Do people see the same colors? of course red is red, because you were told that the color you saw was red, but

Question

what if your red is my purple? i cannot think of a way to prove or disprove this, and please don't respond about color blindness, that is not what i mean. thanks =]

i just think that maybe two different people's eyes perceive "blue" (or any color) as two different colors. I think the only way to prove or disprove it would be to actually see through their eyes.

Silas, you're not seeing what i mean. i'm not talking about how we learned it or what shade we call it because that's aside from the matter. okay. you were born and your mother taught you this tree is green. so, yes, it is green to us both..whether it's kelly green or army green doesn't matter..anyway, it's green, and what i'm saying is.. your eyes may see a different color- but it is still called green to you because it is what you've always known to be green. i want to know if there is a way to show if our eyes see different colors.. does that make more sense?

Answer 1

You ask a really interesting question -- it's one I stumbled across some 20 years ago when I first started working in computer graphics. It's related to how the eye sees color, but also how the brain evaluates the colors that the eye "reports."

Here's an experiment you could conduct to find out whether people see colors the same way. The idea is to take a "gradient" of color -- that is, a broad line that's 100% red at one end and 100% blue at the other and which blends smoothly from red to blue -- and put numbers across the bottom. Do the same with red and yellow, and again with blue and green.

Then find a group of people (fellow students, people in the mall, whatever) and have them look at the color gradients and ask them to identify the point where the colors stop being "mostly red" and become "mostly purple." Likewise with red and yellow, only asking where it stops being orange, and again with blue and green.

Mark down their answers, then plot them on a graph (or on three graphs, one for each color pair).

Now... when I looked into this 20 years ago, I learned some interesting things. First, the human eye can distinguish approximately 88,000 different colors -- but we don't all agree on which ones are which after we start mixing them. So one person's "purplish red" may be another person's "reddish purple." And the color about which there is the most disagreement: blue-green. When asked to choose which sample was clearly blue and which was clearly green, there was more variation between individuals than for any other color pair.

So the answer to your question is no, people don't all see colors the same way, particularly when the colors in question are blends. So while you and I would probably agree that an eggplant is purple and an apple is red, we might choose two different samples as "the last really red chip before it turns purple." And we would almost certainly disagree over "the last really blue chip before it turns green." (My wife and I disagree on blues and greens regularly, and she and her mother have nearly come to blows over it. :-)

Why this works, if you care: blue light has the shortest wavelength in the spectrum, and it interacts with the cells in the eye in different ways for different people. Shining a light with the same wavelength to two different people may actually cause their eyes to send different values to their brains -- that is, it may be a physiological difference rather than a learned difference. For instance, if your mom always called your sweater "green" when it was a bluish green, you might think of that color as "green" where someone else's mom called it "blue." That certainly may be possible, but I believe that the explanation for this is mainly, or at least partly, biological and based on the differences in individuals' eyes.

Answer 2

The answer lies in partly in science, and partly in philosophy. All of our experiences, senses, and everyday conventions are open to interpretation. Scientifically, the color red, for example, is a visible light wave of 650 to 680 nanometers. That wavelength would stimulate the cones in our eyes that are receptive to the color red (or rather the frequency of visible red light) so in that sense, we all are being stimulated by the same visible light spectrum. From there, the stimulation is translated into an electrochemical signal which causes certain neurons in the brain to "fire". Those in turn stimulate other receptor sites such as long-term memory, speech recognition pathways, etc. I would suspect that just as everyone is different (some people may have more cones in their eyes, would that necessarily make the color red "redder" for that person ?) I believe that the "interpretive" part--how the signal from the eye is carried to the brain and which neurons fire, in what order, and through what pathways is more of what constitutes our perception as humans of the color red. In short, how we percieve and interpret the stimuli (the 680 nm wavelength) is probably what colors our world (pun intended) so that the answer to your question is yes and no. Yes in that we are all stimulated by the same wavelength corresponding to the color red, but no, because just as no two people are exactly alike, our "hardware" AND "software" is all subtly different so that an actual interpretation cannot be identical to another's.

Answer 3

I think when you discuss issues with colors and coresponding them with words, it depends on what you learned what color was what. After all, red in english is red but the same color is rouge in french. On the same note, there are different shades of a color: magenta, mauve etc. If you don't know the different shades, then you go with what you know.

In some cases, it's an issue of what a person considers to be a certain color. There are many times that people argue over red and brown. The best example is traffic lights... is it orange or yellow? Again, its up to what you learn.

And although you don't want to talk about color blindness, if you're asking about whether we all see the same shades of a color, then you need to talk about color blindness, as it's all a shade of black and white for full color blindness and for people who are red-green color blind, they see red and green as the same color. They can't distinguish red and green.

Honestly speaking, the shades of colors can differ from one person to the next. It depends on many different reasons, but the red color in the Yahoo! symbol on this page may differ a bit from what you see and what I see. In most cases, we all see the same red, but there are some who see a different shade (that's why some people may complain about the color on a tv set while others don't.)

Answer 4

The thing is, we can never prove or disprove this. We can never really know what someone else is percieving or if they are percieving the world the same way we are. Colors like anything else are abitrary and learned. We see a red object a certain way and we know it's red, and someone else knows it's red too because they have learned that that is red, but we can never really proved they are seeing the same thing as us.

Answer 5

The hues would have to add up...
as in, blue and yellow should still make a green-like color...

I suppose in a relative sense, all colors should be the same for everyone...

I guess is someone's red were your purple, his yellow would have to be your light green..



Strange question, but i guess the colors should be the same for normal people.

Answer 6

Let me drive the question a bit further: is there a method at all to prove or disprove of whether the red that people see is the same red? Isn't it the old psychophysical conundrum?

Answer 7

if you have colour synesthesia, then no, different people do not see the same colours associated with the same number or letter or sound.
it would perhaps be too much to infer from this that the actual sensation (or qualia) of red one experience insides ones own head is markedly different from what someone else experiences, we do after all share the same basic brain chemistry, but it seems unlikely at present we shall ever know for sure.

Answer 8

We see colors because of the rods and cones in our retinas. To be honest, I forget which one sees black and white, and which sees color.

But since no two sets of eyes are exactly alike, I'd say no, we don't all see the same colors.

Which could be a partial explanation as to the wide varieties of taste in colors.

Answer 9

My daughter asked me that question a few years ago. I didn't know the answer then and still don't. But I thought about it for a long time before finally forgetting about it. Thanks for making me think about it AGAIN.....NOT! ;)
There's probably some scientific, physiological explanation proving that we do see basically the same color, but who can know for sure???

Answer 10

I have thought about that before. And i said the same thing that you did . Its red because that is what we were taught but what if someone else was taught that red was purple lol.