Question!

[conuly]

I had come up with this post last night, and then after I forgot it my philosophy class reminded me of it.

How do you know what you're feeling? What does it feel like? Do you think your physical responses to emotions are like other people's? Bonus question: Do you think it's possible that what you see as green, other people see as red? Or some color you can't see? I used to think that.

Comments

[oloriel.livejournal.com]

Hm... I know what I'm feeling because I have some internal way of categorizing or defining my feelings. My reactions to emotions probably are not like other peoples', though; just as my emotions probably aren't like other peoples'. Although everyone could say they feel "happiness" and they would define it similarily if asked for it ("absence of bad feelings", "joy", "feeling loved", that sort of thing), the actual emotion is individual. Or so I think. And reactions are even more different - even I don't always react the same to the (basically) same feelings.

Bonus: Yes. It's so even with things where everyone would say they have a colour, like tennis balls (which some people might see more as green and some people might see as yellow); then there are things that aren't usually associated with colours, like tastes or smells or whatever; there, of course, those who do associate colours with them, can differ even more. (I think chicken tastes purple. I don't know what others would say bout that.) And then there's studies about collective perception, that have whole peoples see colours differently from others. We have one term for red and one term for green (basically. Of course there are shades, like burgundy red, or teal green). A people living in a djungle environment might have several different terms for green (as in, different colour terms, not as in different shades of one colour terms) and only one for red. And so on, and so on.

[catsluvdmb.livejournal.com]

Chicken tastes purple? Interesting...

As for the associating colors with different words, I view the question as people physically seeing different colors, not calling them by different names. Chemistry is what determines what color something is (light being absorbs or reflected) but there are various genetic disorders that cause you to physically not see certain colors or see one color as another.

[oloriel.livejournal.com]

I view the question as people physically seeing different colors, not calling them by different names.
Well, I meant that, too. But they don't only "see some colour you don't see", they even have their own names for it. That's what I meant by that example.
And of course, you can never be sure that people see the same colour that you see, even within your own cultural circle. It's generally assumed that, I dunno, everyone looking at something yellow (let's say, FFFF00 yellow) sees the same yellow, but who knows whether they really are?