Understanding Realism

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Understanding Realism

A human being is sometimes wrong in their decisions or thoughts because reality is not always so clear in black and white. Mistakes are not unique to one person, but may at times be reflective of universal errors. Indeed, they are a human predicament. In reference to Parmenides, Byrne (1) claimed that human thought is characterized by change. Things which humans have laid and believed to be true are changing, one of them being color. Our ordinary beliefs that snow is white or lemon is yellow have been challenged by Parmenides as a mortal mistake. He presents an opinion that snow is not necessarily white, an argument accepted by many color scientists. Color realism is the view that objects have a color that they look to appear. Perception is one of the factors influencing color choice. When you see a lemon and its yellow human eyes take the perceptible form of the lemon, the transparent jelly of the eye becomes yellow (Byrne 1). Further studies on color found that different colors are producing through mixing together different primary-colored lights. Also, the perception of the different colors in the eye is used to address color mixing. I argue that Byrne’s presentation on appearance and reality are well informed especially in addressing color determination and how variations, species, and microscopes influence the color.

Color vision is the ability to differentiate diverse wavelengths of electromagnet radiation relying on the brain perception mechanism. The human retina has millions of photoreceptors comprising of rods and cones. The rods are used mostly at night as they are sensitive to low light, while the rods are sensitive to the visible spectrum. Color insensitive photoreceptors respond to the existence or absence of light only and do not differentiate between definite wavelengths. When light is stimulated to the cone, it produces the same response despite the light composition of the light. Wavelength closer to closer to the cones is more likely to be responded to due to peak sensitivity. The crucial to recovering wavelength information and having a color vision is the brain as it compares the output from diverse cone types. Material objects such as lemon and snow are mental entities collection of ideas that exist only when perceived. Therefore, color things are perceived to have might be wrong since the color is in mind rather not in reality.

Variation influences color. Under different conditions, the object can appear to contain different colors without actual alteration of the object. For instance, candlelight affects the color of an object in comparison to what they appear in daylight and red and purple colors on yonder clouds disappear when one gets closer to them. It is true that objects can look to have color that they do not have perception cause the astray when the light circumstance is poor or when we are in the long-distance apart. Moreover, colors are created through mixing different pigments that produce new colors; for instance, mixing yellow and blue paint creates green color (Byrne 7). Reflection of the pigments is different among different people due to factors such as normal visioning and light sensitivity pigments inside the cones. Hence individual color perception may be different depending on the view of the pigment’s reflection.

Species also influence color. How do other species different from a human being, with different textures of eyes view color? They do not view colors in every object as humans do. Color visioning is diversely distributed across mammal’s fish, insects and reptiles. Their chromatic photoreceptors are turned differently and distinct in numbers, and birds have four receptors while mammals have two (Byrne 5). Most species have a photoreceptor type that is sensitive only to near-ultraviolet outside the seeable spectrum. A study done on shrimps found that they have a great ability to recognize light compared to human beings and the ability to differentiate colors more than people. Do honeybees see colors the same as humans see or have different visioning, or could a human have a correct perception of color while other species have the incorrect one? Animals are believed to detect light that human beings are not able to see, for instance, the ability to detect UV part of a spectrum. None between humans or animals perceive the collect perception of the actual color.

The influence of microscopes on color also add to the argument that what we see may not necessarily be the reality. Things under inverted microscopes look different compare to the human eye. The device provides accurate and closer inspection of things than normal eyes. Also, microscopes discover new colors from those perceived-on objects, and under enough magnification, things appear to have no color at all. Microscope argument proves that objects are colorless, and most of the time, the apparent color is not the real color, and objects may be multicolored or colorless (Byrne 4). Further analysis of the microscope argument reveals a flaw. When a tiny red is viewed on a yellowish flower, apparently, it is discovered that the flower has red parts. The discovery does not show that the larger parts are not yellow. Also, with naked eyes objects looks smooth but with the microscopes, the texture changes and roughness are seen and all kind of aspects that are not invisible to the naked eyes. From the findings of close examination of objects, it is noted that smooth things can comprise parts that are not smooth; hence parts may contain colors different from what we view with naked eyes.

The realism of color is different among people, and the position that snow is not colored would affect the position that snow is cold or tasteless. Color perception is greatly affected by the mind and the response the receptors have to create a color perception or view. The prevailing conditions affect the perception of color factors such as light affect the color perception. Also, some species notice more colors efficiently than human beings due to the existence of different preceptors, but in general, they have the same perception of colors; they all view objects with the same color. Microscopes affect the perception of objects’ color as they are investigated more closely, noting the different textures and parts of an object. There lacks an agreement on color realism by different philosophers, and this reflects the difficulty on the subject; hence more work should be done regarding color realism.

Works Cited

Byrne, Alex. “Is snow white?” (2005).