Color..

[Devils.High]

Ok, I was in saturday detention and was wondering, is the blue i see the blue you see?
It sounds stupid and i was thinking well all people are alike, but then i thought about it and not everyone is alike and what if there was like a mutation along the line somewhere?

So what i wanted to know is if there is any way of telling that right now or some scientic theory?

I put alot of thinking into this and couldnt really find a way to describe something to someone who sees it as something else.

Its kinda like if you think a apple is a orange and the other person thinks the orange is a apple.

 

[1069]

Ok, I was in saturday detention and was wondering, is the blue i see the blue you see?

The first time I ever thought about this, I was about seven or eight.
I got very worried about it, too.
My dad explained to me about how our eyes perceive color, about photoreceptors, rods and cones, etc. But I was still disturbed about it.
What if, I thought, what I saw as a pinkish-peach color, he saw as blue?
So what if, when he looked at me, I had blue skin?
"Honey, you don't, you have pinkish-peach skin." he assured me.
But if we see colors differently, and if he saw blue as pinkish-peach, then he would call that color "pinky peach". But it would still be blue (what I perceived as "blue").
I tried to get him to describe the color of my skin.
"Well, it's the same color as a bandaid".
But if you see pinkish-peach as blue, then wouldn't you see bandaids as blue, also?
I tried to get him to describe what blue looked like to him.
We talked about how if you mix it with yellow, you get green.
But what if, I thought, what he calls "yellow" is actually what I perceive as "red" ... therefore what he calls "green" would be what I see as "purple".
"What difference does it make?" he finally said, getting annoyed.

It made a large difference to me.
Over the years, the thought (and the anxiety about it) came back to me from time to time, until I was an adult and decided that it actually didn't make any difference.
I think the reason it bothered me so much when I was a kid is because:

1. it was an instance when communication broke down, because I did not have the adequate words to explain this concept or to convey exactly what I meant. It bothered me to think that maybe everyone sees colors differently from everyone else, and nobody will ever know, because none of us really have the words to explain what colors look like.

and 2. It was the first time I realized how isolated we all are, inside our own heads.

 

[nes]

Your actually wrong. The green you see, is the same kind of green everyone else observes. This is because only certain colors (not opposites) mix on the color wheel. People see red, blue, and green. If someone saw red as blue, and blue as red, then someone would object when someone said that green doesn't mix with red, it makes gray / black.

If someone seen red as blue, and blue as red, then that person would say that blue mixing with green makes gray, while someone seeing red as red, and blue as blue would say that blue mixing with green makes another color instead of gray or black.

People and animals also see black and white, black being a lack of light, so only light (regardless of color) is actually being picked up. I think that its another mystery on why everyone has hard coded brains that visualize green as green instead of any other color. Gray is a color that is between black and white, when any light is being picked up, yet still being a lack of light, then the color is gray. White is a color of all colors reflecting. Black is a color when no colors (light) reflect. Objects appear to be different colors because they can reflect only certain types of light, while absorbing certain types of light.

 

[Thelost1]

I find it unlikely that we are all seeing differant colors like that*, but it would account for differant favorite colors.

*As our eyes are so similar.

 

[1069]

Your actually wrong. The green you see, is the same kind of green everyone else observes. This is because only certain colors (not opposites) mix on the color wheel. People see red, blue, and green. If someone saw red as blue, and blue as red, then someone would object when someone said that green doesn't mix with red, it makes gray / black.

I know that.
I've always known that.
My primary concern was, what if each of us is at a different spot on the color wheel, as far as our perception.
Like, what if I saw red, and you saw blue?
But of course, we'd both call it the same thing: "Red". (or "blue", or whatever).
Mix "yellow" in with it, and I'm seeing orange. But now you're seeing green.
But we still both call it the same thing: "Orange".
It goes like that all around the color wheel.
What if I saw yellow and you looked at it and saw red?
Mix in blue, now I'm seeing green, you're seeing purple.
But how would we ever know?

It's not a very realistic speculation, and even if it were, it really doesn't matter. Who cares if everyone perceives colors differently?

But just the idea that someone else's perception might be so different from- so alien to- my own scared me a little, back when I first thought about it.
What i wanted was just to get inside someone else's head for one second, and look out through their eyes, and see things the way they saw them.
Then I'd know if we all see things the same, or if we all see differently.
But of course, that's impossible... and barring that, there's no way to ever know. Certainly not by talking about it.
Words will never prove whether we do or don't, not when we might be using the same word ("blue") to describe two totally different colors, and neither one of us would ever know it.

 

[Voidwar]

Blue is NOT subjective.

Blue is : Electromagnetic Radiation in the range of 450 nm to 500 nm.

The receptors Humans make, to detect color, are nearly functionally uniform. They can vary a little, but not at the site of the molecule where their job is done. So they do their job the same for every Human. They detect 450 to 500 nanometer photons, by undergoing a conformation change in the molecule. Another enzyme in the Cone cell comes along and inputs energy to get the detector molecule back to its original, ready to detect, conformation. This enzyme would not work if the receptor molecule was different at the functional site.

Blue light is 450 to 500 nanometers. There is no possibilty of being "shifted" on the color wheel, because the Human eye, discerning color, only works because of specific wavelength ranges and their interaction with particular molecular conformations.

 

[1069]

Blue is NOT subjective.

Blue is : Electromagnetic Radiation in the range of 450 nm to 500 nm.

The receptors Humans make, to detect color, are nearly functionally uniform. They can vary a little, but not at the site of the molecule where their job is done. So they do their job the same for every Human. They detect 450 to 500 nanometer photons, by undergoing a conformation change in the molecule. Another enzyme in the Cone cell comes along and inputs energy to get the detector molecule back to its original, ready to detect, conformation. This enzyme would not work if the receptor molecule was different at the functional site.

Blue light is 450 to 500 nanometers. There is no possibilty of being "shifted" on the color wheel, because the Human eye, discerning color, only works because of specific wavelength ranges and their interaction with particular molecular conformations.

So what happens in the case of red/green color-blindness?
Some physical deformity to the eye, or what?
I know a family where every male in the family is color-blind.

PS I had pretty much figured out already that my "subjective color" theory is pretty unlikely given the similar biological structures of everybody's eyes (although I didn't know all that stuff that you just said; it's quite interesting, thanks).
Like I said, it was just something I thought of and worried about when I was a little kid. It was a bit of childish whimsy.
It was just interesting to read what DevilsHigh wrote in the opening post, because what he wrote was exactly what I used to think, and I didn't know that other people thought about things like that.

 

[Obama08]

I've always thought of the question as well....Its likely that we do based on the fact that everyones eye has the same basic structures unless your born with a genetic disease such as being color blind.

 

[nes]

If you happened to do any research at all, you'd find out the eye would be missing the cones that would pick up the specific color.