Hypothetical situation: Can you prove this can't happen?

I've actually thought about that as well.

There's no way of knowing. For that matter, how would you know who was "right" in that situation? Whose perception is the true one? If we perceive things differently, but give them the same name, and associate the same name with the same object/characteristic, is there a way of knowing? Nope. There isn't.

The same could go for tastes, smells, and other sensory perceptions. We can't be in someone else's mind. The only way to learn these things is by experiencing them. If our experiences are consistent, and there is a word that corresponds with them (as an association), we have to use that word.

Does that make sense? Since we experience colors only through our own eyes, the name we use for each color is the one that we hear others use to reference it. Since we are looking at the same color, it will always have the same name, even if we are "seeing" it differently. We don't have any point of reference except what we as individuals see and the name language has given to it.

Well, I would argue that this happens more often than we think. If we exclude that the person is suffering from some vision problems, then I would think that the question would be a matter of perception. I have a chinese roommate and she has a software platform trading on the Shanghei stock market. Last week, I had a look at her monitor and I saw almost all stocks were on green colour. I said, 'wow, all stocks are rising?' but she explained to me that they represent rising stocks with red colour and declining stocks with green colour (in fact, last week was a bloodbath on the chinese stock exchange).

I will rule out any problems with language or learning, because they should be a problem if the person saw the right colors but called them with wrong names. As I said, it should be a matter of perception. It is how the person apprehend the color. The only instence when you can identify this is by asking 'what does this color mean to you?'. From my story with chinese roommate, we can see clearly that even though we use the same word to refer to the same color 'green'. For me, it means something nice, clean and forward (up), whereas for her, it probably means the contrarily.

To make my poiny, I finish with a short Moroccan joke. A kid having trouble learning colors was asked by his teacher to go to his father's work and learn from him. The next morning, the kid went with his father to his store where he sells vegetables and asked, 'dad, what is the color of this tomato?' The father took an unripe tomato and said 'it's red, but it's yellow because it's green'.

We actually don't know whether two people who see the same color experience the same subjective experience. There are some people who argue that this is a meaningless question. They both see red, so they both have the experience of seeing red, therefore it must be the same experience.

But I agree with you. There's a particular experience I have when I see red, and that experience is a particular type of feeling. Another person could have a different experience even though they see the same color.

As for how it could be tested or proven, at present there is no way. However, perhaps at some point in the future we will invent some kind of device to allow one person to experience another person's experiences as they do. If this ever became possible, I could experience vision as you do, and see how it compares to my visual experiences.

Of course, such a thing is a very long way off, but it's not impossible in principle. I don't think it's impossible in principle for us to hook such a thing up to two people and have one person say, "wow, when you look at orange, you have the same experience I do when I see green".

This person will only realize that his thinking is different if he asks other people what they see, what color do they see, how do they see it or when other people ask him what he sees and he answers differently, they will tell him he is different or they will distance themselves from him and eventually he will begin to ask questions again.

Why are they staying away from me?

Am I different?

I see, and so I am.

Once this happens he will realize that he is different but eventually he will find someone who sees the same color as he does and some people might even wonder if the color that they saw was right and might even consider the view of this person. Thus changing the perception of the world around him...

You mean if the fact that everyone else told him he was seeing things wrong? He might become paranoid and think it's a conspiracy and everyone else is ganging up on him, of he'd learn to accept it and give the "right" answers when what he sees doesn't line up with everyone else's reality. His sensory experiences would certainly be different from everyone else's because how he sees the world is different.

Are you normally a deep thinker?

dude I always think about this. You'd just think that someone got their colour names mixed up but I get your point. Maybe you mean two people recognize the color blue, yet they see two different things. You'd never know that, and that is so cool eh?

Here's something fun: try to explain colour (without using other colours). Try to tell an imaginary person who has been in the dark their whole life what colour is like....I find it impossible!

i dont know how someone else could figure out what they saw but ive thought about that before and no one understood what i meant! like, what if everyone saw different colors? if one person saw purple but another saw green but they both knew it as blue or something? that would be so cool!

The wave lengths of light are what determine its colors not the person seeing it.

Even a color blind person has a way to verify different colors with the right equipment.

I've had the same thoughts and I don't see an answer coming. True, what you see as RED might be another color to me but since I've been told what I see is red, then I guess it is.

I've actually thought about this myself. I can't see a single situation where you would realise, since how your brain interprets color vision is unique to you. So my red could be your orange or blue.