I've always wondered 🤔
When I look at something, lets say grass, I say the grass is green.
You say, yes it is.
But how do we know we are both seeing the same color?
I was told by my parents and teachers that the grass is green so that is why I say it is green.
For example, lets pretend your green grass is actually a shade of red but you were told that is was green so you see it as being normal green grass.
The same as it always has been.
The person next to you sees the same "green" grass but his shade of color could be a shade of blue.
But since he was always told that is what green is he says "the grass is green"
Confused yet?
How can we prove color when we can't look through someone else's eyes and brain?
If I could somehow look through another persons eyes I might see that your "green" is my pink!
Can color be proven?
I have previously heard of this interesting philosophical problem and thought about it and concluded that, until if or when there is AI in the future so advanced it can work out how the electrical pattern in our brains corresponds to our personal perceptions and sensations (and to do that it would have to be WAY more smart than us, intellectually light-years ahead of us in fact, and come to know WAY more than us!), it is impossible for me to rationally know whether when I see green I am experiencing the same green visual sensation as you do.
@cheesemaster saidAs humy said: Interesting philosophical Question. Of course we know what sensors get activated at which wavelength, so we can assume that we have the same Impression when the same sensors are triggered. Look here for basic Information:
I've always wondered 🤔
When I look at something, lets say grass, I say the grass is green.
You say, yes it is.
But how do we know we are both seeing the same color?
I was told by my parents and teachers that the grass is green so that is why I say it is green.
For example, lets pretend your green grass is actually a shade of red but you were told that is was gre ...[text shortened]... look through another persons eyes I might see that your "green" is my pink!
Can color be proven?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cone_cell
However you can ask people with missing cone cells (or some with additional ones (see tetrachromacy) (only females as far as I know)) about their Impression (comparing two almost identical coloured squares for example).
@Cheesemaster
It sounds to me like a non-starter, for our color response to be different it would require our physics to be different from person to person.
Physics is the same here and in the Andromeda galaxy, so the color sensors in eyes would produce exactly the same response assuming that eye had the rods and cones of normal human vision.
I think it is a case of folks overthinking the phenomena.
For instance, lets take a 520 nm green laser, that thing puts out basically a single wavelength and if someone sees blue instead of green it could be easily proven that persons set of rods and cones are out of whack and not due to some kind of different physics going on in one eye vs another.
@suzianne saidYes, but the essence of the philosophical OP problem of this thread isn't a problem of what physically defines color but rather, and even if and when there are no differences between how our physical eyes respond to color, how do we know we all share the same private color sensory sensation in our minds when we physically see the same physical color of, say, color green. How, for example, can I know that when we both physically look at the same physical color of, say, the physical color of green when we both look at the same green colored thing, that your private color sensory sensation you have in your mind is one that I have and not a different one so that my color sensory sensation of physical green is more like your color sensory sensation of, say, blue rather than green, or vice versa?
Yes, what defines color is the wavelength of light that object is reflecting or emitting, not our perception of it.
@cheesemaster saidWhen you say "proven" what do you mean? My best guess is that the internal representation is more or less the same. Vision is both ancient and critical to survival. There's a YouTube channel called Cass Eris. She's a cognitive psychologist who specialises in vision and did a video on it, although not referring specifically to this question. Every lobe in your brain is involved. The occipital lobe does the initial processing. The temporal lobe sorts out what the objects in your vision are, the parietal lobe where they are and the frontal lobe does the executive stuff, what to do about it. We know all this from seeing where brain lesions are in people who've had strokes and have deficits as a result. There's quite an interesting video comparing cat and dog vision with human vision. Balance of evidence I think we all see green as green, but we might shade it differently.
I agree.
I don't think color can be proven...yet 😉
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@deepthought saidi workedwith a colour blind floorlayer and had many arguments about the colour of the vinyls we were fitting/ he drove but could not see green yet he knew that on a set of traffic lights that red was red amber was amber and the other colour was go.
When you say "proven" what do you mean? My best guess is that the internal representation is more or less the same. Vision is both ancient and critical to survival. There's a YouTube channel called Cass Eris. She's a cognitive psychologist who specialises in vision and did a video on it, although not referring specifically to this question. Every lobe in your brain i ...[text shortened]... n vision. Balance of evidence I think we all see green as green, but we might shade it differently.
@badradger
It also turns out color blind folks have a compensation:
They see many shades of gray and have been used by military to identify enemy blinds and such that normal folks would not be able to discern.
They really do see 50 shades of gray.