Perception, Color, and Realism

Abstract

One reason philosophers have addressed the metaphysics of color is its apparent relevance to the sciences concerned with color phenomena. In the light of such thinking, this paper examines a pairing of views that has received much attention: color physicalism and externalism about the content of perceptual experience. It is argued that the latter is a dubious conception of the workings of our perceptual systems. Together with flawed appeals to the empirical literature, it has led some philosophers to grant color physicalism a scientific legitimacy it does not merit. This discussion provides a useful entry into broader points pertaining to debates about color realism and the relationship between philosophical theories of color and the relevant empirical literatures. A sketch of a novel form of color realism is offered, as is an example that fills in some details of that sketch.

Structural Realism for Secondary Qualities

“…Likewise, it is perfectly coherent to admit that color experiences correlate with, or are caused by, SSRs (as I do and I'm sure Teller does as well) without making the further move of identifying color properties as we experience them with SSRs. Wright (2010) helpfully diagnoses a key misunderstanding in this exchange by identifying Byrne and Hilbert's implicit reliance on the thesis that the goal of color vision is to "estimate" or "recover" surface reflectance properties (27). If this thesis is correct, then color science appears to motivate the conflation of the color properties assigned by experience with the surface properties they aim to recover, typically construed as SSRs (28).…”

Memory effects on color perception

“…For the concept of color, the observation of memory color effects suggests that the nature of color is not the subjective impression alone, inde-pendent of stimulation through the visual environment, nor is it a characteristic of the physical environment (e.g., Cohen, 2006;Wright, 2010).…”