People see things differently, but what if they see colors differently? Like, what if what you call "red" would look "green" or another color in a different person's eyes, but they identify the same color as red based on what they were taught to call it? It's a little confusing, but some of you at least should know what I mean. Whether this happens to be true or not, there's no possible way anyone can prove it or test it.

I have a slight colour blindness where I can't tell the difference between blue's and blacks, pinks or reds unless one of the colours is distinctivly much brighter or darker than the other.

Welcome to the group Green Power Ranger

Yeah, colour blindness is what raised this question in the first place. Like I knew someone who was color blind, and he couldn't see blue. Instead, he saw green in place of the blue. Then I began pondering...you know...what if?

Oh, and thanks for welcoming me, I'm glad I found this site.

Good subject!

Let's say for instance that someone switched bodies with another for about five minutes, they saw through the other's eyes. Suddenly they find that they are viewing the sky as red, the grass as blue and everyone's skin as purple! It would near on do your head in LOL.

I don't know whether colour-blind tests can fathom out anything like that, the way the little dots are coloured and placed, maybe that might show it up, but if someone has seen your blue as red from birth they wouldn't know any difference.

Thought provoking for sure!!!

I've wondered this too. Guess we'll never know.

and both of you could see green isn't it? but could not see blue...i'm confused.

I'm just telling you what he told me. Apparently he wasn't always color blind, and he at one point just couldn't see blue anymore, but saw green instead. That's my theory based on what he told me.

Ok, now i know both of you define blue as blue when he is not colour blind.

They usually give you the red green test if your colorblindness is to bad. Usually as well, most color blind people can see individual colors as one of the posters said. Yellow is a hard color for them to see, and others, but i never went further learning more about it.

I have no idea. Maybe my version of orange could be another's version of purple. Whoah.

It really doesn't matter.

It's the same with right and left. Without a common frame of reference it's impossible to describe the difference.

...And if mirrors reverse right and left then why don't they reverse up and down?

A good topic, although very thoroughly thrashed out in previous threads.

You are wrong in saying that "it could not be proved." First, colours are actually associated with wavelengths, whose dimensions are well known and agreed upon. Think of a prism or a rainbow. Thus, If I say "blue" when everyone else says red, there is a problem with my perception.

Secondly, this is the very purpose of colour blind tests. I can remember my first one, over 40 years ago. I was in grade, 7 and didn't have a clue what was going on . I couldn't see any of the correct symbols , but i noticed a small notation on the bottom left corner of each page and just read that out. Consequently I passed, and my noticeable colour blindness in blues and greens was not discovered until my senior years of high school, when i applied to join the air force and failed a much more sophisticated version.

I will also never forget the day i wore a pair of bright green trousers with a totally mismatched shirt. When my newly married wife asked why I would choose green trousers, i said "they look brown to me," And they did look a nice neutral brown to me, rather than a bright green. After that i got her to check all my colour combinations. Heaven knows what i looked like some days before i met her, but everyone must have been too polite to say anything.

It's relative and unproovable, but funny to think about

Funny how that thought comes through every humans mind through a lifetime.

Oh didn't know this.

Proof ?

Mr Walker.

There is something I can not see, How did this get to post 12 before seeing the others would disagree till a problem was realized.

However, There is two points, One is if the Color we see is the Real color of the Object? Or does the object really reflect all the Colors it is not? Like Green leaves. Does it reflect green to us, and really Absorb the RED color it is?

The other is if what we see in our mind as the Different colors, Which is just an image or brain forms, the Correct colors. We can see for Miles, But the whole picture is formed in our brain and looks to be OUT THERE far distances.

Which when we move and touch the objects we know they are out there. But our mind is playing a trick on us, It not only shows the Color, it shows the dimensions also. Cute seeing the Brain is not very wide, deep or high, Yet hundreds of square miles fit in it all spread out.

Ken

Sorry, I am an old fogey, Y.A., and while i could probably find links on the net, I haven't got a clue how to insert them into a forum like this. I learned this in a science class back in the 1960's It was about 3rd year high school. I might have learned it in primary school, it was considered so basic back then, The teacher showed us light refracted (bent) through a prism. As it bends, the prism separates out the different wave lengths of the light into individual colours which you can see on a piece of paper held on the other side of the prism to the light source. A rainbow is nature's way of doing the same thing. As light is bent through water droplets in the atmosphere, it divides out into all the colours of the rainbow (which include those in the spectrum of light which are invisible to the human eye. We even had to learn the order. Roygbiv (may be wrong, that was a long time ago) Anyway, my understanding is that coloured surfaces reflect back the wave length they represent while others are absorbed. (The reverse principle might work too, but I went on to study English and the humanities so I am not an expert on that) Thus, red always is the same wave length (which can be measured and verified by a number of different instruments) As I, and others, have said, You can thus prove what is a standard colour red. However all the other discussion about peoples perception of colour is quite correct. Colour blind people at least have recognised medical conditions in their eyes which "confuse" their sense of colour, but there are many less well known conditions where people "see" sounds as colours, or may not see colour at all.

There's really no question that people see some colors differently though... while no one would mistake purple for yellow or green for orange... there's no question that people see color tones differently and describe them with different words.

Below is a photograph of the wall paint in my house. I know what color this is in mind without any doubt. What color do you think it is? And if anyone says ugly I'm gonna thrash ya about the head an neck with the angry dungeoness crab I have sitting right here next to me.

The color that's lit up directly behind the cabinet is the true color. The others are in shadow.

Beige? :S
Don't judge me if I'm wrong, I'm colour blind

Why not?

Why mightn't one person's purple be another person's yellow?

We are taught the names of the colors not the colors themselves.
No one can get in your head and tell you which colors are which.

