The Colour Red

[Khandro]

Does the colour red (or any other of the spectrum) exist outside of the mind?

[jno]

mibn and OG are right about the light, but the names we give it vary. Russians have different words for light blue and dark blue, suggesting they see them as different colours.

The ancient Greeks had words that appear very strange to us; they seemed to recognise only four colours (red was one of them)

http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/exchange/node/61

The colour "exists" but how many of the colours on the spectrum have names of their own is down to individual languages and cultures.

[chrisgel]

Khandro you are absolutely correct re:- traffic lights.
My own thoughts on the subject are that confusion arises, especially with me, with shades.
Obviously the spectrum is not divided into just 7 colours that we have arbitrarily given names to but is an infinite gradation.
Whereas I can easily identify some reds and some greens there are shades of these colours that look like browns to me.

[mibn2cweus]

Sharing an experience does not necessarily imply two people experience it in the same way. What makes an experience the same for two people is their ability to relate it to a larger context enabling a mutual understanding of their shared experience. In a situation where it becomes necessary to assign the colour red to a specific wavelength of light, that can be achieved by measuring the wavelength against a mutual agreed standard to a greater precision than can be achieved by most if any perceptually unaided.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colorimetry

[jomifl]

Some experiences undergo a lot of intellectual processing and are influenced by previous experiences at a subconcious level before they reach the awareness of our concious minds.
Colour perception is ''wired in'' and established in our brains before we do any intellectual 'editing'.

[neodarwinian]

As a wavelength, yes. That is the non-arbitrary reality.

The color red is what the brain assigns to the wave length along a distributed variance. That is when I see red most people also see red, or some close variation of the color red.

No relativism needed.

[ludwig]

This is another way of asking the 'tree falling in the forest' question.
ie - if there's no-one around to hear it does it make a sound?

My answer's always been no it doesn't, because sound needs someone present to perceive it. Without ears\eyes and a brain present interpreting the compression waves\lightwaves into the concepts of sound\colour then they just remain as energy bouncing around the forest.

[naomi24]

I disagree with that ^^. If I go out and leave my radio on, it doesn't suddenly become silent.

[Khandro]

ludwig; My OP has nothing to do with a sound unheard, it is about different peoples sensory perceptions. If it was extended to the perception of sound I might ask, do we all hear the same thing, eg. to some, finger nails scraping on a blackboard fill them with physical horror, while others are unconcerned.

[ludwig]

// I disagree with that ^^. If I go out and leave my radio on, it doesn't suddenly become silent. //

How do you know? ;o)

I think it does. Seriously, because the sound exists only in your brain. Without your ears detecting the energy and brain translating it just remains energy, and never becomes what we understand to be a 'sound'.

That's the whole point of the question though. There's no right or wrong answer. It's serves to promote a philosophical discussion about the nature of reality.

[jim360]

Sound isn't defined as what we hear, though. Scientifically, Sound is merely a set of vibrations in the range of about 20 Hz to 20kHz. No need for anyone to hear it for the sound to be created and to propagate. The same is true of light, and the colour red, which again has an existence of itself, rather than of the observer.

That said, naturally each sound and colour evokes a different emotional response (or none at all) depending on who is looking at the colour, and also on the context of that colour. A red dress might be seen as "sexy". A red teapot, even of the exact same colour, probably isn't. Well, not to me anyway.

[Khandro]

That's right ludwig, and if we move on to the sense of touch, and a slightly more delicate matter if (as an ageing and yet still lusty male), I were to run my hand over a female body I would experience a completely different sensation than if it were that of a male, and yet flesh being flesh, there would not really be any discernible difference, so the 'sensation' would reside entirely in the mind would it not?

[pixie373]

I'm not sure that's right. We must see "red" the same way, or we wouldn't all identify it's mixtures the same? Pink/purple/brown/orange etc.

[jim360]

That's again an entirely different thing, though. There is, after all, more than the sense of touch involved -- for example, you are probably seeing who you're touching so there is at least one more sensation involved.

The fact is that sounds, and colours, and smells, exist independent of us. What they mean to us, how we respond to them, is a completely different sensation, and that meaning necessarily doesn't exist outside the mind. After all, we had to see/ hear/ smell/ touch it in order to process and interpret the sensation, and that process can hardly occur if we weren't there.

[pixie373]

Khandro, if you can't tell the difference between male and female flesh, you're with the wrong women;-)

[mibn2cweus]

Perception is merely the first step in grasping the nature of what is perceived, understanding what evokes the perception, the process of perception and the correlation between the observer and the observed. Knowing 'what it is' entails an understanding of that which gives rise to the manifestation, providing the means for determining whether that manifestation arises from within or without.

Objectivity is the process of being able to isolate oneself from the equation and understanding ones own contribution to the relationship between observer and observed.

[ludwig]

// I were to run my hand over a female body I would experience a completely different sensation than if it were that of a male, and yet flesh being flesh, there would not really be any discernible difference, so the 'sensation' would reside entirely in the mind would it not? //

Yeah, until your wandering hand strayed over an erect c0ck. Then you'd know for sure you were stroking a man.

[mibn2cweus]

Chewn
So if you leave a tape recorder in the forest and a tree falls...the tape recorder won't record any sound?
23:52 Sun 23rd Feb 2014

Until someone observes the tree and/or plays back the tape, the tree is in a superposition of being both erect and fallen. If the tape is then played back prior to having observed the fate of the tree, the wave function of the tree collapses to the appropriate state depending on whether the sound is present upon playback of the recording.

[vascop]

Mib What on earth are you on about?