Color - Maund.2012.Stanford

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ColorFirst published Mon Dec 1, 1997; substantive revision Thu Oct 11, 2012

Colors are of philosophical interest for a number of reasons. One of themost important reasons is that color raises serious metaphysical issues,concerning the nature both of physical reality and of the mind. Amongthese issues are questions concerning whether color is part of a mind-independent reality, and what account we can give of experiences ofcolor. These issues have been, and continue to be, inextricably linked withimportant epistemological and semantic issues.

1. The Philosophy of Color1.1 A Problem with Color1.2 Resistance to Eliminativism/Subjectivism1.3 The Problem of Color Realism1.4 Rival Theories of Color

2. The Aim of Philosophical Theories of Color2.1 The Relevance of the Ordinary Conception2.2 The Ordinary Conception of Color and Metaphysics2.3 Conclusion

3. A Framework for a Theory of Color4. Color Science: Some Complexities5. Color Experiences: Phenomenal Character and Intentional Content6. Theories of Color

6.1 Two Forms of Objectivism About Colors6.2 Primitivism: The Simple Objectivist View of Colors6.3 Physicalist Color Realism6.4 Color Eliminativism/Irrealism/Fictionalism6.5 Color Dispositionalism6.6 Color Relationalism6.7 Action-Based Theories of Color

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1. The Philosophy of Color

In this section, we consider some central puzzles that arise from trying tofit colors into scientific accounts of the world.

1.1 A Problem with Color

The visual world, the world as we see it, is a world populated by coloredobjects. Typically, we see the world as having a rich tapestry of colors orcolored forms—fields, mountains, oceans, hairstyles, clothing, fruit,plants, animals, buildings, and so on. Colors are important in bothidentifying objects, i.e., in locating them in space, and in re-identifyingthem. So much of our perception of physical things involves ouridentifying objects by their appearance, and colors are typically essentialto an object's appearance, that any account of visual perception mustcontain some account of colors. Since visual perception is one of the mostimportant species of perception and hence of our acquisition ofknowledge of the physical world, and of our environment, including ourown bodies, a theory of color is doubly important.

One of the major problems with color has to do with fitting what we seemto know about colors into what science, particularly physics, tells us aboutphysical bodies and their qualities. It is this problem that historically hasled the major physicists who have thought about color, to hold the viewthat physical objects do not actually have the colors we ordinarily andnaturally take objects to possess. Oceans and skies are not blue in the waythat we naively think, nor are apples red, (nor green). Colors of that kind,

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it is believed, have no place in the physical account of the world that hasdeveloped from the 16th Century to this century.

Not only does the scientific mainstream tradition conflict with thecommon-sense understanding of color in this way, but as well, thescientific tradition contains a very counter-intuitive conception of color.There is, to illustrate, the celebrated remark by David Hume:

Physicists who have subscribed to this doctrine include the luminaries:Galileo, Boyle, Descartes, Newton, Young, Maxwell and Helmholtz.Maxwell, for example, wrote:

This combination of eliminativism—the view that physical objects do nothave colors, at least in a crucial sense—and subjectivism—the view thatcolor is a subjective quality—is not merely of historical interest. It is heldby many contemporary experts and authorities on color. S. K. Palmer, aleading psychologist and cognitive scientist, writes:

Sounds, colors, heat and cold, according to modern philosophy arenot qualities in objects, but perceptions in the mind. (Hume1738/1911, Bk III, part I, Sect. 1, p. 177; Bk I, IV, IV, p. 216)

It seems almost a truism to say that color is a sensation; and yetYoung, by honestly recognizing this elementary truth, establishedthe first consistent theory of color. (Maxwell 1890/1970, p. 75)

People universally believe that objects look colored because theyare colored, just as we experience them. The sky looks bluebecause it is blue, grass looks green because it is green, and bloodlooks red because it is red. As surprising as it may seem, thesebeliefs are fundamentally mistaken. Neither objects nor lights areactually ‘colored’ in anything like the way we experience them.Rather, color is a psychological property of our visual experiences

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Some other examples of experts who say similar things are S. Zeki(1983), E. H. Land (1983), and R. G. Kuehni (1997). We should note thatthese and other scientists vary between speaking of colors as sensations,psychological properties of visual experiences, mental properties,representations, constructions of the brain, and properties of the brain, sothere are different brands of subjectivism.

Not all scientists express eliminativism explicitly, but many of the otherstend to accept subjectivism. D. L. MacAdam, for example, is notuntypical in writing that physiologists and psychologists use term ‘color’“to denote sensation in the consciousness of a human observer”(MacAdam 1985, pp. 3–4). Moreover, it is common to find, inauthoritative texts, definitions like: “Color attributes are attributes ofvisual sensations, e.g., hue, saturation and brightness”; “Hue: attribute ofcolour perception denoted by the terms yellow, red, blue, green and soforth”; “Brightness is the attribute of a visual sensation according towhich a given visual stimulus appears to be more or less intense”.

1.2 Resistance to Eliminativism/Subjectivism

There has been a strong resistance among philosophers, both to theEliminativist tendency within the scientific tradition, and the relatedsubjectivism. One form this resistance takes reflects the fact that eachcomponent of this traditional view is very puzzling. A common responseis to say that our color terms—red, blue, purple, orange, yellow, green,brown, etc.—are in order: we have paradigms of colors to which the colorterms apply: ripe lemons are yellow, tomatoes and rubies are red, and so

when we look at objects and lights, not a physical property ofthose objects or lights. The colors we see are based on physicalproperties of objects and lights that cause us to see them ascolored, to be sure, but these physical properties are different inimportant ways from the colors we perceive. (Palmer 1999, p. 95)

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on. We have no trouble, by and large, in learning these terms and teachingthem in ostensive practices to children and others. In the second place, itis hard to make sense of the claim that colors are properties of sensationsor are psychological properties: if they are anything they are properties ofobjects and light sources—of peaches, and emeralds, of skies, ofrainbows, of glasses of wine, of headlamps, and so on.

It should be noted, however, that things are more complex than the earlierremarks of Hume and Maxwell suggest. Descartes and Locke, forexample, think that there are no colors in the physical world—no colors,as we ordinarily and naively understand them to be. But they are alsowidely interpreted as holding a secondary quality view of colors, i.e.,holding the view that colors are powers or dispositions to causeexperiences of a certain type. It is instructive to try to understand this dualposition. We find, for example, this passage in Descartes' Principles ofPhilosophy:

The implication of “it is really just the same as saying” is that this is notwhat it is ordinarily taken to be saying. As Descartes later explains, theordinary way involves the mistake of “judging that the feature of objectsthat we call ‘color’ is something ‘just like the color in our sensation’.”However, Descartes is not implying that we should dispense with ourordinary talk. Instead, it is being suggested, we should go on using ourordinary color talk, but give it a novel interpretation: when we say ‘X’,then it is as though we said ‘Y’. That is to say, we should not understandthe sentences literally, but rather translate them into other more

It is clear then that when we say we perceive colors in objects, itis really just the same as saying that we perceived in objectssomething as to whose nature we are ignorant but which producesin us a very clear and vivid sensation, what we call the sensationof color. (Descartes 1644/1988, para. 70; see also paras 68–70)

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appropriate sentences. Descartes, here, is following the principle commonto many thinkers of the time, the principle of “talking with vulgar, andthinking with the learned.” The justification for this proposal is that itacknowledges that our color language serves very useful purposes: thereconstruction allows the language to continue to serve those purposes,while avoiding metaphysical error. Thus, there is at least a partialresponse to the common-sense criticism: the reconstruction central to thisform of eliminativism embraces a principle of respect for our ordinarylanguage.

There are also complications with respect to the subjectivist component ofthe traditional view. When philosophers such as Descartes and Lockewrote of sensations of color, or of (sensory) ideas of color, there aredifferent interpretations of what is meant by the terms. The commoninterpretation is that a sensation of red is a sensory experience in which acertain subjective quality is presented. Expressed in modern terms, thesubjective qualities are construed as qualia, or as qualities of sensoryindividuals such as sensa or sense-data or as sensational properties. Thereis, however, an alternative interpretation: a sensation of color is a sensoryexperience, which represents something as having a certain quality (theexperience has a certain intentional content). On this secondinterpretation, Descartes' view would be that the relevant quality our colorexperience represents objects as having is one that no object possesses.Accordingly, it would not be inappropriate to call the theory fictionalist(rather than subjectivist). This interpretation, we should note, allows forqualia or sensa, but does not mandate them. And some Cartesian scholarsdeny that Descartes, in particular, was committed to qualia.

Finally, there is yet another complication. It is in fact possible to combinethe two versions in a single interpretation. That is to say, therepresentationalist view does not rule out a version with subjectivistelements. For such a view allows for a type of projectivism, whereby the

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experience both presents a sensory quality, and represents a physicalobject as having that quality. The experience is said to ‘project’ thesubjective, sensory qualities onto the physical objects. A model for thiswould be the experience of pain: the supposition is that when one has atoothache, the experience represents the pain as being in the tooth. (Thisprojectivist view seems to suit Hume's thought, but in any case, it fitsmodern projectivist accounts.)

These considerations suggest a useful way of understanding thedefinitions offered above, e.g., color attributes are attributes of sensations:to drop the use of ‘sensations’ and to read them instead as saying, forexample: color attributes are attributes of visual perception, i.e., attributesperceivers perceive objects as having. (Or if we retain the use of‘sensations’ we can say that the attributes are properties the sensationsrepresent objects as having.) Accordingly, these attributes are putativelyproperties of objects in physical and public space. (Qualification: there aresome experiences of color that do not fit this schema, e.g., experienceshad with one's eyes shut.) This way of understanding the definitionsleaves it open whether physical objects actually have the properties or not,and whether the properties (that form part of the content of theexperiences) might have subjective components.

1.3 The Problem of Color Realism

These complications allow what I have been calling ‘the traditionalscientific view’ to make sense, but it leaves us with the question of whatreason is there to accept the view. The quotation above, from Palmer1999, has the virtue of suggesting an argument for color eliminativism,one that is at least implicit in the scientific tradition. As Palmer states theview, it takes the form: when we see objects as colored, we experiencethe objects in certain ways, we see them as having certain qualities, butthe objects do not have those qualities; the colors we perceive are

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different from any the physical objects possess. There are two claimsimplicit here: (i) the colors we perceive objects as having, have a certaindistinctive character; (ii) the physical sciences have shown that noqualities with that character play any part in the perception of colors.From this, it is concluded that neither objects nor lights are colored inanything like the way we experience them.

This formulation has the additional merit of fixing the subject matter forthe dispute between eliminativists and realists: the debate concerns certainqualities which objects appear to have. It is helpful that there are leadingcolor realists who describe the debate in similar terms. A. Byrne and D.R. Hilbert (2003) say of the problem of color realism, that it “concernsvarious especially salient properties that objects visually appear to have”.By way of clarification, they say:

The first question concerns the debate between color realists andeliminativists. The second question concerns the debate among colorrealists (and eliminativists). For both questions, the suggestion is that wefocus on the relevant “salient properties that objects visually appear tohave”. These properties, they point out, are sometimes called phenomenalcolors, and sometimes colors-as-we-see-them. The point of identifyingphenomenal colors in this way is to provide a fixed subject matter forboth of the debates about the two questions.

