The Philosophy of Color

Summary

This script explores the concept of color as both a scientific phenomenon and a perceptual experience. It discusses cross-modal correspondence, where senses like sight and hearing intertwine, using examples like the association of red with heat and blue with cold. The script delves into color categorization across languages, the psychological impact of color, and philosophical debates on color's nature. It contrasts Newton's scientific view of color as light waves with Goethe's perception-based approach, emphasizing our active role in creating color through interaction with the world.

Takeaways

• 🔴 Cross-modal Correspondence: We associate colors with sensations like temperature, with red often linked to hot and blue to cold.
• 👥 Synesthesia: A condition where individuals experience sensory overlap, such as associating numbers with specific colors.
• 🌐 Cultural Influences: Color perceptions vary across cultures, affecting how we assign meanings to colors and their usage in different settings.
• 🌈 Basic Color Categories: Research identified 11 basic color categories that languages around the world use to describe colors.
• 🌟 Ethnocentric Bias in Color Studies: Criticisms suggest that some color perception studies may be biased towards Western perspectives.
• 🌍 Universal Perceptions: Despite cultural differences, people globally tend to perceive blue as cool and red as warm.
• 🎨 Color in Art and Media: Colors are used symbolically in various media, with different colors representing different emotions or concepts.
• 🌌 Newton's and Goethe's Theories: Two contrasting views on color, one scientific and analytical (Newton), the other perceptual and experiential (Goethe).
• 👀 Color Perception as a Conscious Event: Colors are not just physical light but are experienced through the interaction between the observer and the observed.
• 🧠 Philosophical Views on Color: Philosophers propose different theories about color, including the idea that color is not an inherent property but a relational one.

Q & A

What is cross-modal correspondence?

Cross-modal correspondence is a phenomenon where multiple sensory modalities interact. For example, associating the color red with hot and blue with cold is an instance where visual perception is connected to the perception of temperature.

What is synesthesia and how does it relate to color perception?

Synesthesia is a perceptual phenomenon where stimulation of one sensory or cognitive pathway leads to involuntary experiences in another. For instance, some people with synesthesia associate numbers with specific colors, like two being violet and five being yellow.

What is the McGurk effect and how does it connect to color perception?

The McGurk effect is a perceptual illusion where the perception of a sound changes when a person sees a mouth articulating a different sound. It illustrates how visual perception can influence auditory perception.

What is the Bouba/Kiki effect and how does it relate to color?

The Bouba/Kiki effect is a phenomenon where people tend to associate rounded shapes with the name 'bouba' and spiky shapes with 'kiki'. It shows how visual shapes can influence auditory perception.

What were the 11 basic color categories identified by Brent Berlin and Paul Kay in their study?

The 11 basic color categories identified by Brent Berlin and Paul Kay are white, black, red, green, yellow, blue, brown, purple, pink, orange, and gray.

What criticism does the Berlin and Kay study face regarding color perception?

The study has been criticized for assuming an ethnocentric bias based on Western Scientific and political thought, implying that more 'primitive' cultures have not evolved to capture the true categories of color that Western languages have.

How do colors like red and blue relate to concepts in video games?

In video games, red is often associated with health or danger, blue with mana or energy, and green with stamina. These associations are based on cultural perceptions of colors as warm or cool.

What is the historical significance of the color purple?

Historically, purple was associated with royalty because the dye was made from a rare sea snail, making it expensive and available only to the wealthy.

How does the perception of color relate to our physical sensations of warmth and cold?

Our skin's physical response to temperature (getting red when warm and blue when cold) influences our perception of colors as warm or cool.

What does Newton's scientific description of light tell us about color?

Newton's description of light as waves of electromagnetic radiation explains that visible light consists of wavelengths perceived by the human eye as colors. The colors we see are the result of how light is reflected by objects and detected by the cone cells in our eyes.

How did Goethe's approach to color differ from Newton's?

