What Colour Was That?

reply to post by Blanca Rose


I actually meant to exclude colour blindness from the equation as that is a recognised medical condition that is well documented. I was more taking it from the idea that if we all are trained that that is blue it may not necessarily mean that we perceive it in the same manner.

Feel free to correct me but is colour blindness a condition where the colours a sufferer sees are limited so may for example see red where a non-sufferer may see three different colours?

Originally posted by Most Infamous

Originally posted by star in a jar
I wonder if there's a base color in the universe that no human has ever seen before. We can't imagine it since it would be so foreign to our minds.I have a feeling that's impossible, but still, something to think about and get a headache over.

I imagine there is a base color, not so much 'in' the universe but 'of' the universe. It's no so much a color that we've never seen before, quite the opposite, we see it everyday. It's for want of a better term the color of Invisibility. It's the basis for all other colors. We never recognize it because either it's coated by other colors or in it's natural pure state it is invisible.

The universe is beige.

Smells like raspberries.

And tastes like rum.

I used to think about this when I was younger, and wonder if there was a colour that had no name yet. I had a colourblind classmate who would get the naming of colours wrong (to the teacher anyway), but he would perceive it as perfectly normal, which made me question if I was actually looking at a blue cup like everyone else sees it, or if it was actually a purple cup.

Maybe this whole thing relates to how people have favouritism when it comes to colours. It could be that we prefer the colour we can see most vividly, which is red for me, while someone else prefers a green shade.

Some people do perceive colours differently though. It's called tetrachromacy, but I think it's only women who get it. I think what tetrachromats see is vastly different to what we can see, insanely so. What we see as red, they can see another completely different and nameless colour mingling with it.

Tetrachromacy

reply to post by invetro


Tetrachromatic vision in humans would be extremely rare, if it even exists at all. If women have two X chromosomes in their cells, some women could be carrying different cone cell pigments because two cone pigment genes are located on the X chromosome, thus possibly making them tetrachromats. However, this has not yet been confirmed and so is still debated.

However, tetrachromacy in other animal species is far more common. Spiders for instance, have tetrachromatic vision, along with most marsupials (kangaroos), predatory birds, a few species of fish and of course reptiles.

As is explained in much more detail in my prior post on this thread, most humans have trichromatic vision. Most humans also have the same cell and chemical construct in both their retina and the part of the brain responsible for processing the light being received through three opposing channels, each from the raw light coming through the three cones of the retina, which would mean that we all should have the same approximate perception of color. Of course there are some differences and therefore exceptions in a small percentage of the population, such as those with either damaged or deformed cones, making them "color blind", but for the majority of humans, we all interpret light through the same processes with the same cell construction, thereby making it highly unlikely that we perceive light or color differently. So, when asking yourself if you perceive "red" (or any other color) differently from the guy/gal standing next to you, the answer is most likely yes, unless you run into the rare person with an abnormality. If light gets its color from the wavelength of electromagnetic radiation and we process that light by and with the same means, it is safe to conclude that our perception of light and its color is objective and not personally unique.

--airspoon


[edit on 9-5-2010 by airspoon]

reply to post by pablos


I think that there may be some differences between how people see some color but these differences are so slim that they don't affect color perception. This may be caused by eye shape, amount of light passing to eye and Rod cell (if I translated correctly)variations in human eye. For example if person would have slightly more blue cells than than green cells perception between this colors would be propably weaker as these are rather close on the spectrum. Instead of seeing green person would see more blue in it than there actually is.
Actually Color (various reasons not medical term) blindness is may be caused by rod cell color recieving problems, which may be caused by different amounts of rod cells (achromatopsia for example).