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The Myth of Unique Hues

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Abstract

The paper examines the notion, widespread in the contemporary color science, that there are certain hues, specifically focal red, yellow, green and blue (RYGB), that are unique or privileged in human prelinguistic color perception, all other chromatic hues being perceptually composed of these. I successively consider and reject all motivations that have been provided for this opinion; namely the linguistic (unique hues as referents of necessary and sufficient color descriptors), “phenomenological” (unique hues as phenomenologically pure color experiences), and some minor or historical motivations. I conclude that, contrary to the standard opinion, there is no solid reason to claim that the RYGB hues are unique among colors in a sense that would allow for direct neurophysiological explanation. The notion also has no relevance for the construction of perceptual color spaces and is not defensible as an explanatory principle with respect to the existing crosslinguistic patterns of color categorization.

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Notes

  1. Since Hering and throughout the discussion, black and white have kept an ambivalent status, usually mentioned in connection with the assumed achromatic perceptual channel but omitted from the list of unique hues.

  2. Such as, the shape of the human perceptual color space, or influence of the languages of the Western colonialism, or the importance of communicating about certain colors for the survival in a natural environment.

  3. As regards (2), that is opponency, note that I only question the idea of red–green and yellow–blue as opponent perceptual channels, in no way putting in doubt the findings concerning opponent color coding in the retina or LGN.

  4. However, see the criticism of Johnson and Wright (2008), which is only partly addressed by the reply Philipona and O’Regan (2008). Cf. also Mollon’s (2006) suggestions concerning the extraordinary features of particular “unique hues”.

  5. On the other hand, one can get green as a mixture of blue and yellow; the analogies between talk about pigments and the hue-oriented talk are far from perfect.

  6. The latter difference will be probably found smaller, but that is a fact of different resolution abilities in different parts of the spectrum. It is not relevant for Ingling’s case: at other wavelengths one can as well find, on one hand, a pair of hues both describable as greenish yellow, and, on the other hand, a pair consisting of a reddish yellow and a greenish yellow hue, such that the perceptual difference (captured in a color space) within the first pair is greater that within the second.

  7. On purpose, I mostly omit references to the literature where these motivations are mentioned, as it is not clear that the authors would be willing to defend them explicitly. If a particular motivation turns out not to be seriously defended by anyone nowadays, the better for my case.

  8. Note that this is not necessarily the case for “opposite” hues if the color space is defined on the basis of judgments of perceptual similarity and difference.

  9. Even if it turned out that the phenomenon actually does support the two particular oppositions in perception, it would not be completely clear to what extent this vindicates also the uniqueness of RYGB in the narrow sense of the aspects (1) and (3) above. As one of the anonymous reviewers noted, e.g. the fact that there is an auditory scale from very loud to very silent, which has a clear biological basis, does not make the intermediate loudness levels perceptually composed of very loud and very silent.

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Acknowledgments

This paper draws on chapter 5 of the thesis Ocelák (2013), defended at the University of Amsterdam, under the supervision of Martin Stokhof. Valuable comments on the previous versions have been provided by him, by Lieven Decock, and by two anonymous reviewers. Any remaining faults are solely my responsibility. I am also grateful to the Dutch Nuffic for making my recent studies in the Netherlands possible. The paper gained partial support from the project GA UK 330214 “Color and Meaning” at Charles University, as well as from the Programme for the Development of Fields of Study at Charles University, No. P13 Rationality in human sciences, sub-programme Knowledge and Normativity.

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  1. Institute of Philosophy and Religious Studies, Charles University in Prague – Faculty of Arts, náměstí Jana Palacha 2, 116 38, Prague 1, Czech Republic

    Radek Ocelák

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Ocelák, R. The Myth of Unique Hues. Topoi 34, 513–522 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11245-014-9249-4

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