What Is the Explanatory Gap in Color Perception?

TL;DR

The explanatory gap refers to our inability to share and explain subjective experiences of color perception, emphasizing that color is not an external reality but an internal illusion created by our brains. This gap is evident when attempting to describe color to someone who has never seen it, showcasing the limits of language in conveying qualia.

Transcript

Hey, Vsauce. Michael here. This appears blue. This appears yellow. And this appears green. Those of us with normal color vision can probably agree. But that doesn't change the fact that color is an illusion. Color, as we know it, does not exist in the outside world, beyond us, like gravity or protons do. Instead, color is created inside our heads. ... Read More

Key Insights

• 🧠 Color is not an inherent property of the external world but a perception created inside our brains.
• ❓ Differences in color perception arise due to conditions like color blindness.
• ❓ The ineffability of qualia, including color perception, is known as the Explanatory Gap.
• 🙈 Describing color to someone who has never seen it is challenging due to the limitations of language and their lack of visual experience.
• 😷 Animals, including apes, exhibit curiosity and problem-solving abilities, but they may lack a "Theory of Mind" and the ability to ask questions.
• 🤯 The Sally-Anne test demonstrates that young children and some apes fail to recognize that others have separate minds and knowledge.

Questions & Answers

Q: Why is color considered an illusion?

Color is an illusion because it is not something that exists independently in the external world but is created and perceived within our own minds.

Q: How do differences in color perception arise?

Differences in color perception can arise due to conditions like color blindness, where individuals fail to see certain colors that most people can perceive.

Q: What is the Explanatory Gap?

The Explanatory Gap refers to our inability to connect physical phenomena, like the properties of color, to our internal experiences or qualia, making it challenging to explain and share our perceptions.

Q: Can color be adequately described to someone who has been blind their entire life?

Describing color to someone who has never seen it is difficult because our ways of describing color, such as associating red with "hot" and blue with "cold," may not have any meaning for someone who has never visually experienced color.

Summary & Key Takeaways

• Color does not exist in the outside world but is created inside our brains by converting a certain range of the electromagnetic spectrum.

• Differences in color perception, like color blindness, exist because people fail to see certain colors.

• The ineffability of qualia, our inability to share and explain our internal experiences, is demonstrated by the difficulty of describing color to someone who has been blind their entire life.