While Newton focused on systematically analyzing color scientifically, Goethe was interested in color as we perceive it. He explored how color affects us emotionally and how our perception of color is influenced by the context in which we see it.

Outlines

00:00

🔴 Perception of Color and Temperature

This paragraph discusses the cross-modal correspondence between colors and temperature. It explains how red is commonly associated with heat and blue with coldness, a phenomenon stemming from our sensory perceptions. The concept of synesthesia is introduced, where individuals link numbers with specific colors. The script also touches on the McGurk effect, where visual cues alter auditory perception, and the Bouba-Kiki effect, which illustrates how shape influences the association with sound. The focus then shifts to the linguistic aspect, mentioning a study by Brent Berlin and Paul Kay that identified 11 basic color categories across different languages. The study's implications and criticisms are briefly discussed, highlighting potential ethnocentric bias. The paragraph concludes with a universal observation that people worldwide perceive blue as cool and red as warm, suggesting a fundamental human sensory experience.

05:01

🌈 Theories of Color Perception

This paragraph delves into the scientific and perceptual theories of color. It contrasts the analytical approach of Isaac Newton, who saw color as a property of light, with the poetic perspective of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, who focused on how humans perceive color. Goethe's experiments with colored shadows and his color wheel, which placed complementary colors opposite each other, are highlighted. The paragraph also explores the concept of 'accidental color' and how the brain strives for visual harmony by creating complementary colors. It discusses the idea that color is not just a physical property but also a conscious event resulting from the interaction between the observer and the observed. Philosophical theories of color are introduced, comparing the views of Locke and Newton, who saw color as secondary qualities, with those of Goethe, who emphasized the active role of the observer in perceiving color.

10:03

👀 The Active Role of Perception

The third paragraph examines the active role of perception in understanding color. It introduces the ecological theory of color, which views color not as an intrinsic property of objects but as a relational property between the environment and the perceiving animal. The concept of 'affordances' is discussed, which refers to the opportunities for interaction that the environment presents. The paragraph contrasts this with the traditional view that color is a dispositional property of objects. It argues that color should be seen as emerging from the interaction between light and sight, rather than being a passive observation. The ecological approach emphasizes the active, exploring nature of animals, including humans, in their perception of color.

15:04

🐟 Color Perception Across Species

This paragraph explores how color perception varies across different species and its evolutionary significance. It discusses how the number of cone cells in the eye determines the range of colors an animal can see, from monochromats that perceive only light intensity to trichromats like humans who have a broader color spectrum. The paragraph also explains how color perception is not arbitrary but is adapted to the ecological needs of the species. For example, deep-sea fish have limited color perception due to their dark environment, while primates have evolved to see brightly colored fruits. The co-evolution of primate perception and colored fruits is highlighted, showing how the environment and the animal mutually shape each other's evolution. The paragraph concludes by emphasizing that our associations with colors reflect our participatory relationship with the world.

Keywords

💡Cross-modal Correspondence

Cross-modal Correspondence refers to the phenomenon where one sensory experience influences another. In the video, it's discussed in the context of associating colors with temperature, such as red with hot and blue with cold. This concept is used to illustrate how our visual perception is linked to our perception of temperature, showcasing how multiple sensory modalities can interact.

💡Synesthesia

Synesthesia is a perceptual phenomenon where stimulation of one sensory or cognitive pathway leads to involuntary experiences in another. The script mentions it as an example of cross-modal correspondence, where individuals might associate numbers with specific colors, like two with violet and five with yellow. This concept is integral to understanding how different senses can blend and influence each other.

💡McCollough Effect

The McCollough Effect is a visual aftereffect where orientation-contingent color afterimages are experienced. It's mentioned in the script as an example of how our visual perception and auditory perception can become intertwined, demonstrating how our perception of sound can be influenced by what we see.

💡Booth-Kiiki Effect

The Booth-Kiiki Effect is a phenomenon where people tend to associate certain shapes with specific sounds. In the script, it's used to explain how the way we see shapes can interact with the way we hear sounds, indicating a deep connection between vision and auditory perception.

