Couples are wholes and not wholes, what agrees disagrees, the concordant is discordant. From all things one and from one all things.
—Heraclitus (DK B10).
Abstract
Data about perceptual variation motivate the ecumenicist view that distinct color representations are mutually compatible. On the other hand, data about agreement and disagreement motivate making distinct color representations mutually incompatible. Prima facie, these desiderata appear to conflict. I’ll lay out and assess two strategies for managing the conflict—color relationalism, and the self-locating property theory of color—with the aim of deciding how best to have your cake and eat it, too.
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Notes
Though I’ve presented fuller versions of this argument in several places (including especially Cohen 2009), I confine myself here to a more circumscribed presentation designed only to motivate the ecumenicism desideratum and to get the discussion that follows off the ground.
One much-discussed instance of this phenomenon is the observed interpersonal variation in spectral loci for the four “unique,” or “phenomenally uncomposed,” hues of green, blue, yellow, and red. Thus, unique green is that green hue that looks not at all yellowish and not at all bluish; unique blue is that blue hue that looks not at all reddish and not at all greenish; unique red is that red hue that looks not at all bluish and not at all yellowish, and unique yellow is that yellow hue that looks not at all greenish and not at all reddish. Typically, subjects’ choices of unique hue loci are intrapersonally remarkably stable (though they may shift over many years, as age changes the filtering properties of the lens and macula), but there is significant variation in the settings made by different (color normal) human perceivers. For general discussion of unique hues, see Hurvich (1981, 66ff); for a good overall review of the evidence of the significant interpersonal variation in the spectral loci for unique hues, see Kuehni (2004).
The question here is metaphysical, not epistemic: it is not ‘how do we know which of the perceptual effects veridically represents the stimulus’s color?’, but ‘what makes it the case that one of the perceptual effects (as opposed to others) veridically represents the stimulus’s color?’.
There may be principled grounds for saying that some of the perceptual variants occurring in some of the cases described above represent the stimulus color erroneously: perhaps, for example, one of the variants arises in a condition that we would want to characterize (for independent reasons) as pathological, hence erroneous—perhaps after the perceiver ingested LSD, or in a perceiver who has undergone blunt instrument trauma to visual areas of her brain, or in a circumstance that is in some important way not ecologically valid. However, it looks as if there will remain significant variation even after we have appealed to all the available principled grounds to exclude as many variants as we can. For example, it is hard to see that there’s any independently well-motivated characterization of either of the two perceptual conditions under which we view the central patch in Fig. 1 that would license setting aside as erroneous the perceptual variant arising under that condition. And given that perceptual variation remains even after we have done all the motivated setting aside of variants possible, it would seem objectionably ad hoc to treat the remaining variants that cannot be set aside as systematically misrepresenting the colors of objects.
For reasons for believing that this standard view about agreement/disagreement may be too simple, see Caponigro and Cohen (2011). I’ll ignore such complications here, since the confounding factors discussed by Caponigro and Cohen aren’t at issue in the cases under consideration.
See Cohen (2009, ch. 3) for critical consideration of several of the most important responses of this kind.
Here I characterize relationalism in a way that is agnostic about the nature of the color constitutive relation, since I think it is useful to consider the broader relationalist framework while allowing that different relationalists might disagree about the best way of filling in the details. Because color relationalism is formulated in a way that leaves this room for debate, it is probably best regarded as a view-family rather than a single determinate view.
The schematic description in the main text invites the question: what parameters individuate perceivers and perceptual circumstances?
Again, I can imagine different relationalists answering that question differently. However, in so far as the position aims to accommodate the kind of ecumenicism motivated by the facts of perceptual variation, there is a reason to think we should include any parameter variation along which affects the psychophysical effect of the stimulus in the perceiver and that cannot be excluded in a principled and theory-independent way. Following this procedure will plausibly require that we take account of parameters including properties of the chromatic/achromatic surround, properties of the illumination, viewing size and distance, simultaneously seen objects, retinal cone type populations and ratios, state of adaptation of the visual system, and so on. Though this is clearly an empirical matter, it is reasonable to expect that this strategy will result in descriptions of perceivers and perceptual conditions, hence of color properties, that are significantly more fine-grained than we would have come up with prior to investigation.
