of words.
You are claiming that the phrase "X is blue" is to be taken to mean "X absorbs lightwaves in the blue part of the spectrum".
If, for some reason, this indeed was what we mean when we say "X is blue", your objection would be justified, but this clearly is not the case.
"X is blue" means "X has the property that makes it seem blue when I look at it under white light", or thanks to our scientific understanding of the mechanics underlying it "X reflects lightwaves in the blue part of the spectrum".

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Master_Shake

I don't think that's true. I think when most people refer to an item as blue they really think the blueness is somehow in the item. When people put up blue paint, they aren't thinking that "hey, I'm really putting up a substance that reflects light that I interpret as blue," they think the paint really is blue, and that they see truth in it. Not everybody, but some of the people I've talked to about this subject.

Now who's being silly? The rhodospin proteins in the retina absorbs the light that enters the eye. Different wavelengths excite different cells to produce our colour images. That is the process we call sight.

EDIT:
Again, I don't think this is how most people think about colour. But maybe I'm wrong and I've just been talking to complete fools before this.

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CSflim

So are you saying the most people believe that the phrase "X is blue" is to be taken to mean "X absorbs lightwaves in the blue part of the spectrum"?
If that is the case, then indeed most people are wrong. (I don't belive that this is the case however).

Now if you were stating that there is no "blue-stuff" intrinsically a part of blue objects, then I would most certainly agree with you. (But then again I would be so "crazy" as to go as far as asserting that there is no "blue-stuff" in the mind either).

But I don't think people believe that there is "essence of table" intrinsically a part of their furniture either. (see my table post above)

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Yakk

There are frequencies of light which, when seen by our eyes, look blue.

But, the sensation of 'blue' isn't only produced by those frequencies. You could possibly generate the same perceptual colour using completely different frequencies.

People are talking about light as if a blue chair reflects light of a particular wavelength, which we interprit as blue.

The chair actually reflects a whole bunch of different wavelengths in a coninuum. We interprit all of those photons together as blue.

There are colours we can see which no single frequency of light can produce.

This is a technical point, but a whole bunch of people kept on talking about colour as if there was a two-way correspondance with frequencies of light.

Sure. There are people who have alot of wierd and wrong views of the world, especially when you ask them to abstract things into realms they don't deal with often. Usually these beliefs are weak and easily corrected.

People describe as 'blue' those things that, when they look at them, they percieve the colour blue, amoung other things.

They might have internal models of how blueness works that are gibberish. But, that's to be expected, really. So I'm just looking at their behaviour.

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Last edited by JHVH : 10-29-4004 BC at 09:00 PM. Reason: Time for a rest.

CSflim

Indeed. I'm sure that there are plenty of people who believe that they and all other living creatures have the ability to move about and do things because they have a special "life force" within them.
They are wrong.
But it doesn't follow from this that they are dead!

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Master_Shake

You could also generate it for some people using sounds. You can generate it for a digital camera using 1's and 0's.

That's all I was originally trying to point out. The problem is, I don't think those people are in the minority, I think most people walk around thinking the "blueness" is somehow intrinsic to the objects they see.

Really, you tried talking to people about religion lately?

Yes, but I don't think they see it that way. Our language doesn't describe things as we see them, it describes things as they are. "That chair is blue" is a statement we've all made (at least I know I have). But by any definition that chair isn't blue. When we describe something as weighing 10 lb's, it really does weigh 10 lb's and no perceptual differences will change that.

Maybe you think that "That chair is blue" means something other than what it plainly does, but most people accept that the chair is blue, even in a dark room that chair would still be blue as far as they are concerned. People speak in these absolutes because they assume we all have the same perceptual experiences (which many of us do, but not all) and that these perceptual experiences tell us some truth about the item in questions. "That chair is blue" would be a useful statement if everybody knew that it really meant the chair reflects certain frequencies of light that our eyes and brain interpret as blue.

That is a chair, would be a useful statement if everybody knew it really meant that there is a physical structure upon which I can sit.

Ascribing truth to these perceptions does not advance our understanding of the world, only our confidence in our own perceptions. When a colour blind person sees that same "blue" chair but doesn't see blue it doesn't mean there's anything wrong with that person, or that the person can't see the "truth" some people think they see.

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You know something, I don't think the sun even... exists... in this place. 'Cause I've been up for hours, and hours, and hours, and the night never ends here.

Mephisto2

OK, there are a lot of interesting replies and I can't answer each and every one. However I think you all miss the point I was trying to make. Perhaps that's my fault for not being more clear.

Everyone agrees that we "see" colours. But that doesn't necessarily mean that they exist per se.

Colours, as we see them, are simply interpretations of particular wavelengths of light by our eyes and brains.

