But that surely just describes the retina and the way light passes through the lens (which we can measure or at least make informed guesses based on the substances and reflectance/absorbtion involved)? How do you KNOW that my hue isn’t rotated completely differently since you can’t measure it—my experience of it? The wavelengths don’t mean a thing.
What I am talking about has very little to do with “wavelengths”.
Example:
Consider an orange (that is, the actual fruit), which you have in your hand; and consider a photograph of that same orange, taken from the vantage point of your eye and then displayed on a screen which you hold in your other hand. The orange and the picture of the orange will both look orange (i.e. the color which we perceive as a hybrid of red and yellow), and furthermore they will appear to be the same orange hue.
However, if you compare the spectral power distribution (i.e., which wavelengths are present, and at what total intensity) of the light incident upon your retina that was reflected from the orange, with the spectral power distribution of the light incident upon your retina that was emitted from the displayed picture of that same orange, you will find them to be almost entirely non-overlapping. (Specifically, the former SPD will be dominated by light in the ~590nm band, whereas the latter SPD will have almost no light of that wavelength.)
And yet, the perceived color will be the same.
Perceptual colors do not map directly to wavelengths of light.
I’m not sure what I’m meant to be convinced by in that Wikipedia article—can you quote the specific passage?
I don’t understand how that confirms you and I are experiencing the same thing we call orange. To put it another way, imagine a common device in Comedy of Errors: we are in a three-way conversation, and our mutual interlocutor mentions “Bob” and we both nod knowingly. However this doesn’t mean that we are imagining “Bob” refers to the same person, I could be thinking of animator Bob Clampett, you could be thinking of animator Bob Mckimson.
Our mutual interlocutor could say “Bob has a distinctive style”—now, assume there is nothing wrong with our hearing. We are getting the same sentence with the same syntax. Yet my mental representation of Bob and the visual style will be different to yours. In the same way that we could be shown the same calibrated computer screen which displays the same image of an orange, of a banana, we may appear to say “yep that orange is orange” “yep, that banana is a pale yellow”—but how do you know that my mental representation of orange isn’t your purple. When ever I say “purple” I could be mentally experiencing your orange, in the same way that when I heard “Bob” I’m making reference to Clampett not Mckimson?
I’ll certainly change the analogy if you can explain to me what I’m missing… but I just don’t understand.
But that surely just describes the retina and the way light passes through the lens (which we can measure or at least make informed guesses based on the substances and reflectance/absorbtion involved)? How do you KNOW that my hue isn’t rotated completely differently since you can’t measure it—my experience of it? The wavelengths don’t mean a thing.
Absolutely not.
What I am talking about has very little to do with “wavelengths”.
Example:
Consider an orange (that is, the actual fruit), which you have in your hand; and consider a photograph of that same orange, taken from the vantage point of your eye and then displayed on a screen which you hold in your other hand. The orange and the picture of the orange will both look orange (i.e. the color which we perceive as a hybrid of red and yellow), and furthermore they will appear to be the same orange hue.
However, if you compare the spectral power distribution (i.e., which wavelengths are present, and at what total intensity) of the light incident upon your retina that was reflected from the orange, with the spectral power distribution of the light incident upon your retina that was emitted from the displayed picture of that same orange, you will find them to be almost entirely non-overlapping. (Specifically, the former SPD will be dominated by light in the ~590nm band, whereas the latter SPD will have almost no light of that wavelength.)
And yet, the perceived color will be the same.
Perceptual colors do not map directly to wavelengths of light.
I’m not sure what I’m meant to be convinced by in that Wikipedia article—can you quote the specific passage?
I don’t understand how that confirms you and I are experiencing the same thing we call orange. To put it another way, imagine a common device in Comedy of Errors: we are in a three-way conversation, and our mutual interlocutor mentions “Bob” and we both nod knowingly. However this doesn’t mean that we are imagining “Bob” refers to the same person, I could be thinking of animator Bob Clampett, you could be thinking of animator Bob Mckimson.
Our mutual interlocutor could say “Bob has a distinctive style”—now, assume there is nothing wrong with our hearing. We are getting the same sentence with the same syntax. Yet my mental representation of Bob and the visual style will be different to yours. In the same way that we could be shown the same calibrated computer screen which displays the same image of an orange, of a banana, we may appear to say “yep that orange is orange” “yep, that banana is a pale yellow”—but how do you know that my mental representation of orange isn’t your purple. When ever I say “purple” I could be mentally experiencing your orange, in the same way that when I heard “Bob” I’m making reference to Clampett not Mckimson?
I’ll certainly change the analogy if you can explain to me what I’m missing… but I just don’t understand.