Is it possible that people see in different colors?

Question

I'm not talking about minor variations such as blue and green. I'm saying if you see blue, could someone else see your blue as orange.

You can tell that I'm not a science major. I had this question as a child and never got a good response. This question just came out of nowhere!

Answer 1

amy is right. this is the basis behind percieved perception. what you see may be different than what somebody else sees however you speek of it as the same thing.

aarons answer is missing the part of transfering the light information into a chemical reaction inside the rod cells and then turn to electical activity. this is where the possible problem occurs
better yet heres the sequence

1. Light rays enter the eyes by passing through the cornea, the aqueous, the pupil, the lens, the vitreous, and then striking the light sensitive nerve cells (rods and cones) in the retina.

2. Visual processing begins in the retina. Light energy produces chemical changes in the retina's light sensitive cells. These cells, in turn, produce electrical activity.

3. Nerve fibers from these cells join at the back of the eye to form the optic nerve.

4. The optic nerve of each eye meets the other at the optic chiasm. Medial nerves of each optic nerve cross, but lateral nerves stay on the same side. The overlap of nerve fibers allows for depth perception.

5. Electrical impulses are communicated to the visual cortex of the brain by way of the optic nerve.

Answer 2

Surprisingly enough, it's possible. We know that blue light has such-and-such a wavelength and red light has such-and-such a wavelength, but we don't have the technology yet to be sure what the light does to our brains. To be sure everybody saw the same colors the same way, we'd have to be able to scan people's brains while they looked at different colors and see if they all lit up in the same way, and we can't look at brains in that much detail yet. There's no objective way to tell because if you've grown up all your life seeing orange where other people see blue, you've just learned to call orange blue.

Answer 3

i dont think you can get much more than mild variations. Your eyes will either pick up the frequencies or they wont. If colors were really that different to people you would have alot more signs. The blue and orange for example, that is going from light to dark. If you saw yellow instead of blue, then it would be really bright, and you would squint your eyes, when other people didnt have to. Or if you walked out with the sun shining on the snow, if it looked like a dark color to you, it wouldnt be blinding. If people had that much variation, you wouldnt end up with most girls liking pink, or boys liking blue and red. Besides that, if you had massive variations in your eye, and brain anatomy, i doubt that only color would be different. If some people saw blue as orange then alot of people wouldnt think of blue as a relaxing color. you would have people walking into a room, saying, man "thats" bright and makes me edgy.

Answer 4

I just want to say, I LOVE your question. A very interesting and intelligent thought. I once wondered the same thing when I was younger and had forgotten such. Thank you for bringing up this topic and forcing my brain to think outside the box, as the 1st poster stated, I definitely think it is possible as well :) I'm looking forward to any other answers that may bring more insight to this.

Answer 5

Amy has an excellent answer but you must also remember that the interpretation in the brain is not the only possibility. The vision instrument (our eyes) can be "calibrated" differently.

Just google color blindness and you will know what I am talking about.

So one possibility is that all eyes see the same colors but the brain might intrepret it differently. Another possibility will be that two different sets of eyes see different color so even though the brains intrepret the colors the same way, the brains get different responses from the eyes. So even though your brain considers green to be actually green but the eyes are going to tell the brain that they are seeing purple so the brain will assume that the actual color is purple.

Answer 6

Excellent question. I don't think such wide variations are possible though, and here is why. We know that colors are taught to us as children. Our parents tell this is yellow and after a while we recognize yellow as yellow. If one saw green as yellow then when the mix yellow (green) with blue, what would they get? It is possible to confuse colors of similar wavelength, but not of dissimilar wavelength. Blue and green is normal, yellow and blue is not.

Answer 7

We are a perfect creation of God. All perfectly the same as in our eyesight. Blue to u could be orange to me if I am color blind or has glaucoma or any other eye defect. Or maybe if I have lack of oxygen supply in my brain.

the dogs can see only white colors as well as other animals like the bats they have sonars to see things.

Answer 8

yes, its been fathomed like that as long as history. form an opinion, but personally, i don't think it matters

Answer 9

in uniqe cases yas

Answer 10

yeah