Do we each see the same 'color' when we look at a particular 'color'?

Question

Is my green your red, and someone elses blue. though the frequencies ect remain the same. do we percieve the same things differently.
is this question answerable.. and then.. ever provable?

thanx but being colorblind is irrelevant to the question.

Answer 1

We probably do not see the same exact 'colour' - though your example is a little extreme. My 'red' is never your 'green' - (unless you happen to have planted scarlet grass, I suppose.... but even then a group of randomly selected observers ranging from two to ninety-two would probably be able to agree that your lawn was not a standard 'grass green' but rather in the 'red' spectrum... )

For example, we all agree that the shade of human blood is 'red' - to the extent that we have a name for the particular shade 'bloodred'.

Most people (who have been exposed to colour names) can distinguish between two shades of light purple and agree on which one should be called 'lavendar' and which one 'lilac'.

Colour is an amazing concept - there are literally infinite variations in tone and shade and hue, saturation, luminosity and intensity - yet they can be so precisely mixed that we can agree that one particular shade (give or take a few lumens!) can be assigned a unique and recognizable name.

If I say that I have a 'mushroom' suede couch - despite the fact that real mushrooms come in every colour from fiery orange to inky black, you can probably envision that faintly beige, dirty white colour in which your average supermarket button mushroom comes. If you describe your girlfriend as having 'emerald' eyes and 'sooty' lashes, I can imagine the intense, luminous green pupils shining through the deep black fringes.

And there have been so many studies on colour's emotional effect on people I shan't even bother to raise that particular point. We seem to agree that blues and greens are calming, reds are stimulating, and so on. However, it's not necessarily cross-culturally always a consistent effect, as more recent studies have demonstrated...

Anyhow, if you look at a particular intense shade of turquoise, do you see the same rich mix of blues and greens that I do? Does a man see color differently than a woman might - or are those differences attributable to linguistic and cultural issues? Does a person raised in a low-contrast environment experience colour in the same way as an individual who is constantly surrounded with saturated shades?

An interesting musing on this follows, as written by Cecil Adams and found at his website www.thestraightdope.com.
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Anthropologists and classicists have been arguing about color terminology since the nineteenth century, and it's only recently that the situation has begun to clarify. The opening shot was fired by William Gladstone, the British politician and Homeric scholar. He pointed out that abstract color terminology was virtually absent from Homer's work, and claimed that the Greeks had no sense of color at all, having only the ability to distinguish light from dark. He believed "... that the organ of color and its impressions were but partially developed among the Greeks of the heroic age"--i.e., the Greeks were physiologically incapable of perceiving color.

Lazarus Geiger, a naturalist, expanded on Gladstone's ideas. Based on his examination of Greek literature, the Vedic hymns, and other ancient writings, he claimed that man's color sense had developed only gradually, in fairly recent times. He thought that man had become aware of colors in the order that they appear in the spectrum, starting with the longest wavelengths. First, he said, people dimly realized that something was "colored," then they could distinguish black and red, then black and red plus yellow, then white, then green, and finally blue. (I realize white is not a "color" of the spectrum, but this is Geiger's theory, not mine.) He pointed out that "Democritus and the Pythagoreans assumed four fundamental colours, black, white, red, and yellow.... Nay, ancient writers (Cicero, Pliny, and Quintilian) state it as a positive fact that the Greek painters, down to the time of Alexander, employed only these four colours."

Later writers conceded the relative poverty of color terminology among ancient peoples, but denied that it reflected a physical inability to distinguish color. A major breakthrough on the question occurred in 1880 when an opthalmologist named Hugo Magnus organized a study involving missionaries working with primitive tribes around the world. Using standardized color samples and a rigorous testing procedure devised by Magnus, the missionaries found that primitive peoples with a limited color vocabulary nonetheless could distinguish colors every bit as well as persons from highly developed cultures--they just didn't have names for all the colors.

Not everybody bought this conclusion. As late as 1901 one researcher was arguing that the members of one primitive culture literally could not see any difference between blue and green because their retinas were more strongly pigmented than those of Europeans. But in general anthropologists came to accept the view that physiological differences did not explain the variations in color vocabulary among cultures.

So what does explain the variations? That's still a matter of dispute. The majority view, I would venture to say, is that the designation of colors in different cultures is totally arbitrary. For instance, H.A. Gleason notes, "There is a continuous gradation of color from one end of the spectrum to the other. Yet an American describing it will list the hues as red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, or something of the kind. There is nothing inherent either in the spectrum or the human perception of it which would compel its division in this way" (An Introduction to Descriptive Linguistics, 1961). Similarly, Verne Ray says "there is no such thing as a natural division of the spectrum. Each culture has taken the spectral continuum and has divided it up on a basis which is quite arbitrary" ("Techniques and Problems in the Study of Human Color Perception," Southwestern Journal of Anthropology, 1952).

