How do you really know everyone isn't colorblind?

Question

Meaning, what if the sky, to me, looks blue but if I could see through your eyes, what is "blue" to me is "orange" to you and you just grew up calling it blue?

Answer 1

The word 'colorblind' really means 'abnormal color vision' ... in other words the vast majority of humans fall into a certain range of color vision, and 'colorblind' people fall outside that range.

So we all can't be 'colorblind' by definition of the word 'colorblind'.

And words like 'blue' and 'orange' are just names we give to certain experiences. There is no way to tell if two humans actually have a different personal experience when they look at the sky ... both will point at the sky and say 'blue' ... simply by definition of the word 'blue' as "the same color as the sky."

All we can tell is that most of us will point to a sky, and the sea, and to Italy's home uniform and say they are all the same color ... a color that we were taught in childhood is named 'blue.'

In other words, all we can tell is that most of us have the same color *categories*, regardless of whether we call it 'blue' or 'azul' or 'bleen.'

Answer 2

I don't suppose anyone knows for certain but since color is based on light frequency we can be certain that all optical nerves are at least reading the same signal. How that signal, or any other, is interpreted by the brain is impossible (so far) to discover. One could also broaden the category to include all sensory perception ie. my version of slight pain may not even be perceptible to you, or it may knock you unconcious.

To take that even further, I read about a study once performed on people with severe epillepsy. It was theorized that the seizures were caused by the two hemispheres of the brain reacting against each other (like feedback, or holding two mirrors facing each other) to test the theory they performed surgery on the patients and literally separated the hemispheres, in essence creating two brains. This dramatically reduced the siezures but also had some interesting side effects. After surgery, if a patient was asked to read a flash card with the word RED written in blue ink, they would say "Blue." Then if asked to write the color they saw they would write "RED." Talk about a split personality! Check out this link for more info:

Answer 3

That isn't technically being colorblind, but I know what you mean.

This topic is an important issue in Philosophy of the Mind. Every sensation produces a unique "qualia". No one can know the exact qualia another experiences because it seems to occur as a part of conscious experience, which we can't share with another. It's also virtually impossible to describe.

Here is a good article to read on the subject with some examples of the arguments for and against the existence of qualia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualia

I took a class on Philosophy of Mind. Fascinating stuff!

Answer 4

I'd pull out my trusty crayola crayons (or markers if that's what you prefer). it's what most of us learned colors from. those who are colorblind learned the words and read the crayons (or at least that's what my brother does). What they call blue you'd probably call blue etc.

it's an interesting question you're bringing up, but i refuse to delve in the philosophy when i can answer the question using crayons

Answer 5

We don't.
All we know about the world around us is what we can perceive. No two people perceive things the same way. So we have absolutely no way of knowing how another person sees something. As far as I know color doesn't even exist and is only an illusion created by my mind in order to fill in gaps left by the colorless world. I can only assume color does exist because I can see it.

Answer 6

I guess you don't. We had a friend years ago that questioned if we saw the same green traffic light as "green". It was pretty thought provoking. Almost like wondering how blind people dream if they've never had sight before? How can they experience a cloud, for example? Does God really exist? Should these questions be regarded as "faith", in that, you just have to "believe"?

Answer 7

"Color blindness" is lack of color sensitivity in certain parts of visible light spectrum, not just a difference in subjective color perception. Lack of color sensitivity is easy to detect.

For the difference in color perception, I think one could look for combinations of colors which are considered "pleasant" and "unpleasant". As different people usually like different colors and combinations of colors, I think the color perception really varies between people - just like perception of anything else...

Do you think that difference in perception of music, when one likes e.g. baroque chamber music and another one likes death metal, implies some problems with hearing in one of the persons? I don't think so.

Answer 8

Then we have way more to deal with than just being colorblind.

Answer 9

Because my brother is and I'm not...........MY proof......