If a colour has no name, do we see it?

[Theda Baratheon]

Buildings, statues would have been painted, you'd see all sorts of colours in the market - we have no way of knowing that poorer people would have no access to dyed cloth. Pottery was black and red (usually) and mosaics contained all sorts of colours, including, yes, blue...

i have been studying ancient history for 5 years and never once have i been made to feel that the ancient greeks were living in a colourless world.

[TrueMetis]

But where does that leave people with blue eyes? Do you distinguish eyes that are "brown" and eyes that are "the colour of the sky"? That would be an awkward way of doing it.

Doesn't seem that awkward to me. :dunno:

[Ser Lepus]

If we can't see a colour, how do we name it?

I think there is definitely a perception difference with regards to language. With regards to blue and green using the same word, perhaps the colour referred to was cyan/teal rather than a sky blue or leaf green. It's not hard to see how if you only had one word, you wouldn't think there was much difference. For example, my desk is a very dark brown and my book shelf is a very light brown. If I didn't know the word brown, I would have described them as black and yellow. Someone better with colours might not even use the word brown and refer to them by their specific shades. (In case I didn't make my point clear, brown=cyan/teal, black=blue, yellow=green)

Doesn't explain the experiment in the article where they couldn't pick out the blue square but had no problems with the green though.

I dunno, if you think about it, most of our colour names come form objects: orange, peach, salmon, fawn, cerise, garnet, violet, mint, turquoise, golden, burgundy, cardinal, pink, maroon (chestnut)...even names like vermilion, purple, indigo, cyan...etc., come from the substance the dye was made from.

A person from a culture that uses the same word for blue and green would probably call a green object "leave blue/green", and a blue object "sky blue/green".

A greek could see blue, but he only had one word for both blue and green, so, if asked, he would say that both the sky and a leave were the same colour. If pressed, he would say that a dye was the colour of the grass, or of an olive leave, or of the summer sky, or of lapis lazuli or turquoise.

Europeans used the same word for red, pink and most shades of orange for the longest time. They could see the colours, but would have problem describing them unless they remembered something they could use as a reference.

I have often trouble remembering which colour is peach, which is cream and which is salmon, but I can distingish them when I see them together...it's just that I don't use the words often, so I forgot which is which.

[Summah]

Blind people apparently see colours. I wonder how those who have been blind from birth name them or maybe they don't bother.

Most blind people have light perception, and I imagine—given that the legal definition for blindness is corrected vision worse than 20/200 or visual field less than 20 degrees—that many blind people, even those blind from birth, have some type of color perception. What that guy saw was entirely in his brain, but most blind people have at least light perception and wouldn't have the same experience as that guy. Also people who are blind from birth may have more of the visual parts of their brain used for other things, so their experience may be completely different.

But where does that leave people with blue eyes? Do you distinguish eyes that are "brown" and eyes that are "the colour of the sky"? That would be an awkward way of doing it.

Considering that blue eyes only exist in certain populations, this is not going to be a problem for most of the world.

[Salafi Stannis]

To answer the question, yes, if colour has no name of course we see it. And also, the question about the tree falling in the woods is not tricky, or deep or whatever, it's extremely simple, of course it makes a fucking sound.

[Larry of the Lawn]

To answer the question, yes, if colour has no name of course we see it. And also, the question about the tree falling in the woods is not tricky, or deep or whatever, it's extremely simple, of course it makes a fucking sound.

Seems a bit more nuanced than that, but hey, thanks for chiming in.

[maarsen]

Go to the OP article, go to the radio site, and look at the program's comment section. Several people talk about experiences in Africa where people discovered the prevailing opinion is that the sky was white. I also followed links in other articles that linked to stories about colour perception that mentioned the same thing, but I'm not sure I could find those stories again.

Since I was a little nipper I had trouble with people saying the sky was blue. The sky is blue only if you look at the sky that is opposite the sun. Look at the sky where the sun is and it is white.

[White Walker Texas Ranger]

Since the entire Western world just had an argument over whether a dress was white or blue, I don't think it's inconceivable that with the right cultural priors, people can see the sky as white and the ocean as black.

[Ser Lepus]

Since the entire Western world just had an argument over whether a dress was white or blue, I don't think it's inconceivable that with the right cultural priors, people can see the sky as white and the ocean as black.

I'm quite sure the dress thing was either a joke or a social experiment.

[Proudfeet]

I dunno, if you think about it, most of our colour names come form objects: orange, peach, salmon, fawn, cerise, garnet, violet, mint, turquoise, golden, burgundy, cardinal, pink, maroon (chestnut)...even names like vermilion, purple, indigo, cyan...etc., come from the substance the dye was made from.