Let me put it another way. If life on Earth did not exist, and there arose another form of life that perceived the world through sound-waves (like bats), they would be ignormant of such characteristics; colour to them would not exist. In other words, the existence of light is dependent upon its observation (ie, its interpretation) by conscious beings.

What I'm getting at is the link between colours existence and observation. If noone can see in colour, does that mean it's still there? And, as we know for a fact, that certain people see the exact same wavelength differently, then we know it is not a fundamental characteristic. There are brain injuries that can cause complete colour blindness. That is, the victim can see only in black and white. If our brains had evolved as such, none of us would see colour. Would we still be having this argument?

I think the fact that different people see different colours for the exact same wavelength proves the issue that colour are not inherent, but interpretive. And therefore, as they are ways that our brains "see" the world, they do not exist outside our brain.

I guess my question is similar to Nagel's famous paper "What is it like to be a bat?" (http://members.aol.com/NeoNoetics/Nagel_Bat.html).


Mr Mephisto

MuadDib

Colors are concepts much like emotions in that everyone experiences them, but we can't "prove" they are perceived in the same manner. However, we can assume that people do experience them the same based on their reactions to the stimlus (emotions or colors). Consider this, there is a significant portion of color blind individuals out there. Of those that are color blind there are multiple types but those with achromacy see the world in various shades of gray. While they do not see color they are able to perfectly differentiate colors from other colors. Since they would always learn that a certain shade of gray is red and another shade is green then how could we possibly detect this form of color blindness.

Physiologically we can detect that cones in these people eyes are not functioning and there are cases where later in life peoples cones stopped working so they lost the ability to see colors. Since we can detect the operation of rods and cones in peoples eyes and know what I normal functioning eye works like then we can tell that the input on each individual is the same. Furthermore, some colors have had a special meaning placed on them because of unique features which lends credit to the universalization of color view point. White is chosen because of its brightness as a flag for surrender because its easier to see from distances. Hunter orange is a shade of orange that does not appear in nature so is used in hunting so people will not be shot and b/c the hue is very noticable. While people could still associate these colors with their meaning because they would be unique to them while they looked different, they must at least be very similar because brightness, hue, saturation, contrast, etc have specific values in specific colors. The colors others would have to see instead of the ones I see would need similar characteristics otherwise the meaning behind them would not be universally appropriate and someone would have stated by now that it didnt work for them.

Finally, because the eye identifies color through a mixture of red, green, and blue it and we can scientifically note that peoples cones react in the same way to each color then we at least know that the data is being accumulated in the same manner. While perception is a completely individual experience we can see that we can identify the lack of color even though we can't see through the persons eyes, that if we did see different colors then it the differences we saw would have to be HIGHLY similar which narrows down the possibility alot, and because we can see that peoples sense gathering organs operate in the same way it is only about perception. At this point I think it is more logical to assume that the normal perception of color is universal among human and other animals with rgb eyesight. I mean, if people only took for fact exactly what they could 100% prove through experience then our current knowledge of the universe would be miniscule compared to what is it today. I guess, what I'm saying is that it can't be proved per se that I see the same colors as you, but it is the logical conclusion and if reject that sort of logical assumption then the logical end to that is rejection of universal concepts of god, emotion, and most modern science.

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Mephisto2

MaudDib,

You are concentrating on colours as they are perceived, and I don't disagree with anything you've said so far.

However, my question is do colours exist in and of themselves? Were there no people to see tomatoes, would they still be red?

Is red anything other than a construct of our consciousness to designate certain objects that reflect particular wavelengths of light?

Maybe I'm arguing with shadows...

Mr Mephisto

Willravel

As someone with a type of colorblindness, I can say that perception is the eye of the beholder. I cannot see some colors that the average person sees, and I see several colors that very few people will ever see (based on testing). This leads me to belive that it is possible that others see different reactions from light reflection and refraction. Whether a certian color means something to a certian person may or may not have bearing, but the red I see is probably not the red you see.

Da Munk

As some sort of fundamental quality independent of observation? No, color does not exist. Light exists and our brains can interpret it as color, but that's about it.

MuadDib

At the point that you are talking about if there are no people to see it, we are basically down to the tree falling in the woods question only with different senses. At that point we are still talking about perception.

Red, for example, is the name we give to a certain wavelength reflected off certain objects. In that, it wouldn't be called red if we didn't name it such, yes it is a construct. But the same way that a minute passing would still go by if we humans weren't here to designate it as a minute, the light would still reflect off of a tomato at the same wavelength regardless of our being here to being here to see it and it would likely be perceived by other visual entities as the same "color" we see it as.

