The perception of red is related to an objective reality, frequencies of light that map into the eye's response curve.
Not really, at least not in common usage. My husband has a number of items of clothing that are shades of dark red - call it anywhere from "cranberry" to "maroon". He insists that they are purple, and washes them with my purple clothes. Conversely, my late father occasionally gave me something that was blue, believing that it was purple. I don't know how either of them would have responded if shown various wavelengths of light and asked to name the color.
There doesn't seem to be any good way to define emotions except in terms of other emotions. "Embarrassment", for example, could be defined as "the feeling of shame, guilt, and humiliation a person feels when ridiculed, or when they believe they have done something that would incite ridicule." But then you have to define "shame", "guilt", and "humiliation". A possible way to clarify the definitions would be to describe a situation, and ask various people what emotion they would feel under those conditions. (If you asked a random selection of people "What emotion would you feel if you were among a group of people when suddenly your pants fell down, revealing stained, ragged underpants?", they would most likely answer that they would feel embarrassed. Unless, of course, they were wearing their pants that way on purpose...)
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Date: 2009-03-31 10:10 am (UTC)Not really, at least not in common usage. My husband has a number of items of clothing that are shades of dark red - call it anywhere from "cranberry" to "maroon". He insists that they are purple, and washes them with my purple clothes. Conversely, my late father occasionally gave me something that was blue, believing that it was purple. I don't know how either of them would have responded if shown various wavelengths of light and asked to name the color.
There doesn't seem to be any good way to define emotions except in terms of other emotions. "Embarrassment", for example, could be defined as "the feeling of shame, guilt, and humiliation a person feels when ridiculed, or when they believe they have done something that would incite ridicule." But then you have to define "shame", "guilt", and "humiliation". A possible way to clarify the definitions would be to describe a situation, and ask various people what emotion they would feel under those conditions. (If you asked a random selection of people "What emotion would you feel if you were among a group of people when suddenly your pants fell down, revealing stained, ragged underpants?", they would most likely answer that they would feel embarrassed. Unless, of course, they were wearing their pants that way on purpose...)