Isn't it impossible to describe or say what a color is?

Question

For example you're talking to a guy who was always blind, he's never seen anything in his entire life. There no way to express what a color is and what it looks like without associating it with an item.

The terms cool, soothing, royal, attention getting, and hot are subjective terms. You can't use them because they could be different things to different people

Answer 1

Yes. of course. But with a slight correction.
It impossible to describe PERCEPTION of color. You can describe to color-bind person the concept of colors by using physics(color is the frequency of the light wave) and have him telling the colors apart by using instruments.
However, what another human being FEELS when he sees a color is impossible to describe.
In fact NO internal thought is possible to describe. Things like perception of pain, emotion, color, heat, cold, happiness etc etc -- are all personal and are impossible to describe to another person.

Answer 2

I disagree with the last part of your thought.

HOT/COLD are 2 things that exist concretely FELT.

To describe the Sun to a blind person, would be to offer that Yellow,,, in the context of the Sun, is warm,,,"Which by the way, that person has already established as fact."

Blindness isn't retartdation; it's only the loss of one means of sensory perception. The Actual Color, need not at all be defined to a blind person, but Yellow, can always be recalled as Warm,,,even when describing a flower, or a painted wall, the blind person can then relate that Yellow is a Warm color, and so on, and so on and yada yada yada.

Rev. Steven

Certainly they cannot envision the color in the actual, but I promise they can visualize what it stands for as it relates to all things that particular color.

Answer 3

You can express colors in terms of a wavelength number, so that at least they will have some idea that two colors are "close together", versus two colors that are "far apart". Perhaps you could even create a system that would translate color into physical height off of a page, which would make it possible to "feel" the color change of a picture.

Answer 4

colors can be expressed in terms of emotion and feeling. However you might have a hard time with some colors, who knows if you'd be getting the right color across.

Answer 5

Blue is cool, green is soothing, yellow is attentiongetting, orange is warm, red is hot, purple is royal.

For that matter, how can you tell that what Red looks like for you, is the same for anyone else...