[Philosophy] Red

[Xannari Ferrows]

What color is this?

It's red, right? Should be obvious. You were raised to call it red, everyone else calls it red, so it must be red. But... what about my red? Don't I get a say?

Your red to me might look like this:

What's the deal? What color is this? This isn't red... to you. Maybe it is what your brain's interpretation of red would appear in my mind, but I can't see through your experience.

We'd call it red, and call it a day, but can you imagine the vastly different experiences we had?

Are our colors the same?

Sorry for keeping this one a bit short, but I really can't think of anything else to add.

[Albert VDS]

You could find out if we see the colors the same way, at least to me it seems like a solid idea.

Make a brain scan from 2 people when they look at only red and compare the scan, the should be essentially the same in the visual portion of the brain.

[Floppster]

I'm colourblind and now I'm offended as well. Check your privilege.

[rkman]

We'd call it red, and call it a day, but can you imagine the vastly different experiences we had?

Both experience color, and that are not vastly different experiences.

As far as philosophy goes this topic is shallow.

[RainDreamer]

Call it what you want, but the colour can be objectively observed by machine as light in a specific wavelength, and no matter what name we give it, we see the same light. Now, if you were to ask whether that colour is interpreted the same way...that is a whole another thing.

[cpast]

Look up "qualia;" that's the name for this concept of "experience as it's experienced by a mind."

[Bill Phil]

Our colors are the same wavelength, but how our brain reacts to it is different per person.

[-Velocity-]

This just came up less than a month ago. Since qualia are by definition isolated to a single brain, no one sees the same colors. The quale of "redness" is an illusion, there is no such thing as redness. (Silly you. I bet you even believe that the sense of self is real.) There are long wavelengths of visible light, but that's not the quale of redness. All "redness" is is a certain way in which neurons fire in your brain. Since a different brain is a different brain involving different neurons, it is senseless to wonder whether your red is the same or different than my red. They are different sensations, different qualia, by the simple fact that they are occurring in different brains. So a quale, like "redness", is a process that is unique to a certain brain.

This is what I said about all this a month ago.

You are speaking of what are known as "qualia"- the actual "substance" of sensory perception. Like the sensation of the color blue or the sensation of a high pitched noise.

I believe that viewing the brain as a chemical-electrical computer (there is overwhelming scientific evidence after all that the brain is "nothing but" this) can inform us of the nature of qualia. A quale (quale- singular form of qualia) you experience is thus the firing of certain synapses that exist only in your brain. Thus, by definition, qualia other sentient beings experience are different than yours, since it's a different brain. The sensation of "blueness" doesn't have any physical meaning outside of this process that creates it. So a qualia is a process unique to each being that experiences it. This is enough to make the comparison of qualia invalid IMO, but if you want to go even further, you could point out that the brains of all sentient beings are all wired very differently from each other, so not only is a different instance of a sensory process going on when each sentient being views a certain color, but a different configuration of neurons is involved as well.

Heck, we even know for a fact that sensory perception can involve vastly different processes for different people. There are people who "suffer" from synthesia, which is a sensory phenomenon where an individual experiences cross-overs between the sensory systems, like being able to "taste" colors or "feel" sounds. (Studies of mice have even suggested that they have evolved synthesia and make deliberate use of it, experiencing a sensation dubbed "smound" that is a mix of olfaction and auditory perception.)

Anyway, I think that, just in the inherent way that qualia are produced and defined, as being a specific process in a specific sentient being, it is invalid to compare them. Apples and oranges. And then add on that sentient beings all have differently-wired brains, it just makes trying to compare them even more invalid.

[Kryten]

As far as we can tell, the interpretation of colour within the brain is in fact very similar between most people, so the experience is likely to be broadly the same.

[YNM]

Didn't we already discussed it in some thread back then ?

My own reaction: I'd argue that just the same as a baby need not to be told how to breathe, move fingers, cry, smell, feel, and taste, vision should be the same - it has to be genetic. And at least, my family should look at things the same way.

[Frida Space]

[Fel]

Bahh

I wanted to wipout a really really cool image, there's a problem with PNG rendering based on browsers; something to do with the transparency layer.

Chrome, Firefox, and I.E. all render it slightly differently; which allowed a person to make an image that showed what browser you were using with zero php behind it.

But there is a point to this, we assume that what we're seeing is always the same; we don't realize the differences until someone goes and points them out to us.

[Xannari Ferrows]

As far as philosophy goes this topic is shallow.

I beg to differ. This is a just as strange a question as "what, and where are you?"

You can't really say they aren't very different experiences with much confidence, because you can't see into other's experiences. It's theoretically impossible to share your perspective on such like topics with others.

- - - Updated - - -

Oh hey, a new channel I'm gonna subscribe to.

[Kryten]

'What is red' in itself doesn't get you anywhere terribly interesting, because red is a primary colour and so has pretty consistent effects on most neurologically. If you shift it slightly you can get a much more interesting question-what is yellow?

