How is the color of an object determined by the brain?

Question

I know that no object has a definite color that exist outside of the brains interpretation of the light being reflected off if an object. So if I say the ball is red what I am actually saying is in my mind I visualize the ball as red. That being said color must be a subjective experience and that color assignment is a mental activity? I would follow up to ask is it possible that different brains assign different colors to the same object? The real simple question would have been how do all humans see the same objects having the same colors? TIA ELI5

In: 1

Answer 1

Let’s start from the beginning.

1. Light bounces off of a red delicious apple. Not all of the light that hit it bounces though. Some of the light got absorbed into the apple.

2. The light that did bounce hits the back of your retina. Special cells there absorb that light and can tell which wavelengths hit it.

3. Those cells then send that information along the optic nerve, and back to the brain, specifically the part close to the back of your neck.

4. From there, your brain takes the information and interprets it into an image.

So it’s silly to say that “there is no color outside the wavelengths of light we see” because that’s what color is. It’s like saying there’s no smells outside the chemicals that get into our nose.

The sticking point you’re on is that we have no way of guaranteeing what the interpretation in step 4. actually looks like to anyone other than yourself. This is because we all learned what “red” meant by being taught the same thing other people say red means. So no matter what interpretation your brain makes, you use the same language to describe “red” as everyone else.