Does that more address what you are trying to get at or am I still shooting blanks in the dark (thats what my girlfriend calls it but we won't get into that )

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anleja

Good thread, I've wondered this myself for quite awhile. Well, not sure if I am wondering this in the same way as you. I know the way I look and perceive colors are probably nothing like an animal would perceive them. That is pretty obvious, but it lends to the fact that we are pretty limited in seeing things how they "really" are, outside of the human eye... anything outside of the human eye is certainly there, but not anything I can conceive at all.

As far as the difference between people, it seems like colors would appear largely the same, if you consider the similar "moods" people get from observing colors. For example, I read about a study that people put in a yellow-walled room for a length of time would tend to be more depressed. And red is commonly used as an "alert" color. So, whether or not the actual "shade" is exactly the same, the emotional connection, I think, is pretty consistant. However, this may be a flawed observance.

I wonder if people who have had eye transplants have noticed a change, even though the brain would factor into that as well.

Let me end this by stating that it seems like others here have put more thought into this than I have...

*edit* I love "colour" compared to "color." I'd use it, but I think it would be seen as a bit pretentious, considering I'm from urban West Michigan.

asaris

I would want to say that we could easily create counter-factual conditions so that we can say that a chair no one has ever seen is blue. A chair is blue just in case, were it seen by a typical human observer, she would say it is blue. If this is what 'blue' means, then a chair can be blue in the absence of direct observation.

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"Die Deutschen meinen, daß die Kraft sich in Härte und Grausamkeit offenbaren müsse, sie unterwerfen sich dann gerne und mit Bewunderung:[...]. Daß es Kraft giebt in der Milde und Stille, das glauben sie nicht leicht."

"The Germans believe that power must reveal itself in hardness and cruelty and then submit themselves gladly and with admiration[...]. They do not believe readily that there is power in meekness and calm."

-- Friedrich Nietzsche

CSflim

Ah. I understand what you mean now.
To which I would respond, yes I agree that 'colours' don't exist outside the mind, when by colours you mean the 'qualia' of colours (i.e the actual "redness" of red and the "blueness" of blue).

I would agree with you on that. But I would go much much further and argue that these 'colours' don't exist inside our mind either. To elaborate on this would take us far beyond this thread, and probably beyond this forum.

To me "the propery of red" is "the property that causes the reflection of light in the 610 - 659THertz range" and this is objective and exists outside our mind.
An alien species of intelligent "bat people" would be able to grasp this concept and would certainly be able to discover it and determine which objects had this propery (which objects are red), however it is unlikely that they would have any reason to make up a specific word for red. They would just refer to 'colours' using their wavelength. (They would also have no reason to cut-up the spectrum so very finely into 'red', 'blue', 'yellow' etc. "visible" light would be no different from the rest of the elctromagnetic spectrum, and we only cut that up into very broad terms; gamma rays, x-rays, micro-waves, radio-waves, etc.)

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cybersharp

I think that yes, of course there is red... It isnt simply a coincidence that you both perceive the same color... Not to be scientific... Because I dont know the science of the eye.. But it is majorly doubtfull that you would perceive somthing as blue when 10 other people say its red. So if you both look at a object and it looks red for each of you then its red... Even if there was not a realistic red, the fact that you term somthing as red labels it as red anyway... A example of this would be prehapes if you saw a yellow wall... But if you looked at it and said it was red, and truly thought yellow was red...then it would be red... My beleif is that the concept and idea behind the red, or "color" is what make's a color.

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0PtIcAl

Suave

There is colour because all we know are our perceptions, and as colour is a perception, it exists. In the case of someone who is either colour-blind or completely blind, I'm willing to go with colour either not existing for that specific person, or colour still existing, as they have reference of it from the experience of others.

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Amaras

In classic philosophy I believe that this is commonly known as the "objective vs. subjective reality" debate. I think the idea is that if we were able to erase all filters of perception we would then see the universe as it truly is (ie. objective reality).
The problem I have with objective reality is that according to the Heisenberg principle, all phenomena is changed whenever observed no matter the apparatus used. Therefore, to me, it is impossible for any human to "objectively" view the universe, as we are corporeal and therefore implicitly use apparatuses.
Then again, I could be wrong.

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CSflim

I think we need a new version of Godwin's law for this forum, that replaces Hitler with quantum mechanics.

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Master_Shake

Of course, I think that in the case of colours and other perceptions we should not judge them against "reality" but against the human norm.

That the human norm, or koinos kosmos, does not provide an objective view of the universe doesn't make it invalid. It's when people use the human norm as objective truth that things get troublesome.

