We all (mostly) have the same biology for seeing and interpreting colour (eyes and brain). But learning and forming an association with "red" happens inside our heads. What I "see" as red could be different to someone else. I'm not talking coloured blindness, I'm talking the visual interface in our brains. It grows as we grow. Our brains are all different. I know the biology is all the same... Perhaps it is that simple...
I always find it hard to explain.
There is talk (there probably always is) of Belgium splitting into two (the Dutch-speaking north and the French-speaking south). At first glance it seems to be about language but of course there is all sorts of history we couldn't begin to understand unless we lived there. All of these borders seem a little arbitrary to me...
But it got me thinking about language. Imagine if we had a Star Trek universal language translator that took in voice of someone and converted it to something your brain could understand. At the present that would mean I would hear every language as English, as English is what I understand.
But imagine for a moment if you gave such a device to a baby. And they grew up always having every language translated to "what they understand".
What exactly is that "language" that they're hearing? Does "language" have any meaning if we all understand each other simply through the adapted biology of our brains? We could all be speaking completely different "languages"...
That's what I'm talking about with colours. We could all be seeing something different, but we all understand what "red" is.
I guess this post proves only that even if we all "understand" the same language, it's still difficult to explain yourself...