💡Basic Color Categories

Basic Color Categories are the fundamental colors that humans can perceive and name. The script discusses a study that identified 11 basic color categories across different languages, which are white, black, red, green, yellow, blue, brown, purple, pink, orange, and gray. This concept is crucial for understanding color perception and how it varies across cultures.

💡Ethnocentric Bias

Ethnocentric Bias refers to the tendency to use one's own culture as the standard by which other cultures are judged. The script critiques a study for assuming an ethnocentric bias, suggesting that so-called 'primitive' cultures might have different color perception but not an inferior one. This term is important for understanding cultural relativity in color perception.

💡Color Constancy

Color Constancy is the ability of the human visual system to perceive color as relatively constant despite changes in illumination. The script uses this concept to explain how our perception of color can remain consistent even when the lighting conditions change, demonstrating the adaptability of human color perception.

💡Complementary Colors

Complementary Colors are pairs of colors that, when combined, produce a neutral color. The script discusses how colors can be seen as striving for unity, with yellow demanding violet and orange demanding blue. This concept is used to explain the interplay between different colors and how they affect our perception.

💡Perceptual Experience

Perceptual Experience refers to the subjective experience of sensory input. The script uses the thought experiment of Mary, who can study color scientifically but has no conscious experience of color, to illustrate the difference between physical descriptions of color and the actual experience of seeing color. This concept is central to understanding the nature of color perception.

💡Color as a Conscious Event

Color as a Conscious Event is the idea that color perception is not just a passive reception of light but an active, conscious process. The script argues that color arises from the interaction between the observer and the world, suggesting that our perception of color is shaped by our engagement with the environment. This concept challenges the notion of color as a purely physical property.

💡Perceiver Relativity

Perceiver Relativity is the idea that perception can vary between different observers. The script discusses how different animals perceive color differently, which affects how they segment visual scenes. This concept is important for understanding the diversity of color perception in the animal kingdom and how it is adapted to different ecological niches.

Highlights

Cross-modal correspondence is the phenomenon where multiple sensory modalities interact, such as associating red with heat and blue with cold.

Synesthesia allows some people to associate things like numbers with colors, such as associating the number two with violet and five with yellow.

The Buba-Kiki effect shows that people across different cultures associate certain shapes with specific sounds, like 'Kiki' for angular shapes and 'Buba' for rounded shapes.

Berlin and Kay's 1969 study of 20 languages identified 11 basic color categories, noting that some languages lack words for colors like brown, purple, and orange.

There is a pattern in the emergence of color categories in languages, with words for brown, purple, pink, orange, and gray coming after categories for green and blue.

Color associations vary across cultures, like the association of orange with enlightenment in Buddhist traditions, or the use of purple for royalty due to the rarity of purple dye.

Warm colors like red and cool colors like blue are universal color associations across cultures, possibly rooted in the human perception of skin temperature and environmental landscapes.

Newton's scientific approach to color focuses on the physical properties of light as electromagnetic waves, with colors being the result of varying wavelengths perceived by our cone cells.

Goethe's approach to color emphasizes the subjective, experiential aspect of color perception, with complementary colors creating balance in visual experience.

Goethe's concept of accidental color illustrates how our eyes, after prolonged exposure to one color, will produce its complementary color to create a balanced visual experience.

Color perception is a participatory interaction between the observer and the environment, suggesting that we actively contribute to how we perceive colors.

The ecological theory of color perception emphasizes that organisms and their environments co-determine each other, with color being a relational property rather than just a physical one.

Colors help animals, including humans, adapt to their environments by providing clues for survival, such as distinguishing ripe fruit from foliage.

Different animals perceive colors differently based on the number of cone cells in their eyes, with humans being trichromats, while some animals like pigeons might have five types of cones.

