What does this tell us about the vocabulary we use to describe our perceptions of color?

Question

If a group of people were asked to picture a specific color in their minds, like Red, it is safe to assume that each person's vision of that color will be different. What does this tell us about the vocabulary we use to describe our perceptions of color?

Answer 1

we identify with the color red in general.

the mind defines red in various hues and shades, and require
a detailed request.

Answer 2

to me it would remind us that our vocabulary is made up of symbols, vocal ones, that we have created to describe things, emotions, all of our world, so that we can communicate together.
while each persons individual thought may vary as to what red is, the thoughts would have enough in common to allow people to communicate and have a common ground of understanding

Answer 3

Imagine that apple isn't red, blood too, etc. The color red will cease to exist, won't it?

Answer 4

I think there are quite a few issues at hand, some of which are related in different ways. I'll try to list a few of these issues.

1) When a person says the word "red" a picture can come to mind (but would it need to?) and there is, by hypothesis of your question, a contingency to what it is that is pictured by any individual color. The temptation is to say that the word "red" means what we picture when we hear the word but this can't possibly be the case for otherwise communication would be impossible. This should be clear from the fact that each person's image of the color red is different. (I actually have issue with the hypothesis that "each person's vision of that color will be different". My issue is not that this is false but we have no means to evaluate that claim since, at least at present, we have no cognitive access to other "persons' vision".)

This leads us to conclude one of two things: (1) communication is not possible or (2) the meaning of the word does not have to do with the picture that comes to mind.

I'm inclined to go with the latter in this case. The philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein deals with this a great length in the Philosophical Investigations. He contends, roughly, that the picture that comes to mind is more of a "sign post" that guides us in the word usage but the actual meaning of the word is governed by its use in a language which is a social practice. Correct and incorrect usage depends on norms established by a community of speakers in the language. If someone says the word "tree" I might get an image in mind (although I need not picture such an image), say, of a maple tree in my back yard but this image hardly governs the entire use of the word "tree". It serves as a guide which can fail to capture all uses of the word "tree".

Wittgenstein also introduces the notion of "family resemblance" between words. One way of defining a word is by looking at all of the instances of a word and finding what is "common" to all of them. Wittgenstein rejects this and suggests that it's possible that there is nothing common to all of a given word's usage. Rather there is a "family resemblance" in which particular things which we call, for example, "tree", overlap in such a way that it's possible for two individual trees to have nothing in common. The analogy being used would be like members of a biological family. It's possible that two particular individuals in an extended family have no two genes in common but there is overlap between these individuals and other members of the family. I might have no shared genes with a "5th cousin" but the 5th cousin shares genes with family members who share genes with family members who share genes with me and that establishes our relation: that's why we're part of the "same family". The same concept is applied to word usage.

2) Another issue is that there is an element of vagueness to (particularly) "natural" language. The problem comes up more clearly when the words we use are employed in a more formal matter such as philosophical or scientific discussion. This gives rise to "technical" uses of words which resemble natural usage but are a bit more refined as the concepts are clarified for more scrutinized exploration. Einstein's theory of special relativity, for example, was to a large extent dependent on an analysis of the word "simultaneity": what does it mean for two events to be "simultaneous". This word has a rather vague usage in natural language that functions well in everyday usages but doesn't work so well when looked at in detail.

This can be illustrated by the "heap paradox" or some variant. I'll use the word "pile" but the idea is the same. Suppose I have a "pile" sand and suppose it just so happens that it has 10,000 grains of sand that make up this "pile". (This number isn't terribly signficant to the claim; so long as it has some finite value.) Now suppose I remove one grain of sand from the pile. Is it still a pile? Of course it is! We can formulate this as a general rule: If you have a pile of sand and remove one grain of sand it is still a pile of sand.

Taking this as a general rule and continuing this process I can conclude that 1 grain of sand constitutes a "pile" of sand even though this usage is incorrect in our language: 1 grain of sand is not a pile. The vagueness comes in when we ask the following question: at what point does will this pile of sand no longer be a pile of sand? It has to be somewhere in between 10,000 grains and 1 grain but it's not clear where exactly.

I think this issue of vagueness comes up with the color red as well. We might have two colors which we call red but they clearly aren't identical colors. At what point is it no longer red? This isn't terribly clear.

There are other issues as well but I think this post is long enough as is.

Answer 5

That verbal communication is merely adequate.