If someone with normal color vision looks at a tomato in goodlight, the tomato will appear to have a distinctive property—aproperty that strawberries and cherries also appear to have, andwhich we call ‘red’ in English. The problem of color realism isposed by the following two questions. First, do objects liketomatoes, strawberries and radishes really have the distinctiveproperty that they do appear to have? Second, what is thisproperty? (Byrne and Hilbert 2003, pp. 3–4)

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It is important to take note that the formulation, by Byrne and Hilbert, ofthe problem of color realism has an extra advantage: it spells out twoways of characterising the subject matter, i.e., the colors for our debate.The color red, for example, is identified as:

i. the property which certain paradigms appear to have;ii. the property which we call ‘red’ in English.

It is natural to suppose that these are different ways of characterizing thesame property (though, as we shall see, there are some philosophers whochallenge the assumption). Separating them out has the merit of allowingus to see that different kinds of issues might arise in deciding the answersto such disputes. The second way raises questions about the underlyingmechanisms for the linguistic practices whereby color terms name therelevant properties.

1.4 Rival Theories of Color

There are two issues concerning color realism: (1) what sort of propertiesare colors? (2) do objects really possess those properties? With respect tothe first question, there is deep division between color realists (as well asbetween eliminativists). Setting out the views of major realists andeliminativists, we have the following major rival theories:

1. Colors are ‘primitive’ properties—simple, sui generis, qualitativeproperties that physical bodies possess or appear to possess:Primitivism.

2. Colors are ‘hidden’ properties of bodies—complex, physicalproperties that dispose bodies to look blue, pink, yellow, etc.:Reductive Physicalism

3. Colors are perceiver-dependent, dispositional properties—powers tolook in distinctive ways to appropriate perceivers, in appropriatecircumstances: Dispositionalism

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4. Colors are subjective qualities ‘projected’ onto physical objects andlight-sources—qualities which visual experiences represent objectsas having: Projectivism.

5. Colors are subjective qualities—either qualities presented inexperience or qualities of experiences: Subjectivism.

Note:

1. Theories in category 3 are relational theories of color. Historically,they have been interpreted in terms of normal/standard observers,and standard viewing conditions. Recently there have developedversions of the theory which relax these requirements.

2. This taxonomy is a first approximation. Some theorists would holdthat there is more than one kind of color: dual referent theorists, e.g.,Descartes 1644/1988, D. Brown 2006.

2. The Aim of Philosophical Theories of Color

At the end of the last section, we set out the major rival theories of color,i.e., theories of what sort of properties colors are. In the specific case, theaim is to know, for example, what sort of property is (i) that propertywhich certain paradigms visually appear to have (phenomenal colors, orcolors-as-we-see-them); (ii) that property we call ‘red’ in English.

One approach to deciding between these theories, accordingly, aims atgiving an account of phenomenal colors. Another approach to the task,however, is to take up the second part of this characterisation, that is, toconcentrate on giving an account of what property our color terms name.Given the recent developments of externalist theories of meaning, thereare various ways in which one might pursue this task. One way that isstill popular is to give a conceptual analysis of our ordinary colorconcepts, as expressed in our color language. Some of its leadingpractitioners are David Lewis 1997 and Frank Jackson 1998. Some color

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theorists, however, reject the approach altogether. After all, we maywonder, why should the thought and talk of ordinary folk inform of us ofthe right theory of color? The aim of this section is to consider the extentto which this question can be answered.

2.1 The Relevance of the Ordinary Conception

Byrne and Hilbert seem to adopt the point of view that is skeptical of thevalue of conceptual analysis in this context. In their article, referred to inthe first section, where they describe the problem of color as concerning“various especially salient properties that objects visually appear to have,”they take pains to emphasise that

By way of explanation, they add:

These remarks, however, are misleading. There is something else thatByrne and Hilbert say, which undermines their food analogy. It is worthre-quoting the passage that was discussed in Section 1.3, above.

It does not concern, at least in the first instance, color language orcolor concepts. The problem of color realism, they say, isprimarily a problem in ‘the theory of perception’, not a problem inthe theory of thought or language.

Consider an analogy. From the point of view of the biologist, theword ‘food’ is applied by ordinary people in a somewhat arbitraryway … an investigation of how ordinary people use the word‘food’ is not particularly relevant to biology. … The problem ofcolor realism is like the investigation of what humans can digest,not the investigation of the folk category of food. The enquiryconcerns certain properties that objects visually appear to have,not how ordinary people use color words, or how theyconceptualize color categories. (Byrne and Hilbert 2003, p. 4)

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So, among other things, the enquiry is directed at uncovering the propertywhich our ordinary color terms, such as ‘red’, express. So it can't entirelyavoid issues to do with color language and concepts. We can reinforce thepoint by referring to the fact that it is common to find color authoritiesexplain a central aspect of color, the property of having a hue, as follows:“Hue: attribute of colour perception denoted by the terms yellow, red,blue, green and so forth” (Kuehni 2005, p. 187; see also Byrne andHilbert 1997b, p. 447).

This criticism may be effective as an ad hominem response to Byrne andHilbert, but it is hardly decisive. We can still identify a problem ofrealism which has to do with phenomenal color, and why think thatconceptual analysis is relevant to that? Let us grant that there is such agenuine problem. It is not clear why it deserves to be called ‘the’ problemof color realism. As we have seen, there is a long scientific traditionsaying that ‘color is not a physical reality’. And whatever other form ofcolor realism it may deny, most of us still want to know whether it rulesout the following form of color realism: one which concerns theproperties that our color terms ‘red’, ‘blue’, ‘purple’, ‘dark blue’, etc.,name (and our color concepts pick out or express). Let us specify thatversion as Color Realism (1). Even if Byrne and Hilbert have identified adifferent form of color realism, call it Color Realism (2), which isimportant, that wouldn't show that Color Realism (1) is not significant. It

If someone with normal color vision looks at a tomato in goodlight, the tomato will appear to have a distinctive property—aproperty that strawberries and cherries also appear to have, andwhich we call ‘red’ in English. The problem of color realism isposed by the following two questions. First, do objects liketomatoes, strawberries and radishes really have the distinctiveproperty that they do appear to have? Second, what is thisproperty? (pp. 3–4)

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is surely worth wondering about, and discussing, the claim that objects donot have colors, colors that are the subject of our ordinary thought andtalk.

Moreover, if one leading conceptual analyst, Frank Jackson, is right, thenthe two problems are intimately related. Jackson describes what he calls“the prime intuition about color”: ‘red’ denotes the property of an objectputatively presented in visual experience when that object looks red. Thishe also calls “a subject-determining platitude for ‘red’.” If he is right, thenColor Realism (2) is a sub-problem of Color Realism (1).

Nevertheless, the point of view expressed by Byrne and Hilbert helpsclarify a distinction between two issues in this area. It is one thing toaccept that our ordinary concepts and language, for color, are importantenough to justify our developing an account of them; it is another toaccept a special theory of the nature and significance of such an account.There is reason to think that what Byrne and Hilbert wish to reject, inparticular, is a certain type of conceptual analysis. In a footnote (6), theyrefer to the point of view expressed by Lewis and Jackson,

However, one might have a different understanding, from Jackson andLewis, of the role of our ordinary color concepts and, as a result, differentways of understanding what ‘conceptual analysis’ consists in. Jacksonand Lewis both describe the ordinary concept as a ‘folk concept’, and theyexplain the folk concept in terms of its being, or incorporating, a folktheory. They take having mastery of the relevant concepts as havingcertain (well-grounded) beliefs, which they describe as ‘color-platitudes’.Wittgenstein, on the other hand, in his Remarks on Color, explicitlydenies that he is looking for a theory of color. He describes his aim as one

who agree that the problem of color realism concerns propertiesthat objects appear to have, but according to them, the only way tosolve it is to analyze our ‘folk concept’ of color.

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of “establishing a logic of color concepts”, an activity which he describeselsewhere as “laying bare its grammar” (Wittgenstein 1977, para 188, p43e). Then, there are other theorists, e.g., those defending a Primitivistaccount of color, who draw upon an account of our ordinaryunderstanding, which does not take the form of a folk theory (see Section6.1).

Perhaps there is a third way between the Lewis-Jackson approach, with itsemphasis on folk theories, and Wittgenstein's approach, which eschews alltheories. What may be important, besides having beliefs, is that there is aset of practices in which color perceivers engage. And the philosophicaltask is to reflect on those practices, and to develop an account that makesbest sense of them. This is not to say that folk beliefs are not relevant. Itis to suggest that the study of our conceptual practices involves more thanthe study of folk beliefs. One thing that may happen upon reflection isthat a puzzle might arise. To give one example from Wittgenstein, hemakes the following remark:

Wittgenstein here is not aiming to describe what could be called a ‘folkbelief’. He describes a puzzle that arises for someone who has ordinaryconcepts of color and who, upon reflection, makes a certain observation.It is here, one might reasonably think, that there is room for some theory.

95. In my room I am surrounded by objects of different colours. Itis easy to say what color they are. But if I were asked what colourI am now seeing from here at, say, this place on my table, Icouldn't answer; the place is whitish (because the light wall makesthe brown table lighter here) at any rate it is much lighter than therest of the table, but, given a number of colour samples, I wouldn'tbe able to pick out one which had the same coloration as this areaof the table.

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2.2 The Ordinary Conception of Color and Metaphysics

To clarify some of these issues, it is helpful to begin by considering theinfluential and detailed account that one prominent color theorist, MarkJohnston, gives. Like Lewis and Jackson, he endorses the view that theordinary color concepts are captured in a set of beliefs that those withmastery of the concept possess. Johnston says that the ordinary concept ofcolor is a ‘cluster concept’, which incorporates a wide set of beliefs.There are, he points out, many beliefs about color to which we aresusceptible, beliefs resulting from our visual experience and our tendencyto take that visual experience in certain ways. Johnston says that some ofthese beliefs are ‘core’ beliefs, which we can contrast with the more‘peripheral’ beliefs. The point about the core beliefs is this: were suchbeliefs to turn out not to be true, we would then have trouble saying whatthey were false of, i.e., we would be deprived of a subject matter, ratherthan having our views changed about a given subject matter. By contrast,the peripheral beliefs are such that “as they change we are simplychanging our mind about a stable subject matter” (Johnston 1992/1997,p. 137).

Taking canary yellow as an illustrative example, he writes that beliefswith a legitimate title to be included in a core of beliefs about canaryyellow include:

1. Paradigms. Some of what we take to be paradigms of canary yellowthings (e.g., some canaries) are canary yellow.

2. Explanation. The fact of a surface or volume or radiant source beingcanary yellow sometimes causally explains our visual experience asof canary yellow things.

