Color(s)

[Anonymous No.8965773]

Ever thought of the colors that we can't see, it's like a color blindness, that we can't comprehend what it could look like.

[Anonymous No.8966007]

>>8965773
Colors are a phenomenon produced within the brain, in response (usually) to the wavelengths of light detected on the retina. There's no such thing as a color we "can't" see, unless you're color blind.

[Anonymous No.8966015]

>>8966007
I am! :D

[Anonymous No.8966027]

>>8966015
Well, there you go.

[Anonymous No.8966028]

>>8965773
colors is a psychological thing anyway

[Anonymous No.8966044]

>>8965773
I always wondered how much information is in the color. e.g. take color red, you have perception of it, can you quantify that? can you write down what is red? how much information is in that perception?

[Anonymous No.8967972]

>>8966044
>can you quantify that? can you write down what is red? how much information is in that perception?

Yes, red is the absorption of all colors especially green but red, therefore red is a reflection as its coinciding inverse color. Colors are measured using spectrometers which measure the wave length of light waves in (nm) and absorption of a substance in (abs).

Colors are a measured qualitatively as in they exist and are measured in a gradient spectrum, they can be deeply concentrated pink or very faint blue but they objectively exist as a single color or a combination of colors. Black is the expression of no color while white is all colors.

Colors are not a psychological phenomena nor a perceptual thing they objectively exist.

Our perception of them is based on our need to recognize depth as a species that was once arboreal, we retained color vision since it helps us recognize predators, and potential hazards. We cannot see infra red because it exceeds the wavelengths visible to the human eye, meaning were all colorblind to infra red light, but we do know it exists objectively because we have night vision goggles and shit.

[Anonymous No.8968649]

>>8965773
What would infared look like?

[Anonymous No.8968671]

Color is just a social construct. All categories of color are arbitrary, you can't define where red ends and orange begins.

[Anonymous No.8968678]

>>8968649
People without lenses in their eyes can see ultraviolet. As you would expect, it's like a blue violet but moreso.

You can imagine such a thing if you try, and your brain is capable of "seeing" things that aren't even possible, like stygian blue.

I have synesthesia which lets me see weird things like pinkish blue and orange-yellow, which is somehow distinct from just a yellowy orange or orangey yellow. I can't really describe it except in those terms. When I was younger I used to get incredibly frustrated that crayons and markers weren't made in all colors, and mixing them never worked.

Essentially, there's no such thing as objective color. There's a band of electromagnetic radiation that our brains have evolved to perceive a particular way, and that's all.

[Anonymous No.8968687]

Artfag here,
Humans generally have retinal cone cells receptive to three bands of light, one type for each band, and what we see as non-primary colors is the additive firing of more than one type of cone on a frequency at which those types' responses overlap. They detect a range with an envelope response (i.e., higher response toward the center of the band, trailing off at some rate toward the ends), not as a 1:1 frequency:color response. If you had the green and blue cones removed from your retinas leaving the reds, you'd perceive light as more or less bright/intense/saturated depending on how its frequency relates to your red cone's peak frequency. Our perception of color is not objective, and can be fooled. One case would be seeing light of a higher frequency than blue as a mixture of red and blue. Animals with one, two, or four types of cones see the same colors in different ways from us, and are sensitive to different frequency bands, sometimes ones we can't see. Some birds and insects in particular can see into our ultraviolet range, and certain humans can see into what would normally be the infrared range for us.

Only know enough about optics and anatomy to be useful for art, but hopefully that insight is useful to somebody.

[Anonymous No.8968702]

>yfw you realize that "visible" light is visible because those wavelengths are where the highest irradiance of the sun lies, and so our eyes evolved to be tuned there.

[Anonymous No.8968715]

>>8968671
>>8966044
A documentary that talks about this is "Do you see what I see." It talks about the himba tribe of Northern Namibia.

>The OvaHimba use four colour names:zuzu stands for dark shades of blue, red, green and purple; vapa is white and some shades of yellow; buru is some shades of green and blue; and dambu is some other shades of green, red and brown.

They have trouble differentiating between reds and greens, but since they have two colors for different shades of green, they can tell two shades that are almost identical to us apart very quickly.

[Anonymous No.8968719]

>>8968715
This has more to do with how useful linguistic color differentiation is to a culture. Saw an article the other day about how that differentiation usually develops about the same way anywhere on earth, like languages that have two words for two different colors will usually pick about the same colors (like red and not red), the third color is usually the same (dark, light, red), etc.

[Anonymous No.8968743]

>>8968719
I read an article a while back that talked about some cultures not distinguishing blue and green, that different shades of both were considered shades of the same color.
Also that in europe, orange was not generally considered a color until the orange fruit was introduced.

[Anonymous No.8968746]

>>8968702
aww yee

[Anonymous No.8968754]

>>8968743
Yeah there are pretty modernized cultures that do that. (Somebody correct me if I'm wrong, but I've heard) Chinese languages usually use one word for both blue and green, with modifiers if it's really necessary to distinguish.