The vast majority of people on this planet perceive yellow as a mixture of red and green signals-they cannot distinguish a truly yellow monochromatic source from a mixture of red and green light. However, a few people have alleles for a fourth colour receptor, sensitive to the yellow portion of the spectrum-and a small proportion of these people (two known so far) have been able to integrate it into their visual system.

These people can distinguish monochromatic yellow from the mixture everybody else sees-so what are they seeing, and what are we? Can the rest of us even be said to be able to see yellow?

[Xannari Ferrows]

Can the rest of us even be said to be able to see yellow?

An interesting question indeed. We receive the wavelength, but it stimulates 2 cone cells which are sensitive to 1 type of wavelength. That is then processed through our brains which allows us to see this light, but every brain is different.

Those with the extra cone cell don't suspend the red and green sensitive ones in the presence of yellow light, but the end sights are purer than most.

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

Well, it seems that what yanks call lime green, like in "the prograde marker is that green circle..." I and everybody I asked around here, call yellow... So we don't even need to get into wavelength and other science stuff, I might be also cultural.

[ZetaX]

In some rare medical cases a person sight is inverted so everything looks the opposite color to them buuut they know the right colour because like all of us we learned the colors when we were young. Most of the people like this don't even know that there seeing inverted culors.

Citation or the actual name please. This sounds at least weird because a lot of these things (color receptor's connection to the brain) is actually learned, not given.

[Ethanadams]

Deleted post because I misread what the article was saying

[Fel]

'What is red' in itself doesn't get you anywhere terribly interesting, because red is a primary colour and so has pretty consistent effects on most neurologically. If you shift it slightly you can get a much more interesting question-what is yellow?

I don't think we should too soon exclude the interesting aspect of red; but let me point something out to you

How well can you really distinguish red (that looked better when blown up 500%)

That's just 8 shades of red... the other half has one shade twice but, should be easy. Which goes to which? You can read this jumble of squiggles faster than you can discern individual differences in the color spectrum.

In many cases, an 8 bit image can be made to appear like a 24 bit image; You have to avoid the fringe darks / brights (stuff that isn't represented will in 24-bits either) and add in dithering (which wiki doesn't do); but 256 colors alone are very capable of representing a large number of images.

even at 4-bit, with only rounded pixels (really, you can do better than this; no reason for the bright pixels when nearest neighbor would indicate they're way out of range.)

It isn't a major what the heck is that reaction.

Adding in yellow cones does more than just makes it easier to tell what yellow is in the same way that red-green colour blindness isn't as easily represented by just tinting pictures. Cones indicate not only what "has an energy level similar to x" but also "what doesn't have an energy level similar to x". Adding in yellow cones may very well change what a person's view of what "red" is; given there's a faster stop between "sort of green" and "nope, not green".

[Camacha]

Didn't we already discussed it in some thread back then ?

Apparently it is a thing to redo threads several times.

My own reaction: I'd argue that just the same as a baby need not to be told how to breathe, move fingers, cry, smell, feel, and taste, vision should be the same - it has to be genetic. And at least, my family should look at things the same way.

Do your family members also like exactly the same things to eat, smell and see?

[Albert VDS]

'What is red' in itself doesn't get you anywhere terribly interesting, because red is a primary colour and so has pretty consistent effects on most neurologically. If you shift it slightly you can get a much more interesting question-what is yellow?

The vast majority of people on this planet perceive yellow as a mixture of red and green signals-they cannot distinguish a truly yellow monochromatic source from a mixture of red and green light. However, a few people have alleles for a fourth colour receptor, sensitive to the yellow portion of the spectrum-and a small proportion of these people (two known so far) have been able to integrate it into their visual system.

These people can distinguish monochromatic yellow from the mixture everybody else sees-so what are they seeing, and what are we? Can the rest of us even be said to be able to see yellow?

Do you have a source, I'm intrigued.

[Skyler4856]

I'm colourblind and now I'm offended as well. Check your privilege.

Please be kidding...

And as to your post OP, interesting, kind of banal, but interesting...

[Aanker]

Of more interest may be the way some 'exotic' or 'impossible' colours may be perceived under certain conditions. By looking at a field of one colour for an extended period of time and then shifting one's focus to another field we may see things like 'bluish yellow' or 'grey-fluorescent pink'. I don't remember the exact examples but with a simple google search you should get the picture... or not

[Camacha]

Of more interest may be the way some 'exotic' or 'impossible' colours may be perceived under certain conditions. By looking at a field of one colour for an extended period of time and then shifting one's focus to another field we may see things like 'bluish yellow' or 'grey-fluorescent pink'. I don't remember the exact examples but with a simple google search you should get the picture... or not

That's just a negative of the image you just watched fading from your retina. Not much impossible about that.

[Aanker]

That's just a negative of the image you just watched fading from your retina. Not much impossible about that.

The issue being that the colours cannot be recreated by using paint or computer screens, they are rendered entirely by the retinal colour balancing act.

Thats the way neurology textbooks describe it. Just saying. If you know better than that type of literature, sure.