How Would You Explain Colour?

[Redeemer]

I have a bit of an open question here, this is something I'd love to talk about for some reason. You're speaking with a person who has never seen colours before, okay? They're either like, completely blind (as in not even seeing blurry things or anything, they're in the dark), or they're an alien who only sees in grey, or whatever.

 

How do you explain colours to them? Or describe them?

[DZComposer]

"How do you use adjectives to describe an adjective." O_o

[Redeemer]

"How do you use adjectives to describe an adjective."

 

Well, one could be creative about it. Some people associate colours with feelings and moods, or even sounds.

 

I had this talk with my sister a long time ago before I moved to Germany, and she said something clever about comparing colours to textures, which I thought was pretty effective.

[Dr. Orange]

Well I'd think I'll explain it kind of like...

 

Orange is 590 - 620~nm in wave length.

 

technically I'm right

[Arashikage]

White is #FFFFFF

Red is #FF0000

Green is #00FF00

Blue is #0000FF

Yellow is #FFFF00

[OneUnder]

For one, I'd tell them to remove the "u" from the word.

[Redeemer]

You're all sons of bitches.

[unoservix]

You don't. Color in and of itself, as far as we know, can only be experienced by the visual sense organ and the brain doing their thing together. Associating colors with textures or sounds or moods doesn't explain color itself, so if you're explaining color to someone who has never experienced color in terms of textures, sounds, and moods, you're just associating those textures, sounds, and moods with the words we use to describe and name colors.

 

e.g. someone who can't see any color at all and never has might understand that the phrase "seeing red" is an expression for anger, but they won't know what the color red looks like; they'll only know that the word "red" is in this case being associated with the emotion of anger.

[Redeemer]

You don't. Color in and of itself, as far as we know, can only be experienced by the visual sense organ and the brain doing their thing together. Associating colors with textures or sounds or moods doesn't explain color itself, so if you're explaining color to someone who has never experienced color in terms of textures, sounds, and moods, you're just associating those textures, sounds, and moods with the words we use to describe and name colors.

 

e.g. someone who can't see any color at all and never has might understand that the phrase "seeing red" is an expression for anger, but they won't know what the color red looks like; they'll only know that the word "red" is in this case being associated with the emotion of anger.

 

That was what I initially thought. It's strictly a visual thing and therefore can only be experienced visually. The closest way I could try and help them experience colours is by providing them textures and sounds, because when I see certain colours, I'm always reminded of things that feel like related objects, or sounds/ambient noise.

 

Yeah I don't know why I brought this up, I was talking about it recently and wondered what others would say. But then I remembered that this is SFO.

[InfinitySquared]

You don't. Color in and of itself, as far as we know, can only be experienced by the visual sense organ and the brain doing their thing together. Associating colors with textures or sounds or moods doesn't explain color itself, so if you're explaining color to someone who has never experienced color in terms of textures, sounds, and moods, you're just associating those textures, sounds, and moods with the words we use to describe and name colors.

 

Having some friends and family-members who are colorblind, this is pretty spot-on.

[Drasiana]

AFAIK the strong association of colour to other senses and concepts is a condition called synesthesia. It's dependent on how your brain is wired and not everyone experiences the same associations, nor do they make much sense to begin with. I mean, I've tried to explain why January is purple to people but it hasn't exactly worked.

[Patch93]

@InfinitySquared

 

Sorry to hear that man.

[Aiden O'Conner]

I would just say that it's the effect of how light reflects off of unique or certain objects. It can change depending on what the object is, or if it's treated with something (like paint on a wall). It just depends if your eyes can see those colors (like how we can't naturally see ultraviolet light without the aid of technology).

[unoservix]

That was what I initially thought. It's strictly a visual thing and therefore can only be experienced visually. The closest way I could try and help them experience colours is by providing them textures and sounds, because when I see certain colours, I'm always reminded of things that feel like related objects, or sounds/ambient noise.

 

Yeah I don't know why I brought this up, I was talking about it recently and wondered what others would say. But then I remembered that this is SFO.

 

What we're talking about here is called qualia and there's a shitload of philosophy about it.

[Snys93]

I'm not sure that I could. I guess it wouldn't help to explain what it isn't.

 

Color is something you can't eat, touch or smell. It has no mass or density, anything of that nature. 

[Redeemer]

 

What we're talking about here is called qualia and there's a shitload of philosophy about it.

 

 

AFAIK the strong association of colour to other senses and concepts is a condition called synesthesia.

 

Wait, there's a name for this stuff? Holy shit. I didn't know it was a thing, I thought I was being super weird because no one got what I was trying to ask in this topic and the first half is all a bunch of poopspam.

 

Colour is something I associate with pretty much everything, names, moods (not emotions but moods for doing things, like when I want to draw I'm imagining green), sounds etc. I don't think it's a condition or anything, I just think it's a weird habit/quirk of mine and I've never really brought it up unless I'm curious about what other people experience. This is why I wanted to ask this question because I kind of figured this was one of those things everyone does but never really talks about.

[InfinitySquared]

AFAIK the strong association of colour to other senses and concepts is a condition called synesthesia. It's dependent on how your brain is wired and not everyone experiences the same associations, nor do they make much sense to begin with. I mean, I've tried to explain why January is purple to people but it hasn't exactly worked.

Now that you say that, I've always associated January with silver. Purple's more of an April, tbh.

[Drasiana]

nO do not say these things my brain cannot handle

 

april is green dag nabbit

 

(I think I associate the months with colours based on what colour their letters are because I also associate June and July with shades of purple)

[Redeemer]

 

(I think I associate the months with colours based on what colour their letters are

 

I base my stuff on the smells and textures, and what colour those are to me.

 

This is really interesting, I had no idea that this was a real thing that others experience.

 

Ah excuse my several editings, it's late and I'm exhausted. I type no more today.

Edited October 17, 2014 by Redeemer

[AAAA]

I Am colorblind, I've no way to explain what I see to those normal humans XD but the thing I surprise people with a lot is I can not read red text on a black background or vice versa, That always baffles people.

I've no idea what this world truly looks like and I'll admit that's mildly depressing. But eh, such is life.

[Arashikage]

So you must have what is known as Protanopia, or red weakness.  Very interesting.  I have a friend who has Protonapia, and I was trying to explain the Taco Bell coin game to him, where you drop a coin onto a spinner, and the spinner has five different ledges, the very bottom being the smallest, and yellow.  If you get a coin on the yellow, you get a prize depending on the coin that landed on the yellow.  He looked at the game, then at me and asked which one was yellow.  I looked at him almost dumbfounded, like "It's right there at the bottom" and he told me he was colorblind.  

For those of you who haven't seen it, this is the Taco Bell coin game:

 

Also for those of you interested, I saw this a few weeks ago on the youtubes, thought you might find it interesting while we're on the topic of color

 

[AAAA]

I didn't even know tacobell had games haha