Hell, in certain cases the English word "red" could refer to anything from purple to brown to orange.

Then on the other end of the spectrum, I (artfag from earlier) could probably name 40-50 different colors off the top of my head by paint pigment names, and anybody else who knew the same naming conventions could identify each of them.

[Anonymous No.8969161]

>>8968678
>there's no such thing as objective color. There's a band of electromagnetic radiation that our brains have evolved to perceive a particular way, and that's all.

So objective color.

And Color is not personalized to humans other mammals even amphibians can see colors too so no its not a social invention unique to us it would be egocentric to think so, our semantics applied to them is though proven by this thread.
Again color vision was an adaptation due to the selective pressures of being an arboreal species, it doesn't matter what other races or cultures call colors it exists on a spectra and this can be proven with the current technology we possess for measuring it.

You being colorblind and saying color is a perceptual thing is akin to me saying shapes don't exist because I am blind, they do exist you just can't fucking see them. The vast majority of our species can though. As for impossible colors and interesting stuff like infra red we can predict some exist with the current framework we have for seeing visible spectra and we do have tools that transcend our biology so we are able to see infra red, it doesn't matter though since color is a phenomena that exists from radiation, we know we emit radiation since our body temperatures are 35-37 degrees Celsius. They're the byproduct of heat radiation nothing more.

Again we use spectroscopy something you learn about in highschool level chemistry, you can ponder about the perceptual phenomena of color till the cows come home but it wont change the fact that it objectively exists through testing the expression of certain colors through diffracting light waves off Pink Floyds dark side of the moon prism.

I thought this board for for /sci/ ientists. Or at least high school graduates.

[Anonymous No.8969200]

>>8969161
Dunning–Kruger effect, everyone.
Beware.

[Anonymous No.8969239]

>>8969161
I can agree with some of what you said, but no need to act so condescending and rude toward the end.

I think OP was more whimsically asking about colors we can't imagine, like an easy one where does chrome fit into ROYGBIV? Whats the color of a black hole? Or colors like neon white. Or when my sister was 8 saying her favorite color was clear...

>>8969200
Dubs of truth.

[Anonymous !!9CDbk9GkltQ No.8969297]

>>8969161

I can not agree with you on that and your argumentation is really not firm.

>>8968678
>there's no such thing as objective color. There's a band of electromagnetic radiation that our brains have evolved to perceive a particular way, and that's all.

He is definitelly right in his point. Because even the spectroscopy you mentioned just measures some wavelenghts in electromagnetic waves.
Do you even know how light emitting is caused in molekules? And why spectroscopy works so well in astronomy?

The >colours are produced by our brain. and nowhere else. Especially when you consider the fact that seen >colour is just the reflection of the light that is not absorbed by its environment. there is no such thing as solid >colour . Its always an interpretation of our brain of what it sees reflected or better not absorbed.

No one can tell in witch way animals see colours. HOW they see it. And there are many species that can recept diffrent spectrums to ours. For example birds, lizards, fisches. Bats produce a picture witch is a compilation of sound and sight. How you would imagine that?
And it is definitely not just mammals and amphibeans that are able to differenciate in the light spectrum.
We cant even really say what >colour means . Its words we made up for stuff our brain mades up. Every given fact in science is going to be falsified some time...

and comparing colour to something like shape shows that you have not really got the clue... so tell me what shape is. From YOUR perspektive. What do you tink what an bacteria thinks about the shape of an eggshell? Or what do you think about the shape of salt? Or salt in an soulution.
The shape of an atom? The 99.9% emptiness in everything you consider as matter?

Maybe you should attend some philosophy classes or read some books about perception and the mind.

Do not think the universe is grey because you end up on a grey wall. It is always everything else but grey!

[Anonymous !!9CDbk9GkltQ No.8969304]

>>8967972

They are still just electromagnetic radiation that is seen as coloration as an interpretation from our brain.

You can measure it in Kalvin and by the wavelentgh of the emitted electromagnetic radiation.

But everytime you "face" a colour as an interpretation of that specific wavelentgh, it is still just that evey other spectrum gets absorbed by the surface it is reflected from.


So how can you say you can prove that colour exists?

[Anonymous No.8969333]

What color could you possibly perceive that isn't a mix of RGB values?

[Anonymous No.8969336]

>>8969333
ultraviolet and infrared.

"Color" is just how we see different wavelengths of light. Basically every wavelength outside the visible band, from ultra low frequency radio up to, but not including red, and every wavelength beyond blue to the highest frequency gamma are "colors" we can't see.

iirc there's a small number of people who can see some near ultraviolet wavelengths.

[Anonymous No.8969442]

>>8965773
colour is just a manifestation of the mind, so that we can discern objects. There is no actual colour in reality. If we could see more colours, then it'd simply be more things, we can't imagine this because we can only see what our mind manifests. We cannot comprehend "other colours" because they don't exist without our brain making a representation that distinguishes objects.