3. Unity. Thanks to its nature and the nature of the other determinateshades, canary yellow has its own unique place in the network ofsimilarity, difference and exclusion relations exhibited by the whole

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family of shades.4. Perceptual Availability. Justified belief about the canary yellowness

of external things is available simply on the basis of visualperception. That is, if external things are canary yellow we arejustified in believing this just on the basis of visual perception andthe beliefs, which typically inform it.

5. Revelation. The intrinsic nature of canary yellow is fully revealed bya standard visual experience as of a canary yellow thing.

Canary yellow is an example. More generally, for each color property F,beliefs that are legitimately included in the core of beliefs concerning F,will include the relevant instances of the beliefs (1) to (5). Johnston goeson to argue that in fact there are no properties for which all of thesebeliefs hold true. Accordingly, “speaking ever so inclusively”, the worldis not colored. However, he maintains, “speaking more or lessinclusively”, the world is colored, for there are properties which maketrue enough of these beliefs, so as to deserve to be called colors. Johnstonthen goes on to defend the view that the closest candidates for the variouscolors are the dispositional properties, dispositions to look yellow, to lookblue, etc. The item in the list that provides most trouble is item (5) thedoctrine of Revelation. To drop this from the list, he thinks, is a priceworth paying, to preserve that claim that there really are colors.

It is of course an important question as to whether the list is accurate orcomplete. To make progress on that question, however, there is, a priorquestion to answer: what are the criteria for inclusion in the list? (Whosebeliefs are they supposed to be?) On the face of it, they are beliefs ofthose who have mastery of the concepts of color, i.e., including the manyordinary people who lack detailed scientific knowledge. This is certainlythe view of Lewis and Jackson, who use the term ‘folk concept’ inreferring to the ordinary concept and who, in addition, see the possessionof the concept as involving having a theory, e.g., a folk theory of color: a

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set of beliefs or platitudes about color.

However, when we look at the items of Johnston's list, it seems difficultto maintain this view about the status of the various items. Take item (5),Revelation. Whatever its status, it doesn't look like a folk belief. It looksmore like something a philosopher might come up with. In the secondplace, it seems to have a peculiar status. Experiences of color, it isclaimed, are enough to inform us of the nature of color. If it is true or if itis a folk belief, it is hard to see what need there is of the other items inthe list. Perhaps, though, this formulation of the doctrine is misleading,and there is a better formulation available. One possibility is that thedoctrine should be interpreted as addressing certain necessary conditions,rather than all necessary conditions, or all necessary and sufficientconditions. This point is important since there is group of philosopherswho are sympathetic to Primitivism and/or Naïve Realism, who seem tofavor a principle that differs in this way from Johnston's formulation (seesection 6.1).

But let us concentrate on item, (3), which Johnston labels ‘Unity’. What itpoints to is the fact that the various colors can be ordered systematically,in a structured array of all the colors, where that array is based on thesystem of relations of similarity, difference and exclusion holding amongthe colors. The color ‘yellow’ is said to have a unique place in this array.Johnston explains the principle in more detail:

There is little doubt that this is an important principle, one which plays a

Think of the relations exemplified along the axes of hue,saturation and brightness in the co-called color solid. The colorsolid captures central facts about the colors, e.g., that canaryyellow is not as similar to the shades of blue as they are similaramong themselves, i.e., that canary yellow is not a shade of blue.(Johnston 1992/1997, p. 138)

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central part in the reasoning of many philosophers who have written oncolor, e.g., Wittgenstein 1977, Harrison 1973, Hardin 1988, Thompson1995, Maund 1995. It is regarded as an important factor whichphysicalist-realist theories of color must explain, and have a problem inexplaining. However, whatever the status of this principle, it is not a folkbelief (and few of these last-mentioned theorists say that it is). Nor is itplausibly a tacit belief. For example, it does not seem a belief it isnecessary to have, in order to have mastery of concepts of color and, inparticular, of a concept of yellow. It is surely quite a sophisticated belief,which requires considerable experience with colors. For one thing, thedimensions mentioned by Johnston—hue, saturation and brightness—apply to aperture colors or film colors, which few folk would be aware of,and not to surface colors. Aperture colors are colors perceived under aspecial mode of viewing: one views the objects or light sources through asmall aperture in a screen (of an achromatic color). The appearance ofthese colors differs from that of colors seen under more usualcircumstances. ‘Surface colors’ are the colors of illuminated samples seenunder conditions in which it is possible for the viewer to distinguish thecolor of the surface from that of the ambient light. Indeed, for surfacecolors, there are two sets of dimensions: hue, chroma, and lightness (theMunsell system) and hue, chromaticness and whiteness/blackness (theSwedish Natural Color system, NCS). Nevertheless, Unity (or a set ofUnities) is an important principle and it has something to do with ourconcepts of color. Wittgenstein, for example, thought it was central to ourhaving the concepts of color that we do, but as we saw above, he says that“we do not want to find a theory of color … but rather the logic of colorconcepts”.

There is another explanation for why Johnston's principles (1) to (5) areimportant, besides their being folk beliefs. It is more plausible to see themas items of knowledge: of facts or truths, that are readily accessible tosomeone who has the relevant concepts. For example, once we are fluent

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with color names, and are competent in the exercise of color concepts, weare then in a position to come to know that Unity holds with respect to thecolors. We won't discover this, however, until we have familiarity with awide range of colors and can see the various colors ordered in suitablearrays. Likewise, with the other items in Johnston's list, e.g., (5), thedoctrine of Revelation. Indeed, if we look at item (1), in Johnston's list,the item he labels ‘Paradigms’, it explicitly states one such sort of fact: itstates that there are paradigms of canary yellow, things that are canaryyellow.

These considerations are not trivial, for when we examine the examplesthat Lewis and Jackson give of the relevant constraints on color, we findthat they function as items of knowledge, than as mere beliefs. IndeedLewis often refers to the folk beliefs as ‘common knowledge and knownto be common knowledge’. In Jackson's case, consider the quote, cited inthe previous section 2.1, concerning what he calls ‘the prime intuitionabout color’: ‘red’ denotes the property of an object putatively presentedin visual experience when that object looks red. This he also calls “asubject-determining platitude for ‘red’.” What is particularly interesting iswhat Jackson does with this ‘prime intuition’. He says that it seemstrivial, but its significance is that it tells us

That is to say, in arguing to a substantive metaphysical conclusion—namely, that color is a certain microphysical property—Jackson iscombining the result of his intuitions (which he claims to share with the

something important about the metaphysics of color, when wecombine it with plausible views about what is required for anexperience to be the presentation of a property: a necessarycondition for experience E to be the presentation of property P isthat there be a causal connection in normal cases. (Jackson 1998,p. 89)

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‘folk’) with a certain piece of knowledge.

It would seem that the terms ‘folk beliefs’ and ‘folk theories’ are not themost appropriate terms to capture the theories set out by Jackson, Lewisand Johnston, and would be better replaced by reference, say, to common-sense. It is worth noting that the same problem comes up in discussionsof the relative importance of ‘folk psychology’ in the Philosophy of Mind.Because of this problem, some theorists prefer to use the term ‘common-sense psychology’ (see, for example, Crane 2003).

These considerations give us a different way of thinking of how theordinary conception of color is relevant to metaphysics, than in terms offolk beliefs/theories. The important thing about our color concepts is thatwe apply them in a wide a range of situations and practices. The point ofa theory of color is not so much to capture our folk beliefs, but to makesense of those situations and practices. In part, this means recognising awide range of color facts. Central among them are the facts that we haveparadigms of color: lemons are yellow, skies (in Perth) are blue, tomatoesare red. Another is the fact that ostensive teaching situations play a centralrole in the learning of color terms. Indeed, it seems that there is a vastrange of truths—‘color truths’, let us call them—which are expressedthrough our ordinary color concepts. According to this way of looking atthings, we philosophers want to make sense of these conceptual practices,and at least part of what that involves is giving an account of what sort ofproperties colors are: what are the properties that make the relevant colortruths true.

2.3 Conclusion

The issues raised in this section involve complex issues of philosophicalmethodology, about which there is much contemporary dispute. No shortdiscussion of such issues can hope to be comprehensive. Differentphilosophers hold sharply differing views about both the nature of

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conceptual analysis and its significance. Part of the aim of this sectionwas to bring out that the practice of different groups of philosophers iscloser than one would expect from their official views.

3. A Framework for a Theory of Color

The discussion in the previous section was aimed at issues related to thegeneral question of what counts as an adequate theory of color, i.e., todetermining the constraints upon such a theory. There are a number offactors that theorists take to provide such constraints: some will be almostuniversally accepted; others will have different rates of acceptance. Invarious discussions, one or more of these factors will be paramount. Oneconstraint, widely accepted, is that the theory should give an adequateaccount of the ordinary understanding of color. There, however, two waysto take that constraint. One way is to take it that the account must beconsistent with the ordinary understanding; a weaker way is to say thatthe theory must ‘respect’ that understanding. Respecting it involves takingit seriously, which is compatible with thinking that it is faulty and standsin need of modification. It may involve explaining how it came about.

There is another complication. While it seems plausible to understand“giving an account of the ordinary understanding of color” as addressingthe set of beliefs held by those who have mastery of the concept, it turnsout, in practice, that there is a set of other factors that are important: theputative truths expressible and knowable with this concept, and factorsimportant in the operations of the concepts and use of color vocabulary,e.g., factors involved in the learning of color terms, in the perceptualrecognition of colors, in the ordering of colors, and so on. Johnston givesa useful set of such factors, at least to begin with.

Many of these factors are important even for those who do not profess tobe interested in questions of language and concepts. Such theorists usually

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focus on certain truths concerning color and attempt to give an account ofwhat sort of properties colors need to be to satisfy or explain such truths.One such factor is that of providing an adequate account of experiences ofcolour. This will include giving an adequate account of thephenomenology of color experiences, and in giving an account of the roleof the experiences in the acquisition, both of colour concepts, and ofcolour knowledge. A number of issues arise: for example, (1) whatphenomenological character do experiences have? (2) whetherexperiences have representational content and, if so, of what type, e.g.,whether the content is conceptual or non-conceptual; (3) do theexperiences contain subjective, non-intentional qualities? (4) what role dothe experiences play in the acquisition of colour concepts, and in theirexercise? (5) what is it for something to look blue, or look yellow, or lookred, etc. (6) does the theory have an adequate fit with scientific facts, e.g.,about the mechanisms of color vision, about the types of colorappearances, about the individual differences among color perceivers, andso on.

4. Color Science: Some Complexities

Color science is a flourishing field of science, with a long history thatgoes back to Newton, and includes such famous figures as Young,Maxwell, Helmholtz, and Hering. While there has been widespread doubtabout the existence of color as a physical reality, this has not stopped thegrowth of an enormous amount of research into color: into themechanisms underlying color vision, into ways of specifying the wayscolors appear, and into constructing systems to order colors. While muchof this research has been directed at human color vision, there has been agrowing amount addressing animal color vision. In other words, no onedoubts that there is such a thing as color vision.