When people have cataracts removed they experience a big change that emphasizes blue and de-emphasizes yellow. Not what's being discussed here, but it's kind of cool.

I think there was a case in which a guy donated one eye to his blinded identical twin brother (then again, maybe this story belongs in the "urban myth section). The brother never got good resolution but supposedly he could perceive lightness, darkness and vague colors. There was no mention that the colors were different from colors he remembered from before he was blinded. But you'd expect these two individuals to have identical retinas since they were identical twins.

lol this is one of the coolest questions

hey greenpowerranger!! i've had the same thought as you!! quite a few months back actually.. told my wife about it and she gave a thought about it too..

the only way to prove this is to switch bodies.. or we can device 2 things of measurement.. colour can be "measured" by it's wavelength, so that if i see "red", you're looking at "red" from the wavelength specified.

but how do you prove that the colour that i see, is the same as you see? I guess there have to be some research done in bio-optic nerves..

interesting.. and hey!! my first post!

* Is slightly Blue/Green colourblind*

Turquoise just confuses the heck out of me.

My eldest son used to think that Christmas trees were Red for a while, when he was younger, so I'm guessing he has a similar problem.

In the same way people perceive colours differently, they also perceive words differently as well. For example, in America, Pants are what you wear over your underwear. In England, Pants ARE your underwear...

Perception is a very individual thing, based on the experience and the sensory capacity of the person who is doing the perceiving.

Richard Bandler summed it up with this - "The meaning of the communication is the response you get", as what we perceive as meaning one thing might mean something completely different to someone else, and hence they may respond differently to what you'd expect...

Exactly so.

Many times I've listened to two people having entirely different conversations. Sometimes
they won't even be on the same topic and won't realize it.

There are many causes for this from poor communication skills to bad listening and improper
use of pronouns but it always really comes down to different perspectives. People react to
perceptions of reality and their perceptions tend to be the result of the experiences they gained
from their beliefs.

I don't entirely agree with the quote though. I'd say it's more true that every communication
has a different meaning to each of the communicators. The object of language and each com-
municator should be to assure that meanings are as identical as possible for each. Words have
meanings only in context just so any thought can be expressed.

I agree. I read a fascinating book called "Light in My Darkness", and it was written by Helen Keller, who was deaf, mute, and blind. I can only imagine the colors she envisioned in her mind as they were described to her by her teachers. I think her first teacher described blue as "cold" and red as "hot". I really wonder what colors she saw in her mind as they were being described.

I do agree that it's all about individual perception. It all goes back to the "vase on the table" example. There will always be different descriptions of the identical vase.

I once thought about this too. I was thinking how there would be absolutely no way to tell.

There is one thing that might imply people see the same colors.

Most people agree on what colors don't go together (clash). It's
difficult to know how much of this is learned and whether there
are other mechanisms than percieved color that determines this.

yea when i was 16 i came up with the idea that the colours that we perceive may not be the colour that is actual there

like what if we had an outside source of eyes and see what our planet really looks like with a diffrent type of eye configuration such like an alian or an animal

No freaking way!!! I have always wondered that, and people think I'm super wierd for thinking it. I'm so glad someone relates!

Color blindness is something I can relate to. I am color blind to certain shades of red and yellow. They just look red or yellow to me. I also have no depth perception at all. With all that though, things still look "normal" to me. I have thought about what it would be like to see things the way others do. Would I even know the difference? I should expalin that the reason I have no depth perception is becasue I am right eye dominant. This is due to some damage I aquired to my left eye (optic nerve) when I was very young. If that wasn't enough, I have poor day vision. I suffer from sunblindness, and my eyes are very sensitive to UV. I wear dark, UV blocking sunglases most of the time. On the plus side, I have exceptional night vision. My eyes aren't quite as good as Riddick's, but I don't need a flashlight to get around in the dark, even on moonless nights.

Good Journey.

Kyle Rajasthan.

unless i was colour blind why wouldn't i see something green being green... there are a lot of shades of green whithout
names so if it looks green enough i call it that. maybe it's just too many shades and not enough names for every shade
(thankfully too).
... why wouldn't someone else without colour blindness see the same shade of green?
it's same thing with sound... unless you have hearing problems why wouldn't you hear the same frequencies i hear... you
hear a squeaky voice when you hear it and a deep voice, and that in between...
same with smell, unless you have a blocked nose, sure you'll smell poo if it got that close to your nose... or maybe it may
smell like roses to someone else , dunno? maybe like beauty colour is in the eye of the beholder...
although i do agree different animal see things differently... some in the UV range more than we do! same with sound, dogs
hear higher frequencies than we can, and as we age the frequency band we hear narrows, maybe it's like that with our
other senses too

I've actually thought about this before, myself. I guess it could be possible. If it is, there is no way we would ever be able to know for sure, anyways.

Um, don't colours give off different wave frequencies?

Maybe we see different colors at different wave frequencies.

If we heat the little filament in the light bulb. It emits white light, Pass that through a Prism and it will show the different colors are being emitted.

If we then move the light emitted in those colors to a cloth we see as black, All is absorbed and the cloth becomes warm or we have taken the heat, moved it as light, and converted it back to heat. We could eliminate the Prism and just heat the Cloth with what we see as white light.

Because the Cloth is getting warm, It would conclude that the different color wave lengths are being absorbed. So would it not be logical that the color we see a object being, Is the one reflected, Which can not be absorbed, but is resisted due to the wave length being unable to fit within the Atomic structure and move it to the next energy level.

So if it reflects or looks red, It is really a combination of yellow and Blue or the object is Green and appears red.

So a green leaf is absorbing the Red or longer wavelength for plant growth and warmpth.

Ken