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Poll

What colors do people see?

The same, always.
- 3 (33.3%)
Different, always.
- 1 (11.1%)
The same for some, different for some.
- 5 (55.6%)

Total Members Voted: 7


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Author Topic: Our eyes and what they see.  (Read 3128 times)

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Our eyes and what they see.
« on: July 29, 2006, 04:34:22 am »
  • MEOW
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Well, I used to ponder this from time to time: do we all see the same colors?

Whether proven right or wrong it wouldn't be very important but every little fact is just as good to know.

You see, I have a theory that we all see different colors. Most people don't understand what I am about to say (but I live in a city with idiots, so maybe you people will).

Now, an example would be two friends, Timmy and Tommy, born around the same time. Now, look at THIS COLOR. Timmy calls this red, which we will from now on call "Timmy's Red." THIS COLOR is "Timmy's Green." These "Timmy" colors are the way you see the colors. Now, Tommy sees "Timmy's Red" as: THIS. He see's "Timmy's Green" as: THIS. A stop sign is red, correct? Timmy, or you, rather, sees it "correctly." Tommy however sees it as "Timmy's Green" but as he grew up, he was always told it was red, therefor he calls it red. How would he be supposed to know that he and Timmy see it differently but they call it the same, because as he grew up it was always called red.

I believe someone in the past when naming colors just picked names and told everyone examples, as stated in a similar way as above.

If nobody understands I can change or add some things above.

So, what do you think? Do we all see colors the same, differently, or slightly off-shade?
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Hikij
Re: Our eyes and what they see.
« Reply #1 on: July 29, 2006, 04:49:40 am »
If this is true, then my world looks beautiful. :D
And I believe this could happen, because noone really knows how the brain works. It is still a mystery to us.
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Max
Re: Our eyes and what they see.
« Reply #2 on: July 29, 2006, 04:58:33 am »
  • Crazy Monkey
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All eyes see the same colors, unless there are problems with constructs of the eye or the way the brain takes this input.  What you are saying has to do with language, not really how we perceive colors visibly.  For instance; some languages have 'more' colors than others due to having more words for different colors.  The Russian language has a single word for light blue, while English uses an adjective to modify an existing color.  Other languages such as Dani(one from New Guinea) have only two 'colors', or rather, names for colors; specifying 'cool' or 'warm' colors.

This doesn't mean the people who speak these languages see more or less of the colors we see, but just have different names for them.

However, if you are going by the color definition of the visible spectrum of light, you can define a color statically without giving it a name by it's wavelength.  Seeing 'green' is seeing the ~520-570nm wavelength of light and seeing 'red' is seeing the ~630-760nm wavelength.
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Re: Our eyes and what they see.
« Reply #3 on: July 29, 2006, 06:22:00 am »
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Think of it this way, you have two cameras that take a picture of the same apple.  Assuming that they took the pictures in the same place and under the same conditions, then any difference in the two pictures would be due to the cameras themselves.  This is similar to how the brain works.  It "interprets" the light and "forms" its own picture; taking information from the eyes and sorting it out. 

Thus, all light seen by somebody is relative to itself.  If one sees red as red and another sees red as orange, then the first person sees orange as orange and the other person sees orange as yellow.  If all the colors were not relative variations, then the spectrum could not interpret blending/in-between colors.  However this brings up a flaw.  If the first person sees violet as violet, then what does the other person see: violet as what?  That other person cannot then see red because everything is shifted over.  If a person had this condition, then they see past black (or is it white, I think it is white), and that is not possible; you run out of room in the spectrum.  The ends of the spectrum are rationized by humans as black and white; also due to absence of light resulting in black.  Thus black can be considered a base for thinking visually, because it is a constant for everyone.  The only way that people truly seeing different things would work is if the colors were inverted.  The differences in sight are mainly minor variations in hue anyway.

So, I believe that light is seen nearly the same by everyone.  Since the DNA for our eyes was developed by our parents, we see similarly to how they see.  We all see by having proteins in our eyes stimulate to different wavelengths: three proteins that respond to red, blue, and green.  Nothing is going to be radically different.  But, yeah, the only way another could see differently and maintain normality would be if your spectrum was inverted.  Otherwise, the changes are so slight that they do not matter and what is considered a color is thought to be the same for mostly everyone.
« Last Edit: July 29, 2006, 06:24:35 am by 4Sword »
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Re: Our eyes and what they see.
« Reply #4 on: July 30, 2006, 06:06:38 am »
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Quote from: 4Sword on July 29, 2006, 06:22:00 am
Think of it this way, you have two cameras that take a picture of the same apple.  Assuming that they took the pictures in the same place and under the same conditions, then any difference in the two pictures would be due to the cameras themselves.  This is similar to how the brain works.  It "interprets" the light and "forms" its own picture; taking information from the eyes and sorting it out. 

Thus, all light seen by somebody is relative to itself.  If one sees red as red and another sees red as orange, then the first person sees orange as orange and the other person sees orange as yellow.  If all the colors were not relative variations, then the spectrum could not interpret blending/in-between colors.  However this brings up a flaw.  If the first person sees violet as violet, then what does the other person see: violet as what?  That other person cannot then see red because everything is shifted over.  If a person had this condition, then they see past black (or is it white, I think it is white), and that is not possible; you run out of room in the spectrum.  The ends of the spectrum are rationized by humans as black and white; also due to absence of light resulting in black.  Thus black can be considered a base for thinking visually, because it is a constant for everyone.  The only way that people truly seeing different things would work is if the colors were inverted.  The differences in sight are mainly minor variations in hue anyway.