The relationship between primate color vision and fruit evolution suggests that brightly colored fruits co-evolved with primate color perception to benefit both species.

Transcripts

when you look at most sync designs the

knob that controls the hot water is

usually red and the knob that controls

cold water is usually blue we associate

red with hot and blue with cold this

phenomenon is an instance of cross-modal

Correspondence a perception where

multiple sensory modalities interact in

this case our visual perception is

connected to our perception of

temperature there are a few other

examples of this like synesthesia a word

that traces back to Greek words that

mean together sensation people with

synesthesia can associate things like

numbers and colors so two might be

Violet and five might be yellow there's

also the maguric effect where the same

sound can elicit different perceptions

based on how we see a person speaking

that sound

foreign

here our visual perception and auditory

perception are becoming intertwined the

buba Kiki effect is another instance of

this if I present these two images to

you which one would you call buba and

which one would you call Kiki both

American college undergraduates and

Tamil speakers in India are more likely

to call the left shape Kiki and the

right shape buba the way we see these

shapes is interacting with the way we

hear sounds but for this video I'm

mostly concerned with color in 1969

Brent Berlin and Paul K studied 20

different languages from around the

world and the words they have for

different colors they identified a total

of 11 basic color categories white black

red green yellow blue brown purple pink

orange and gray in particular they

noticed that some languages didn't have

all 11 words and that there was a

pattern for which words a language had

words for brown purple pink orange and

gray were never present in languages

that didn't already distinguish between

green and blue they broke this pattern

turned down into a sequence purple pink

orange and gray come after brown brown

comes after blue blue is preceded by

both green and yellow green and yellow

come after red and finally the most

basic language categories are dark cool

and light warm encompassing the set of

all cool colors and warm colors as two

categories now it's important to mention

that this study has been criticized it

assumes an ethnocentric bias based on

Western Scientific and political thought

it's basically implying this idea of

progress where more primitive cultures

have not sufficiently evolved to capture

the true categories of color that the

Western languages have I don't think

Berlin and K have successfully proven

that speakers of so-called primitive

languages can't perceive the same range

of colors that we can they just use

different category systems to describe

them but what can be said conclusively

is that according to the world color

survey people all over the world seem to

perceive blue as cool and red is warm

now this might not be particularly

surprising we make all kinds of

associations between in colors and

Concepts in video games the health bar

is often red the Mana bar is usually

blue and stamina is green we often

associate red with love anger or power

blue has a sophisticated reliable

corporate Vibe orange is usually

associated with energy taste

extroversion or Amusement but these

symbols vary cross-culturally Buddhist

monks wear orange robes where orange

symbolizes Enlightenment in Placebo

studies pills with hot colors like red

or yellow work better as stimulants

whereas pills with cool colors like blue

or purple work better as depressants

these results do seem to depend on

culture though purple was historically

associated with royalty because purple

dye was made from a species of sea snail

which excreted it from a single gland

the hypobranchial gland in very small

quantities this made the dive very rare

and was usually only available to the

very wealthy so just because of this

coincidence that Psychological

Association emerged the one color

Association that remains consistent

across cultures is cool and warm this

might just be coincidence but it Taps

into a much more universal one our skin

gets red when we're warm and goes blue

when we're cold when we gaze at a warm

sunny landscape we're presented with

warm colors when we gaze at a cold

overcast day we're presented with cool

colors so what even is color in the

first place I'm going to argue that

there are two ways of describing it

which are basically captured by two

figures Newton and Gerta let's start

with Newton in the scientific

description of light visible light can

be understood as waves of

electromagnetic radiation the human eye

can perceive wavelengths of about 400 to

700 nanometers or one nanometer is one

billionth of a meter the visible colors

on the Spectrum increase from red to

Violet following the mnemonic Roy G Biv

which is also a great song by Boards of

Canada

the retinas of our eyes have things

called cone cells we have three types of

those one responds really well to blue

light one to green and one to Red the

colors we see in the world are the

result of the way in which these