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You know something, I don't think the sun even... exists... in this place. 'Cause I've been up for hours, and hours, and hours, and the night never ends here.

irateplatypus

i'm just taking a little slice of the thread to respond to...

can we not reasonably infer that our perception of color is consistent between minds (if we are to accept the premise that our consciousness is isoloated) because we have common ideas of which colors "match" each other? that is, i think that people from different centuries and different cultures would agree that a tan pair of slacks and a blue jacket wouldn't match well with purple shoes. of course, i can't quantify this speculation... but if you assume this to be true wouldn't that indicate that our perceptions of colors are held to a common rubric? why should we agree that some colors go better with others if this were not so?

hmm...

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Yakk

Once again, no. There are colour-perceptions that cannot be generated by any particular wavelength of light.

Colours are interpritation of certain sets of wavelengths of light, in particular visual environments, by our eyes and brains.

This might be a technical point, but it does matter.

This is no more true that 'the existance of the chair is dependant upon its observation'.

Huh? People who can only see shades of grey cannot differentiate some colours from certain other colours.

There are definitions of the term 'red' and 'be' that would make "Where there no people to see tomatoes, would they still be red?" true, and others that would make it false.

False, The single-frequency colour fallacy, yet again.

The human eye and brain can't percieve wavelengths. They can percieve how some pigments respond to various wavelengths. Pure wavelengths have a perceptual colour, but the perceptual colour is not determined by a range of wavelengths.

Light in that range implies the light is red. Red light is not defined by that range.

If those alien bat-people where to live on Earth for a period of time, they might start breaking down the 'visible' spectrum into smaller chunks. There is a reason why life sees using the 'visible' spectrum, and frequencies around it, on Earth.

Speaking correct English is allowed no matter where you are from! So relish in colour, honour, cheque, centre, cigarette, omelette, cauldron, defence, aesthetic (beautiful word!), archaeology, manoeuvre, enroll, travelling (those yummy double-Ls) and grey!

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Last edited by JHVH : 10-29-4004 BC at 09:00 PM. Reason: Time for a rest.

d*d

Is that a subtle plato-esque dig at other posters?

CSflim

My point was, that we can define 'red' in terms completely ignoring humans, eyes, or any kind of conscious perception. We can define a colour as an objective propery of an object.

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Slavakion

That really depends. Since color is dependant on reflected light, an object's position and motion could play a part in its color. What I'm getting at, is that when galaxies/celestial bodies are moving towards/away from an observer, their color shifts according to which direction that they're heading. I can't remember off of the top of my head which is which, but I think a celestial body moving away experiences a red shift. That celestial body now appears more red than it did before. Is it red? If you were to define a color as an objective property of an object, you would have to define the conditions.

I wasn't aware that cigarette, omelette, cauldron, aesthetic, archaeology, enroll and travelling were spelled differently in American English. Or were you just pointing out words that you like?

paulskinback

As a human being we are all different. No two people look the same, or have the same genetic makeup, and therefore each individual experiences events differently. We have different tastes in food, for instance, meaning that our tongues interpret flavours in different ways. As our eyes are essentially "tasting" the light around us, why shouldn't we also interpret light in a different way to one another?

We're taught from a young age that when you point at a banana, it's yellow (or "lellow" as i pronounced it, or sometimes brown) etc. etc. but i'm a firm believer that what i see isn't what the next guy sees. Who knows if he sees red as what i interpret to be the colour blue? The light reflected at a certain frequency to represent the colour blue in my brain could be sent to your brain as the colour red.

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CSflim

True. But there is no fundamental stumbling block here. It just means we have to be quite precise when it comes to defining the property.

But your example quite properly shows up the point I have being trying to make in this thread: There are two seperate understanding of the word colour in use. The apparent philosophical 'problem' arises from the confusion of the two. (see the fallacy of equivocation).

Very roughly, the two meaning are distinguished thus:
1. colour as an objective property of an object
2. colour as a subjective experience/sensation (known as 'qualia' in the philosophy of mind)

In the majority of cases, objects with the physical propery of red (meaning 1) cause us, when we look at them, to experience (what we label as) 'red' sensations (meaning 2).

When we state that 'colour' in the second sense, doesn't exist in the real world, we are not being insightful, we are essentially stating a tautology.


There are of courses, cases where the colour-experiences do not match the colour-properties.

For example:
Looking at a purple object while wearing red contact lenses.
Looking at a purple object bathed in blue light.
Looking at a blue object moving away from us at enormous speed (not sure how often this noticably occurs in daily life!)
Looking at an orange (the fruit) in poor light, people will report seeing the colour orange, despite the fact that the fruit has been, unknown to them, painted blue.
I'm sure you can continue to make up your own further examples...



As for the other point which inevitably arose in this thread, the problem of other minds (do I see red like you see red?), that is a far trickier question, and it is, at the moment most certainly insoluble.
Whether it is destined to remain that way forever is another question.

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