Do people see the same colours?

Guest2 said:
I have had this conversation with a few people before and my housemate brought it up again last night

Do you think colours look the same to all people? I dont think there is a way of ever finding out the answer.

For example, when I am younger my mum or dad will have pointed at the grass and told me "that grass is green" or I might have seen it in a book. I automatically associate this colour of 'green' with anything that looks similar.

Whats to say that my 'green' might look like what someone else sees as my 'brown'

Maybe in future this could be worked out when we know more about the brain
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Knowing stuff about the brain doesn't really help. You can never really know what someone else's subjective experience is like - no matter how much you know about the chemical/electrical processes that go on within the brain.

You can say similar of any sensation. When i eat chocolate, i have a particular sensation that i associate with that act. You also have a sensation that you associate with eating chocolate. But if i were able to experience what you experience, perhaps your experience would seem the same as the sensation i get when i eat cheese, or see the color blue, or scratch an itch etc

What is really interesting about this kind of stuff, is that it's not what these things are actually 'like' that matters - it's the fact we all share the same frame of reference. When we eat chocolate, we all have a sensation we can define as 'eating chocolate'. We can communicate about it even though what each of us actually experiences could be completely different.

If you really want to drive yourself insane on this stuff you should go read some Wittgenstein or something.
 
tedmaul said:
You can say similar of any sensation. When i eat chocolate, i have a particular sensation that i associate with that act. You also have a sensation that you associate with eating chocolate. But if i were able to experience what you experience, perhaps your experience would seem the same as the sensation i get when i eat cheese, or see the color blue, or scratch an itch etc
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This was what started off the conversation last night. We were talking about smells after I made a meal for everyone (had 7 of us watching Masters) Someone said something like "that smells well nice" Which sparked off a conversation on the lines of "my chicken might smell like your beef" :p
 
Does the brain of an English speaker use the same language as a non-English speaker? Do our brains really operate in a human language or is only when we need to express something (by speaking or thinking for example) that we automatically translate our 'brain language' into a human language.
 
RobH said:
Does the brain of an English speaker use the same language as a non-English speaker? Do our brains really operate in a human language or is only when we need to express something (by speaking or thinking for example) that we automatically translate our 'brain language' into a human language.
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I asked this question to a bilingual friend and apparently it doesn't. When she's talking in english she thinks and replies in english, when she's talking Farsi she thinks and replies in Farsi (ie it isn't translated into english so she can understand before replying back in Farsi).
 
Amp34 said:
No it doesn't AFAIAA colourblindness just means certain colours look the same, the OP is talking about colours looking different but some peoples purples looking like others blues.
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Correct.

For example, I can distinguish between every colour perfectly fine, and don't (for example) get blue and green confused, they are very different to my eyes and mind, but what if what I see as blue is what you see as red, and what you see as red, I see as blue?

Of couse, I'd never know this, because I was always taught that "this object is blue", regardless of what "colour" I see it as.
 
I'd imagine it also comes down to statistics too, subconsiously. If say 100 people are telling you somethying is green, and only 5 are saying its blue, I think you may well associate that colour with the word blue over time, without actually putting any thought into it.
 
Guest2 said:
For example, when I am younger my mum or dad will have pointed at the grass and told me "that grass is green" or I might have seen it in a book. I automatically associate this colour of 'green' with anything that looks similar.
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This is no different to calling a cat a dog and vice versa, its a label. Once out in the real world, you'll soon learn a red light is not a blue one!
 
Dj_Jestar said:
Ishihara and Snellen eye tests provide evidence that everyone sees the same colours.
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Again, missing the point. We could both look at something that is light red and say both say "thats light red" but it might look completely different to what i see (despite me also saying its light red)
 
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