Naked Science Forum

Life Sciences => Physiology & Medicine => Topic started by: savio marel oliver on 14/07/2009 19:38:59

Title: Is red for me the same colour for you?
Post by: savio marel oliver on 14/07/2009 19:38:59

Suppose we have 2 persons viz , A & B
A and b saw a colour and identified it as Red
but say , for B he/ she said it was red but is not the same colour as A 'see',

like the text for A is qwerty     {PLZ note tht the text is just to show the colour }

 but for B it seems to look like this qwerty

due to some 'disorder' ,
but both A and B only identifies it red because they trained or learned at their younger ages
so i wonder whether if this is possible ?

also i hope you are not confused , i did try to make it simple !

Title: Re: Is red for me the same colour for you?
Post by: Chemistry4me on 15/07/2009 01:11:35

Quote from: savio marel oliver on 14/07/2009 19:38:59

so i wonder whether if this is possible ?

http://www.thenakedscientists.com/forum/index.php?topic=23763.0

Title: Re: Is red for me the same colour for you?
Post by: lyner on 15/07/2009 17:52:11

savio marel oliver

Say two people look at an object and agree that it looks the same colour as another object and they agree to call that colour "red".  Then, if they each go into another room and look at two more separate objects, painted with the same paint as the other objects, they will both see the same light stimulus and they will give it the same name. They will both 'see' red. Unless one of them has a visual defect, he won't 'see' the new object as anything but red.
You are suggesting that one of them could be seeing the red object as blue.

We see what we see. The names we give colours is just to distinguish between visual experiences and to communicate information to each other  or to record it for ourselves. A green shirt will look the same(ish) colour as a leaf for anyone with standard vision and two people will usually agree on that point - except when semantics are involved (or handbags).

Title: Is red for me the same colour for you?
Post by: chris on 20/07/2009 09:03:03

Professor Ron Douglas answered this question on a recent edition of the naked scientists podcast (http://www.thenakedscientists.com/HTML/content/questions/question/2357/).