receptors respond to different levels of

Blues greens and reds that are reflected

by materials

in the book The physics and chemistry of

color by Kurt Nassau he enumerates 15

different causes of color including

everything from the incandescence of

flames the rotations of blue ice and

water and the interference of soap

bubbles a lot of our scientific

understanding of color has its roots in

an experiment by Isaac Newton conducted

in 1704. he constructed a triangular

prism and Shone a Sunbeam through it

refracting its light colors emerged from

this process of refraction which he

called a spectrum about a hundred years

later gota the German poet responsible

for Faust became interested in color too

guten knew about Newton's experiments

and tested it himself with prisms he

borrowed from a friend as you do we've

all got that one friend who always has a

bunch of prisms on hand while Newton was

concerned with systematically analyzing

color in a scientific way gota was

interested in color as we see it he

conducted experiments with colored

Shadows he noticed that if a colored

light is shown on an object and a white

light is shown on its opposite side we

perceive the shadow as the colors

complement in his color wheel he

situated these complementary colors

opposite one another in his view our

perception strives for Unity yellow

demands violet orange demands blue

purple demands green and vice versa

another instance of this is the

phenomenon of accidental color here I've

made the screen yellow pause the video

and stare into the yellow for 30 seconds

or so and then unpause

your eyes had become accustomed to the

yellow and when the screen abruptly

switched to White your perception

conjured a violet Hue or I wants to

bring Harmony to our visual experience

the eye creates Freedom For Itself by

producing the opposite of that which is

forced upon it creating in this way a

satisfying whole

goto was also very concerned with how

color affects us the color palette of a

scene tells us about the seasons and

cycles of our world they show us how to

tell one thing from another we wouldn't

be able to spot these berries if they

weren't brightly colored we see certain

colors as warm and textural we see

others as cold and spatial yellows seem

to come towards us and blues seem to

recede away not only is color associated

with temperature but also proximity and

distance Guta took this so seriously

that his home was painted very

deliberately with a yellow dining room

to create a sense of warmth and pleasure

and a greenish blue study to promote a

stimulating calming environment where

Newton's approach was analytic Goods

approach was poetic these aren't

necessarily contradictory views either

they're just two ways of looking at

things to elucidate this distinction

consider the scientist Mary she exists

in a black and white world but she can

still study color she has access to

physical descriptions of color she can

tell you which wavelengths correspond to

each color but she can't see them she

has no conscious experience of color now

suppose Mary is able to exit this black

and white world and take in the

perceptual experience of color for the

first time the question is will Mary

gain any new understanding this thought

experiment was proposed by Frank Jackson

in 1982. Newton approached color as Mary

did from her black and white World while

Gutta was concerned with the

understanding Mary achieved from

actually seeing color gutter urged that

physical descriptions of color only tell

half the story we can't separate the

color in the world from the color as we

see it he didn't view humans as passive

observers of things for him the outer

World calls forth the inner World

meeting in a participatory interaction

color isn't just a light particles out

there in the world nor is it a conscious

representation of the light in the world

instead color arises through the

interplay of light in sight

so in this way we don't just take color

in color emerges from our interaction

with the world in a sense we put a

little bit of ourselves into the color

in the book interaction of color the

artist Joseph Albers discusses the way

in which color is relative in visual

perception a color is almost never seen

as it really is as it physically is this

fact makes color the most relative

medium in Art here's an experiment he

describes there are three pots of water

in front of you containing warm lukewarm

and cold water you dip your hands into

each outer container left hand in the

leftmost pot and right hand in the

rightmost part you perceive two

different temperatures warm on the left

and cold on the right but then you dip

both hands in the middle container you

perceive two different temperatures

again but this time in reverse order

your left hand feels cold and your right

hand feels warm but in reality the water

is neither of these temperatures it's

lukewarm the context of our prior

experience altered our perception in the

same way that the relative temperature

of our hands deceives Us in this haptic

illusion or physical fact and our

conscious experience don't match optical

illusions also deceive they cause us to

see colors other than those with which

