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Perception, Color, and Realism

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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.

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Notes

  1. I owe this point to an anonymous referee.

  2. Given how the theories are constructed, if the number of required basis functions exceeds three (i.e., the number of cone cell classes), there is no unique solution for the “intrinsic color” specified by a surface’s basis function weights; see Maloney (1999, pp. 399–401).

  3. A similar question arises about the idea that the visual system achieves color constancy by performing—or behaving as though it performs—a matrix inversion to solve for a surface’s basis function weights; see Brown (2003). However, Usui et al. (1992) show that a five-layer neural network can perform an operation equivalent to singular value decomposition.

  4. Wright (submitted a) offers a proposal that effectively moves Romney’s cube-rooting of reflectance spectra inside the visual system.

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  1. Department of Philosophy, California State University, Long Beach, 1250 Bellflower Boulevard, Long Beach, CA, 90840, USA

    Wayne Wright

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Wright, W. Perception, Color, and Realism. Erkenn 73, 19–40 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-010-9223-5

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