One line of research focuses on the chemistry and physics of color. This

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includes the study of how the material properties of physical bodies alterthe composition of the light it transmits or reflects or emits or scatters,and of the character, and composition of the light involved. These causes,as Kurt Nassau points out, are many and varied. He refers to an “informalclassification [that] … has some 14 category of causes” (Nassau 1983,p. 3). Much of the research in color science, however, is devoted, directlyor indirectly, to color perception, i.e., to the psychology of color, and topsychophysics, and to studying the complex physiological andneurological mechanisms underlying color vision.

One important area of study has to deal with the construction of colorspaces, which are spaces for ordering the colors systematically. There aredifferent spaces constructed for different purposes (see Kuehni 2003,2010). One type of color space is dealt with in the field of colorimetry,which is a branch of color science concerned with ‘measuring’ color,which means specifying numerically the color of visual stimulus (either alight or an object). We do this, in the simplest case, by specifying themixture of three reference lights that match the stimulus (i.e., appear thesame), under specific viewing conditions, and illumination.

Central types of color space are psychological color systems, i.e., of waysof ordering, in a systematic fashion, the range of colors—colors asperceived—in a three-dimensional coordinate system, within which eachpossible perceived color can be represented as a single point with aunique position. It is important to note that there are different systems thathave been constructed. For one thing, different dimensions are used,depending on the way in which color appears. Colors as properties ofsurfaces, in general, have a different mode of appearance from colors asproperties of volumes such as wine, and yet again from that for film coloror aperture color (the color of an object or light source viewed through anaperture in a reduction screen). These different modes of appearance suitdifferent dimensions of color. For aperture or film colors, and light

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sources, the dimensions are hue, saturation and brightness; for surfaces,the dimensions are hue, chroma and value (lightness)—Munsell—andhue, chromaticness and whiteness/blackness—Swedish Natural ColorSystem (NCS).

A wide range of psychological phenomena related to color perception hasbeen studied. Many concern the conditions of perception, e.g., the field inwhich color-constancy, simultaneous contrast, the effects of variousbackgrounds on color perceptions, and so on, are examined, andcompeting explanations debated. One striking phenomenon is that thereare certain surface colors—contrast colors—that seem to depend on beingperceived against a certain background, e.g., black, white, brown. Anotherimportant discovery has been the extent of the variation there is, amongnormal color perceivers, in the perception of specific shades of color.

One of the most vigorous areas of research, especially more recently, isthe study of color vision, i.e., of the mechanisms involved in theperception of color. Helmholtz and Hering were pioneers in thephysiology of this area, the former contributing to the Trichromatictheory, and the latter to the development of the Opponent Process Theory.Originally these theories were seen as rivals, but much of the research inthe second part of the 20th century has pointed to them explainingcomplementary parts of the visual processes.

According to the Trichromatic theory, there are in the retinas of the eyes(for normal perceivers) three types of cones, which contain differentvisual pigments, maximally sensitive, respectively, to differentwavelength of light: long, medium and short. The cones are commonlyreferred to as the L, M and S cones, respectively. The stimulation of thesepigments does not correspond in any simple way to the experiences ofcolor. The Opponent-Process theory postulates computationalmechanisms in the visual system to explain how the outputs of these

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cones lead to the experiences. According to this theory, the outputs of thethree cone-types are transformed into two opponent chromatic signals andone non-opponent achromatic signal. It is thought that there are pairs ofopponent information channels, where the activity in one channel inhibitsactivity in an opponent channel. The pairs of channels are supposed to belinked to ‘red/green responses’, and to ‘blue/yellow responses’respectively. Letting the cone outputs for the long, medium and shortwave cones be L, M and S, the red-green signal is L − M, the yellow-bluesignal is (L + M) − S, and the achromatic signal is L + M. Concentratingon the two chromatic signals, if L − M > 0 then the red-green signalproduces a ‘red response’, and a ‘green response’, if L − M < 0. Similarly,the yellow-blue signal produces a ‘yellow response’, if (L + M) − S > 0,and a ‘blue response’ if (L + M) − S < 0. With such a theory, we seem tohave a natural explanation for how we have say experiences of uniquered, unique green, unique blue, unique yellow. (To have the color ofunique red is to have a color that has no blue or yellow component.) Italso explains why we have experiences of bluish-reds, and yellowish-reds, but not greenish-reds.

It should be borne in mind that the theory described above has the statusof a simplified model. Finding solid neurophysiological evidenceconfirming the theory is proving difficult. For accounts of thecomplexities, see Abramov 1997 and MacLeod 2010. Some experimentaldata go against the model. As Hardin points out, certain color-blinddichromats, with only two functioning cones, and supposedly bereft ofexperiences of red and green, nevertheless seem to have some suchexperiences (Hardin 2008, pp. 145–146; for an even more dissentingview, see Jameson 2010). For an introductory accessible overview ofcolor vision, the reader is referred to Palmer 1999, Ch.3. For a moregeneral reference on color science, one should consult Kuehni 2005 and2010.

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5. Color Experiences: Phenomenal Character andIntentional Content

One of the most important issues for the philosophy of color to addressconcerns the phenomenal character of color experiences. This issue, inturn, raises general questions of whether the experiences haverepresentational content and if so, of what type, and questions aboutwhether there are non-intentional aspects to the phenomenal character.The question of phenomenal character is related to what account one'stheory can give (or require) of what it is for something to look a certaincolour: to look blue, to look yellow, look red, and so on. This notionplays a central role in most accounts, either in giving an account of whatcolour is, or for raising problems that the theory needs to resolve.

The most notable example is the most common version of thedispositional account: for something to be yellow is to be such as to lookyellow—to normal observers, in standard conditions (McGinn 1983;Johnston 1992/1997; Levin 2000). Another example is the relational viewof Jonathan Cohen 2009 and Edward Averill 1992, the view that impliesthat colours are relational properties, defined in terms of the object'scapacity to look a certain way, in contextually defined circumstances, tocontextually defined observers.

But the notion also plays a central role in theories of physicalistobjectivists such as McLaughlin 2003 and Jackson 1998. According toMcLaughlin, colours are the “occupants of a certain functional role-description”, where the functional role is specified in terms of the waysthings look, that are peculiar to colours. Jackson, as we saw, makescrucial use of what he calls “the prime intuition about colour”: The primeintuition is simply that red is the property objects look to have when theylook red (Jackson 1998, p. 89). Finally, both Byrne and Hilbert 2003 andBoghossian and Velleman 1991/1997 characterize the dispute between

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realists and non-realists on color, to concern “certain properties thatobjects visually appear [i.e., look] to have.” As Boghossian and Vellemanput it,

The centrality of this notion raises the question of what exactly is it forsomething to look blue. Unfortunately, this question is not easily settled.It is usual for theorists to rely upon what is called ‘the phenomenologicaluse’ of ‘looks F’, where this use can be distinguished from the perceptual-epistemic (and epistemic) and the comparative uses of the same phrase.However, different theorists take the phenomenological use in differentways. For some, it is connected with the idea that the experience or statecarries representational content, while others take it to refer to non-intentional aspects of experience. And of those who connect it withrepresentational content, there are some who hold that the content isconceptual, and others who think it is non-conceptual. Finally, it is not atall unusual for some theorists to hold that experiences have two aspects,i.e., non-intentional and intentional characteristics, and/or conceptual andnon-conceptual aspects, and that ‘looks yellow’, say, can be used, ondifferent occasions to refer to these different aspects.

The commonest way to think of ‘looks blue’ is to think of the phrase ashaving a semantic structure, with ‘blue’ having its usual sense. This use,which is found in common practice, can be contrasted with anunstructured sense of ‘looks-blue’, in which the term ‘blue’ does notmake the same contribution. For X to look-blue in this sense is usuallytaken to mean that X causes a certain type of experience (or type of visualstate), a type that is not defined by reference to the property of being blue,

What philosophers want to know is whether the properties thatobjects thus appear to have are among the ones that they aregenerally agreed to have in reality. (Boghossian and Velleman1991/1997, p. 106)

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and whose occurrence does not require the subject to have the concept ofbeing blue. (It is often thought of in these terms: for X to look-blue to S isfor X to induce in S a blue-ish-appearance—or appearing.) This use of‘looks’ is usually introduced by philosophers for theoretical purposes,though some argue that it is implicit in the ordinary use of ‘looks blue,‘looks square’, etc.

Unfortunately, there is more than one way different philosophersunderstand the innocuous-looking structured use. Many philosophers takeit as obvious that for something to look blue is for it to be represented asbeing blue, and that, given that this is so, it is perfectly understandablethat it could look blue to me without my believing, or even being inclinedto believe, that it is blue, e.g., Jackson 2000, 2007. The claim is that for Xto look blue is for it to cause a visual experience or visual state thatrepresents the object as blue. Furthermore, thinking in theserepresentational terms explains why it is that some perceivings areveridical, and others non-veridical. In veridical cases, the representation isaccurate _ things are as they are represented as being—in the other case,they are not accurate.

In recent times, however, there has emerged a growing minority positionthat challenges this view. M. G. F. Martin 2002 has been the mostinfluential, but there has been a large group of philosophers: PaulSnowdon 1980, P. M. S. Hacker 1987, John McDowell 1994, CharlesTravis 2004. As Martin points out, both the view known as naïve realism,and the disjunctivist account of perceptual experiences, offer a differentway of understanding ‘looks F’. On these views we do not have to takeveridical experiences and non-veridical ones as being of a uniform type.In the case of veridical perceiving we do not have an experience whichrepresents an object as having colours, shape, size, etc. Instead we shouldthink of these qualities being presented to the perceiver in having theexperience. On the naïve realist view, ‘looks blue’ is still structured: the

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property of being blue is presented in the experience. This issue isparticularly important for a theory of colour, for one way of explainingthe primitivist theory is to connect it with a naïve realist view of colour(see section 6.1). One might defend the primitivist view and also claimthat the primitive properties are part of the representational content.

There is an added complication. Of those philosophers who assume thatvisual experiences have representational content, some, like Jackson, doso within a framework in which the content is conceptual, while otherssuch as M. Tye and Byrne and Hilbert, take it to be non-conceptual.Furthermore, there are yet others, such as Peacocke 1992/1997, who holdthat there are two distinct aspects to color experiences, one non-conceptual, the other conceptual. Peacocke defends a theory in which‘looks blue’ is confined to the conceptual, representing sense. On thisaccount, we must distinguish between two aspects to the visual experiencehad, when S sees a red object, and where it looks red to her; (1) asensational property red* is presented to S, in a region of her visual field;(2) S is in (or has) a state which represents, conceptually, to S that X (or atleast something) is red.

6. Theories of Color

In an earlier section, 1.4, the major rival theories of color were set out.They comprise varieties of color realism and coloreliminativism/fictionalism. In this section, we will examine specificversions of these theories. Many of the general issues that have beentouched upon will come up for discussion.

