Theory of Chromoperceptive Discontinuity

As you see this screen, you surely are seeing a bit of blue somewhere on-screen. You look outside or above, and yellow lights can be seen shining from some bulb. Perhaps look down below to find a mixture of green and brown earth, or in the fridge for a variety of pink meats, red fruits, and yellow boxes of ingredients.

But just what are these colors? What is red, and what is yellow? What makes purple the color of violets, and green the dress that plants wear? Before you tell me that it's basic primary colors being mixed together, or light being reflected into my cornea, stop and think: what if we didn't all see the same? What if my red was your yellow? Or your black was my white? Or even if my sky blue is your ocean green?



All eyes are different, just by tiny bits in the number of atoms, color, condition, health, and so forth. So therefore, is not possible that my eyes perceive colors different that your eyes do? Or perhaps that the man sleeping in the room next over has a green door whilst his neighbor's door he sees as a bright orange color, while both of them were painted with the same shade of paint that the painter saw as what I call purple? How would we know if we all saw different colors, or the same ones? In theory, the hue that I call "black" to describe the color of these words right now might look to you what I call violet, yellow, or periwinkle.

How is this possible, though? Surely someone would have caught on by now, right? Nope, it is simple to see how we can all see colors in different hues and never notice. When a child is taught colors, they connotate them to objects, symbols, or emotions. For example, we all learn "green" as the color of the grass and tree leaves, "blue" as the color of the sky and water, and "pink" and "purple" as the color of wildflowers. We'll begin to call that shade "blue," "pink,"  "green," or "purple," and so will everyone else who learns it. We will never know that we saw two different shades because that we are able to connotate them to the same icon.

To expand on that, these symbols are constant. Many of us learn red as the color of fire and love. Now when Valentine's Day swings around, the hearts I see on advertisements and television are pink and red; would those hearts not be red constantly, then? If one hue of color is perceived by the eye as red, would not all other objects of that hue also be "red"? Supposedly, yes. What can be concluded from this is that humans can learn the color from its recurrence in a symbol, no matter what is "hue" is.

Imagine that someone sees all the grass as "blue", not "green," whatever green is for you. Their sky is red, their fires are white, their paper is pink, and their oceans are a bright orange? We can never have the evidence to disprove this theory, nor can we prove it, without a sudden advancement in eye biology of perception to prove it. However, we can prove that seeing colors different than the person next to you is possible, to a smaller degree:

Being colorblind. My red is your gray, as is my yellow, blue, and green, all different shades. At least, that's how most people interpret being colorblind. What many people do not know about colon vision deficiency is that is does not necessarily mean they see everything in black and white. They may have issues differentiating between red and green tones, or the blue and yellow tones. However, what if this is because their eyes are matching those hues as very close colors? We don't necessarily know that our division of the 6-7 base colors are the same for everyone else's visionary perception. What if their red is Light color X, and their green is Dark color X? They would be so similar that it could be deemed a medical issue.

Furthermore, if all of the colors are dark or light that someone interprets, could it not be connected to blindness, making it difficult for the eyes to see, irritating them into being blind? Or perhaps the eyes would have naturally adapted to fit the hue perception. This opens up many doors to interpreting color vision deficiency and its variants. Perhaps we can trace what hues of colors we see in our genes? What if some colors are dominant traits, and others are recessive? Would that mean that some of us see colors more often, because that two of their colors are so similar since they received both dominant traits of that hue family? This would also mean it is possible to see some colors less, or even not at all!

Ultimately, we all are using the same terms for our colors--red, yellow, green, blue, purple, black, periwinkle, burnt sienna, flamingo pink, gonna-die-in-an-explosion orange. And I bet that when you read all of those words, the colors flashed in your mind. But what if when someone read the world "red," they imagined what you call "black"? I find this theory of chromoperceptive discontinuity very interesting, and am totally left in wonder, awe, amazement, shock, and curiosity at the fact that the very colors we associate with love, good, evil, light, darkness, the oceans, the skys, the grasses, and all of nature may all simply be subjective. Are there perfect colors, then? Did the first man (Adam, in my faith) have the perfect eyesight? We shall never know...


At least, not yet.