I hate when I'm reading an article and become completely distracted with an irrelevant detail.<p>In this case, his traffic violating cyclist was full of shit. Even the color blind know <i>which</i> light in the arrangement is the stop light, regardless of its apparent color.<p>EDIT: Removed bonus apostrophe
Some people have seen that sort of "impossible" color: <a href="http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=seeing-forbidden-colors" rel="nofollow">http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=seeing-forb...</a><p>Basically if you have areas of different incompatible colors next to eachother, and they're the same subjective brightness, and you use fancy eye-tracking equipment to make the border stay in exactly the same place on your retina, then your brain gets confused and shows you some impossible combination around the boundary.
I am surprised Dawkins did not touch on the connection of language and color. Aside from physical ability, people "see" colors simply based on the language they speak. As someone who grew up speaking Russian where light blue and dark blue are 2 separate colors as different as green and yellow, I've often been surprised by English speakers' inability to distinguish between those colors. Similarly, some languages do not distinguish between blue and green, or blue and black, or have no purple, etc.<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_Color_Terms:_Their_Universality_and_Evolution" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_Color_Terms:_Their_Univer...</a><p>So the question is, even before physical ability, what part of the difficulty in recognizing a color can be attributed solely to lack of prior experience? In other words, if you subject a color-blind patient to brain stimulation, might they <i>still</i> not see a color simply because they haven't been acculturated to it?<p>Incidentally, I <i>have</i> seen sky-blue-pink, at sunrise on the Haleakala volcano on Maui.
The 'label' would have likely atrophied.<p>Kittens raised in an environment without vertical lines don't develop the ability to perceive vertical lines. These sensing cells would have developed in the retina, but it seems reasonable for the same effect to occur on any cells that are tightly connected with vision - such as colour <i>qualia</i>. Though I doubt that many neurobiologists take that philosophical term very seriously.
There's an easy way to experience a small range of colors you haven't seen before.<p><a href="http://www.skytopia.com/project/illusion/illusions.html#Eclipse%20of%20Titan" rel="nofollow">http://www.skytopia.com/project/illusion/illusions.html#Ecli...</a><p>Documentation on the physical phenomenon behind this:<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imaginary_color#Perception_of_imaginary_colors" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imaginary_color#Perception_of_i...</a>
Well, he's not a Tetrachromat so he can still volunteer for a study:<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetrachromacy" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetrachromacy</a>
The assumption being made here is that the labels are fixed categories, immutable and the same from person to person; and yet we know that's not always the case. It seems to me that we have the capability of deriving labels from experience, but don't (especially in the case of the colour-blind) all have the same experiences. I know there has been a fair amount of research on colour names in cross-cultural contexts and that for the most part there is a pretty clear similarity between the colour names employed in different cultures, but that not all cultures distinguish between blue and green for instance.
Like so, so many arguments in philosophy of mind, the argument requires there to be a distinction between subject and object. Without this distinction, the argument is not disproven, but its semantics completely break down; i.e., not "Without this presupposition, Dawkins is false when he says X" but rather "Without this presupposition, Dawkins has said nothing at all when he says X; he may have said 'blippity bloo blah bleem bam' instead."<p>Without a strongly reasoned argument for subject-object distinction, one may as well be proving things with the presupposition that God exists.
Some people can see infrared, due to their cornea being replaced by an artificial plastic one which does not block infrared as the natural one does. However, this isn't an entirely new colour, but just a more red red.
As a child I wondered what it would feel like to 'discover' a brand new colour. I'm was delighted to find that I'm not alone in that impossible quest. =)
Apparently there is a colorblind synesthete somewhere who 'sees' colors (triggered by numbers) in his mind that he cannot see in the real world.
<a href="http://j.mp/9I6XwH" rel="nofollow">http://j.mp/9I6XwH</a>
nice thoughts. Now, I have no idea what I'm talking about, but i imagine the brain of a red-blind person wouldn't have a fully developed pathway to "see" red. I'd guess that after being exposed to a new stimulus, the pathway would slowly develop, but I don't think the patient would immediately see a new color.<p>Does anyone know what happens to a deaf-from-birth person gets a cochlear implant late in life?
This reminded me of the incredible feeling of epiphany from reading <i>The Giver</i> in elementary school.<p><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Giver-Lois-Lowry/dp/0385732554/" rel="nofollow">http://www.amazon.com/Giver-Lois-Lowry/dp/0385732554/</a>