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thank you, sneha, for this excellent example: green--any color--is produced by and an artifact of our visual apparatus. it does not exist in the world outside of us. you can never know whether what you see as green is seen the same way by someone else. you can teach someone to say green when showing him or her, say, a color chip that you see as green. using the word correctly does not tell you anything about what that person sees. a good example is the well known fact that red/green type colorblind people can handle traffic lights well, having learned that the green light is below the red. most colorblind people do not know of their disability until tested (or getting into an accident). their concept of green may well contextual and under certain condition works well. the test for color blindness eliminates contextual aids, working with contrasts instead. this is an excellent example for the consensual coordination of perception through language - and this is all we can TALK about - not what the world outside of us really is or how we experience it. without reference to our body we are dealing with objectivist abstractions. for designers it is important not to confuse what the outside world is (for them) with how users respond to it linguistically and/or behaviorally. in the above case, designing redundancy into signals is an important design principle whenever you are faced with a diversity of perceptions, sensory preferences, cultural habits, and approaches. klaus -----Original Message----- From: Sneha [mailto:[log in to unmask]] Sent: Friday, January 25, 2008 12:29 AM To: [log in to unmask] Cc: 'Klaus Krippendorff' Subject: RE: Roots, traps, constructions So is Green really Green? Do I see the same Green as others? How do we know that the Green others see is not the Red that I see? Can 'know' the Green for sure? How does it matter in the grand scheme of things? What do I do of the Green that I see - and others don't see? Green may seize to be for the blind, and the world could be blind, if so until genius finds Vision to see the Green, the much discourse somehow seems wasted (frustrating as well). To have fun (with theories) we need to have the new (vision). Sneha - Woman donning the mantle of a designer <Snip> i am disappointed, ken, that you ask the following question: "I agree that the world cannot "be observed without an observer" or "known without a knower." I've asked you several times whether you believe that a world exists outside our knowledge of the world -- I've never been able to get a clear answer on that specific question." </snip>