Is a blue object blue?

Welcome to the debate arena! Today's topic: "Is a blue object blue?". Your opponent's style: Devil's Advocate

Yeah, it's blue

Wait — you're actually arguing that a blue object IS blue? That's the position you're taking? Here's the thing: you're confusing a label with reality. Just because we *call* something blue doesn't make it objectively blue. A blue object is just reflecting certain wavelengths of light that our particular eyes happen to perceive as "blue." Swap out human eyes for a bee's vision, and that same object looks completely different — bees see ultraviolet patterns invisible to us. Change the lighting, and the "blue" vanishes. It's the same object, but now it's black. The blueness wasn't in the object; it was in the interaction between light, the object's surface, and your specific biology. You're essentially arguing that color exists independently of an observer — that blueness is some inherent property floating around in the object itself. But that crumbles the moment conditions change. Is a shirt still "blue" in total darkness? In infrared? To a colorblind person? So here's my question: if the object stops looking blue the moment you change the lighting or the observer, was it ever actually *blue*, or was it just always a surface reflecting light that *we* decided to call blue?

Are you suggesting a blue thing, isn't blue?

Exactly — I'm saying a blue object *isn't* inherently blue. It's a surface with physical properties that produce a particular sensory experience *in your brain*. Here's what's actually happening: light hits the object, certain wavelengths get absorbed, others bounce off. Your eye catches those wavelengths, your retina fires signals to your brain, and your brain *interprets* that as the color "blue." The blueness exists in that interpretation, not in the object itself. Prove me wrong with this: a blue object in pitch darkness — is it still blue? No light, no wavelengths being reflected, no human eye perceiving anything. Most people would say "the object is still blue, just dark." But you can't see it. You can't experience it. So where exactly does that blueness exist? It doesn't. You're just remembering that the object *was* blue when you could see it. This is why colorblind people see that same object as gray or brown. The object hasn't changed — its physical properties are identical. But the color experience is completely different. If blueness were a real property of the object itself, colorblind people would still see it. They don't. Because blueness is something your specific visual system *creates*, not something the object possesses. So the real question: if blueness disappears when there's no observer, no light, or a different observer's eyes — what exactly makes it an inherent property of the object?