What if everyone saw colors differently?

Question

I mean...... what if blue to me was a particular color, but maybe others are seeing blue in the same way I perceive yellow??

Answer 1

This observation -- called the "reverse spectrum" or "colorblind neurosurgeon" -- is a famous philosophical argument for existence of some immaterial component in a human.

The argument goes roughly like this:

All human feeling are completely internal and are not possible to describe. Two people might say that they feel pain in the left knee -- but how do we know that their pain is the same? This question is not resolvable by science. Even if one were to understand the brain perfectly -- on would still not experience what the owner of the brain experience.

Consider the case of color-blind neurosurgeon. He might know everything about perception of color -- he might know everything there is to know about color. YET, he will never know what it is like to perceive color.

So brain states are not the same as the state of MIND or perceptions. So if the perceptions are not the states of the brain -- what are they? we don't know what it is -- But i like to believe that the mind states come from immaterial soul -- whatever it is,.

Answer 2

How would we know? We can't see what they are seeing. We see the same things except we perceive our colors in a different way. If it is blue to one person, it is still yellow to another. Sort of like ( same color.......different name)

Answer 3

I've wondered this before! It's fascinating to think about. I mean, colors "look good" together for me because I've lived my whole life like this and I've been told they look good. But also think about this-- if it's possible that the colors you see are jumbled up compared to the colors I see, what if you see colors that I don't? What if your "blue" doesn't even compare to anything I see, and is something I can't even imagine because I've never seen it? Maybe I see your red as my blue, and for my red I see something completely different than anything you see! It's crazy, I could go on and on...

Answer 4

It doesn't really matter.
I've thought about this before too, and if your perception of yellow is my perception of blue, or vice versa, or what have you, we're still trained to look at the world through that perspective, and operate accordingly. (if you see a yellow traffic light the way I see the color blue, we're both still trained to slow down at the label we've placed on that colour. Yellow, regardless of perception, means slow down. and if you call it yellow and to me it looks blue but our definitons are the same, it wont make a difference.)
It's about the label, not the color.
It all comes down to the tool of language, really.

cheers

Answer 5

We've lived our whole lives seeing those colors and connecting them with certain symbols. As long as everything that's called green looks like one color and every single thing that's called red looks like another single color, I guess there won't be any confusion. (I don't know how to say that to make it make sense)

Answer 6

The world may never know! But I think that if colors were switched they would have to be primary colors otherwise it wouldn't work.

Answer 7

That would suck, we wouldn't be able to use color to describe anything cause no one would know what we were talking about

Answer 8

Then we're going to have a whole world of grief at traffic lights!!!

Answer 9

You never know, but it doesn't make much of a difference if you think about it.