How do we see the color violet?

[bkelly]

Think about what you "see." The eye connects thousands of rods and cones to the brain and the brain translates those many thousands signals into what we "see." We do not directly "see" the objects we look at, we "see" the image that our brain creates. When the brain receives signals from the red, blue, and green sensors in a particular area of the eye, it creates an image that has the characteristics we call white. Differing amounts of signals translate to different hues and intensities.
Our brains are some rather fantastic computing machines. All this is done not only unconsciously, but we have no way of "looking" or "sensing" inside our brains to detect what is going on. Absolutely incredible.

 

[mic*]

I really think this thread should be discussing non-spectral colours more. After all, we never (not too strong a word, I would say) actually see spectral colours - certainly not in everyday life.

I don't think it's making too fine of a point to say, if you hold true your definition of colour to be a subjective perception, then this is a redundant statement. What is spectral or non-spectral colour if it is not tied to a spectrum of wavelengths/frequencies? If colour is connected to a spectrum, then how?