What is the most fundamental reason(s) why humans can't imagine new colors?
The brain is an enormously complex molecule and "computer". Is there any physical law that would prevent us from 'adding' new module to brain for new color.
What is stopping us from adding new emotion to anything actually? Like human module with which they could feel electric and magnetic fields?
Our eyes pick up wavelengths from 390mm to 700mm. To distinguish the wavelengths in the visible spectrum from each other, we use three colors, red green and blue. Red for 700mm, green for 500mm and blue for 450mm. Any wavelengths in between are a mix of the nearest two colors. On the high end of the spectrum everything's red. On the low end of the spectrum everything's violet, not blue because of some errors.
There's nothing stopping you from modifying your eyes so they use a fourth color for some specific wavelength. You can pick a wavelength in the ultraviolet or maybe even x-rays. That'll give you x-ray vision and an entirely new unique color.
Yeah but where does it stop?
Could I create 170'000 different feelings that appear as colors in visual field, and map each of them to an english word?
So for example every word would have unique color. Not like "shade of green" but unique color.
feelings..? I'm talking about assigning colors to wavelengths of light for your eyes.
Feelings come from something completely different, chemicals in your brain and body. I don't know how new chemicals would affect your mind differently.
The brain just lacks the ability to convert the abstract idea of a wavelength and turn it into a color. If we could see colors for what they actually are, it would be easier.
Colors are not feelings. We don't make up the colors we see: they are actually assigned to wavelengths which exist in the world. We associate feelings with colors, but that's entirely separate from seeing those colors in the first place
>If we could see colors for what they actually are, it would be easier.
Colors don't even exist though, they're all a brain construct. Especially brown which doesn't even exist on the color wheel.
Are you dense ?
The eye is made up of rods and cones, these are specialized cells that can only absorb certain wavelengths of light. Some animals have differently formed eyes and can see colors we can't, and we can see colors they can't. Evolution has selected which colors are beneficial for survival for your species. I don't think you can do better than evolution, which has had millions of years to perfect our abilities.
>The brain is an enormously complex molecule and "computer".
Fuck you and no. A molecule is a chemical structure, the human brain is light years ahead in complexity, made up of millions of neurons and shaped by human experience which is different for everyone. A computer is a dumb man-made device which, even a supercomputer does not come close to the human brain in complexity, I'm sorry but I can't agree that our brains our that simple. Your views are dehumanizing and insulting to me.
Also stop trying to look at physics, your questions are a matter of biology.
>he can't imagine new colours
poor little brainlet probably can't even visualize living in greater than 3 dimensional space
>I don't think you can do better than evolution, which has had millions of years to perfect our abilities.
That would imply that we, as humans, are perfect. Of course we're not. Besides intelligence we're beaten at pretty much everything but one member of the animal kingdom or another. The mantis shrimp has 16 photo receptors which stretch well into the UV/IR range. Not only that, but they can see the polarisation of light.
only way to visualize new colors is through self induced synesthesia
>Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent
>Wittgenstein
He is talking about language, but I think the same thing applied to color. We only understand the "language" of color that is our RGB perception.
The brain is trapped in a cage built by micro and macroevolution. There's no need to recognize the different shades and tones of a color and attach a corresponding name to it. The only colors you even need to perceive in order to survive prehistory are red, blue, green, black, brown, pink, white, and tan. All that matters is the distance at which you are from and object and the level of light you receive from it as neural stimuli to interpret. I'm disappointed user, you are better than this.
Brown is the darker hues of yellowish orange. Which is basically some green with a lot of red
>colors don't exist, they're a brain construct.
Colors are defined by the ability of an object to reflect certain light wavelengths. This property most certainly exists (for example, a black car will get significantly hotter than a white car if left out in the sun).
But it doesn't become a colour until our brains have processed it. Before that its just a collection of wavelengths.
you can.
