For a long time nowweeks, months, years, IdunnoI’ve wondered what it’s like to be in somebody else’s head. I mean, basically what it’s like to be them, from a first-person perspective, with their thoughts, memories, and perceptions. How does someone else’s thought processes go? Would their inner reality be anything like mine? Would I see the same colors?

I’m pretty sure that a lot of people have thought about that last question at one time or another, even if they never gave it all that much thought. But I think it kind of begs the question. It implicitly assumes that things have an inherent color to them. That can be argued, I guess, but as for the sensation (after all, isn’t that all it is?) of color itself, it’s completely in your head. The grass isn’t as green so much as it reflects electromagnetic waves of a certain frequency, i.e., light, which your eyes pick up and send to your brain where it is processed into a visual imprint on your immediate memory which you recognize as the color green.

But what if your range of vision is expanded so you can see ultraviolet light as well as infrared light. The grass wouldn’t necessarily be green anymore. It could be as yellow as a banana or teal or something. Hot, sweaty people would appear more red than people at normal temperature (infrared waves = heat radiation). Your preconceptions of what color is would be thrown out the window. The idea of experiencing colors through someone else’s eyes is, in a sense, meaningless. What you consider to be color is unique to your own self and what your brain does with the light that your eyes sense.

I’m not sure if what I said was a convincing argument that thinking about how other people see color is meaningless. It made perfect sense before writing this entry but I forgot exactly what about it I found to be a convincing argument.

Anyway, back to someone else’s head. What I’ve considered before, and what I’m reconsidering now is that the idea of being in someone else’s head is also meaningless. Just as there are no colors “out there”, there isn’t any real concrete you. Now, of course you can see colors (so they must be there) and you’re absolutely certain that you are in fact you, that you have a self, and you do exist. But it’s all in your head, just as everyone else’s ideas of what color is and who they are is in their heads. And that’s just what they areideas. All there is is the idea of what colors are and the idea of what a self is. You won’t find those things, that these ideas represent, anywhere. You can’t touch it, you can’t measure it (the subjective perception in the case of color), you can’t describe color to a blind person, or what a self is to an autistic. There really is no you. And if there’s no actual self, then there’s nothing that can go into someone else’s head. It’s not like there’s anyone there anyway.

I’m sure that some or all of this sounds wrong or very confusing to some people. I get confused, too, and I don’t always know that I’m right. But I’ve tried my damndest to imagine what it would be like to actually be someone else. This is my tentative conclusion. I can easily and correctly envision and describe four-dimensional space and relativitism, but this one baffles me.

It baffles a lot of people.