"PeterN" wrote

| Individual perceptions of color may vary from one individual to another,
| just as taste, and hearing do.
| http://www.livescience.com/21275-color-red-blue-scientists.html
|

That's one of several uncontrollable factors that
I was trying to point out to Eric. I used to have a
friend who took up painting and was surprisingly
good at it. He was doing still life. I said I though his
work was very good, but didn't understand why his
pears were purple and various other things had been
painted the wrong colors. It turned out he was color
blind and had never known it. Yet his paintings were
beautifully done, looking very realistic. He just wasn't
painting the colors that other people saw. It was
intriguing, but he was embarassed by the whole thing
and stopped painting, so I never had a chance to
figure out how he was painting so right and so wrong
at the same time.
Up until that point, it never would have occurred
to me, if I said something like, "Isn't that a beautiful
coral?", that he was actually seeing a very different
color. And what does that mean? Does he see something
equally exquisite but more like frog green? I don't know.
Where would be the objective vantage point to decide?
Is green to him the same as green to me? Or does it
"feel" like coral?