So, I believe that light is seen nearly the same by everyone.  Since the DNA for our eyes was developed by our parents, we see similarly to how they see.  We all see by having proteins in our eyes stimulate to different wavelengths: three proteins that respond to red, blue, and green.  Nothing is going to be radically different.  But, yeah, the only way another could see differently and maintain normality would be if your spectrum was inverted.  Otherwise, the changes are so slight that they do not matter and what is considered a color is thought to be the same for mostly everyone.
What about colorblindness?
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Re: Our eyes and what they see.
« Reply #5 on: July 30, 2006, 06:14:04 am »
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From Wikipedia:

Color blindness is not the swapping of colors in the observer's eyes. Grass is never red, stop signs are never green. Distinguishing a Granny Smith from a Braeburn or the red and green of a traffic light is not a problem. The color impaired do not learn to call red "green" and vice versa. Most color blind persons have learned their vulnerabilities and are acutely aware of just which colors will be confused. In some cases this can lead to an acute color sensitivity due to the fact that nuance of color will need to be categorized more clearly. A person who has limited ability to distinguish brown from red or green may become more concerned as to the shade of taupe or olive of a specific material than a person whose normal vision allows them to see exactly which shade of greenish-brown they are looking at.

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Re: Our eyes and what they see.
« Reply #6 on: July 30, 2006, 06:16:29 am »
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Actually, I was reffering to "So, I believe that light is seen nearly the same by everyone. "
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Re: Our eyes and what they see.
« Reply #7 on: July 30, 2006, 06:24:48 am »
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Yeah, light is seen nearly the same by everyone.  If that person was not colorblind, then they would interpret the color as close to how everyone else does.  Light is read the same way, but color is defined differently due to small flaws in the eye.  Just because you are colorblind does not mean that you interpret light so differently to the point where there is no similarity to others.   
« Last Edit: July 30, 2006, 06:26:21 am by 4Sword »
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Re: Our eyes and what they see.
« Reply #8 on: August 08, 2006, 07:59:07 pm »
  • Who's your favorite possum?
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Quote from: 4Sword on July 30, 2006, 06:24:48 am
Yeah, light is seen nearly the same by everyone.  If that person was not colorblind, then they would interpret the color as close to how everyone else does.  Light is read the same way, but color is defined differently due to small flaws in the eye.  Just because you are colorblind does not mean that you interpret light so differently to the point where there is no similarity to others.   
Well, if you are colorblind, then yes: you do see light differently, because light is what gives us color.  Black is black, because it's so absorbant of light, red's red, because of that amount of light it absorbs, etc.

Sorry... just browsing the debate forum, and this looked interesting >_>;;
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Re: Our eyes and what they see.
« Reply #9 on: August 08, 2006, 08:06:45 pm »
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No you see light the same way and by the same means as another person, you just do not see certain colors due to missing stimuation.  You see light the same way, but certain colors do not show up.
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Re: Our eyes and what they see.
« Reply #10 on: August 08, 2006, 08:08:21 pm »
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Quote from: 4Sword on August 08, 2006, 08:06:45 pm
No you see light the same way and by the same means as another person, you just do not see certain colors due to missing stimuation.  You see light the same way, but certain colors do not show up.
Ah, I think I'll read up on that...

...I really ought to do my reserach before barging in on a discussion about something like this.  My mistake.
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Re: Our eyes and what they see.
« Reply #11 on: August 08, 2006, 08:15:03 pm »
  • Fear my Blades
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Quote from: 4Sword on August 08, 2006, 08:06:45 pm
No you see light the same way and by the same means as another person, you just do not see certain colors due to missing stimuation.  You see light the same way, but certain colors do not show up.

Yes, our eyes all react to light in the same way, what matters here is how our brains interepret the signals from the eyes.  I don't know about colors, but there was a study with kittens on seeing horizontal and vertical lines.  Some were kept from birth where they could only see vertical lines, others where they could only see horizontal lines.  Later on the kittens couldn't see the kind of lines they didn't see while growing up, although after a while they did adapt and regain some (not all) of their sight abilities they lacked because of the "missing stimulation" while they were growing up. The parts of thier brains that interpreted the lines they didn't see growing up didn't develop as much because it was never used.
« Last Edit: August 08, 2006, 08:17:11 pm by Atrius »
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Re: Our eyes and what they see.
« Reply #12 on: August 08, 2006, 08:50:52 pm »
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Ok, well simply put the answer is no, generally we all see the same colors (with the exception of color blindness, though this is general an inibility to distinguish between colors due to the brightness being distorted, but thats a whole other topic...) there are quite a few test to prove this (like http://www.toledo-bend.com/colorblind/Ishihara.html), they work on the principle that the eye can distiguish more shades of of green than any other primary color, due to the setup of the cones in the eye. If as you say people all distinguish colors differently those test would simply not work.

Thats the simple explanation if you want a more complex explanation explaining how the photosensitives chemicals work just ask.
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