Q&A: The Sensation of Color
The Sensation of Color
Question
Hello Rabbi,
Regarding the representation of color in the sensations of one person versus its representation in another person:
At first glance, it would seem that we shouldn’t have any problem with the sensation of color. If there’s a disagreement, we can explain to those arguing how a spectroscope works, and from that point on there will surely be agreement.
I heard an interesting discussion on the program Three Who Know, a Kan podcast from August 11, 2021 (the name of the episode: How the Brain Produces Motivation). Starting from minute 36. Rona Israel-Kulat, and from minute 40, explained about mixing of the senses. Sensations of sound, color, and taste are connected to one another.
I assume one can explain the inability of one person to know what the representation of a certain color is in another person’s sensations by comparison to the sensation of pain. Here, unlike color or sound, you can’t point to something external, objective.
For me, tooth pain feels very different from the pain of hitting a finger. The intensity of the pain may be similar, but it’s different. It’s possible that what someone else feels in their teeth is like what I feel in my finger, or vice versa.
“Mary’s Room.” Suppose Mary is a dentist, who has also studied the nervous system, how pain signals are transmitted, and so on, but fortunately—for better or worse—she has never had a toothache and has never needed a filling or root canal treatment. What would she learn if tooth decay struck her?
Best regards
Answer
Understanding how a spectroscope works will not solve any problem. The question is what they see in their inner consciousness when they look at the color that you call red. They too will call it red, but maybe they see green (or hear music).
In the sensation of pain there is usually an external cause (how hard a blow or wound is). The sensation of pain, like any sensation, is of course a subjective matter. And therefore there too we have no way of verifying that the other person feels it as we do. And so too regarding Mary. There is no difference between pain and color.