Tye (2012) offers this consideration (among others) as a reason to abandon the color relationalism of Cohen (2009); however, he does not comment on any of the strategies for responding to this criticism, including those discussed in that work (and below), so it is not clear whether or why he thinks those strategies are inadequate. For further discussion of Tye’s objections, see Cohen (2012).
Besides providing a plausible account of cognitive/linguistic representation of colors, and additionally allowing for a solution to the initial clash between desiderata that is my focus in this paper, the introduction of coarse-grained colors also paves the way for relationalist responses to an array of otherwise troublesome objections against relationalism having their source in our ordinary thought and talk about color—e.g., the worry that relationalism legitimates more color attributions than we would ordinarily accept, that it is overly permissive in the color attributions it licenses, and that it precludes errors of color representation. For details, see Cohen (2009, chap. 4).
Though this wasn’t explicit in Cohen (2009), I have come to think that this contextualist semantics is best understood as a self-consciously revisionary proposal about how to hook overtly unrelativized color predicates onto the world, given the ontological inventory color relationalism is committed to (for reasons motivated by perceptual rather than linguistic phenomena).
In cases where a perceiver \(S_1\) in a perceptual circumstance \(C_1\) takes herself to be a \(K\)-relevant perceiver and \(C_1\) to be \(K\)-relevant circumstance, she may, on the strength of her perceptual representation of \(a\) as exemplifying the fine-grained property yellow to \(S_1\) under \(C_1\), come to hold a cognitive/linguistic representation of \(a\) as being yellow simpliciter—viz., as exemplifying yellow for the perceivers relevant in context \(K\) under the perceptual circumstances relevant in context \(K\). Whether this transition between representations is epistemically warranted will depend on, possibly among other things, whether \(S_1\)/\(C_1\) are indeed \(K\)-relevant, as \(S_1\) takes them to be.
What types of perceivers/circumstances are relevant in a context \(K\)? If \(K\) is a more or less ordinary conversational context in which there are no special presuppositions in force, it is plausible that the relevant perceivers/circumstances are something like the (metaphysically unprincipled) “normal” perceivers/circumstances that traditional secondary quality theorists have invoked—perhaps perceivers more or less similar to most of the conversational participants themselves (perhaps members of the same species, or those who make similar color discriminations most of the time), and circumstances more or less similar to most of the circumstances the conversational participants encounter (actually, nowadays, and hereabouts). But I take it that conversants can, if they wish (by stipulation, presupposition and conversational accommodation, etc.), restrict the range of conversationally relevant perceivers/circumstances in any other way that serves their needs—perhaps to perceivers who are dichromats, deuteranopes, women, pigeons, non-anomolous trichromats adapted to a stimulus used in their psychophysics lab, molecular duplicates of Barack Obama, or what have you, and to circumstances involving a particular viewing angle, adaptation pattern, illuminant, chromatic surround, etc., or any combination of such parameters.
Of course, while the particular coarse-grained colors represented in a context will ordinarily serve the context-dependent conversational interests of the representers present in \(K\), this doesn’t mean that the \(K\)-relevant perceivers/perceptual conditions are distinguished from other sorts of perceivers/perceptual conditions in any metaphysically significant way. That one coarse-grained color is represented rather than another does not amount to a metaphysically principled choice of one perceptual variant over others in the context of the argument from perceptual variation, and therefore in no way relieves the pressure to accept fine-grained colors in our ontology.
For the record, Egan’s endorsement of the view is tentative (cf. Egan 2012, 310, note 1).