we are confronted physically remember

this dress as of the recording of this

video this meme blew up just over eight

years ago people argued endlessly over

whether the dress was black and blue or

white and gold the reason nobody could

agree was because people's visual

systems were interpreting the photograph

in different ways in particular

different people assumed different

conditions of Illumination when we look

at a scene with different levels of

Illumination we're able to recognize

different colors as the same a

phenomenon called color constancy

depending on how you initially

interpreted the illumination of this

Photograph you could see the dress with

completely different colors

here's another illusion you've probably

seen before we have a cylinder casting a

shadow on a floor of tiles it appears

that the tiles A and B are different

colors a looks gray while B looks white

but when you scrutinize the image more

closely you realize that these tiles are

in fact identical the context of the

scene and the interpretation we have for

what's happening is changing the way we

see these colors even now when you know

that these colors are the same you don't

see them that way

okay last one take a look at the circles

in the middle the left Circle appears

red and the right Circle appears green

but once again if I zoom in it becomes

clear that each circle is in fact yellow

all of these Illusions demonstrate a key

Insight that go to new colors as we see

them are not merely light color is a

conscious event resulting from the

interplay between the Observer and The

observed the French post-impressionist

artist Paul Cezanne wrote that color is

the place where our brain and the

universe meet

so what do philosophers make of all this

well there's a number of different takes

people have but in this video I'll be

discussing two theories that I think

capture the ancient disagreement between

Newton and Gerta let's start with the

Newton side of things and one of the

most famous distinctions in all of

philosophy John Locke's primary and

secondary qualities primary qualities

are the properties of things as they are

in the world independent of our

perception take a basketball for example

the fact that the basketball is

spherical is an inherent property of

that object and does not depend on an

observer seeing it that way then there

are secondary qualities the stuff that

depends on the Observer like smell taste

sound and of course color the basketball

being orange and the sound it makes when

you bounce it are each secondary

qualities objects don't exactly have

colors in this way but they have

dispositional properties to give rise to

Colors the basketball is not orange

itself but exists in such a way that it

appears orange to an observer when they

look at it under the right conditions

some people call this a received view of

color since the properties of the object

result in The Observer receiving that

sense experience on the other side of

things we have a take that's more more

in the spirit of Gerta Evan Thompson JJ

Gibson and some others put forward

what's known as an action-based

ecological theory of color on first

glance it seems pretty similar to the

received view they still don't consider

colors intrinsic properties of things in

the world independent of any perceiver

it depends in part on the perception of

the color itself color is a relational

property connecting the environment with

a perceiving animal but this view also

wants to emphasize the fact that at the

end of the day we're still basically

animals he who understands the baboon

would do more for metaphysics than Locke

that quote is from none other than

Charles Darwin biologists will always

tell us that an organism can't be

understood in isolation apart from the

world and in the same way that

organism's environment or Niche can't be

understood apart from the organism in

fact the animal and its environment are

connected in a much deeper way than you

might expect an organism finds itself in

an environment but they don't just hang

out there they interact with their

surroundings based on the physical

signals the environment gives them

through this they transform the

environment and simultaneously the

environment itself transforms the

organism by defining what traits are

selected evolutionarily the organism in

the environment co-determine each other

this co-determinacy is a bit of a

problem for people like Locke and Newton

for them perception involves

representing items of sense data which

are the immediate objects of perception

these representations stand in for some

physical object in the external world so

we aren't actually looking out at the

world we're looking through our

representations this view treats the

animal and its environment as separate

systems rather than two components of

one system in the ecological approach to

visual perception Gibson expresses some

issues with this take as animals our

perception is always guided perception

and action evolve together and are

inseparable our perception guides the

activity in our motor system and our

motor system guides perception for

Gibson environments have particular

