How would you explain the concept of Color..

[SunSamurai]

.. to someone born blind?


Also another thought; are the dreams of the blind audio only?

 

[Colt45]

unpossible

 

[brblx]

it's the complete opposite of everything you currently see.

 

[Nohr]

My wife is totally blind and so I've thought of this subject in the past. I don't think it's possible to do. It's a concept that's completely foreign to her.

 

[MAKENITO]

I remember watching someone explain the concept of colour to a blind person in a movie - cant remember what movie it was. Could be Helen Keller. Or not.

Anywho, they explained the concept the of colour to the person by associating different things with a certain colour. Whilst the blind person cannot picture the actual colour - they can associate the name of a colour with a different feeling/temperature/thing. E.G - hot is associated with the colour red, so too is burning. Cold is associated with the colour blue, but snow is white - snow is freezing. The sun is warm - the sun is yellow.

Should I find this description, I'll post it - because I realise my paraphrasing isnt all that.

 

[honolululu]

Color is an illusion our eyes play on us through our brain.

Our eyes are merely organs which are very good at detecting the differences in bright and dim light sources and more incredibly, the difference in wavelengths of electromagnetic radiation on the order of parts of nano meters.

It's the same as the answer if a tree falls in a forest and no one is there to hear it does it make a sound? The answer is no. It merely vibrates the air around it.

So theoretically color doesn't exist until the light is inside the body, therefore maybe a blind person does dream in color, they just don't know it, or better said can't explain it? Do people who lose their sight later in life, start to dream in black or white (which is just as much a function of the eye as color is now that I think about it)?

 

[jhu]

The same way how you'd explain what a gamma ray, microwave, or radio wave looks like.

But the easiest way is to stab electrodes into their occipital lobes and send some electric pulses that way.

 

[Sea Moose]

My wife is totally blind and so I've thought of this subject in the past. I don't think it's possible to do. It's a concept that's completely foreign to her.

is she hot? if so pic of wife

 

[SunSamurai]

It's the same as the answer if a tree falls in a forest and no one is there to hear it does it make a sound? The answer is no. It merely vibrates the air around it.

Vibration is sound.

therefore maybe a blind person does dream in color

Now thats an interesting thought. Are the dreams of the blind audio only?

 

[Nohr]

is she hot? if so pic of wife

Guess I should have known better than to mention her.

 

[SunSamurai]

The same way how you'd explain what a gamma ray, microwave, or radio wave looks like.

Typically with such things visual knowledge is critical to grasping the concept, be it merely related to the subject or otherwise.

 

[Sea Moose]

Guess I should have known better than to mention her.

I am joking bro, full respect to you and her sir. I cant wait for the day when people can be fitted with a bionic eye so they can see. I really hope that happens one day.

 

[DangerAardvark]

~650 nm

So theoretically color doesn't exist until the light is inside the body, therefore maybe a blind person does dream in color, they just don't know it, or better said can't explain it? Do people who lose their sight later in life, start to dream in black or white (which is just as much a function of the eye as color is now that I think about it)?

If you want to go that far, then nothing really exists until it's sensed and interpreted by our brains. But let's not stray too far into philosophy. Color is just specific chunks of the visible light spectrum and those chunks will continue to exist long after human eyes go extinct.

 

[Nohr]

I am joking bro, full respect to you and her sir. I cant wait for the day when people can be fitted with a bionic eye so they can see. I really hope that happens one day.

First you want pics, then you want to turn her in to a terminator. WTF dude!

:biggrin:

 

[Sea Moose]

First you want pics, then you want to turn her in to a terminator. WTF dude!

:biggrin:

D: Ugh, now i feel terrible!!!

 

[Newbian]

Just remember...tell the blind people it's spelled colour.

 

[ShawnD1]

it's the complete opposite of everything you currently see.

You are so going to hell for this.

 

[Locut0s]

Tell them to imagine what it would be like to explain the world of touch to someone who has lost their peripheral nervous system and can't feel anything. The blind person would have just as difficult a time explaining the world they feel to this person. Tell them it's something similar but far far richer in terms of subtly.

 

[biggestmuff]

Different frequencies of light.

Any more brain busters?

 

[honolululu]

Vibration is sound.



Now thats an interesting thought. Are the dreams of the blind audio only?

Vibration is vibration. Sound is what our ears interpret that vibration as. Just my way of thinking of things I guess.

~650 nm



If you want to go that far, then nothing really exists until it's sensed and interpreted by our brains. But let's not stray too far into philosophy. Color is just specific chunks of the visible light spectrum and those chunks will continue to exist long after human eyes go extinct.

I don't know, if I walk into a wall, even if I have no senses at all the wall is still there. If you keep looking closer and closer at that apple it 'loses' it's color. Does anyone ever feel textures in dreams?

 

[Locut0s]

Vibration is vibration. Sound is what our ears interpret that vibration as. Just my way of thinking of things I guess.



I don't know, if I walk into a wall, even if I have no senses at all the wall is still there. If you keep looking closer and closer at that apple it 'loses' it's color. Does anyone ever feel textures in dreams?

I can swear that I have but I can't think of an example. I know I have felt other things in dreams like itching, heat, cold etc... so I see no reason why one couldn't feel textures.

 

[SunSamurai]

Vibration is vibration. Sound is what our ears interpret that vibration as. Just my way of thinking of things I guess.

I dont think its limited to human interpretation. A recording device or even a dog. Going further, the earth and plants themselves can 'hear' the sound, though the vibrations might be interpreted in alien ways, they are still fit within the definition of sound. To try and explain what sound might be to a rock may be quite as difficult as explaining color to the blind or the world above the water to a fish.

 

[ShawnD1]

I can swear that I have but I can't think of an example. I know I have felt other things in dreams like itching, heat, cold etc... so I see no reason why one couldn't feel textures.

A lot of my dreams involve being bitten by insects. Too much World of Warcraft.

 

[honolululu]

I dont think its limited to human interpretation. A recording device or even a dog. Going further, the earth and plants themselves can 'hear' the sound, though the vibrations might be interpreted in alien ways, they are still fit within the definition of sound.

I also don't think sound is limited to human interpretation, but I do think sound is limited to one's interpretation, whether human, rock or otherwise. So I think we sort of agree here.

To try and explain what sound might be to a rock may be quite as difficult as explaining color to the blind or the world above the water to a fish.

Here, I don't agree. It seems you're equating a rock to a blind person, but I assume you're talking about their respective sensory abilities? Even so your average human has more of a chance of understanding 11-dimensional space or warping of space time than your average rock, even though neither of us can sense it.

This might be most evident in smell. Smell is nothing more than lock and key mechanisms with hundreds of receptors in your nose (thought it was thousands, but apparently it's hundreds, but each odor stimulates multiple receptors, so the result is tens of thousands of odors. http://kidshealth.org/kid/htbw/nose.html) Nothing really smells. It just emits certain shaped particles.

 

[zCypher]

I'm not sure I'd go so far as to say some of these things exist or don't exist, obviously something exists if you're perceiving it. Just how you perceive that thing might be different than someone else.

So if vibration is sound, or vibration is vibration and we perceive it as sound through whatever bodily functions -> really, what's the difference? The fact is, the vibration is there, it exists - period.

I think it's pretty cool that the same thing can be perceived in so many different ways.