6.1 Two Forms of Objectivism About Colors

One of the most prominent views of color is Color Objectivism, i.e., theview that color is an objective, i.e., mind-independent, intrinsic property,

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one possessed by many material objects (of different kinds) and lightsources. This view, however takes different forms. One form it takes isthat colors are simple qualities, which show their natures on their face:they are sui generis, simple, qualitative, intrinsic, irreducible properties.This view is sometimes called ‘the simple view’ and sometimes‘Primitivism’. Another form is that colors are objective (mind-independent), properties of material bodies and light sources, whosenatures are ‘hidden’ from us, and require empirical investigation todiscover.

Perhaps the earliest defender of this second form of Color Objectivismwas Thomas Reid, the 18th Century Scottish philosopher. Reid thoughtthat the folk did not think as philosophers such as Hume and Descartesand others said that they did. Reid wrote that:

It would seem that, so far, Reid is simply displaying the common sensefor which he is famous. More controversially, however, he goes on to saythat when we perceive the color of body,

On the face of it, this view of Reid seems counter-intuitive. Many of‘those untutored by modern philosophy’, have a lot to say about colors,

All people who have not been tutored by modern philosophyunderstand by color, not a sensation of the mind, which can haveno existence when it is not perceived, but a quality or modificationof bodies, which continues to be the same whether it is seen ornot. (Reid 1822/1970, p. 99)

The idea, which we have called the appearance of color, suggeststhe conception and belief of some unknown quality in the bodywhich occasions the idea, and it is to this quality and not the idea,that we give the name of color. [my emphasis] (Reid 1822/1970,p. 100.)

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and would be surprised to be told that colors are unknown qualities. Red,for example, is the color used by many revolutionary parties, good forannoying bulls, my favorite color, the color of my true love's lips, and soon. We can give paradigms of blue, red, yellow, turquoise, mauve, etc.We often say things such as ‘that is a better blue that this’. One suspectsthat they (the untutored) would be puzzled by the remark that red is someunknown quality (for more on this, see Hacker 1987, p. 186).

Reid's view may be extreme but it helps us appreciate the significance ofthe view of a contemporary color physicalist, B. McLaughlin, who singlesReid out as anticipating his account of color. McLaughlin explicitlyendorses this view of Reid though, in fact, his position is subtly different.He defends a functionalist analysis of color, according to which a color,say redness, is the occupant of a certain functional role:

McLaughlin adds that this proposal is intended as providing a conceptualanalysis:

McLaughlin's proposal is different, in a crucial respect, from Reid's. Itdoes not explicitly state that the property, which is the occupant of the

Redness is that property which disposes its bearers to look red, tostandard visual perceivers in standard conditions of visualobservation, and which must (as a matter of nomologicalnecessity) be held by everything so disposed. (McLaughlin 2003,p. 479)

The proposal is intended as a functional or topic neutral analysisof the concept of redness. The role description ‘that propertywhich …’ is intended not only to fix the referent of the concept,but also to express a condition that is necessary and sufficient forsatisfying it. Thus, if the proposal is correct, then all it takes for aproperty to be redness is for it to fill the redness role.

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functional role, is a property ‘unknown’ to the observer. His proposal isdesigned to be ‘topic-neutral’. This means that colors could either besome complex physical properties, that could only be discovered byscientific investigation, or they could be the sort of properties describedby Primitivists: sui generis, simple, intrinsic, qualitative, non-relational,non-reducible properties of physical bodies (McGinn 1996; Campbell1994, 2005; Gert 2006, 2008). McLaughlin argues that scientificinvestigation makes it highly plausible that the occupant of the role issome complex physical property—that is, that Color Physicalism is true—and that no good reason favors the Primitivist option.

McLaughlin's topic-neutral proposal is a proposal about our ordinaryunderstanding of color. Most Primitivists would accept this condition ascapturing, at best, only one element of that understanding. (Some wouldsay that the proposal expresses a truth that we can recognize, but it is notpart of the ordinary understanding.) Other elements, they would contend,rule out the complex physical properties that McLaughlin indicates. Aplausible candidate for one of these elements is the doctrine ofRevelation, item (5) of the list that, as we saw, Johnston provides, in his‘cluster’ of core color beliefs.

5. Revelation. The intrinsic nature of canary yellow is fully revealed bya standard visual experience as of a canary yellow thing.

This would explain the Primitivist account of the character of the colors,as being revealed in our perceptual experience. McLaughlin addresses thestatus of Revelation in his argument. He thinks that this doctrine, once wereflect on it, has little to recommend it. What appeal it has depends on thefact that it is easily confused with another principle, which has someintuitive appeal (though it too is false). He does not have an explicitargument against the doctrine, although he draws a consequence that hethinks we would all find unwelcome:

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He thinks that there is a basic mistake behind the commitment to thedoctrine of Revelation: the failure to distinguish colors from what it islike to see them. Revelation, he concedes, is more plausible with respectto the phenomenal character of color experiences—the what-it-is-likeaspect—though, here, too, it is false.

There are a number of responses Primitivists can make to this criticism.One is to say that insofar as the thesis needs to appeal to some version ofRevelation, it only needs a much weaker version. Gert 2008, for example,defends a weaker form of Revelation in his defense of an ‘unmysterious’version of Color Primitivism. Indeed, the doctrine as stated above is verystrong indeed. Most of us would find that, in order to be plausible at all,the doctrine would need to refer to a series of experiences rather than asingle one. A second plausible restriction would be to say that our visualexperiences reveal some of the necessary elements to the nature of colors,i.e., part of their nature, rather than all of it. This would allow for thepossibility that further empirical investigation uncovers other elements,e.g., that colors satisfy the Principle of Unity.

A second possible response is to say that Primitivism requires a differentversion of Revelation altogether, or even some other plausible doctrine,which is being conflated with the strong one described above. Somethingthat indicates that this might be so is the fact that though McLaughlin andJohnston illustrate the doctrine with quotes from Bertrand Russell andGalen Strawson, they fail to notice the authors offer us different

All we have learned, and indeed, all we can ever hope to learn byscientific investigation will contribute not one whit to ourknowledge of the nature of colors themselves. For Revelationentails that there is nothing more that we can learn about thenature of colors than what visual experience teaches us.(McLaughlin 2003, p. 477.)

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interpretations of the doctrine.

Russell says nothing about experiences; he talks about seeing colors.More to the point, he emphasizes knowledge-by-acquaintance, which heexplicitly contrasts with knowledge of truths. McLaughlin and Johnston,by contrast, interpret knowledge of the color as knowledge of necessarytruths. Campbell 2005 takes up Russell's understanding of the doctrine. Inthis paper, his main aim, he says, is to contrast the idea that experiencemakes the colors transparent to us, with the idea that color experienceprovides us with knowledge of truths relating to the essences of the colors(Campbell 2005, p. 105). Color experience is said to provide knowledgeof the aspect to the world that is being acted on when we, or someexternal force, act on the color of an object and thus make a difference tothe experiences of people looking at it.

[Strawson] Color words are words for properties which are of sucha kind that their whole and essential nature as properties can beand is fully revealed in sensory-quality experience given only thequalitative character that experience has. (Strawson 1989, p. 224)

[Russell] The particular shade of color that I am seeing … mayhave many things to be said about it … But such statements,though they make me know truths about the color do not make meknow the color itself better than I did before: so far as concernsknowledge of the color itself, as opposed to knowledge of truthsabout it, I know the color perfectly and completely when I see itand no further knowledge of it itself is even theoretically possible.(Russell 1912, p. 47)

It is in this sense that the nature of the colors is transparent to us.For there to be colors is for there to be the qualitative categoricalproperties that we encounter in perception, action on which affectsthe color experiences of observers. (Campbell 2005, p. 105)

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This line of thought, Campbell writes, contrasts with the idea that colorexperience reveals the colors to us, in the sense that it providesknowledge of number of necessary truths about the colors.

The second important feature of the Russell quote is that it speaks ofseeing colors not of having visual experiences. This is important for tworeasons. One is that McLaughlin says, in his criticism of the doctrine ofRevelation, that he is employing ‘see’ in a narrow sense: the sense‘common in vision science’. He explains this remark as follows: “By‘seeing red’, I mean ‘having a visual experience as of something red’.”This remark is instructive. It overlooks the possibility that ‘see’ might beused in the normal ordinary sense, used outside of vision science, and thatthis possibility might lead to a different interpretation of the doctrine ofRevelation. The second reason is that this distinction between seeingcolors and having color experiences is crucial to theories of NaïveRealism, which defenders of primitivism could appeal to. The crucialclaim is that there are certain qualities, including colors, that are presentedin veridical perception to the subject who has these experiences. Thepoint is that the qualities make themselves manifest in perception, not thatknowledge of necessary truths about colors reveal themselves to thosehaving the experiences (see Martin 2002 and Kalderon 2007). We shouldadd that it seems to matter little to the Primitivist whether we think of thisview as a different version of Revelation or as a different thesis altogether.

Even if the Primitivist draws upon this account of perception, so as to saythat what is important about perceptual experience is that it makesqualities manifest to us, rather than revealing necessary truths, that doesnot stop it from being the case that once these qualities are manifest, wecan go on to discover truths, that are plausibly necessary truths, aboutthem, e.g., those truths captured by the Principle of Unity.

6.2 Primitivism: The Simple Objectivist View of Colors

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Primitivism or as it is sometimes known as ‘The Simple Objectivist Viewof Color’ is the view that there are in nature colors, as ordinarilyunderstood, i.e., colors are simple intrinsic, non-relational, non-reducible,qualitative properties. (By ‘objective’ here, I mean ‘ontologicallyobjective’, i.e., mind-independent. This sense should be distinguishedfrom ‘epistemologically objective’, which implies appeal toepistemological standards of objectivity.) They are qualitative features ofthe sort that stand in the characteristic relations of similarity anddifferences that mark the colors; they are not micro-structural propertiesor reflectances, or anything of the sort. There is no radical illusion, erroror mistake in color perception (only commonplace illusions): we perceiveobjects to have the colors that they really have. Such a view has beenpresented by Hacker 1987 and by J. Campbell 1994, 2005, and hasbecome increasingly popular: McGinn 1996; Watkins 2005; Gert 2006,2008. (For a comprehensive range of criticisms, see Byrne and Hilbert2007.)

This view has come to be known as ‘Primitivism’, though a more accuratelabel would be ‘Primitivist Color Realism’, since it is possible to believethat Primitivism expresses our ordinary color concepts, while holding thatthe concepts are not actualized. Primitivist Color realism contains aconceptual (and semantic) thesis about our ordinary understanding ofcolor, and a metaphysical thesis, namely, that physical bodies actuallyhave colors of this sort. It is possible to accept the conceptual thesis butdeny the metaphysical thesis (e.g., those who hold a version of colorfictionalism or a projectivist theory or the Illusory theory).

One major criticism with Primitivism concerns whether the arguments forit depends on a questionable form of the doctrine of Revelation. In theprevious section, we considered this criticism and possible responses. (SeeByrne and Hilbert 2007 for a defence of this criticism, among a set of

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other criticisms; see also Campbell 2005 for a counter-defence.)

