I think we agree that there are no dark colors involved. And because we share brains you might think we see the same colors. I noticed that I saw red differently with both eyes after holding small colored christmas tree lights close to one eye. It affected the perception. But under normal conditions, we all see colors alike.

I think that any agreement or disagreement from other people can’t set any ultimate support abot reality, because, ultimately, whatever they say is interpreted and filtered by our brain. In practical life a few elements are fine to accept some ideas about reality, but philosophy wants the ultimate, the universal, and for this purpose anything we say cannot grant anything, because it is human, subjective. My conclusion is that we, as humans, cannot claim any absolute certainty about the existence of reality, of any reality, even of ourselves, although Descartes thought that he was able to.

although Descartes thought that he was able to. — Angelo Cannata

If Descartes could, it's good enough for us. Be it Cartesian reality, physical reality, religious reality, or mental reality, we can always inform other people. There is more than one reality. Every group of persons has its own objective reality.

The standard philosophical agreement is that it's impossible to say that the colour red that I see isn't the colour blue to you. — GLEN willows

Only if you ignore Wittgenstein's private language arguments. The picture he challenges is that each of us has a mind full of perceptions that are infallibly known to the perceiver, inaccessible to others and incomparable between perceivers. His arguments set out show that, if this were the case, then we would not be able to describe our perceptions even to ourselves. We are not able coherently even to describe the project of trying and failing to compare incomparable perceptions. The claim "...the colour red that I see isn't the colour blue to you" may (in the way intended) have no sense at all, despite a superficial appearance of sense.

There are sensible ways in which we can check whether colour perceptions vary and by how much. There are colour-blindness charts, for example. We can tell that some people cannot distinguish red from green. We can say for sure that they are seeing differently from non-colour-blind people.

I think that Descartes failed in finding something able to resist the attack of doubting. His reasoning is exposed to a lot of criticism, it can be easily demolished.
If an objective reality belongs to a group, then it's not objective. In order for something to be really philosophically objective, it must be universal, absolute, independent from any opinion, otherwise it is relative, subjective. If I say "I think that this thing is objective", the sentence is a contradiction, because, if that objectivity depends from "I think", then it's not objective, it's just my opinion, it is subjective. This applies also to groups.

Couldn't one colour correspond with 'I can't really see you well' & and the other color correspond 'I can see you really well'.

Thanks for the response, and no, I definitely don't want to go up against Wittgenstein. Colour blindness is due to a fault in CERTAIN humans, and it can be analyzed physiologically. But the Wittgensteinian argument seems to say there's no way we could know if we're seeing colours differently.

But the human body does react to different colours in different ways, and these seem to app;y to almost all people. Correct me if I'm wrong but entering a bright yellow painted room would cause the human eye to dilate, whereas a dark room wouldn't. And wouldn't you be able to find the unique qualities of yellow that do this, while a brown colour doesn't?

Wouldn't this suggest that seeing colours differently WOULD be detectable? At least in one way?

Unless we're in a solipsistic world, separate minds do agree on certain things. A sharp object cutting your skin causes pain in anyone except those with no pain-sense. Would anyone argue my "private feeling of pain (C fibers firing) is a different pain from yours?"

We seem to be slipping into a discussion of whether there is an objective reality. I'm an empiricist - but that's not what I'm arguing re: colours.

I would like to understand what you are arguing about.

Colors are nature's way of expressing her emotions! Bright colors - she's on cloud nine, Crimson & fiery red - she's in the mood or she's screaming "off with his head!" :wink: , Blue - despondent, and so on.

I would like to understand what you are arguing about. — Angelo Cannata

:lol: Let there be peace on earth.

The standard philosophical agreement is that it's impossible to say that the colour red that I see isn't the colour blue to you. Yet doesn't this clash with the descriptors we use for different colours? — GLEN willows

There is not necessarily a clash here. We know the wavelength of light is how colors are seen. We know the eye takes in colors and the brain interprets them. So there is some objective measurable qualities.

Further, most people seem to internally experience the wavelengths consistently. So lets say for example that when I saw what you consider red, I would see it as what you would consider blue. The thing is, we both reference the same color, and don't have a debate as to whether it is labeled "red". Meaning we're consistently seeing our same internal color for the same wavelength, and can both apply the external label of "red" to it.

Perhaps this is why we have different "favorite colors". Who knows, maybe we all like similar colors internally, and its the external names that differ. As long as we can both identify a color as "red", it doesn't matter if we internally see it as a different color, like blue or green. When there is an issue, we usually call this "color blindness". Color blind people internally see colors in such a way as to not distinctively see certain wavelengths like the rest of the population. Red and green for example can blend internally. But for the rest of us, as long as we consistently see X wavelength a particular way, and can tell the difference between the different wavelengths, how we internally see colors isn't all that important to function in society without disruption.

This is exactly my point though. If you see what I call "yellow" as grey - as when the sky is cloudy it's hard to imagine it appearing to you as cheery and bright. Do you see the point?