The formulation of Egan (2012) commits to the more specific idea that the color constitutive relation is a disposition to look green: “Attributing being green to Kermit delivers the centered worlds proposition that’s true in \(\langle w, t, i\rangle\) iff Kermit is disposed to look green to \(i\) in the circumstances \(i\) occupies at \(t\) in \(w\)” (311). [Brogaard (2015) doesn’t commit to any particular version of the view that colors are self-locating.] I have no specific objection to making such further commitments, except to note that, just as I observed in connection with relationalism (note 9), they are separable from the proposal to treat colors as self-locating properties.
Here I adopt Egan’s preferred precisification of the view (cf. note 17) to smooth exposition; nothing essential hangs on this choice.
It is worth being clear that the sense of conflict/comparability that the self-locating property view provides, as explicated in the main text, is revisionary. The traditional reading of the conflict intuition with respect to a pair like (1a–b) is that what is expressed by (1a), as uttered by \(S_1\), is incompossible with, hence rules out what is expressed by (1b), as uttered by \(S_2\). Whereas, on the current proposal that \(S_1\)’s utterance of (1a) and \(S_2\)’s utterance of (1b) express the centered worlds propositions given in (4a–b), what is expressed by the former is not incompossible with, and does not rule out, what is expressed by the latter. (That is, after all, why the view counts as respecting the ecumenicism desideratum.)
But surely it would be unfair to reject the self-locating property theory simply because it fails to accommodate the conflict/comparability intuition (or the underlying agreement/disagreement data) in the traditional way. The self-locating property theorist’s understanding of comparability, given in terms of disjointness/overlap of the conditions appearing in the contents expressed by color predications, is offered as a replacement for the traditional, compatibility-based understanding—and, importantly, one that collapses onto the traditional understanding in cases where expressions are evaluated with respect to just a single center, so accounts for the appeal of the traditional notion. Rejecting the proposed inheritor on the grounds that it doesn’t exactly match the original it is intended to replace would require imbuing the original intuition with a level of theoretical specificity we have no reason to expect of it, and would amount to begging the question against the replacement.
Material in this section expands on remarks in Cohen (2012).
This consideration might be thought to cut the other direction as well. Thus, if you accept, with such authors as Dancy (1986, p. 181), Armstrong (1987, p. 36), Boghossian and Velleman (1989, p. 85), Chalmers (2006, p. 556), Gibbard (2006, p. 10), Hazlett and Averill (2010), that phenomenology presents colors as non-relational, then you might take this as a reason to prefer the self-locating property theory on the grounds that it does not require locating the subject-involving aspect of colors in the metaphysics of the properties themselves.
I find this consideration unpersuasive.
For one thing, it’s not clear that the self-locating view provides any advantage over relationalism in the respect contemplated. For the sort of phenomenological evidence that fails to reveal colors as relational also plausibly fails to reveal colors as self-locating. As such, the phenomenological evidence appears to constitute a prima facie threat against both views, rather than providing a reason to prefer either one over the other. Of course, one could reply that this apparent symmetry is misleading. E.g., perhaps one could argue that phenomenology is both committal and revelatory about the metaphysics of the properties it represents—hence that the absence of phenomenal evidence of relationality is evidence of the absence of relationality, while phenomenology is mute about whether the properties it represents are self-locating—hence that the absence of phenomenal evidence of self-location is not evidence of the absence of self-location. But those claims about phenomenology are hardly self-evident, and, at a minimum, deserve defense before we can take the phenomenological evidence as favoring the self-locating view over relationalism.
For another, as I have urged elsewhere (Cohen 2009, chap. 6), we should not accept the claim grounding the objection under consideration to the effect that phenomenology fails to reveal colors as relational. It’s plausible enough that introspection on isolated, punctate phenomenal episodes [what Levin (2000) calls “glances”] fails to disclose evidence of the relationality of colors. But there’s no reason to expect phenomenology of that kind to speak to questions about relationality or other elements of the metaphysical makeup of target properties, so our failure to detect evidence of relationality from that sort of phenomenology is in no way decisive. On the other hand, the sort of phenomenal evidence that can reasonably expected to speak to such questions—evidence that requires phenomenal comparison between multiple experiential episodes, possibly together with some amount of ratiocinative reflection—does provide evidence of relationality (as we saw when we appealed to exactly this sort of evidence for just this reason in the section entitled “Perceptual Variation and Ecumenicism”).
