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Is your green my green? Probably not. What appears as pure green to me will likely look a bit yellowish or blueish to you. This is because visual systems vary from person to person. Moreover, an objects color may appear differently against different backgrounds or under different lighting. These facts might naturally lead you to think that colors are subjective. That, unlike features such as length and temperature, colors are not objective features. Either nothing has a true color, or colors are relative to observers and their viewing conditions. But perceptual variation has misled you. We are philosophers who study colors, objectivity, and science, and we argue in our book The Metaphysics of Colors that colors are as objective as length and temperature. Perceptual variation There is a surprising amount of variation in how people perceive the world. If you offer a group of people a spectrum of color chips ranging from chartreuse to purple and asked them to pick the unique green chipthe chip with no yellow or blue in ittheir choices would vary considerably. Indeed, there wouldnt be a single chip that most observers would agree is unique green. Generally, an objects background can result in dramatic changes in how you perceive its colors. If you place a gray object against a lighter background, it will appear darker than if you place it against a darker background. This variation in perception is perhaps most striking when viewing an object under different lighting, where a red apple could look green or blue. Of course, that you experience something differently does not prove that what is experienced is not objective. Water that feels cold to one person may not feel cold to another. And although we do not know who is feeling the water correctly, or whether that question even makes sense, we can know the temperature of the water and presume that this temperature is independent of your experience. Similarly, that you can change the appearance of somethings color is not the same as changing its color. You can make an apple look green or blue, but that is not evidence that the apple is not red. Under different lighting conditions, objects take on different colors. [Photo: Liia Galimzianova/Getty Images] For comparison, the moon appears larger when its on the horizon than when it appears near its zenith. But the size of the moon has not changed, only its appearance. Hence, that the appearance of an objects color or size varies is, by itself, no reason to think that its color and size are not objective features of the object. In other words, the properties of an object are independent of how they appear to you. That said, given that there is so much variation in how objects appear, how do you determine what color something actually is? Is there a way to determine the color of something despite the many different experiences you might have of it? Matching colors Perhaps determining the color of something is to determine whether it is red or blue. But we suggest a different approach. Notice that squares that appear to be the same shade of pink against different backgrounds look different against the same background. The smaller squares may appear to be the same color, but if you compare them with the strip of squares at the bottom, theyre actually different shades. [Photo: Shobdohin/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA] Its easy to assume that to prove colors are objective would require knowing which observers, lighting conditions and backgrounds are the best, or normal. But determining the right observers and viewing conditions is not required for determining the very specific color of an object, regardless of its name. And it is not required to determine whether two objects have the same color. To determine whether two objects have the same color, an observer would need to view the objects side by side against the same background and under various lighting conditions. If you painted part of a room and find that you dont have enough paint, for instance, finding a match might be very tricky. A color match requires that no observer under any lighting condition will see a difference between the new paint and the old. That two people can determine whether two objects have the same color even if they dont agree on exactly what that color isjust as a pool of water can have a particular temperature without feeling the same to me and youseems like compelling evidence to us that colors are objective features of our world. Colors, science, and indispensability Everyday interactions with colorssuch as matching paint samples, determining whether your shirt and pants clash, and even your ability to interpret works of artare hard to explain if colors are not objective features of objects. But if you turn to science and look at the many ways that researchers think about colors, it becomes harder still. For example, in the field of color science, scientific laws are used to explain how objects and light affect perception and the colors of other objects. Such laws, for instance, predict what happens when you mix colored pigments, when you view contrasting colors simultaneously or successively, and when you look at colored objects in various lighting conditions. The philosophers Hilary Putnam and Willard van Orman Quine made famous what is known as the indispensability argument. The basic idea is that if something is indispensable to science, then it must be real and objectiveotherwise, science wouldnt work as well as it does. For example, you may wonder whether unobservable entities such as electrons and electromagnetic fields really exist. But, so the argument goes, the best scientific explanations assume the existence of such entities and so they must exist. Similarly, because mathematics is indispensable to contemporary science, some philosophers argue that this means mathematical objects are objective and exist independently of a persons mind. The bright colors of this granular poison frog signal a