"There is not necessarily a clash here. We know the wavelength of light is how colors are seen. We know the eye takes in colors and the brain interprets them. So there is some objective measurable qualities."

"The thing is, we both reference the same color, and don't have a debate as to whether it is labeled "red"

Again - I agree with you. But this go against Wittgenstein's notion that there is NO WAY of knowing what colour different minds are seeing. If you said red was your favourite colour because of it's rich bright aspect, and I instead saw dark brown - wouldnt that seem puzzling? This has nothing to do with colour blindness - it's about total unknowability, which is what I'm arguing with.

If you see what I call "yellow" as grey — GLEN willows

But what do you call yellow? If I'm colorblind, everything looks grey, like on a B&W photograph.

Colour blindness is not the issue. If you're colour blind you know objectively that you're seeing colours differently from a non-colour blind person. Wittgenstein;s argument was not the same thing. Are you familiar with it?

Even my left and right eye see different colors red sometimes. Your perception of a color might be very different. We can both call something red but still see different colors.

I've made this analogy before but again - if I said "beautiful bright yellow sun in the sky, and gorgeous blue sky" would it make sense if you saw brown and grey instead of yellow and blue? And I DON'T mean as in "my eyes see colours differently from most people"

I found an essay that sums it up like this:

"Wittgenstein seems to be more equivocal when it comes to propositions like ‘There cannot be a transparent white’, ‘There cannot be a shining brown’, which belong essentially to our everyday language-game, rather than the idealized ‘geometry of colour’. He finds these propositions so perplexing partly because they seem to hover on the boundary between the grammatical and the empirical."

"Wittgenstein's Remarks on Colour" - Marie McGinn
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 30 January 2009

The standard philosophical agreement is that it's impossible to say that the colour red that I see isn't the colour blue to you. — GLEN willows

Except for, you know, colorblind people. Why is it that you never get these kinds of discussions with them? Oh right. Because that whole spiel about qualia is nonsense.

Well, since people can eat from plates with pink or gold on them without puking there’s some phenomenological stuff going on with these colors.

Coolest stuff here is if you watch those youtube clips where guys get those glasses that let previously color blind people see colors. The initial wtf reaction, and then they do understand what red, blue and so on are without asking.

Coolest stuff here is if you watch those youtube clips where guys get those glasses that let previously color blind people see colors. The initial wtf reaction, and then they do understand what red, blue and so on are without asking. — Ansiktsburk

Yeah, some folks have really strong reactions which are pretty fun to watch. :smile:

And I DON'T mean as in "my eyes see colours differently from most people" — GLEN willows

Rather than insisting what you don't mean, can you explain what you do mean? It may turn out that you can't explain - not because of any lack of articulacy but because you are trying to say something that cannot be coherently thought and said.

Wittgenstein's notion that there is NO WAY of knowing what colour different minds are seeing. — GLEN willows

I think this is the notion that Wittgenstein challenges and rejects. It is the idea that our minds have incommunicable private contents. If I cannot know what goes on inside your head then I can't know even what happens inside mine. That is because I could never learn the sense of any descriptions that might be applied in either case.

, "We do not want to find a theory of color...but rather the logic of color concepts" (§188)

Do you see the point? — GLEN willows

No, unfortunately no. What is your point? Nature's a mood-altering device? Intriguing and not in the least. It's as is she (momma nature) has her own mood cycles: summer & spring ( :smile: ), autumn & winter ( :sad: ). Mother nature is bipolar?

Are you familiar with Wittgenstein’s argument Re: colour?

Fair enough cuthbert - thanks for replying. I’m not being belligerent, and I’ll go back and read some more Wittgenstein and get back to you. But I said “….what I don’t mean” because people keep talking about colour blindness, which isn’t the same thing.

Are you familiar with Wittgenstein’s argument Re: colour? — GLEN willows

No, what's that?

"The thing is, we both reference the same color, and don't have a debate as to whether it is labeled "red"

Again - I agree with you. But this go against Wittgenstein's notion that there is NO WAY of knowing what colour different minds are seeing. — GLEN willows

You don't need Wittgenstein, any first year philosophy student knows this! If you read again, I'm agreeing with you to a point. We can know certain things like whether a person consistently sees a wavelength as a certain color. Do you see red for what I call blue? Very possibly. Do you see a new and different color every time I see what I call blue? No.

Finally, there's likely a limit to the color spectrum as well. A bright color is likely not seen as a dark color. So if I saw a light blue, you might see red, but it would also be a light red.

What about sound? Do we all hear the same sound? No. Likewise for vision. To see pure color is hard. You can't isolate seeing blue. It's embedded in a larger whole from which it can't be extracted. We can both look at a blue screen but if you grew up in a blue hating family and country, your perception of blue will be very different from mine, being born in a blue loving habitat. Regardless if your blue is my red.