Pud wrote:
The thing is, if those two kids meet, they will instantly be able to tell that there is a discerepancy. Kid A says the tomato is blue, kid B says it is Red. While they both think they are right, they know that one of them must be wrong.
What I'm getting at, is if we are all taught that the colour of the tomato is red, but I see it differently to you. I will associate the colour I'm seeing with the word red, as I always have been taught. You will associate the colour that you are seeing with red, as you have always been taught. We will agree that "The tomato is red", but I can't think of a way that we can know if our brain processes the data in the same way.
Its a very difficult concept to explain clearly.
There are a few anecdotal examples of this I've encountered during my studies.
I suppose the most prominent example is the issue of "grue". In many African languages, our green and blue is conceptually identical to speakers of said languages; i.e. they don't see blue and green as separate categories, they're treated equivalently.
The problem is, as you say, whether this is due to them
seeing it differently, or whether they've learned (through language) that they're the same. No-one has unequivocally confirmed it's one or t'other.
Another nice example is in Greek. Apparently they have a specific term,
galazio, which, to us, would probably be something like "sea blue". However, they see at as categorically different to other blues -- to clarify, or probably confuse the issue further, let's say they call it green -- but we still see, or at least say it is, just another blue.
It's really interesting but it took me forever to get it sorted in my head -- assuming I actually
have got it sorted -- but there really is no answer for it. The tests people have used to explore it usually make
direct use of language, i.e. through memory tasks, and so the interpretation is muddied from that angle as well as the epistemological angles of whether it
is actually different or whether we've
made it different somehow.
Jesus, I brought my revision here. GDI.