Another problem concerns whether it is possible to reconcile the putativecharacter of the intrinsic color features with such features having a causalrole in our experiences of colors. The properties that do the causing ofthese experiences seem to be complex, micro-structural properties ofsurfaces of bodies (and similar properties for seeing volume colors,diffraction colors, scattering colors, etc). This problem is addressed byHacker in his defense of the claim that colors are intrinsic features ofphysical bodies. He insists that colors are properties that are used toprovide causal explanations. There is no more reason to deny this, hesays, than there is to deny the parallel claim for solidity and liquidity. Theexplanation is not vitiated by the discovery that microstructural processesare involved, any more than explanations concerning solidity and liquidityare rendered otiose by the discovery of the microstructural base for theseproperties. A possible criticism of this analogy would be that, in the caseof solidity and liquidity, it is plausible to analyse these propertiesfunctionally: to be solid is to have some structure that is the causal basisfor such and such ways of behaving. This is not the sort of analysis thatthe Primitivist requires.

Hacker's solution amounts to making the claim that colors aresupervenient on their microstructural bases. Another primitivist, McGinn1996 proposes a variation on this theme. Colors, he says, are supervenienton the dispositions to look to have the colors. The plausibility of suchsolutions will depend on whether the theorist can provide some accountof how the supervenience relation is meant to operate (a requirementwhich functionalists can typically satisfy, as in the solidity case). It ispuzzling, for example, that colors, construed as mind-independentproperties of objects, could be supervenient on the way objects look toperceivers. (For a nuanced defence of the supervenient relation's holdingfor Primitivism, see Watkins 2005.)

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Another major problem is one that Hardin 2004, 2008 and Cohen 2009have especially stressed. They draw attention to a vast range of factsconcerning the variety of conditions under which objects appear to havethe colors they do, and the variety of classes of observers for whom thecolors appear. Given this variety, the color realist has to specify whichconditions are ‘normal’ and which observers are ‘standard’. If he cannot,then there is no way to specify the ‘real’ color of a body. Cohen andHardin argue that there is no non-arbitrary way to pick out normalconditions and observers. Averill 1992 presents a pair of arguments thatalso depend on difficulties that stem from trying to give a non-arbitraryaccount of normal observers and standard viewing conditions. We caneasily suppose changes in either our eyes (and hence in normal observers)or in standard viewing conditions, such that some objects that previouslywere yellow would look red, and others would still look yellow—whileremaining otherwise physically unchanged. If primitive colors aresupposed to be supervenient on physical microstructures, then it isdifficult to see how we could accommodate this sort of change. Apossible, but radical, response to this problem is to modify the Realistposition and to hold that objects can have more than one color (indeedhave many colors). See Mark Kalderon 2007 and Vivian Mizrahi 2006 fora defence of this view.

Finally, any defence of Primitivist Realism will require an account ofperceptual experiences—of how veridical and illusory experiences differ,and of how there can be experiences partly veridical and partly illusory.This account will need to cohere with what s known of the neurologicalmechanisms of color vision. Naïve Realism and Disjunctivism seempromising for the Primitivist Realist, but although these theories havestrong support, they are controversial.

6.3 Physicalist Color Realism

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The more common form of objectivism is that colors are objective (mind-independent), properties of material bodies and light sources, whosenatures are ‘hidden’ from us, and require empirical investigation todiscover. This theory is known as Physicalist Color Realism (andsometimes as Reductive Color Physicalism). Reid 1822/1970 wasprobably the earliest advocate of this theory. More recent examples are D.M. Armstrong 1969, Hilbert 1987, M. Matthen 1988, Jackson 1996, 1998,2007, Tye 2000, A. Byrne & D. Hilbert 2003, and McLaughlin 2003.

An initial problem is ‘the problem of multiple realizations’. As wasdiscussed in section 4 above, there is a wide range of different types ofbodies that have colors—light sources, illuminants, surfaces (e.g., ofapples, cars, cloths, paintings, …), volumes (e.g., wine, glass,atmospheres, …), bodies that scatter light, bodies that diffract light, films,and luminescent bodies. The causes of the colors objects appear to have,are many and varied. For most theorists, however, the most plausiblephysicalist candidates for the colors are light-related properties, e.g.,capacities to emit, reflect, absorb, transmit or scatter light to varyingdegrees. For physical surfaces, the color is taken to be related to theobject's reflectance profile, i.e., the capacity to differentially reflectwavelengths from different regions of the incident illumination. It turnsout, however, that, for each surface color, there is no single reflectancecurve associated with that color, but many. The situation is similar, in thecase of film colors or aperture colors. That is to say, for each color, thereis a set of metamers. (Two stimuli—bodies, sources of light, etc.—thatdiffer in their physical characteristics, but are matched in appearanceunder a certain illumination, by the same observer, are metamers for thatobserver, in that illumination. Two bodies that are metamers in oneillumination need not be metamers under a different illumination, or for adifferent observer.)

The favored response to this problem is to say, for example, that a given

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color, red, say, is not a specific color reflectance, but a type ofreflectance, i.e., one that is a member of a certain group. However, thereare still problems. Averill 1992, 2005, for example, presents someinteresting arguments, which are based on plausible conjectures abouthow normal observers and standard conditions might easily enoughchange, with consequent metameric change. The color physicalist seemsto be committed to a very arbitrary grouping of reflectances into thevarious types.

This problem is related to one that Hardin 1988, 2004 and Cohen 2009have drawn attention to. It has to do with the problem of identifying, in anon-arbitrary way, normal conditions, and standard observers. Theobjectivist account requires that we identify the ‘real’ color for object Xas a certain causal basis (e.g., the reflectance profile) for the way itappears, to normal observers and in standard conditions. The problem isthat, as Hardin has persuasively pointed out, particularly, in Hardin 2004,this cannot be done except in a highly arbitrary way. Not only is there aminority of color perceivers who are anomalous (only slightly, butappreciably so) with respect to normal observers, but there is aconsiderable statistical spread even within the group of normal observers.For example, the reflectance profile for unique green will differ fordifferent members of the ‘normal group’. One can decide, of course, on astandard and fix one reflectance profile as green, but the procedure ishighly arbitrary. As we have seen, there are few interesting causal powersassociated with colors apart from the way objects affect perceivers. (Thisargument has led to a vigorous debate in the pages of Analysis, see Byrneand Hilbert 2006; Cohen, Hardin and McLaughlin 2006a,b; and Tye2006a,b, 2007.)

To counter this problem, McLaughlin suggests that we extend a proposal,which Jackson and Pargetter 1987 made, originally to overcome theproblem of multiple realizations. They proposed relativising the concept

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of color, to kinds of objects and circumstances. McLaughlin's suggestionis that we could extend the objectivist concept of color, by relativising itto individual observers.

Another major objection to the physicalist (reductive) account concernswhether the properties can satisfy the principle of ‘Unity’, as described byM. Johnston, (see section 2.2). This principle points to the fact that thevarious colors, it would seem, are the kinds of properties that fit togetherin characteristic ways to form structured color arrays, with a distinctive 3-dimensional character, built on attributes such as hue/saturation/brightness(or hue, chroma, lightness). The principle of Unity would seem to pose aserious problem for the Color Physicalist (see Hardin 1988; Thompson1995; Maund 1995, 2011).

As McLaughlin concedes, the problem is

His solution to the problem is that the comparative claims, e.g., about red,orange and blue—orange is more similar to red than to blue—are true invirtue of a comparative fact about the visual experiences in question.

The claim, here, is that what it is like to for something to look red is moresimilar to what it is like for something to look orange than it is to what itis like for something to look blue.

This solution, however, raises the question of what features of the

that no physical properties that are even remotely plausiblecandidates for being the properties essentially participate in thesepatterns of relationships.

Colors themselves participate in the similarity and differencerelationships derivatively—in virtue of the participation of thevisual experiences that they dispose their bearers to produce.(McLaughlin 2003, p. 487)

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experience are relevant ones, i.e., are the features which stand in therelations of similarity and difference. There seem to be two possibilities:(i) they are features of the experiences themselves; (ii) they are featurespresented in experience or represented in them, i.e., they are features ofregions of visual fields, or of sensa, or of material objects. There are someprima facie problems which ensue. Assuming the former possibility, thenour color experiences involve massive error. The judgments of similarityand difference are applied to the colors and not to our experiences.

If the second possibility is adopted, i.e., it is held that there are certainfeatures, presented in, or represented in, experience, then they stand in therelations of similarities and differences. These features are different fromreflectances, so the color physicalist needs to say what they are.McLaughlin hasn't told us what they are.

Tye and Byrne and Hilbert have proposed a solution to this last problem,one that depends on exploiting the opponent-processing model of colorvision (see section 4, above). It is to specify the relevant groups ofspectral reflectances, associated with each color, in terms of their capacityto produce suitable responses of the visual system. The argument, byByrne and Hilbert, proceeds in two steps: (1) it is argued that colorexperience are characterised as having a certain representational content:they represent objects as having what Byrne and Hilbert call ‘hue’magnitudes; (2) the hue-magnitudes are explained in terms of beingcertain physical properties. As they argue, if we can give the rightaccount of how the magnitudes contribute to the representational content,then we can explain the similarity relations among the hues and thebinary/unique distinction, in terms of the content of color experience.

The opponent processing model, when applied to light with a fixedspectral power distribution (SPD), links three quantities/properties: (1) thedegree of stimulation of the long, medium and short wave cones (L, M,

Color


and S) in the retina; (2) the signals (red-green, yellow-blue and black-white) based on comparison of the cone outputs, and (3) the ‘redresponses’, ‘green responses’, etc., induced by the signals (see section 4).As a result, we can define three types of light-intensities, associated withthe three types of cones, for that SPD: the light's L-intensity is the degreeto which it stimulates the L-cones; analogously, for the M-intensity and S-intensity. Accordingly, it is proposed, we can specify the hue-magnitudes(which are represented in the experiences) in terms of a combination ofrelevant light-intensities. Taking unique red, as an illustrative example,the proposal is that an object is unique red if and only if, under an equalenergy illuminant, it would reflect light with a greater L-intensity than M-intensity and with a S-intensity equal to the sum of its L- and M-intensities.

More generally, we get the result:

Accordingly, Byrne and Hilbert argue, we can specify physical propertiesthat will explain the unique hues, and will stand in the right relations ofsimilarity and difference that hold between the hues.

