In my more philosophical moments, that is. How can we know whether we see colours in the same way? We can agree that something is red, and we can define the colour ‘red’ as reflected light of a wavelength of so many angstroms, but, since colour perception is not only a matter of physics, but also of interpretation by the brain, so how can we know, even though we both agree that something is ‘red,’ that what you are seeing is the same as what I see?
Now some scientists seem to agree with me 🙂
Here’s an interesting little test.
Boadicea's Chariot 
I guess the same can be said for any of the senses. I know what bitter tastes like to me, but I don’t know what it tastes like to anyone else. Given that people have different tastes in food, art, music etc. it seems quite possible that they actually perceive the stimuli differently.
BTW my security software would not let me access your test page. It said this site was known for having malicious SW on it.
I guess you’re right, Feeg – all of our senses are ‘interpreted’ non-mechanically.
The page doesn’t set off any alarms on my malware app?
Bravo, some eminent thinkers have struggled with this. How can you know what I mean when I say, “That hurts!”? You can’t feel my pain. Communicating ‘private’ sensations involves a leap of faith – that you use the words to mean the same as I do. In the modern era, as you say, science can define some of them in objective terms but that doesn’t solve the everyday ‘problem’ between ordinary folk. Of course, as Wittgenstein says, it ain’t a problem at all because we just learn, as we acquire language skills, to refer to our sensations in ways that others can understand. When I shout, “OUCH!” you know what I’m talking about.
I have noted that some people are seemingly quite incapable of matching colours. These people were not colour blind in the accepted sense but definitely did not see the world the same as most do.
I used to see and approve colour progressive proofs and the amount of people that couldn’t appear to ‘see’ them was quite extraordinary so I expect not only is it true but quite widespread. It is rarely done by eye these days, generally have to have it scanned optically to measure wavelengths etc.
As with most things I expect there is a bell curve of what most humans see/feel/sense and a consensus of the majority who see things very similarly.
Janus the pain thing has always confused me. I personally never know what to say when they ask me on the magic scale of 1-10. Having seen real pain I always feel constrained to say 1. Trouble is such scales do not account for emotional reactions and the stoical/wuss mix!
Janus, it’s what I was getting at. We all ‘know’ what red is because we are taught what it is, but theres no way we can know what ‘red’ is to another person.
Pain is a bit different, I would say, because it is an entirely internal affair. We are not ‘taught’ what pain is, it’s built into the hardware, I think?
Bravo, yes, we know. But telling others about it, as CO implies, is a challenge. We have different thresholds and react differently from one another.
Interestingly one can measure colour by light emission and equipment. To my knowledge I have never heard of anyone ever being able to measure pain.
Very interestingly pain is now generally dealt with in specialist clinics run by nurses not doctors. That is all they do. I suspect that only long experience in ‘art form mode’ rather than ‘scientific mode’ gives them the ability to discern, ‘measure’ and assess pain of the individual. They do a damned sight better than the doctors. Any fool can throw morphia at pain but all it does is veg people out and cause most of the other functions of the body to give up. These women by assessment and cocktailing drugs give back a halfway liveable life to people. I have watched them at work for years, I note that top doctors defer to them frequently.
Janus, I have observed that different nationalities have wildly varying levels of stoicism, how much is attributable to cultural expected norms of that group and how much to differences ‘in wiring’ of differing races etc is a closed book. Never heard of any research having been done on it. But having sat around these places observing for 8 years you may believe that such differences exists!
I do think that mind control has a great deal to do with the ability to withstand pain, the ability to distract the mind from the body through meditation etc appears to be a very useful tool here.
I suspect little research has been done for the simple reason that the results could well be imponderable, immeasurable and incompatible with the mores of modern medicine. (Probably be dismissed as spiritualist guff!)
Actually, Christina, it is relatively simple to measure pain using MRI scanning.
FEEG, I’m not into technicalities, how does it work?
Why are they so unsuccessful translating it as a measure into being able to do anything about the pain?
Considering how often the boy was MRI’d I’m hideously underimpressed! Plus two of his doctros/surgeons were Mayo Clinic trained. I have to say that those nurses did a far better job on many people for pain control not just him.
I do think that the doctors are restrained by terms of the NHS into not suggesting methods and illegal substances that have far more use than are discussed in society. Far Eastern medicine has a lot to offer in this department! Never could see the difference between a poppy and various weeds!!
Ahh, I see! All the work done in 2010/11. He died in 2008, not around then! But thank you for the pointer. Let us hope it is useful and gets off the research shelf into real therapy.
I did the test and did… shamefully, apparently…
One of my close relatives ‘sees’ colours differently to everyone else, especially blues and greens; he insists there is no such thing as turquoise and purple; to him, green is blue and blue is green, although he will explain the phenomenon of colour, or our perception of it, in totally scientific terms. It has always seemed odd to me that he can explain everything but his own perception according to the laws of physics. And the composer Liszt perceived the world in colours and heard colours. The condition is called synesthesia; it also shows that perception of the physical world is not something that you can rationalise. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_with_synesthesia
On the pain-scale thingy, may I just say that wolf flu is a thousand times worse than man flu and all you men know how much worse man flu is than ordinary girly flu.
On the colour issue, I quite accept the notion that one person’s subjective perception of ‘blue might be quite different from another’s. However, for the sake of communication we all know that ripe strawberries are ‘red’, whatever that might mean to the beholder.
OZ
OZ, you remind me of the problem of red/green colourblindness. A boyhood friend who had it used to say, “Of course I can deal with traffic lights – top, middle and bottom!”
An existentialist from Keele
Said, ‘pain is imagined not real.
But when I sit on a pin
And feel it go in
I dislike what I fancy I feel.
I saw a tee-shirt that read
‘If a man expresses an opinion in a forest and there is now woman around to hear him speak, is he still wrong?’
Christina:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/09/21/measure-pain-mri_n_974213.html
Sipu, very nice! I recall that two behaviourists met. One said, “You’re fine. How am I doing?”