It's still a real quantity that we in a way measure. Let [math]f(\nu)[/math] be the emitted spectrum from some object. What we see is then
[eqn]c_\mathrm{r, g, b} = G_\mathrm{r, g, b} \left( \int_{-\infty}^\infty f(\nu) g_\mathrm{r, g, b}(\nu) \mathrm{d} \nu \right) [/eqn]
The functions [math]g_\mathrm{r, g, b}(\nu)[/math] are the response functions of the rods and [math]G_\mathrm{r, g, b}(x)[/math] is a function that unifies all other physiological factors that may add up to the final subjective impression, you can assume that it's close to [math]G_\mathrm{r, g, b} = x[/math]. You can theoretically measure those functions in detail and what's left is a very real physical quantity.
emotion can be represented as response to external stimuli. if you measure the responses and decompose them into frequencies, turn that into different wavelengths that could represent color.
as far as English words for those colors, you'd have to make them up.
>Before that its just a collection of wavelengths.
So is everything else
gtfo laplace
You should use the word 'qualia' when discussing the phenomenology of colors.
>if you measure the responses and decompose them into frequencies
How would you do this, in practice? Different people react differently to the same stimulus, so people would disagree on the "color" of the stimulus. If there is no objective convention, then it's meaningless especially in science.
Also, each of our cones don't just measure a single wavelength, they measure a range of wavelengths. The blue and green cones actually have some overlap in what frequencies they can measure IIRC. If our cones had shorter ranges, we'd probably interpret colors differently. If our cones had longer ranges it would be different as well. I also think the overlap of the ranges plays a part. But generally speaking, the more unique cones you have, the better resolution of shades you will have.
Even a new receptor within the visual spectrum would allow us to perceive a new color. We perceive yellow when both the red and green receptors are activated. We have no way to differentiate between a flower that actually is reflecting the 600nm wavelength and a computer monitor that's emitting 700nm and 500nm at the same time. With a receptor at 600nm we'd see this as two different colors. A white made from combining red, green,and blue wouldn't appear as white; it would be what yellow or purple are to our eyes now.
We already do. Purple does not exist "in reality", it's purely an artefact of our brains.
It doesnt matter becaues you couldnt explain the new color to anybody else.
I've heard people say they experiance "new colors" on intense psychedelic drugs like DMT, but you cant describe new color any better than you can describe weird dreams.
So sure you can hallucinate but can you spread that information in any meaningful way? No. h
>why humans can't imagine new colors
Isn't that what we do, imagine color.
A rock doesn't imagine color, and yet the color is there to be perceived, or not.
This thread is pretty disappointing imo
Came here to say this.
...
Human beings can imagine new colors, your premise is flawed op.
With this solution you can compute every existent color by the number of its wavelenght. This would be an almost infinite research, tho.
It appears that you want to be wordy, here's a protip: define fundamental colors, this user did a nice job with 3 different colors. Define the others. For every color you can't see make up a word with the letters 701 is GAB, Gab is the closest color to red (wavelenght = 700),
This will be an infinite process, you'll also need numbers or symbols, because you'll form repetitions of words. 700 is red, but red is also 843 so you'll label it red* and this saves your day.
> DONE.
Thank me later
Brown is not a darker hue of yellow, orange is. In order for you to see brown, you need to see a combination of other colors. A brown wavelength does not exist.
>Before that its just a collection of wavelengths.
daaaamn.....
There exist humans that have three cone cells and a rod cell that they are able to perceive from visually. This is called tetrachromacy. Most humans only have two cone cells.
(normal humans also have a fourth type of cone cell that we cant perceive)
Most tetracromatic humans are not functionally tetracromatic because there cone cells see the same or nearly the same color. When a tetracromat has some cone cells that are deformed with specific types of colorblindness they can be true tetracromats able to distinguish far more colors than normal. This does not how ever translate into being a better artist.
youtube.com
youtube.com
speak for yourself, i can imagine an infinite hilbert space of n-dimensional colours