Candidates endorsed by Brogaard and/or Egan would include at least doxastic properties (e.g., the property shared by all those who believe their own pants are on fire), properties picked out by “predicates of personal taste” such as ‘tasty’ or ‘fun’, egocentric spatial properties (being to the right, being such that the tree is further away than the house), and the undiscriminating property being self-identical.
Another possibility that suggests itself is that one might construct a hybrid view combining a relationalist metaphysics of color properties with a self-locating property story about the property extensions and semantics.
This sort of a view might start by accepting a fine-grained inventory of relational colors (red for \(S_1\) in \(C_1\), green for \(S_2\) in \(C_2\), etc.). It could then add unrelativized/non-relational but (interestingly) self-locating colors: we could say that attributing red to \(a\) delivers the centered world proposition true with respect to \(\langle w, t, i\rangle\) iff \(a\) exemplifies the fine-grained relational property red to \(i\) in the circumstance \(i\) occupies in \(w\) at \(t\).
This hybrid view would meet the ecumenicism desideratum in two ways, corresponding to the explanations of ecumenicism supplied by both the of the theories it draws upon—viz., because of its reliance on fine-grained relational properties constituted in terms of relations to subjects and circumstances, and also because distinct properties will be compossible relative to distinct centers). It would also meet the comparability desideratum because of its reliance on self-locating properties: it makes sense, on this view, to ask about whether the extensions of two self-locating color properties, evaluated relative to the very same center, overlap or are disjoint. Moreover, the hybrid view would allow, as the self-locating property view does not, a systematic explanation of why its self-locating color properties are subject-involving: namely, it claims that exemplifying such properties is a matter of bearing the color constitutive relation (whatever that is) to a subject and a circumstance.
That said, the hybrid view envisaged here seems clunky in a few respects that make it not worth accepting. First, if it was supposed to be an advantage of the self-locating property view that it avoids the relationalist’s dual levels of properties, the hybrid view gives up this advantage. Second, as noted, the hybrid view contains the apparatus to explain ecumenicism twice over, and this seems redundant. And while this redundancy might be worth accepting if it were the only way of accounting for comparability, we’ve seen (in the sections entitled “Color Relationalism and Ecumenicism” and “Self-Locating Properties, Ecumenicism, and Comparability”) that it is not.
Recall that the latter view delivers ecumenicism not by proliferating properties, but by proliferating centers (viz., \(\langle w, t, i\rangle\) triples) with respect to which we can evaluate the extension of each property. But the proliferation of centers is a price everyone should be willing to pay—that’s just a consequence of the plurality of worlds, times, and individuals. (Remember that, for present purposes, we can read the commitment to worlds in just as metaphysically inflationary or deflationary terms as we like. Indeed, even if we were forced for some reason to think of a commitment to plural worlds in inflationary terms, presumably the burden of motivating this commitment wouldn’t depend on any special features of our account of color, in particular. Hence, the proliferation of world components of centers really is innocuous from the present point of view.)
Indeed, Brogaard (2015, p. 12) points out that if we insist on the possibility that color experiences represent interpersonally shareable contents, relationalists will be forced to conclude that color experiences cannot represent color properties (even though they can represent shape, texture, and other visually accessible properties). I agree with Brogaard that this conclusion is implausible, and see it as yet another reason that relationalists should deny Brogaard’s assumption that the contents of perception/perceptual experience must be shareable.
Analogy: It’s fair to demand that an adequate overall account of language understanding should predict the unacceptability of (6).
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6.
Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo. (Pinker 2000, p.210)
But it’s not fair to demand that an adequate syntactic theory, in particular, should be the particular component of the overall account of language understanding from which the prediction is derived.
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6.
Thanks to Adam Pautz for pushing me on these issues.
