Do we all see in the same colours ? Is my 'green' your 'red'?Could my blue sky be orange to you?

Question

I think one or two people may have missed the point of my question.I wasn't talking about colour-blindness.I meant would we ever know if we saw colours differently.We all call grass green because that's what we are told it is which is just a label.

Answer 1

Technically one can never know as everyone is just told that a certain frequency they see is "green" or "blue". It is immaterial as these are just words we use to identify a particular frequency.

However it is very likely due to our physiologically similar compositions and common ancestry that we all do, in fact, perceive the same frequencies in almost exactly the same way.

Answer 2

we all see the same wavelengths of light... therefore we all see the same hues... however... ur green is not neccessarily my green... say if from birth i'd always been told your green was my red then, i would think football pitches are red whereas you would think them green, i would also be one messed up kid, lol
the point is we all see the same wavelengths and thus the same hue
the difference is the terms you give to the hues, i.e. the colours.
Colours (i.e. the names such as blue and red etc) are just names given to different wavelength so retards like us can just say that the sky is blue rather than the sky has a wavelength of 500nm roughly.
Hence the naming of hues as colours is an entirely subjective thing. however over time standards have been set, avoiding confusion most of the time.
Colour blindness tests really test inability to differentiate certain wavelengths not colours.
(in this answer i have used hue to mean the true nature of the light i.e. its wavelength and colour to be its supposed name)
hope that helped and wasnt too confusing, it made sense in my mind... honest :P
the question then asks if we would ever know if we saw colours differently...
colour blind people see things differently to so-called normal people. this can be demonstrated by the ishihara test plates whereby some of them only "colour blind" people will see certain things whereas "normal" people see nothing

Answer 3

We definitely DO NOT all see the same colours. Many people are colour blind which just means they respond differently to the frequency of the radiation of reflected light emitted by an object being viewed. This is due to a MARKED difference in the sensitivity to stimulus of one or more colour receptors in the back of the eyeball. Put simply we all see colour slightly differently, but some of us see them so differently that they disagree about which colour is being described, however this is rare.
Quoted from source;
Anomalous trichromacy is a common type of congenital color vision deficiency, occuring when one of the three cone pigments is altered in its spectral sensitivity. This results in an impairment, rather than loss, of trichromacy.
There are two major types of color blindness: those who have difficulty distinguishing between red and green, and those who have difficulty distinguishing between blue and yellow.

Answer 4

I've actually considered this question myself. i think we have technology now that lets us know that the colors I see are the same as the colors you see. Scientists have done studies to see how animals see in certain colors, it's logical that they know about humans too
And for those who don't understand the question, imagine if all your life since you were born you were told red was really blue and vice versa. Well blue being the most common fav color, you'd probably like blue, but no knowing otherwise would think that you were really liking red. Well the same could be true theoretically if your brain changed the colors around on you instead of someone changing the names around on you. You would associate a name with a color that another person would associate the same color with a different name. It's a bit abstract, you have to think outside the box a bit on this one.

Answer 5

No, I don't feel that will be the case since the word red in the dictionary would not have come into the place if my red is your green and some one else's yellow etc.

Our ability to see colors is dependent on the rods and cones in the retina and just as we all share a lot of common things (while maintaining our individual differences) to be called human beings, we share sufficiently similar biological organs to see the same colors similarly.

Answer 6

We all see the same colours but some percive them in different shades such as the difference between blue and purple etc. In Colour blind people, they are unable to see the difference in shades in colours which other wise would be easily distingused between each other, like red and green. when these colours are put together thay can not tell when green starts and red ends, it is all one colour.

Answer 7

Philisophically speaking, we have been trained to state that a percieved wavelength of x angstroms should be called 'RED'.

Your question can't really be answered in the physical world as unfortunately we have no real frame of reference. People are told to call that percieved colour as RED regardless of how we would see it given their self same resources.

I see no real physiological resolution in the near future, tests have progressed to the point of measure reactions to lights and colours but as to testing of perceptions, we're not quite there yet.

It's a bit of an "if a tree falls in a forest ..." like point unfortunately

Answer 8

yeah what u r talkin may be true.first it was believed that light had no colour.just like that what u r sayin may be true.
we see an object when light fallin on it is reflected to our eye.I think that our eye recognises only the majority of colour reflecting from it and obtains a single colour.if there is a slight change in colour here or there we wont be able to understand.

Answer 9

Your question is interesting one,this week when the decorators had painted the walls white several people would interpret colours differently ( different shades) At least when people are asked about the colour of people skin they all agreed.

Answer 10

Many years ago I had this discusion with a school teacher. She said that some people saw red as blue and vise versa. My argument was 'how would they know?'
I think that the way we see things is fairly subjective. For example we call oranges oranges because they look orange to us but what is orange?