Subject: Re: Absolute frequency / Perfect Pitch ?? From: Martin Braun <nombraun(at)POST.NETLINK.SE> Date: Sun, 6 May 2001 00:32:54 +0200Christian Spevak wrote: "Has anybody heard of people having an "absolute" perception of (shades of) colors? Maybe painters?" But Christian, this is not possible. There are millions of colors. Most of us, however, would have an absolute memory of 12 colors. Color circles of 12 colors are quite common and can be learned in a few minutes. The 12 tones of our octave can not be learned in years (with extremely rare exceptions), once you are older than 5-7 years. Martin ----- Original Message ----- From: Christian Spevak <christian(at)SPEVAK.DE> To: <AUDITORY(at)LISTS.MCGILL.CA> Sent: Saturday, May 05, 2001 11:40 PM Subject: Re: Absolute frequency / Perfect Pitch ?? > Martin, > > your color example is true for such coarse categories as red and green, but > not necessarily for finer shades of colors. I recently came across the > following section from the preface to Diana Raffman's book "Language, Music, > and Mind", which talks exactly about that: > > "It turns out that some [...] perceptual properties cannot be *remembered*. > For example, we cannot remember---in the sense of being able to re-identify > or recognize by inspection (e.g., by looking)---precise colors. We can > remember red and bue, even scarlet and indigo, as such, but we cannot > remember precise *shades* of red and blue. In more traditional philosophical > terms, we can remember the determinable (viz., the general categories) but > not their determinates (viz. the finest values we can discriminate within > those categories). Similarly, we can remember augmented fourths and major > sixths as such, but not the specific "determinate" intervals we can > discriminate within those general interval categories." > > Has anybody heard of people having an "absolute" perception of (shades of) > colors? Maybe painters? Ok, this is an auditory list... > > Christian