Is it possible to imagine a colour that doesn't exist?

Question

Wheeliebin: this is difficult to explain as I have essentially put forward a paradox. The purpose of this question is to explore what we mean when we use terms like imagine.

Answer 1

No.If you can,you can't explain it to others.

Answer 2

this has crossed my mind before, but i reckon the answer is no.

Answer 3

No, because every colour you can think of exists somewhere.

Answer 4

no

Answer 5

I think you would be surprised or completely bewildered to find yourself at such a place where all things just popped up in front of your eyes, where people, places, trees, lakes, districts and delicious items of food were all at the command of your fancy, where things would not be bogged down by their weight, or kept apart by their distances, were walls were no hindrance to eye, and you could go anywhere just by thinking your self to be there.

The fact is that we are neither surprised nor bewildered, even though we go such place many times a day – the place is our imagination.

This is normal to get all sorts of thing in imagination, to travel, to cook, to play and to enjoy, but we never give our imagination a second thought.

All that goes in our imagination, however strange, remains normal for us because our imagination has its roots in a realistic world around us, something that we have learned to understand once and for all time. But if there were something completely out of this world then we would not see even with the power of our imagination. I think for something to pop up in our imagination something has to have a semblance with the real world.

Something as simple and plain as imagining just another colour could also become subjective in the mind, for the colour, if I somehow manage to imagine at all, would be entirely mine ... and the one imagined by you would be entirely yours.

Answer 6

No,because any colour you could imagine,would be somewhere in the known universe.

Answer 7

No.

All of our knowledge comes from our senses. The way we see the world and interact with the universe is entirely mediated to us through our sense. If, therefore, we have not seen a certain colour, then it would not be possible to imagine it since our imagination is a method of our mind. The senses provide the tools with which the mind can work, if the colour has not been inputted, then you cannot conceive of it.

...it may be said it is logically possible if we posit the idea of a God who may suddenly 'make' us imagine a colour. However, since this is an experience of a colour by a third party - we can safely say that it is not randomly and arbitrarily conjurered by the mind.

Answer 8

C’est Ne Pas Une Pipe - La trahison des images - Rene Magritte

No imagined colours exist, but every colour you can imagine can exist.  More in fact than you or anyone could ever truly see.

So maybe/yes/perhaps/no is my answer :)

Answer 9

no that's like trying to find a letter not in the alphabet impossible

Answer 10

Its through our imagination that we invent.  Before we invent it, it did not exist.  

Yet we did not invent colour.  We simply found it when we opened our eyes.  It was already there.

Where you and M-Star speak about colour and how its not there if we don't process the information.   No sorry I cant go with that.

If you stand in a field with your eyes closed the colour is there all around you. (Providing there is light.)  Your eyes open or closed only alters your ability to process the light as it gets to your mind.  Yet process it or not, that does not alter that existence of the light.  

Answer 11

With certain chemical (natural or synthesised) hallucinogens, it is possible to see colours that are impossible to reproduce on paper/computer screen , and that cant be described by any word/s for colours that exist..so yes..it is possible

Answer 12

If you can imagine it and dream it into life, it becomes real to you.

Answer 13

It is possible...

Answer 14

I don't think so, as our imagination is always limited by our experience.

Answer 15

Yeah......Splorango!!

Answer 16

if its a  color  .. it  exsists..   if  u  imagine it..  it does not  exsist!!

  but..  ya  it is  most  def..  Possible..

Answer 17

Not if you have never seen it with ur eyes

Answer 18

no cause every colour you think exists and is a tone or shade of a colour.or maybe just a colour that doesn't have a name.but no every colour is a colour.this sounds weird.lol!! good luck.  :)

Answer 19

not really because what you see is what you get.

I mean if you imagine it  it is there so it exists. You have brought it to reallity.

As soon as you imagine it, there it is   in your head. I am confusing myself now. I`m gone

Answer 20

I think you're in danger of eating yourself with that question. I love thinking about things as much as the next person (in Y!A philosophy), but sometimes you have to be check that you haven't thought yourself up a blind alley....as it were....

Answer 21

Possible. But it would be difficult.

Answer 22

This could be very difficult to understand, but EVERYTHING already exists. This includes ALL shades of ALL colours.

Makes no difference whether you can see or imagine any of them or not.

Answer 23

Yes, it happens all the time.  People think up a new color and then make it a paint.  Have you been to Home Depot recently?

Color is not a figment of the imagination.  You are being a skeptic.  Color is our experience, through our sense of vision, of the well-known phenomenon of the visible spectrum. Yes, once we imagine a color that we haven't seen before, it can be said to "exist", as much as a flavor or a sense of love or any common color like red "exists", but arguably, only if we can paint it and define it by it's ingredients.  

There are certainly animals that are experiencing colors that we cannot see right now.  If we can read their minds some day, we will have knowledge of more colors.  So, you're question is more about whether color exists at all.  It is a word that describes the EXPERIENCE of seeing different components of the visual spectrum, it doesnt' mean a function of the visual spectrum itself.

Answer 24

Yes, definitely. You don't see them with your eyes so physics doesn't come into it. It's an imagination thing.

Answer 25

All colours come from either blue,yellow,red and from them colours we get purple,orange and green and from that we get different shades depending on how much tint is added...The rest of the colours that we imagine are different shades of them colours that are mixed together...So even though we are imaging colours that we have never seen before...they are just colours from the colour wheel being altered by a different shade of another colour but all coming from a primary colour.....

I'm starting to confuse myself now...But in my head I know what I mean...so I think in a way You can not really imagine a colour we haven't seen before...just a different shade of a colour that already exsists

Answer 26

If you imagine it, then it exists, even if only in your imagination

Answer 27

Blind people can imagine colours,although they have no experience of them.If we only accept that which we have sensory experience we deny the existence of anything that is non tangible,such as Hope,Joy,Love,the list could go on.

Answer 28

? please explain?