warning to predators of its toxicity. [Photo: Wikipedia, CC BY-SA] Likewise, we suggest that color plays an indispensable role in evolutionary biology. For example, researchers have argued that aposematismthe use of colors to signal a warning for predatorsalso benefits an animals ability to gather resources. Here, an animals coloration works directly to expand its food-gathering niche insofar as it informs potential predators that the animal is poisonous or venomous. In fact, animals can exploit the fact that the same color pattern can be perceived differently by different perceivers. For instance, some damselfish have ultraviolet face patterns that help them be recognized by other members of their species and communicate with potential mates while remaining largely hidden to predators unable to perceive ultraviolet colors. In sum, our ability to determine whether objects are colored the same or differently and the indispensable roles they play in science suggest that colors are as real and objective as length and temperature. Elay Shech is a professor of philosophy at Auburn University. Michael Watkins is a professor of philosophy at Auburn University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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Fun fact: The saying work smarter, not harder is coming up on its 100th birthday. Coined in the 1930s by industrial engineer Allen Morgenstern, this simple, pithy directive is arguably more achievable today than ever before. Thanks to generative AI chatbots such as OpenAIs ChatGPT, Googles Gemini, and Anthropics Claude, its never been easier to quickly create text, images, code, and more. Here are few practical ways you can leverage them to power up your productivity. Create content If you spend any time crafting marketing copy, drafting emails, outlining blog posts, or even brainstorming ideas, generative AI tools can save you an incredible amount of time. Simply input a few keywords or a brief description, and watch as the AI generates initial drafts, outlines, or even complete pieces of content. Sample prompts: “Write a social media post announcing a new product feature for our accounting software. Keep it under 140 characters and include relevant hashtags.” “Generate three different subject lines for an email marketing campaign promoting our summer sale.” “Create an outline for a blog post titled ‘The Top 5 Benefits of Using AI for Project Management. Summarize information Drowning in readables? Generative AI can help you separate the wheat from the chaff far faster than even the speediest of human speed-readers. You can condense lengthy documents, emails, reports, and more into concise summaries, without spending hours reading. Sample prompts: “Summarize the key findings of this market research report into a few paragraphs.” “Extract the action items from this email thread.” “Synthesize the customer feedback from this collection of online reviews into an overview of common themes.” Generate ideas If youre not quite ready to trust generative AI to reliably create content or summarize information for you, rest assured that it can act as a powerful brainstorming partner. You can leverage AI to generate a wide range of concepts, muscle through writers block, or help you think of new ways to solve problems. Sample prompts: “Brainstorm 10 different marketing campaign ideas for a sustainable fashion brand targeting Gen Z.” “Generate five unique names for a new coffee shop with a focus on local beans.” “Come up with three different approaches to improve customer engagement on our website.”
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Social media is terrible for teens mental healthor is it? At the same time that rising rates of poor mental health among youth have been called a national crisis, and as parents and regulators call on social media companies to do more to keep young people safe online, a recent study by the Pew Research Center found that social mediawhile flawedcan sometimes be a positive influence on teenagers. In a survey of U.S. teens ages 13 to 17, 74% said social media makes them feel more connected to their friends, and 63% said online platforms give them a place to show off their creativity. Theres more good news: About half52%said social media makes them feel more accepted and supported through tough times. The bad news? That number is down from 67% in 2022. The survey found that parents, more than teens themselves, are likely to see social media as a threat to the mental health of teen users. Nearly half (44%) of parents blamed social media as the single greatest negative influence on teens mental health, followed by technology and bullying. Only 22% of teens agreed, citing a broader range of negative influences, including bullying and pressure to meet expectations. Everyone expects teens to have it all figured out by the time we get out of high school, one teenage girl said. Sometimes we dont know what we want to do. We are figuring life out too. Still, social media ranked as the most negative influence according to both teens and parents. The overuse of social media in our society seems to be the main cause of depression among those in my age group, a teenage boy said. People seem to let themselves be affected by the opinions of people they dont know, and it wreaks havoc upon peoples states of mind. Interestingly, teens seem more concerned about the effect of social media on their peers than on themselves. Roughly half (48%) said these sites have a mostly negative effect on teens their ageup from 32% in 2022while just 14% said they believe social media negatively affects them personally. At the same time, the number of teens who said they think social media has a positive effect on their peers dropped from 24% in 2022 to just 11% in the current survey. As a result, many teens are trying to cut back: 44% said they have reduced the time they spend on social media and smartphones. That means more than half are still scrolling.
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