Any colour you like

I'm not sure if I should write about this at this time but if I don't, It'll get all hazy in my mind. Its about a concept that I'd once discussed with Matak. I'm not sure what its called. I think some Irish philosopher guy first wrote about it. Its something all of us take heavily for granted but all the world 'as we know it' depends on it. No, its not some wieldy physics theorem like relativity or anything. Hell its a lot simpler than physics.

Let me begin with an example: What you perceive as the colour GREEN may not necessarily be what I perceive as GREEN. This sentence is written in the colour GREEN. Yes, we both agree on that of course.. but the colour you perceive in your brain when you see that sentence, may not necessarily be the colour that I perceive. It is quite possible that I perceive the colour that you normally call PURPLE. However I still call it GREEN because that’s what I've been taught to call it since I was a kid. Get it?

The implications of this concept are quite astounding as I realized when I first understood it. The concept is not limited to colour... it applies to anything that is perceived by us.. to our entire world 'as we know it'. It means that the true cognitive perceptions of different individuals about a single object are actually independent (and may be different) - however the individuals may still consider their perceptions to concur.

But here's the best part: There is no way to prove that you are actually perceiving the same colour as I am when you are reading this sentence.. we both call it green, but there's no real way to be sure that you're seeing what I'm seeing! For that, we would need a third person/machine that can simultaneously 'see' (or in general, 'perceive') what both of us perceive.

+

# Ok, if you’ve understood what’s written above, here’s my question: If two people perceive the color green completely differently, but still call it green, then which one of them is right ? :)

## 'Any Colour You Like' was part of Pink Floyd's 8th album 'Dark Side of the Moon' released in 1973. It totally kicks ass! However, have a look at the lyrics of 'Eclipse', another track from the same album.. the're totally 'in-tune' with the theme of the above discussion.