Analogy: Consider the following pair of ascriptions:
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9.
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(a)
\(S_1\): Jones is tall.
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(b)
\(S_2\): Jones is not tall.
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(a)
Presenting these ascriptions in such close proximity encourages us to treat the two ascriptions as occurring in a single context, and to take them as comparable/conflicting. When we add that \(S_1\) is a high school basketball coach and \(S_2\) is an NBA scout, we add information that makes it at least less likely (but not impossible; see note 33) that the two utterances occur in contexts that overlap in the standard of comparison for ‘tall’ that they make available; consequently, the impression of comparability weakens significantly. Interestingly, however, even when the impression of comparability weakens in this way, there remains a modest sense of conflict between (9a–b), plausibly arising from our knowledge that the two linguistic forms can be used to generate mutually incompossible contents by evaluating them with respect to a common context, even if they were not so evaluated on this occasion.
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9.
Objection: The weak, character-based sense of comparability/conflict is too weak. After all, the same, weak, character-based sense of comparability applies to John’s and Mary’s utterances in (10a–b):
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10.
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(a)
John: I am a doctor.
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(b)
Mary: I am not a doctor.
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(a)
But surely there is no impression that John’s and Mary’s utterances disagree—certainly not in the sense that the disagreement data of the section entitled “Agreement and Comparability” present, and that we took it as (part of) our brief to account for.
Response: The character-based sense of comparability/conflict at issue is indeed weak (though, I believe, non-vanishing), and would not be plausible if offered as a full account of comparability intuitions with respect to color attributions, generally speaking. But the relationalist does not offer it as a full account of comparability intuitions with respect to color attributions, generally speaking. On the contrary, she claims that there are plenty of color attributions that are comparable in a much more robust sense (viz., those made in contexts that agree about the perceivers/perceptual circumstances they make relevant). The present point is that even where relationalism does not allow for conflict in that robust sense, there is a weaker sense of conflict that remains, and that may be the source of any residual intuitions of comparability that might otherwise be adduced as evidence that the account undergenerates cases.
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10.
I should note that there are at least some cases with this structure in which the comparability intuition can become extremely weak; of course, relationalism is not challenged by those cases. What follows is an attempt to explain how relationalists/contextualists can secure comparability in cases where it is needed. If it should turn out that there are few such cases at the end of the day, then no harm done.
Just what sort of a single-scoreboard semantics should we accept? There are many options here, and different contextualists will have different preferred answers, and possibly different answers for different kinds of cases. DeRose (2004), who is defending contextualism about knowledge attributions, rather than color attributions, considers a (non-exhaustive) range of single-scoreboard rules for contextual setting of epistemic standards including the following: higher standards prevail, non-vetoed standards prevail, a binding arbitration model, community deference, an ‘exploding scoreboard’ rule (extensive semantic gappiness for knowledge attributions), more limited gappiness rules of various kinds, and a supervaluationist rule. I see no reason versions of these proposals couldn’t be adapted to the sort of contextualism about ordinary color attributions we are considering here.
(Perhaps needless to say, if there is such a procedure for installing a single scoreboard for contextual supplementation within a discourse, there’s no reason to think of that procedure as marking metaphysically significant distinctions; hence, the idea that there is a single conversational scoreboard in no way supports the view that there is a metaphysically significant asymmetry between perceptual variants in the context of the argument from perceptual variation discussed in the section entitled “Perceptual Variation and Ecumenicism.”)
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Acknowledgments
Thanks to Berit Brogaard, Daniel Burnston, Mazviita Chirimuuta, Damon Crockett, Andy Egan, Matthew Fulkerson, and an anoymous referee for this journal for comments and discussion, and to audiences at Auburn University, the University of Glasgow, and the University of London, who heard earlier versions of this material.
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Cohen, J. Ecumenicism, Comparability, and Color, or: How to Have Your Cake and Eat It, Too. Minds & Machines 25, 149–175 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11023-014-9354-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11023-014-9354-6