Abstract
Colour relationalism holds that the colours are constituted by relations to subjects. Anti-relationalists have claimed that this view stands in stark contrast to our phenomenally-informed, pre-theoretic intuitions. Is this claim right? Cohen and Nichols’ recent empirical study suggests not, as about half of their participants seemed to be relationalists about colour. Despite Cohen and Nichols’ study, we think that the anti-relationalist’s claim is correct. We explain why there are good reasons to suspect that Cohen and Nichols’ experimental design skewed their results in favour of relationalism. We then run an improved study and find that most of our participants seem to be anti-relationalists. We find some other interesting things too. Our results suggest that the majority of ordinary people find it no less intuitive that colours are objective than that shapes are objective. We also find some evidence that when those with little philosophical training are asked about the colours of objects, their intuitions about colour and shape cases are similar, but when asked about people’s colour ascriptions, their intuitions about colour and shape cases differ.
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Notes
It is important to recognize that there is dissent. One of the present authors has argued that it is misguided to say that the contemporary dispositionalist view holds that relations to subjects constitute the colours (Roberts 2013).
We do not mean to suggest in this taxonomy that physicalism, functionalism, and primitivism when understood broadly are incompatible with relationalism.
Cohen and Nichols’ (2010) also interpret each of these philosophers as endorsing the introspective rejoinder.
Our claim here is not a strong one. We think that, with respect to colour, phenomenal character has at least some bearing on representational content in typical, every-day cases. This weak premise is all that is needed to motivate the introspective rejoinder. Accepting it, for example, in no way commits one to any necessary connections between phenomenal character and representational content (i.e. to any form of intentionalism).
Cohen and Nichols also presented participants with putative disagreement cases involving gustatory properties (sweet, bitter, and sour) as well as cases involving the property deliciousness (2010, p. 221). The vast majority of their participants selected the relationalist option for both kinds of properties (2010, pp. 223–224). We concentrate on shape and colour, because it is these results that are integral to our defence of the introspective rejoinder.
There is another worry with (b). If one interprets ‘different visual experiences’ to mean ‘numerically different visual experiences’, then (b) is as close to undeniable as anything is in philosophy. So, it is reasonable to hold that upon reflection people would find that (b) is certain under this reading. So, participants may choose the relationalist option to choose (b), because they are certain that (b) is true under the relevant reading.
There is empirical evidence that the importance of being able to see colours is environmentally dependent. For example see, Changizi et al. (2006).
These participants were recruited in two sections. The first 67 participants were recruited spring 2013 using social media and through the University of Nottingham. The remaining 62 participants were recruited autumn 2013 through the University of Warwick’s Behavioural Science Group’s participant recruitment system.
There are various reasons why disambiguating statements like Target is important in experimental philosophy. One should not assume that participants will understand terms like “truth”, “fact of the matter”, “correct” and “accurate” the way we do. This is a lesson we can learn from the work of the “Oslo School”, e.g., Arne Naess and Herman Tennesen—work which is sometimes touted as early experimental philosophy. Another illustrative example is that of Fain and Kaelin (1960) who, in a similar early empirical study, found an astonishing level of agreement among philosophy undergraduates that all or most truths are relative (at the beginning of term 80 % and 83 % in consecutive years, and at the end of term 65 % and 56 %). On further investigation they found that “when a student says that the same proposition can be true for one person and false for another, he usually means something quite innocent: that the same proposition can be believed and disbelieved by different people at the same time” (p. 142).
A critic might note that our between-subjects design could hide within-subject differences, like the results Cohen and Nichols found. To mitigate these concerns, 52 willing participants from the University of Warwick were sent a second survey about whichever property they did not respond to originally in a follow up email a week later. In total, 37 participants responded to the second survey (18 colour).
Descriptively, the participants’ responses to Target for both colour and shape are very similar. For colour the median response was eight; while for shape the median response was nine. Notably, the modal responses for both colour and shape were 10. Statistically, these results were compared with a sign test, a non-parametric alternative to the repeated samples t-test. The test found no difference between participants’ colour and shape responses (z = 1.24, p = 0.21). Thus, even employing a within-samples design, like Cohen and Nichols, we find no difference between participants’ colour and shape Target responses.
A significant correlation also emerged between Verbal and Perceptual for both colour and shape cases. This correlation was to be expected and suggests that participants were paying attention.
This additional case was presented only to participants recruited in the second section through the University of Warwick (see footnote 8). The correlation between Target and Epistemic was first brought to our attention when considering the responses of participants in the first section.
The fraction 5/67 represents the proportion of participants who appealed to quasi-scientific views across three variants of a pilot study run in Autumn 2012.
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Acknowledgments
We are especially grateful to Philip Percival, Jonathan Tallant, and Joshua Knobe for helpful comments. We would also like to thank an anonymous referee.
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Roberts, P., Andow, J. & Schmidtke, K. Colour Relationalism and the Real Deliverances of Introspection. Erkenn 79, 1173–1189 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-014-9600-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-014-9600-6