A measure of the discussion this argument has inspired can be found inthe extent and range of entries in the Commentary, which is publishedwith Byrne and Hilbert's article in Behavioral and Brain Sciences (2003).One of the important issues concerns the fact that the proposal depends onthere being a viable naturalistic account of how visual experiences carryrepresentational content and, as Byrne and Hilbert concede, nosatisfactory account as been provided.

an object has some value of R iff, under an equal energyilluminant, it would reflect light with greater L-intensity than M—intensity—the greater the difference, the higher the value of R.And similarly for the other magnitudes. [p. 20]

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6.4 Color Eliminativism/Irrealism/Fictionalism

There is a group of views about color, which come under one or all of thelabels, Color Irrealism, Color Eliminativism, Color Fictionalism. These allshare the view that, there are no colours in the external world, or moreprecisely, that physical bodies do not have the colors that we ordinarilyand unreflectingly take the bodies to have. These views are usuallycommitted to an ‘Error theory’ of visual color experience. Indeed thetheories are often referred to as ‘Error theories’ of color. Prominentcontemporary defenders of variants of this view are Hardin 1988,Boghossian and Velleman 1989/1997, Averill 2005, and Maund 1995,2006, 2011. Earlier defenders were Galileo, Descartes, Locke and others.

The most general argument for Color Irrealism/Eliminativism isaddressed to the ordinary conception of color (and the use of ordinarycolor terms.) The argument, in brief is that these colors are properties ofsuch a character, that there is good reason to think, are not actualized. Nophysical body has the colors (or, at a minimum, there is no reason to thinkthat they have such properties). The most straightforward view of colors,it is argued, is that they are what they seem. Colors are properties thatmake themselves manifest in perception. In other words, the ordinaryconcept of color is captured by that philosophical view known as ‘ColorPrimitivism’. However, it is argued, there are no such qualities possessedby the objects perceived. The reason is that there are certain other itemsof knowledge that, it would seem, these properties need to satisfy: colorsare properties with certain kinds of causal powers, vis a vis thepresentation of color in the perception, recognition and identification ofcolors. Crucially, colors are the kinds of properties that fit together incharacteristic ways to form structured color arrays, with a distinctive 3-dimensional character, built on attributes such as hue/saturation/brightness(or hue, chroma, lightness). It turns out, so the argument runs, that thereare in fact no such colors in nature. There simply are no properties that

Color


both have the causal powers in question and which collectively have theright character. Objects are presented in experience as having colorswhich they do not have.

Neither the properties posited by the Primitivist, nor those posited by theColor Physicalist, it is argued, can satisfy all the required constraints, forbeing colors. As we saw in the last two sections, both sorts of theoristshave a response to this objection. The debate between the ColorEliminativists and their opponents will thus depend on the plausibility ofsuch responses, and counter-responses (see the earlier sections 6.2, 6.3).As far as Primitivist Realism is concerned, one central issue is this. Thedefense of this position, it seems, would need to appeal to some versionof Naïve Realism, and/or Disjunctivism, and there are strong argumentsagainst these accounts. For example it is not clear how these accounts canhandle the fact that many of our experiences have both veridical andillusory elements: the Muller-Lyer lines look unequal, when they are not;but they also look thin, and look to be in front of me, and look black.Another important issue is the one Hardin 2004, 2008 and Cohen 2009raise: that it depends on some non-arbitrary identification of standardconditions, and normal observers, one that cannot be satisfied.

Most versions of Color Eliminativism/Irrealism commit one to an errortheory of visual experience. As Boghossian and Velleman put it: “visualexperience is ordinarily naively realistic, in the sense that the qualitiespresented in it are represented as qualities of the external world”(1989/1997, p.93; see also Averill 2005; Maund 2011). This leads them toexplain how this happens by adopting a Projectivist account of colorexperience:

The projection posited by this account has the result that theintentional content of visual experience represents external objectsas possessing qualities that belong, in fact, only to regions of the

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In ordinary color experience, it is implied, physical objects arerepresented (or presented) as having a certain qualities that are illusory,and accordingly, that experience involve errors. It is important to keep inmind that such claims are not simply negative. Illusions and errors canserve positive functions. The claim that experiences represent objects ashaving qualities with a certain character, can explain why we form theconcepts we do, why we identify and recognize objects, and so on. Thismeans that it is still the case that there are important reasons for retainingour ordinary color concepts, even though they are not actualized.

This fact is a reflection of the fact that Eliminativism or Irrealism, on anytopic, comes in different forms. The most extreme is one that involves theclaim not only that there are no X's, but also which dispenses with theneed either to retain a concept of X, or a system of concepts built aroundclaims about X's, or to retain the language and vocabulary, with whichthose concepts were originally expressed. There are other forms ofEliminativism/Irrealism, however. Two stand out. With one form, weconclude that there are no X's, but either recommend, or at least allow,that there is a legitimate place for thought about X's or other intentionalattitudes, i.e., for concepts of X, and/or the use of linguistic terms withtheir original meanings. This form can be thought of as variety ofFictionalism. With the second form, we argue that we can retain theoriginal linguistic terms, but we give them novel meanings. That is to say,we use them to express different concepts. That is to say, we areproviding rational reconstructions. As we saw in section 1, this seems tobe what Descartes was proposing.

visual field. By ‘gilding or staining all natural objects with thecolors borrowed from internal sentiments’, as Hume puts it, themind ‘raises in a manner a new creation’. (Boghossian andVelleman 1989/1997, p. 95)

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Thus it is possible to consistently hold that there are, in the world, certainqualities that deserve to be called ‘colors’, though, of course, they are notcolors, as understood in the traditional sense. The reason why we canadopt both theses is that there may be different purposes served by havingdifferent concepts. Given that this is so, there may be reason formaintaining an existing concept, for one set of purposes, while revisingthe concepts for another set of purposes. Accordingly, a Color Fictionalistmight very well hold that there is a place, in certain contexts, for adoptinga reconstructed concept, e.g., a concept of colors as dispositionalproperties, or alternatively, as relational properties. Maund 2011 presentsjust such a theory.

The illusory theory, and other error theories, of colors may be thought toleave us with a problem. If there are no properties that satisfy therequirements for being colors: how did the ordinary concept develop? Aplausible solution to this problem is found in the fact that the way that theconcepts of color operate, to serve their various functions and roles, isthrough the way colors appear. For these purposes and roles, objects donot need the actual colors. It will be sufficient if they appear to havecolors. For these purposes, it is sufficient that “it is as if they have thecolors”.

6.5 Color Dispositionalism

Color-Dispositionalism is the view that colors are dispositional properties:powers to appear in distinctive ways to perceivers (of the right kind), inthe right kind of circumstances; i.e., to cause experiences of anappropriate kind in those circumstances. Because they involve responseson the part of color-perceivers, such theories are often called‘subjectivist’.

This theory takes different forms. One form it takes is that associatedwith people in the scientific tradition, e.g., Descartes, Boyle, Newton and

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Locke. This is the view that colors are secondary qualities. However, aswe saw earlier, in Section 1.2, this form of the dispositionalist view waspart of a complex package, related to the emerging scientific world-view.For our current purposes, there are two crucial components tot hispackage. The first is the idea that we should distinguish between twonotions of color: color as a property of physical bodies, and color as it isin sensation (or, as it is sometimes described, ‘color-as-we-see-it’). Thesecond is that the secondary quality view is not thought of as capturingthe common-sense, or ‘vulgar’, way of thinking of color. Rather, it isthought of as a revision or reconstruction of the ordinary concept.

There is a different form the dispositionalist view of colors has morerecently taken, and which has many philosophical defenders, e.g., Bennett1971, Dummett 1979, McDowell 1985, McGinn 1983, Peacocke1984/1997, Johnston 1992/1997, and Levin 2000. These philosophersreject the claim that the dispositionalist view is in conflict with anycommonsense view of color. It is held by some that dispositionalism canbe defended as an analytic thesis, concerning the meaning of color terms;it is held, or implied, by others that possession of the concept of color isneutral on the precise nature of the colors, a nature which consists inbeing dispositional. One virtue of this account is that, if correct, there isno need to agree that science is in conflict with our intuitive notions ofcolor, or that it shows that ordinary color talk is mistaken, or in need ofreconstruction. Another virtue would be that it would explain what seemsto be an important feature of color concepts, as opposed to primaryquality concepts: that in order to grasp, fully, color concepts, it isnecessary to have color experiences.

A prominent defender of dispositionalism is Johnston, whose account ofthe major constraints upon a theory of color we examined in an earliersection. As we saw, he concedes that dispositionalism has difficultyhandling the constraint imposed by commitment to the doctrine of

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Revelation but, he thinks, giving this up is a small price to pay. Hemaintains that, nevertheless, the theory can handle all the otherconstraints, and in so doing has major advantage over rival accounts. Oneof the theory's merits is that it can account for the Principle of Unity, item(3) in his list, although as we have seen, this principle needs to beextended. Another merit of Johnston's version of dispositionalism is thatit handles what seems to be a difficulty for other versions, the problem ofexplaining the causal role of color in the perception of colors, that is tosay, the problem of meeting constraint (2) on his list:

2. Explanation. The fact of a surface or volume or radiant source beingcanary yellow sometimes causally explains our visual experience asof canary yellow things.

It has been argued that dispositionalist accounts of color cannot handlethis causal requirement, e.g., Jackson (1998). Johnston's reply to thisobjection is that the dispositions do not have to be thought of as baredispositions. We can, instead, think of them as ‘constituted dispositions’,which are thought of as follows:

Thus it is part of what it is to have a constituted disposition to have someproperty, which is the causal ground of the manifestation of thedisposition.

There have been two major objections to dispositionalism. These wereforcefully presented by Colin McGinn 1996 in a paper in which herenounces his earlier advocacy of the dispositionalist view (McGinn1983). One objection is that the dispositionalist theory cannot give a

A constituted disposition is a higher-order property of havingsome intrinsic properties which, oddities aside, would cause themanifestation of the disposition in the circumstances ofmanifestation. (Johnston 1992/1997, p. 147)

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satisfactory account of the phenomenology of visual color experiences.Let us come back to this objection. The second major problem, he claims,is that it cannot dissolve what many think is the central problem ofdispositionalism, the problem of characterizing just what the colors ofobjects are supposed to be, “without vacuity, circularity, regress or anyother such damaging vice” (McGinn 1996, p. 162). The circularityproblem reflects the way the dispositionalist thesis is usually formulated:

If we understand the phrase ‘to look red’, on the right hand side, to mean‘to look to be red’, then it would seem we have troubles. As McGinn putsit:

One way to avoid this problem is to take ‘red’ on the right hand side ashaving a different sense from ‘red’ on the left hand side. For example, onemight take it to have the sense that primitivists describe, though, incontrast to those theorists, hold that physical objects do not have colors inthis sense. In other words, one adopts an error theory, with respect toperceptual experience. A different way to avoid the circularity problem isto take ‘to look red to A’, on the right hand side to involve a specialunstructured sense, which is different from its normal sense. That is tosay, the phrase should be interpreted as ‘to look-redly to A’, or as it issometimes put, ‘for A to be visually-appeared-to-redly’. The choicebetween these two ways of avoiding circularity is likely to depend on howwell each can handle the phenomenological problem that we havetemporarily set aside.

X is red = X has the disposition to look red _ to normal perceivers,in standard conditions.

If an object is red iff it's disposed to look red (under appropriateconditions), then an object must be disposed to look red iff it'sdisposed to look to be disposed to look red … and so on, adinfinitum.