relational properties called affordances

things that give us an opportunity to

interact with them trees in relation to

certain animals afford climbing they can

be described as climb uppable the other

side of the coin is F activities the

properties of animals that allow an

opportunity for interaction with the

environment lizards and monkeys can

climb things so they possess the

effectivity climbing thing these kinds

of properties are really weird since

they're almost objective and subjective

at the same time it's both a fact of the

environment and effective Behavior it's

both physical and psychological Gibson

ultimately wants to say that the colors

we see have lawful correlations with

particular ecological properties like

affordances

so what's even the difference here with

the lock-in or the Newtonian view they

both agree that color depends on the

Observer and can't be understood as

intrinsic properties of the world

independent of our perception

Neuroscience can model the features of

color as we perceive them so it might be

tempting to conclude that object color

is really Just an Illusion and we can

reduce it to neural states in the visual

system but Thompson and Gibson want to

avoid this instead of situating color

exclusively in the brain they want to

take into account the relation with the

environment

instead of color being a dispositional

property on the physical level it's on

the ecological level this view is

naturalistic in that it strives to be in

harmony with visual science but that

doesn't mean it wants to reduce animals

like humans to collections of neural

activity in physical processes the

perceiver is treated as an active

exploring animal rather than a

disembodied spectator who just takes the

colors in colors are connected with

affordances and F activities especially

in their roles as categories and signals

to us to satisfy our adaptive ecological

needs they reveal what the environment

can do to us and what we can do to the

environment it's also worth noting that

the colors we see are not the same

colors that other animals see I

mentioned earlier that humans have three

types of cone cells in the eye that

process color which makes us trichromats

but this is not the norm animals like

squirrels rabbits some species of fish

and possibly cats and dogs only have two

goldfish and turtles have four and

pigeons and Ducks might even have five

even Within These categories there's

variation humans and honeybees are both

trackromats but the colors the honeybee

sees is shifted towards the ultraviolet

so why is this a thing well colors

aren't just pretty they help us identify

objects in the world by allowing us to

segment visual scenes and they also give

us clues about the objects in the scene

it can show us how ripe a fruit is or

how hydrated a plant is this leads us to

Evan Thompson's argument from perceiver

relativity color vision helps us split

up the visual scene into regions of

distinct surfaces or objects color

vision varies considerably throughout

the animal world therefore the way we

split up a scene is also also likely to

vary throughout the animal world

therefore what counts as a surface in

visual perception depends on the

perceiver

all of this makes sense when you

consider evolutionary adaptation

consider deep sea fish for example when

you're that far down in the ocean things

are pretty dark these creepy little guys

are usually monochromats meaning that

they only see the intensity of light but

no color a lot of them hunt their prey

from below so their light perception is

tuned to be sensitive to the maximum

contrast to detect movement in their

prey the further up in the ocean you go

where there is much more light around

fish have much more variety in the

colors they're able to perceive

now what about us humans since the 1950s

some people have suggested that the way

primate perception is configured

actually co-evolved with colored fruits

and recent studies support this view too

species of monkeys like macaques patas

monkeys and guanans all have similar

sensitivities in mid-wave pigment and

long wave pigment they all look very

different and live in very different

habitats but they also all eat a lot of

fruit these fruits conveniently tend to

be very brightly colored and stand out

in the green foliage now why would these

fruits be such that they're easy for

monkeys to spot this is obviously great

for the monkeys but it's also in the

fruit's best interest the monkeys pick

and eat the fruit often spitting out the

large seeds far away they also swallow

the smaller seeds and excrete them out

later likely much further away this

allows the fruit species to spread far

and wide throughout the environment so

it's evolutionarily adaptive for them to

look brightly colored for the monkeys

since the monkeys are doing them a solid

the animal in the environment

co-determine each other on an

evolutionary time scale it becomes clear

that the colors an animal perceives are

not arbitrary they depend on the

participatory relationship between the

animal and their environment the

associations we have with colors reveal

this harmony between us and the world

thanks for watching