Do you ever think this

Not quite, scientifically our eyes are all made up of the same core elements. We all have 3 cones in our retina, S M and L which are short, medium and long cones that respectively pick up blue, green and red. We also all have the same identical pigment called Rhodopsin which is composed of something called opsin (basically a protein) which is linked to retinal, which is a conjugated molecule formed from vitamin A.

After that process it's simply a case of carrying that signal to your brain, which can get confused, but only within the current colour spectrum, you seeing red as most people see blue would become apparent very quickly.

If you think it could work any other way (i.e. people seeing completely different colours not in RGB) then try and think of a new colour for a few minutes and feel yourself get infuriated. Our imagination is somewhat limited by the spectrum of light.
 
Sawell said:
Not quite, scientifically our eyes are all made up of the same core elements.
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That doesnt mean anything.
Scientifically, our brains are all made up of the same core elements, yet everybody interprets things differently, thinks differently, acts differently, has their own personality, etc.

Also, your eyes dont 'see' anything. They just feed information back to your brain which interprets it and forms a picture.
 
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touch said:
That doesnt mean anything.
Scientifically, our brains are all made up of the same core elements, yet everybody interprets things differently, thinks differently, acts differently, has their own personality, etc.

Also, your eyes dont 'see' anything. They just feed information back to your brain which interprets it and forms a picture.
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It doesn't mean anything if the entire input/output process is kept within the confines of the brain (i.e. interpretation). Eyes are the input source though, and the input is the same. Basic biology.

Also, please don't just read the first sentence of a post. I went on to talk about the brain's involvement.
 
touch said:
The OP's point is not about what we name things, but about how we see them.

How do you know that everybody sees the same thing when looking at a certain colour? (the name of the colour is not important)
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They don't. Some humans have dichromatic vision ("colour blindness") and it's probable that a few have tetrachromatic vision (and can differentiate between colours far more accurately than most people).

But on the whole, it's pretty objective. Energy of wavelength x is detected by eyes and information about that detection is passed to the brain. That information is enough for the brain to reconstruct a roughly accurate value for the wavelength. You don't get people looking at wavelength x and seeing wavelength y. The variations in human sight determine how accurately the value of x can be determined, but it's the same value for everyone because the same wavelength is associated with the same concept. So if, for example, someone sees light with a wavelength of 570nm. Maybe if they are colourblind they can't detect it more accurately than "something between 530nm and 590nm"). Maybe if they have tetrachromatic vision they would be able to see a clear difference between 570nm and 571nm. But they won't be seeing, for example, 650nm. 570nm (which is what they actually detect) is associated in their brain with the concept of that shade of yellow, so they "see" that shade of yellow (unless they're colourblind, in which case they "see" the colour range containing 570nm).
 
Angilion said:
570nm (which is what they actually detect) is associated in their brain with the concept of that shade of yellow, so they "see" that shade of yellow
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This is the whole point of the thread here. Everybody's (with the exception of colourblindness or other problems) eyes will report the same wavelength. The wavelength of the light is a fixed value and will be the same for everybody.
It's the point that in your brain, that wavelength of light is associated with a certain colour. How do you know that everybody has the same associations?

As somebody else mentioned, it's the same as the tree falling in a forest problem.
it sounds unlikely, but it is impossible to prove either way.
 
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if you watch the youtube video to the end you will see that the answer is yes.... and might even see a naughty picture (watch it on youtube)
 
There was a whole horizon episode about this... the most interesting bit is the himba part, I can't remember the exact details but it seemed to suggest that they actually do see colours differently because of the colours that they see, use & name in their daily life - they had more difficulty distinguishing between certain colours that we can easily tell the difference between & vice versa for us.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/tv/2011/08/horizon.shtml

Something else we found was that there were scientists looking at whether language can influence the way we perceive colour. Could the number of words you have for colour affect the way you perceive it?

The only way to find out was to go to a civilisation far from the technicolour world we live in, to a tribe who have only five words for colour, compared to the 11 essential colour categories.

The Himba of northern Namibia - who had never even set foot in a local town - call the sky black and water white, and for them, blue and green share the same word.

In having fewer words than us for colour, it seems that their perception of the world is different to ours - it takes them longer to differentiate between certain colours, and so we can determine from this that they see the world a little differently.
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