Vikram and Baetal - Through the looking glass

Vikram collected an acquiescent Baetal from the Peepal tree where he returned to, and once again started the long journey back to Ujjaini, where the the demon Mara awaited their return holding the King's son for ransom. Baetal's stipulations had not changed, he would narrate a story and Vikram would have to answer his questions and keep him engaged throughout the journey. Baetal stated his story ...

A long time ago , in the illustrious kingdom of Ujjaini lived the ascetic Dayananda that exuded sanctity that he was fabled to levitate during his meditation. One day during his meditation, his soul left his body and astrally projected itself, and in this state of enlightenment, he could travel without boundaries, uninhibited by physical barriers to the very ends of the cosmos. He decided to use his power for the good of the village and its people.

One day a woman came to him holding her daughter in her arms; the child was sick and unconscious. Dayananda consoled the mother and began to meditate, he reached the point of astral projection and left his own body and entered the child's mind. He cleansed the child from her illness and she slowly opened her eyes. Dayananda who was still inhabiting the child's body could now see, hear, touch and sense the world through the girl. It was as if Dayanada suddenly had a little girl for his body. Dyananda was on a higher plane of existence now, where he could experience the world as another being. He could see his own body though the girl's eyes, sitting in meditation just a few feet away. He quickly noticed that something was not right, it was his robe, and it was green. He knew he was wearing a saffron robe, but it somehow appeared green to him, or to the girl rather. As he looked around, he noticed that all colors seemed wrong; Trees seemed to have blue leaves, Milk seemed to be red like blood and sandal wood seemed to be purple. Intrigued, he left the girl's being and projected his soul into the mother perceiving the world from the mother's eyes. To his amazement, the colors were again different, but this time different from the child's perception too. His yellow robe now looked red, and the trees had white leaves, Milk was blue. Suddenly his train of thought came to an abrupt halt and asked himself, "What does 'Yellow' really mean ?"

Thus Baetal concluded his story and turned to Vikram " Oh great King of Ujjaini, riddle me this, What does 'Yellow' really mean ? "

( Based on the "Mary's Room" thought experiment first proposed by Frank Jackson in his article "Epiphenomenal Qualia" [1982] )

What exactly do words mean ? We use it to describe the world in and around us; our thoughts and feelings; sights and sounds around us. It is taken for granted, this interface though which we collaborate and express the myriad and ever changing landscape of our lives. Magical as it may seem at first, a closer look at the use of language tells us that it is limited to perspective. What that means is that ultimately a person using words is merely enunciating how things appear to him/her alone. The difference between using language to communicate as opposed to truly conveying what one feels and thinks without the limitation of words and symbols is the slight gap between the notion of words themselves and the meanings they carry. When one says that the tomato is red and another agrees, they share an idea, perceive a certain quality of color in the tomato that both call red. They express what they perceive using the same words, but they may not necessarily experience it the same way.

The human brain interprets color based on the wavelength of light emitted or reflected by an object. Humans are classified as Trichromats in color perception, and it is now argued that we are in fact blocked tetrachromats. Regardless how the retina works, the manner in which retinal stimuli is interpreted by the brain is what constitutes visual perception, and it is this very notion of visual perception that is in question. How can we be sure that the same wavelength is perceived by two brains in the same way, causing the same visual perception ?

The idea pursued is that how can one trust one's senses, and if they are to be assumed true, how true is "truth" ? It is possible to make a counter argument that if the all brains did not process the wavelength similarly, we could never identify color blind people. In reality though, color blindness reinforces the notion that visual perception may be different for the same color, because color blindness is detected by a person's inability to distinguish between certain colors, and not the inability to perceive any one given color. A color blind person cannot distinguish between shades that are close to each other in greyscale, but far apart in the trichromatic spectrum.

When two people see the same color, they are infact just percieveing a commonality. For the same reason, two people who dont speak the same language can tell the color of an object and translate the word for the color in to thier own language. But are they translating correctly ?
Furthermore, what does correctness mean in this context ? They both see the same object, but if they percieve it differently, who is right ? and is there a right at all ?

This paradox appears in other situations unrelated to visual perception as well. When a patient tells the doctor, he/she has a "shooting pain" or "dull headache" what do they mean ? There is no way for a doctor to truly understand them without experiencing it by himself. Touching a red hot object hurts, it burns; but what does it feel like, and do everyone feel it the same as you do ? It seems the world we live in purely based on perspectives. How true are universal truths ? What is truth but a perception of a person, living or dead, that another simply accepts to be his own ? What does "Yellow" mean ?