More recent research, however, suggests that color terminology may not be so arbitrary after all. Brent Berlin and Paul Kay (Basic Color Terms: Their Universality and Evolution, 1969), to whom Cecil is indebted for much of the preceding discussion, suggest that there is a remarkable degree of uniformity in the way different cultures assign color names. In a study of 98 languages from a variety of linguistic families, they found the following "rules" seem to apply:

1. All languages contain terms for white and black.

2. If a language contains three terms, then it contains a term for red.

3. If a language contains four terms, then it contains a term for either green or yellow (but not both).

4. If a language contains five terms, then it contains terms for both green and yellow.

5. If a language contains six terms, then it contains a term for blue.

6. If a language contains seven terms, then it contains a term for brown.

7. If a language contains eight or more terms, then it contains a term for purple, pink, orange, grey, or some combination of these.

Berlin and Kay also found that the number of basic color terms tends to increase with the complexity of the civilization. They speculated that this explains the relative poverty of color terminology among the ancients--e.g., the Greeks had terms only for black, white, yellow, and red because theirs was a relatively uncomplicated culture, at least from a technological standpoint. But Berlin and Kay admit they don't know why the "rules" should operate as they do. For more detail, check out their book....
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Hope you've enjoyed my - and Cecil's! - thoughts on the subject!
I leave you with this parting mini-essay on my favourite colours, written a few years back.

JUDITH'S FAVORITE COLOURS

Red: from scarlet through strawberry, wine through tomato, crimson bright as a fresh lipstick or faded into the deep maroons of the Forbidden City's walls. Red is the colour of ripe apples, of cherry brandy, of Chinese brocades, of the setting sun. Triumphing Roman generals would paint their faces red as they rode in through the gates to depict their god-like exaltation; Cro-magnons smeared their dead with red ochre before burial to mimic the flush of life. Red is deep, sensual, the colour of blood and roses and coals.

Gold: The shimmering reflective quality of light that no other colour possesses to such a degree makes gold a warm and yet elegant shade. Dawn and sunset throw a golden wash across landscapes that turn them into dreams. The muted golds and yellows of parchment scrolls, old books, animal hides, butterscotch candies, a woman's sun-kissed skin, a sandy beach - all invite further exploration with touch and other senses. Gold refracts and yet draws in, promising a deep history and a smooth eye-ride.

Green: life, growth, movement, change. The mint-green of fresh pinesprigs breaking through in the spring, the deep forest colour of a hillside, the murky green of a still pond under trees, the colour of Bard Judith's eyes, sage and pear and rosemary and fir and leek and linden and lime. The sparkles of a dragonfly's wings are green, and the orbs of its huge multifaceted eyes. The ocean runs green in places where it is most dangerous and tempting; the sky before a storm promises an eerie green. Jade and emeralds and serpentine and jasper sing green power in the earth's veins; and at the heart of every flame worth watching a thin green streak dances.

Black: the ubiquitous absence of light - some fools insist it is not a colour at all, yet it has as many shades as the irridescent sheen on a raven's wing, as varied as a S'pore beauty's hair, as changeable and feeling as the reflection in a Korean baby's eyes. Black is night's colour, velvet's favourite, leather's aspiration, plump women's friend and slim women's lover. It is the colour brown wishes it were and the colour Death is. Coal, starlings, deep wells, onyx, lacquer, ants, all wear this colour with quiet unpretension, and it lasts them till they go quiet into night.

"Black goes with everything, at the end..."
(Soul Music, Terry Pratchett)

Answer 2

it is an exceedingly solid question... 2 human beings do not see the suited comparable colorings. Take a depressing blue case in point, one guy or woman might desire to even see army, the different might desire to even see a violet. The sign course from the attention to the techniques might have a potential, even nevertheless it would desire to be from habitual getting to grasp. Say, if a guy or woman's determine observed a colour distinctive and taught the newborn, then the newborn might misconceive the colour for what that's only by what they have been taught. it is variety of like the thought no 2 snow-flakes are precisely the comparable.

Answer 3

Yes it is provable. They have colorblind tests, you know the dots with other colored dots in the middle like a number or something, yeah taht tests whether your eyes have a certain chemical in them. It's a different chemical for each color. So if everyone has that chemical, scientifically the chemical has the same traits for everyone. So yeah we all see the same colors.

Answer 4

Although we both see red as red it does not mean that your perception of red is the same as mine but in the visible light spectrum the light wave frequencies are always the same.

Everyone recognizes a 'red ' light as a place to stop.

Answer 5

i have this question in my mind too but i never let it out.

i totally understand your curiousity. it would be cool if there is some sort of device that can tell us what colour everybody sees.

i think you're the first person to ask this in yahoo answers...good for you!

Answer 6

Of course!
Red is red as idea.
No two reds are equal at physical level.

Therefore, human can see two red as single red.
No two human can see a single red as double red.

Answer 7

I think we all see slightly differention coloration, but only slightly because we all have the same basic physiological makeup.

Answer 8

your green is my black

your blue is my black

your red is my black

your yellow is my black

your fuschia maroon striped tangerine is my black

your taffy sprinkled tangerine lime kiwi tutti frutti is my black

but...

your white is my black...

so there you have it...

you and i both see the same color!

Answer 9

no we don't - many people are color blind.