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A different solution to the circularity problem is that provided byPeacocke's distinctive version of dispositionalism. Peacocke defends whathe calls an ‘experientialist's version’ of the theory, one which requires theintroduction of a third property, besides those of being red, and lookingred—a sensational property, that of being red*. According to this account,the property red is explained not in terms of looking red, but in terms ofcausing the perceiver to have presented to him, sensational properties in avisual field. The theory is as follows:

Importantly, according to this account, the person who has mastered thepredicate ‘red’ is someone who is disposed to apply it to an object whenthe region of one's visual field is red*, and circumstances are apparentlynormal. The person does not need to have a concept of being red*: all thatis required is that she is sensitive to the presence of red* and she can bethat without having the concept being red*.

This position escapes the problem of circularity, which threatens thosedispositionalist accounts that define being red in terms of looking red.However, it still faces the question of whether it can give an adequateaccount of the phenomenology of perceptual experience. Boghossian andVelleman 1989/1997 argue that it cannot. They think he is right to posit avisual field with intrinsic sensational properties (and give supportingarguments). What they question, however, is his insistence that thecolours of external objects are still seen as dispositions. The reason, theysay, is that visual experience does not ordinarily distinguish between

The experientialist can say that when a normal human sees a redobject in daylight, there is a certain property possessed by a regionof his visual field in which that object is presented to him. Thisproperty we can label ‘red*’: the canonical form is that region r ofthe visual field is red* in token experience e. (Peacocke1984/1997, p. 58)

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(1)

(2)

qualities of field representing objects and qualities of the objectsrepresented. Visual experience is ordinarily naively realistic, in the sensethat the qualities presented in it are represented as qualities of the externalworld (Boghossian and Velleman 1989/1997, p. 93).

This phenomenological problem is similar to the other major objectionthat McGinn levels at dispositionalist theories, more generally. As heexpresses the point, color properties do not look much like dispositions toproduce color experiences, so that an error theory of color perceptioncomes to seem inescapable. Colors turn out not to look the way they aresaid dispositionally to be, “which is to say that ordinary color perceptionis intrinsically and massively misleading” (McGinn 1996, p. 537). Ratherthan adopting a dispositionalism with that consequence, McGinn fallsback on a Primitivist view of color, a view that resists both criticismsleveled at dispositonalism.

Levin 2000 has provided a powerful reply, on behalf of thedispositionalist, to McGinn's argument. Her challenge is complex,highlighting the assumptions that underpin McGinn's criticism (and has adetailed discussion of the relevance of the doctrine of Revelation). Animportant question seems to remain, however. In McGinn's formulation ofthe phenomenological problem, there are two distinct claims, each ofwhich is crucial:

Colors do not look like the sorts of dispositional properties theywould have to be if the dispositional thesis were correct; “Colorsturn out not to look the way they are said dispositionally to be”.

colors look like non-dispositional properties: when we see anobject as red we see it as having a simple, monadic, local propertyof the object's surface.

The second claim is expanded as follows:

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One possibility that this claim raises is that even if it is true, as Levinargues, that our visual experiences are such that objects look to havedispositional properties of the sort the colour-dispositionalist iscommitted to, it will also be the case (often at least) that the coloredobjects look to be manifesting that disposition. McGinn's claim (2) maythen apply to the manifestation of the disposition. If so, thedispositionalism would seem to be allied to an error theory, as hesuggests.

Finally, another difficulty with dispositionalism, as it is standardlyexpressed, is the one that Hardin 1998, 2004 has stressed. As ourknowledge of color vision has grown, it has become increasingly moredifficult to specify normal observers, and standard viewing conditions inany but an arbitrary way, arbitrary from the point of view of metaphysics.To be sure, there are conventional reasons for picking out some observersand some viewing conditions as special, but we can, without too muchtrouble, imagine these changing. And with respect to normal observers,we have found that in fact, as things stand, there is a wide range ofvariation among competent color perceivers. As we shall see in thefollowing section, these considerations have led Cohen to modify thestandard dispositionalist account in favor of a ‘more ecumenical’ colorrelationalist theory, one that relativises the dispositions to groups ofperceivers, and types of viewing conditions.

6.6 Color Relationalism

When we see an object as red … [the] color is perceived asintrinsic to the object, in much the same way that shape and sizeare perceived as intrinsic. No relation to perceivers enters intohow the color appears; the color is perceived as wholly on theobject, not as somehow straddling the gap between it and theperceiver. (McGinn 1996, pp. 541–542)

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One of the most important developments in recent philosophy of color hasbeen the emergence of a radical relationalist view of colors. Averill 1992proposed a relational view of color, one that can be thought of as a radicalmodification of the standard dispositional position. He presents twoarguments against both physicalist and dispositionalist accounts, whichdepend on raising difficult questions for their dependence on normalobservers and standard viewing conditions. In their place, he offers anaccount according to which colors of bodies are relational properties. Inexplanation, he asks us to:

Cohen 2004, 2009 holds a similar position, though he has produced amore general argument. For Cohen, Color Relationalism is themetaphysical thesis that colors are relational properties of a certain sort—relational with respect to perceivers and circumstances of viewing.According to Color Relationalism, there are no such properties as blue,red, yellow, orange, etc. To be more precise, there are no such propertiesas blue simpliciter, red simpliciter, and so on. What there are, instead, arerelational properties: blue-for-perceiver A-in-circumstances C1, red-for-perceiver B-in-circumstances C2, yellow-for-perceiver D-in-circumstances C3, and so on.

At the heart of Cohen's account is a certain argument, which he calls his‘Master Argument’. This argument depends on pointing out the extent towhich the colors things look to have, vary with different viewingconditions, different classes of perceivers, and different types of animals.

Suppose that ‘yellow’ is regarded as a relational term having twosuppressed argument places, one argument takes populations asvalues and ties any instance of being yellow to the normalobservers of a population, the other takes environments as valuesand ties any instance of being yellow to the optimal viewingconditions of an environment. (Averill 1992, p. 555)

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In short, it is built upon the premise that there is a vast range of situationsin which there are variations in the way something looks, either to thesame subject under different viewing conditions, or to different subjectsunder the same conditions.

Then follows the crucial question: Can we select one amongst theseperceptual variants that should be regarded as veridically representing thecolor of the object (where this would mean that the other variants arerepresenting the object's color erroneously)? It is just this question, Cohensuggests, to which it is difficult to imagine a well-motivated, principled,and non-question-begging answer, and thus leads to the formulation ofthe Master Argument. Given that there is no well-motivated reason forsingling out any single variant (at the expense of the others), he argues, anecumenical reconciliation of the variants is preferable to an unmotivatedstipulation in favor of just one of them. He concludes: the best way toimplement such an ecumenical reconciliation between apparentlyincompatible variants is to view them as the result of relativizing colors todifferent values of different parameters (Cohen 2009, p. 24).

The thrust of the Master Argument, powerful as it is, is largely negative.It seems to rebut all objectivist theories of color, whether the objectivisttheory is one of the standard forms of color realism—physicalist realismor primitivist realism—or whether it is framed in terms of a disposition toappear, in characteristic ways, to normal perceivers in standardcircumstances. On the face of it, only two candidates remain: ColorRelationalism and Color Irrealism. Cohen holds that Color Relationalismprovides the best solution to the problem outlined, but he concedes thatColor Irrealism also offers a solution. He thinks that that view ought to berejected, on independent grounds. The argument against Color Irrealism isthat it is a ‘theory of last resort’, one that we should accept only after allother candidates have been rejected, when no other alternative remains.

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6.7 Action-Based Theories of Color

There are other forms of color relationalism which have links to action-based theories of perception, as developed principally by thepsychologist, J. J. Gibson. A leading example is the theory defended byEvan Thompson, the Ecological View of Colors. On this account, colorsare taken to be dependent, in part, on the perceiver and so are not intrinsicproperties of a perceiver-independent world. Being colored, instead, isconstrued as a relational property of the environment, connecting theenvironment with the perceiving animal. In the case of the color ofphysical surfaces, “being colored corresponds to the surface spectralreflectance as visually perceived by the animal” (Thompson 1995, Ch. 5,pp. 242–50).

In more detail this account is spelled out in the following way: “beingcolored a particular determinate color or shade is equivalent to having aparticular spectral reflectance, illuminance, or emittance that looks thatcolor to a particular perceiver in specific viewing conditions” (p. 245).Thompson insists that this account is to be distinguished from both aLockean dispositionalist account and an error theory of colors. Whether itis or not will depend on how what account he can give of “as visuallyperceived by the animal”.

One of the most important recent contributions to the philosophy of coloris the book by Matthen 2005. In this work, Matthen articulates a theory ofsense-perception in which color plays a prominent role. The work issignificant for the theory of color that he presents, one that draws heavilyon comparative studies of color vision among different species. Matthenreplaces his earlier objectivist views on color by an account that has morein common with the ecological theory favored by Thompson. Matthenagrees with Hardin, Thompson and others that the phenomenology ofcolor is not captured, or accounted for, by any of the standard objectivist

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accounts. Nevertheless, he claims to be defending a realist theory of colorand to be rejecting standard irrealist theories, including Hardin's.Matthen's account is complex. The idea is that the senses (the visualsensory system) do categorize objects as ‘blue’, ‘yellow’, etc., but thesequalities are related to actions that perceivers can perform, and inparticular, to ‘epistemic affordances’.

The sensory systems are held to be devices that are in the business ofclassifying distal stimuli (physical objects) as having certain properties,which stand in similarity and difference relations with each other. Thesecategories are constructed by the system and do not, at least in the case ofcolor, correspond to any objective properties that are independent ofperceivers. When one has an experience of blue, then this state is a visualsignal that system provides—a signal that it has classified the object asblue. In such a circumstance the object looks blue. This leaves us with theproblem of saying what exactly it is for something to be blue. Matthenexplains what it is, through his theory of ‘primary content’ of visualexperiences, that is, in terms of the actions the perceiver is prepared tomake on the basis of having the visual state. Where Matthen's account isdistinctive is that for him, these actions are epistemic actions. As he says:x and y resemble each other in color if there is a color based epistemicpractice E such that the color looks presented by x and y signal that x andy are to be treated as equivalent with regard to E. The crucial question iswhether what Matthen means by ‘color’ is the same as what others mean,especially the main opponents. He defines color-vision in a functionalway, so that it covers comparative studies, i.e., so that it applies to honeybees, humans, pigeons, and so on. Accordingly, color is defined in afunctional way:

A color classification is one that is generated from the processingof difference of wavelength reaching the eye, and available tonormal color perceivers by such processing. (p. 167)

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On this account, there is no set of properties that color vision is alwayscharacterizing (as color) and there is no class of types of experience thatany color perceiver must possess.

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Academic Tools

Other Internet Resources

Causes of Color, WebExhibits online museum.The Science of Vision and the Emergence of Art, WebExhibitsonline museum.The Munsell Color System Adobe Technical Guide.

Related Entries

concepts | Descartes, René | determinates vs. determinables | qualia |realism | reduction

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