Question 1

Do people actually see colors differently from each other?

Accepted Answer

Yes. Genetic variation tunes each person's cone cells slightly differently, roughly 8 percent of men have red-green color deficiency, and language influences which color differences we notice. Whether two people share the exact same private sensation of a color is impossible to verify.

Question 2

Is color a real property of objects or made by the brain?

Accepted Answer

Light itself carries no color, only wavelengths. Color is constructed inside the brain from the signals of three types of cone cells in the eye. It is an inference, not a fixed property of the object being viewed.

Question 3

Why did people see the dress as different colors?

Accepted Answer

The photograph was ambiguously lit, so each brain guessed at the illumination and subtracted it. Brains that assumed cool blue light saw white and gold; brains that assumed warm light saw blue and black. Same pixels, different internal guesses.

color

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