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Think

I think therefore I am

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made by moo - giving it another go on May 3, 2007

Not meant as anything but a serious question - how can we say that …

Not meant as anything but a serious question - how can we say that what a colour-blind person sees isn't 'right'?
My husband is colour blind and sees grass and calls it green; I see grass and call it green but what we both see is a shade relating to the name we give it, so who's wrong?
He also can't distinguish between what are obvious shade differences to me - such as bright red berries on a dark green holly bush but I think that's something else...

4 comments

Joe, May 7, 2007:

well colorblindness is caused when there is loss of function from a type of cone cell in your eye, so colorblind people can see all the colors but may look similar to each other when the color perceived is one that would be primarily interpreted from the cone cell that has lost functionality. because each of the three different types of cone cells transmit different types of messages to the brain, when one of the types of messages is lost, the brain can no longer discern between the colors that would activate those cone cells and those that would not. the colors that colorblind people see are always inaccurate (not always by a lot) because they are unable to interpret whole portions of wavelengths of light.

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moo - giving it another go, Jun 7, 2007:

My eldest is just completing her Masters in Genetic Counselling - and just got a job too - seems a really interesting subject.

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Joe, Aug 12, 2007:

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Turaturai [~is lost~], Dec 28, 2007:

I believe that everybody sees the same colors as everybody else. Even with color-blindness you'll still see the same blues and yellows and pinks and browns and stuff. The notion that someone else's brain could perceive colors differently to you was one I toyed with when I was little, but I realised after studying it that the basic programming in the visual cortex is part of the DNA - it's not just random for each person. So you'll share the same color perception as everyone else in the same broad species.

I've limited evidence to back this up - the colors that people tend to like and dislike are found to be consistent across different races and societies. This means that there is basic programming in our brains that relies on a consistent interpretation of colors for survival. Perhaps that's why people don't like brown very much. Did the early humans survive better when they lived in green areas than barren muddy areas? Did they survive better when they didn't try to eat animal faeces? Of course they did, so maybe color helped them to make the right choices.

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