Redness

Any sight that could be roughly described as reddish or greenish is called an organic chromatic sensation. We use words like red, green, pink, chartreuse, crimson, turquoise, orange, purple, olive, scarlet, khaki, magenta and so on to identify particular visual sensations within the organic category. The national flag of Bangladesh is used as an icon for organic visual sensations. You can click on icons to come back to a page like this for easy reference.

 Bead Panel from a baby carrier, Kenyah people. Borneo 20th century, 36 x 26 cm. From the Teo Family collection, Kuching. Photograph by D Dunlop.
reports that, "No color is clearly reddish as well as greenish … redness and greenness … are mutually exclusive."1 Therefore organic visual sensations are capable of binary description. By the third hypothesis the reference experience for describing organic chromatic sensation is seeing human blood.2 So to make a binary description of an organic chromatic sensation, compare it to seeing human blood. Report the result using one of the following algebraic statements. If the two experiences are not comparable, then say that the sensation is not an organic chromatic sensation and express this as

$\delta_{m}=0$

If the sensation is like seeing blood, then say that it is red. Express this as

$\delta_{m}=+1$

If the sensation is not like seeing blood, then say that it is green and that

$\delta_{m}=-1$

If it is both like and not-like seeing blood, then say that it is a composite sensation and

$-1 \le \delta_{m} \le 1$

The number $\delta_{m}$ is called the redness.

 Summary
 Adjective Definition Redness $\delta_{m} \equiv \begin{cases} +1 &\sf{\text{if a sensation is red }} \\ -1 &\sf{\text{if a sensation is green }} \end{cases}$ 2-3
page revision: 242, last edited: 06 Mar 2016 20:09