How can we see colour?

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How can we see colour?

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3 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

Our retina has a special type of cell called a cone. There are three types of cones according to the light wavelength they are most sensitive to: the blue, green, and red cones. Blue, red, and green are the primary additive colors, meaning the light waves that correspond to these colors add together to stimulate our cones and elicit the perception of creating new colors. Blue and green produce cyan, red and green produce yellow, and red and blue produce magenta. This goes on and on, as light waves of different wavelengths stimulate our cones to various intensities and amounts, producing a wide gamut of colors.

Anonymous 0 Comments

We have cells in our eyes that react only when they are hit by certain wavelenghths (a certain color of light) and over millions of years, our brains evolved to interpret these differneces in activity as different colors

Anonymous 0 Comments

What none of the replies have yet to answer is how the experience of colour emerges from the physical process. Our brains recognizes differences in wavelengths but why do we experience it as hue rather than pitch? And why sound as pitch rather than hue?

We do not only sense a blue wavelength but we see blue as a visual effect added upon the shape of something.

And there is a significant difference between just seeing and seeing colour. Some people who are visually impaired in the brain and not the eyes, can recognize shapes but do not see any colours or fine contrasts. Some can even tell someone is smiling but have no concious imagery of it. If you ask someone with this condition what they see they will insist: “nothing”. But if you smile at them they will smile back.

I can’t answer this, to the best of my knowledge it is connected to conciousness which we don’t know a lot about how it works.