Perspective
Once I was chatting with my brother. We wondered if what I 'see' as green is same as what he 'sees' as green. We were all shown a particular colour (which we may perceive differently) and were taught the name of that colour. So, we all agree on what's green, for example. But, how do we perceive 'green'? What I perceive as green may be perceived by you as the equivalent of my 'blue'. How do we find out if our previous hypothesis is true or not? At that point of time we were not aware of Godel's incompleteness theorem; we almost reinvented it (though the essence of the theorem has been around for a long time in the metaphor 'kiNatruth thavaLai', a frog in a well).
Later, I suggested that if ever there's a poet who can describe the colours in a way even a person born blind can differentiate, then we can test the hypothesis by making the poet describe the colours (essentialy the poet's own perception) and we test if it matches our perception. Little did we realise then that, for this to be possible, either the poet has to break the incompleteness or colour of light should not be an orthogonal property (one which can't be expressed in terms of other properties). With my creative skill level at absolute zero, I am still wondering if someone who's blessed with such poetic skills can ever confirm or deny this fact ...
Besides colour is just another instance of human perception ...
posted by Sundar at 6/11/2004 03:57:00 pm
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8 Comments:
If this "illusion" is in fact true(But you cant even prove that from within), then I think this is the only means of making two human minds to agree on a point.
Yes, Sanjeeth. If this is possible, a shared mind protocol(similar to a shared coin) for consensus can be implemented! Think of the possibilities, a solution to Indo-Pak conflicts, Cauvery row, Middle East conflicts, Sri Lankan imbroglio etc. Hmm..
Ya...Theoritically the protocol would work. But the problem is neither parties in all these problems are working towards a consensus. All are Byzantine ;)!
I think we are moving this post into a Distributed Algorithm course :) . After such a long time and through blogs!
Perspicuity, I'd talked about a hypothetical poet who could describe colours to a blind person(meaning describing a colour in terms of other attributes). If this were possible we can cross check if our perception of colour is same or not. Take for example, if a colour can be expressed in terms of Mass(just for example sake), then a poet on seeing Blue can say it's heavy and suppose in my perception the colour appears to be the 'yellow' of the poet, then I would see it as 'light'. So, we know that our perceptions differ.
As for science, using some cerebral electrical signals may be we can deduce if there is a difference.
Godel's hypothesis tells that the basic axioms or 'assumptions' about a system can not be verified within the ambit of the system.
As expected, here is a post talking Godel.
Anyway, We percieve wavelengths, which we have named as colors. For ppl who suffer Daltonism, some colors are indistinguisable, would the hypothetical poet still work out. I think yes!
Can the same be said of numbers also? Why must "1" represent one and not two. It is also just a matter of practice, like color naming. Right?
This colour perception issue has been debated from Newton's time apparently. I have to agree with you that there's a large degree of subjectivity thanks to perception differences. Again, are these innate or acquired colour perceptions? The wavelength differences only matter to our eyes. The next stage in the brain is where the subjectivity will enter.
Definitely, two people would agree on what constitutes "blue" to some degree only because they've been conditioned to do so from childhood.
Describing color of light in terms of other properties? Let's assume that color is dependent on wavelength. So the problem of communicating colour information to a blind person boils down to communicating wavlength information.
Now, I would say that wavelength of light is so fundamental a property that all other things like sound, action etc.. would be completely describable in terms of light of certain wavelengths and it intensity. Hence, ultimately our uber-poet would be describing colour in terms of wavelength, directly or indirectly. The catch here, is wavelength objective or subjective?
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