It’s a classic stoner thought: Do you see the same colors that I do? Is your red the same as my red? An individual’s perception is a difficult thing to study, but researchers found that we might all be perceiving colors the same way, even if we may not be seeing the same thing.
Our personal experiences and perspectives are so unique to us that it’s almost impossible to scientifically measure our perception of the same thing, even if it’s something as seemingly irrefutable as a color.
To answer the question, the researchers focused on the color red and on a philosophical concept called qualia, a term describing a person’s subjective conscious experience. In other words, they weren’t so much testing to find out if we can visually see the same color as much as they were trying to find out each color’s vibe. It’s vibes-based science, baby.
The researchers asked the participants to rate the similarity of 93 colors to capture the subtlety and nuance between the hues. “We try to find the best matching between qualia structures based only on their internal relationships,” the team’s research paper reads, describing the philosophy behind leaving the colors unlabeled so the study participants can make their own associations between colors without external influence.
The researchers found that despite our individual perception, our experiences when we perceive a color are similar more often than not. We’re overall feeling the same vibes when we look at red and any of its many hues.
All of this alignment between our individual perceptions of color means it’s not very likely that your definition of a color is different from mine. There’s no way to prove that the red you’re looking at is exactly the same as the one I am looking at, but as long as we both agree that it feels like red, then maybe that’s all we need.
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