But it’s not solely bats and aliens—fictional or optimistically imagined—who brandish subjective experiences we can not perceive. Nagel cites his personal incapability to grasp “the subjective character of the experience of a person deaf and blind from birth.” Across human talents and cultures, there are myriad methods during which our sensory capabilities and even our cultures and languages render our subjective experiences of the world incomprehensible to others of our personal type. Some languages have extra phrases for primary colours than others—some naming solely darkish, white, and crimson, whereas others, like Russian, divide blue into mild and darkish the way in which English differentiates crimson from pink. But nonetheless, analysis has proven that even individuals with out totally different phrases for, say, blue and inexperienced, can differentiate between the 2. Though after we every make our means via the world, who is aware of what various things we see.

A comparatively well-known factoid is that Homer writes of the “wine-dark sea” as a result of the Greeks had no phrase for blue. He appeared on the ocean and noticed one thing totally different than we do. But Maria Michela Sassi, professor of historical philosophy on the University of Pisa, offers a deeper illumination to the difficulty.

In her essay, “The Sea Was Never Blue,” Sassi writes that, nicely, initially, Homer did have phrases not less than for elements of blue: “kuaneos, to denote a dark shade of blue merging into black; and glaukos, to describe a sort of ‘blue-gray,’” as in gray-eyed Athena. But certainly, the sky was “big, starry, or of iron or bronze (because of its solid fixity),” and the ocean was “whitish” and “blue-gray,” or “pansylike,” “winelike,” or “purple.” But neither sea nor sky was ever merely blue.

This didn’t apply solely to our acquainted blue expanses. Sassi gathers examples of Greek descriptions that would appear patently flawed to a contemporary reader. “The simple word xanthos covers the most various shades of yellow, from the shining blond hair of the gods, to amber, to the reddish blaze of fire. Chloros, since it’s related to chloe (grass), suggests the color green but can also itself convey a vivid yellow, like honey.”

We know grass and honey usually are not the identical colour—did the Greeks one way or the other not?

Human eyes haven’t modified prior to now 2,500 years, although in 1858 the classicist and eventual British prime minister William Gladstone did suggest that, as Sassi places it, “the visual organ of the ancients was still in its infancy.” But whereas Gladstone’s conclusion was flawed, he was doing his finest to clarify the truth that historical Greek writing displays a specific sensitivity to mild, not simply hue.

Our modern understanding of colour is primarily outlined by hue—the place on the rainbow spectrum—with variations in lightness, or worth. (Red and pink have the identical hue, however pink has a lighter worth.) There’s additionally saturation, the depth of the colour—vivid blue versus the much less saturated gray-blue.

Sassi sees in Greek descriptions of colour extra emphasis positioned on saliency, which is how a lot a colour grabs your consideration. Red is extra salient than blue or inexperienced, and certain sufficient, Sassi finds that descriptions of inexperienced and blue in Greek are extra centered on the qualities that seize your consideration than on the relatively unsalient hues. She writes, “In some contexts the Greek adjective chloros should be translated as ‘fresh’ instead of ‘green,’ or leukos as ‘shining’ rather than ‘white.’” It wasn’t that the Greeks couldn’t see blue, they simply didn’t care about blueness as a lot as different qualities of what they had been seeing.