Prove to me that the sky is blue.

Assume this is true about myself:

Hello, my name is Sean. I used to live in a very secluded island, which had a society of around 1,000 people. We don't know English - but when asked about the color of the sky, we'd generally point to an apple. Something that most of you would define as 'red'.

Now, why is this? Well, I was born into a society where everyone is color blind. Everyone. It's in our genes, and continues to be passed down to our offspring. But anyways, it posed no problem for us. We agreed on everything. Is the sky's color like an apple? Yup. No debates there.

Recently, I moved to America. Now, after learning some English, I eventually told my peers (while shopping at the grocery store), that the apples looked just like the sky. They all laughed. I couldn't understand. They then explained to me that the sky is a different color than the apples.

Still, I was perplexed. Back where I lived, everyone agreed that the apples were the color of the sky. Here, everyone is saying the opposite. Who's right?

The story ends here. It's not meant to be taken so literally. A few posts in this thread will show the main gist of this topic.

Look, I know the sky is a certain wavelength, but how do we know that the color of that wavelength is correct? Note that, we don't have to be as dramatic as 'red'. I could argue that the shade of blue you see is different from the shade of blue I see.

Furthermore, there are people with overdeveloped eyes (tetrachromats) which actually see colors a surely different shade than we do. These people are a minority, but to them, we are the color blind ones.

Finally, this doesn't necessarily have to refer to humans. If color is objective, it should exist outside of the mind. So, even different life forms should be seeing the color 'blue' as we see it (in its exact shade).

I urge you to read the following before providing me any proof:

1. http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20120209-do-we-all-see-the-same-colours/1

2. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...ientists-claim-persons-red-anothers-blue.html

Edit: Here is a VERY interesting article that you MUST read. I prefer you read this article over the above 2.

http://www.petapixel.com/2011/08/12/do-people-always-see-the-same-things-when-they-look-at-colors/

 

You're fucking stupid. It's been scientifically proven the sky isn't actually "blue".

 

...

Yes, it was just an example to open up the debate - but I later said at the end of my post to not take the red part so literally, as it is quite an extreme example. Rather, can you prove that the shade of blue that you see is the same shade of blue that I see? As in, if I could take a screenshot of what my brain is seeing, and you could do the same, and we were both able to load said screenshots onto a computer and determine the shade of blue which pertains to the sky, do you believe they would be exactly the same?

 

This is about as fun as the "can you prove to me you exist" debate.

I mean you can't really debate one way or the other since there is no true objective evidence.

 

I'm a bit confused at this post, but I'm pretty sure that the title is misleading.

Question;
Are you asking a question that is beyond comprehension with the scientific facts and theories that we have now?

For example, when I see my hands, I see fingers. But to you, they could look what I would define as carrots.

Again, I am confused with the objective of this debate.

 

I agree - I don't like pure skepticism.

However, existence deals with objectivity - it's either you exist, or you don't. I'm not arguing that the wavelength exists - just on how we determine that our interpretation of the wavelength is the correct one out of a multitude of choices. After all, many color blind people do not know they're color blind until they speak to others who are not color blind.

You can give me proof that drugs are bad for you, that smoking can cause cancer, etc. and these are all objective information. For those, we don't simply refer to the effects corresponding to the majority - we actually know the methodology of why such and such happens. Now, the cause and effect relationship between smoking and cancer was just recently discovered - before, we could only say there was a correlation based on statistical evidence. But this wasn't sufficient for proof. Now, we have sufficient proof.

The sky being blue right now is substantiated by the majority of the population agreeing that it is blue. But without proof, what's there to say that this is objectively true?

Edit:

The main gist is how to determine we have acquired objective knowledge. Otherwise, 'objective' is simply defined as 'what the majority agrees to be true', which is an appeal to popularity fallacy (in the case with the sky being blue). We know the term 'objective' means that it is true in nature. How do we know we've achieved that?

Also, to prove your fingers are not carrots, you simply get cells from your finger, and cells from a carrot, and determine that they are not the same.

 

Then I guess that Sythe answered your question. Blue is defined as the wave of light that is not absorbed by a material but is reflected, with a wavelength of 400~500, including some shades of violet and green.

How we see it does not matter. If the wavelength is between 400~500 (more precisely 450~500 to eliminate as much green and violet shades that I see,) then it is blue.

Also, I was a bit vague with my fingers and carrots question, and you seemed to have misunderstood it. But I now understand what you are asking now and that question no longer matters, so forget it

 

...
Are you a renaissance man? I thought that you had a profession in relation with law (and thus you are a good debater,) but now you seem to a good deal about biology.

Always wondered

 

Okay, but there's no guarantee that our definition is correct. We measured the wavelength of the sky - that's objective. Later, we associated this wavelength to a color from our color palette, and selected blue because 'that's what we see'. What if the majority of us were color blind? That wavelength would be defined differently now.

I urge you to read the 3rd article I gave above. It will be an interesting read!

Furthermore, I just want to know why we are the right ones, and not the tetrachromats, for example. I can understand how someone would say that we are correct over a cat, as our eyes may be more developed. However, a tetrachromat's eyes seem more developed than the average human's eyes. So why do we consider our definition of any wavelength of a certain color to be objectively true?

 

Ehh
I don't think that there would be much of a change, even if it DID turn out that we were the people who are colorblind (although according to the my interpretation of its definition, we don't seem to be.)

Sure, people who be surprised that it was all a misconception, that blue isn't really "blue."
The biggest event I count think of happening following the discovery that we are colorblind would be a simple change in the names of those wavelengths that we originally called "blue."

No biggie.

 

Yes, the RGB color model is based on the way our eyes work - we have 3 different types of cones in our eyes. However, there are some people that have 4 different types of cones, and this affects the colors they see dearly. It also means their 'RGB color model' (it would obviously have a different name now) is different as well. These people are the tetrachromats. They see colors differently than we do - perhaps better than we do.

I'm sure you've heard of super-tasters. It's essentially the same thing. A minority of people are extremely sensitive to taste, and have the gene to taste 6-n-propylthiouracil, or PROP. Now, for a good portion of the population, PROP tastes like absolutely nothing. Hence, people would conclude that PROP is tasteless. However, for the super-tasters, PROP has an extremely bitter taste. Now, bitter can be subjective - for objective terms, does PROP have a taste, or does it not? Of course it does - a lot of us just can't perceive it.

The same can vaguely be applied to tetrachromats. Although we don't know exactly what they are seeing (as our eyes themselves are incapable of perceiving it), we know that they most likely are seeing more than we are, and perhaps, even different shades than we are. So how can we conclude that we are the right ones?

 

I dn't really think that we ever did.
I am guessing that this debate is now more related to humanities than the color blue.

If we really did conclude that we are the right ones, then I would answer that it was a conclusion set by what the majority agreed to be generally true.

 

Don't you think if I publicly stated that the sky isn't blue (dramatic example), everyone would laugh at me?

Yes, but this is a fallacy!

 

I meant that it's what we generally accept to be true, but there's nothing official about it
An unrelated example are the laws of physics. They are officially the "laws" of physics.
However, there is no laws in nature that defines the sky as blue, blue being the color that the majority of us see.


And blue as you know, the color in which the most of us see the sky?

Haha, I wish that I knew the correct wordings...
I guess that we were both talking with the same words defined differently

 

Yes, and the laws of physics have proof.

Haha, I'm not too sure - are you saying there is no proof?

 

The sky isn't blue. It's reflection.

 

Haha, I know - and the ocean isn't blue either.

I don't mean it this literally though. As in, what we see in the atmosphere - can you prove it's blue?