A person from a culture that uses the same word for blue and green would probably call a green object "leave blue/green", and a blue object "sky blue/green".

A greek could see blue, but he only had one word for both blue and green, so, if asked, he would say that both the sky and a leave were the same colour. If pressed, he would say that a dye was the colour of the grass, or of an olive leave, or of the summer sky, or of lapis lazuli or turquoise.

Europeans used the same word for red, pink and most shades of orange for the longest time. They could see the colours, but would have problem describing them unless they remembered something they could use as a reference.

I have often trouble remembering which colour is peach, which is cream and which is salmon, but I can distingish them when I see them together...it's just that I don't use the words often, so I forgot which is which.

Which means that we do see the colour. We just don't distinguish them as separate colours.

With regards to blue/green, it may be absurd to describe the sky as green or leaves as blue, but its not inconceivable to describe both the sky and leaves as teal. Much of the fuss about blue/green using the same word could just be a translation error arising from cultural differences. It's not that they share the same word, they don't have a word for either green or blue. I was trying to make a point (poorly) in my example that if you didn't know a colour, you can easily substitute it with another close looking colour, and that this colour is close enough to blue and green that they didn't feel the need to coin separate words until later.

[Summah]

This was linked by a Facebook friend, I thought it was interesting, and possibly if this is a relatively new thing part of what's going on here. For the record I counted between 36 and 39 depending on which screen I use.

[Kat]

This was linked by a Facebook friend, I thought it was interesting, and possibly if this is a relatively new thing part of what's going on here. For the record I counted between 36 and 39 depending on which screen I use.

I call BS on that test. There are only 3 colors in your monitor. Color vision tests don't work on regular monitors for this reason. To test for tetrachromacy, they'd have to use something that actually provided 4 different peak wavelengths. Additionally, the "25% of people have this" is a number pulled out of nowhere. I was reading up on color vision again last night and since tetrachromacy is something that likely only women would have, they would also have to be carriers for an anomalous green cone, but that's only about 6-7% of X chromosomes (about 6-7% of men have it.)

ETA: Yup, that test won't work.

[Summah]

So for those who aren't color blind, it's more likely a test of how well your computer displays the colors used to make this test.

[Kat]

So for those who aren't color blind, it's more likely a test of how well your computer displays the colors used to make this test.

Yeah. Although it's certainly possible you are a tetrachromat. An estimated 12% of women are. But I'm skeptical of a test that says I can perceive extra colors when all the tests I've done say that I have the opposite problem. Out of curiosity, do you pass the colorblindness test on a monitor? (Apparently this test is not supposed to be given on a monitor. This shows examples of what colorblind and color deficient people see.

I've been told that these tests are very easy, and I can pass them on paper, but I fail all of them online and literally all of the plates at the bottom for all types of color deficiencies look the same as the test plates to me, and the protanopia plates look the same as the deuteranopia. The informal tests I've done offline have shown that my anomalous vision is pretty anomalous, but I really have no trouble distinguishing colors IRL. I can see all of them. I swear. Just apparently differently from most women. (My dad also tested positive for deuteranomaly, and my maternal grandfather was colorblind, so I think I only have the anomalous green vision gene and am a carrier for colorblindess. I think this is one of two ways a woman can end up with anomalous color vision, but it's pretty rare. But this might mean that if my sister isn't a carrier for colorblindness, she is probably a tetrachromat.)

[Summah]

Yes, I just passed the color blindness test you linked. I thought they were easy.

[Fat Mans Plan]

This was linked by a Facebook friend, I thought it was interesting, and possibly if this is a relatively new thing part of what's going on here. For the record I counted between 36 and 39 depending on which screen I use.

No screen can test that you possess tetrachromacy unless the screen has 4 colours. I believe that Sharp has/had screens with 4 colours (blue/green/red/yellow) but seeing as you can't send it data for all those channels individually it still won't be able to test for it.

Apparently I am a techrachromat... They havn't even got the bars the same size on the test.

[Kat]

Good news: You might be a tetrachromat! (But would have to take another test, because obviously the first one isn't very good.)

Bad news: I am probably not. :( I want to be because seeing extra colors would be super cool.

[Kat]

Apparently I am a techrachromat... They havn't even got the bars the same size on the test.

Yeah, exactly. And assuming you're genetically male, that's basically impossible.

[Summah]

I did notice the bars weren't the same size and the first time I took it I thought maybe the double width bars were two colors I wasn't differentiating, but apparently not.

[Larry of the Lawn]

I did notice the bars weren't the same size and the first time I took it I thought maybe the double width bars were two colors I wasn't differentiating, but apparently not.

That's what i thought too, and I came up with the same count you did. And I'm very colorblind.