[Anonymous No.8969457]

>>8969239
Your right it did turn condescendingly douchey at the end but I was getting fed up of all this pseudo-science bullocks of sensory perception ITT.

And I brought up infra red and non-visible light OP didn't specify whether they meant primary colors or otherwise, to my knowledge it didn't even seem like they knew colors are a byproduct of radiation, then everyone was talking so flippantly and vaguely I assumed they meant both.

>So how can you say you can prove that colour exists?
I think your getting too bogged down in the semantics of defining what a color is, its just a word we use to ascribe certain features of the same light waves of visible spectra.

>No one can tell in witch way animals see colours. HOW they see it. And there are many species that can recept diffrent spectrums to ours.
You just contradicted your first statement, we can tell how animals see by studying their systems and comparing it to our own, by dissecting the eye of a dog we can tell its colorblind, even without studying its physiology we can make conjectures based on its phylogeny and evolutionary history. The same goes for those who suffer from myopia, we can see that there's a noticeable shortness that light can reach through the cornea to the optical nerve.

I never claimed to be an expert in this thing I'm just an undergraduate Biochem but you really have trouble understanding and keep changing your viewpoint, bacteria and archaea are incapable of thought they are unicellular organisms they fucking lack a neural system.

>Maybe you should attend some philosophy classes
Oh yes and I have no clue because I spell like shit and think bacteria is capable of fucking cognitive thought.
Condescending coming from someone who can barely form coherent sentences and still can't grasp basic fundamentals of biology.
Chill your inferiority complex I never said I was the master of fucking color.

[Anonymous No.8969461]

>>8969239

O shit replied to the wrong guy sorry anon that was obviously meant for OP

[Anonymous No.8969486]

>>8969333
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impossible_color

[Anonymous No.8969885]

This might be kinda weird, but I experience some colors I can't see with my eyes.

I've got multiple-synesthesia, and sometimes a smell, sound, etc. is a color that isn't an actual color.

>>8969486
Yeah, that. There's a bit in Veruca Salt's Stoneface that sounds red-green. I don't even have a word for that color.

[Anonymous No.8969902]

>>8965773
You can't comprehend even what you can see.

Your ability to categorize or express colors is limited to several dozen entities at best, while your senses are able to discern much more subtle gradients. I.e. you can tell the difference between two slightly different shades of blue (more blue/less blue), but both is just "blue" to you unless you are comparing them side by side.

Color blindness is related to this. And this applies to any cognitive ability, not just to vision.

[Anonymous No.8970243]

>>8969486
>Real colors

[Anonymous No.8970481]

>>8966007
The brain's responsible for translating the signals sent from the eye, but it needs to get the signals in the first place, and the signals determine what the brain has to translate.

Compare someone who's color blind to someone with the typical three types of cones in the retina, to people with four types of cones. Nothing different going on in the brain, it's all in the eye.

[Anonymous No.8971375]

>>8969885
You're not the only one. See >>8968678
What I find strange is that some sounds have associated colors that even people without synesthesia would agree on, but there others that people with the same forms of synesthesia disagree on.

I only have auditory-visual. There's a few notes of the song "bleu" by worakls that have a really peculiar color, kind of a white-yellow-blue that is nothing like green. When I tried to explain this to my brother, who does not have synesthesia, he completely agreed that it made sense, but my sister, who does, disagreed even about the shape of those notes. Instead of a smooth elongated blue-white-yellow teardrop, they were a twisted ribbon of dull dark brown.

[Anonymous No.8971390]

>>8971375
That's totally trippy dude.

On topic, I read that most languages name the color red first and blue last, and also that our eyes evolved to see blue last. The blue receptors are only around the outer rim of the retina, everything in the middle is red or green cones. I've noticed it's completely impossible for me to focus cleanly on a blue light source point when it's far away, but a red light near it I can focus on fine.

[Anonymous No.8971399]

>>8965773
Colors are mental labels for different ranges of signal the eyes pick up.

If you could see a wider range of radiation, your brain would have evolved to invent more colors for itself anyway, or perhaps - if 6 hues is the limit, it might have evolved to stretch the color wheel out more so that ultraviolet becomes ultraviolet, infrared becomes red, and the colors we perceive in every day objects would be more subtly different from each other.

In order to know which of those scenarios would be possible, you'd need to be an evolutionary biologist specializing in the visual cortex.

[Anonymous No.8971400]

>>8971375
I legitimately wish I had this condition. I feel it would enhance how I perceive and reflect on all kinds of stimuli.

It sounds somewhat like you're on a low dose of psilocybin at all times.

[Anonymous No.8971976]

>>8971400
Here's how I would describe it.
Picture a circle that is a very pale yellow.
Put that circle on a blue background.
Now make the circle transparent, so you can see the blue leaking through.
It's not green. In real life it would be green, but can you conceptualize how it can be both yellowish and blueish without being green?

[Anonymous No.8973004]

>>8971375
>white-yellow-blue

So the way the smell of a tropical swisher looks. I feel ya.