Laura Berchielli - Color, Space and Figure in Locke: An Interpretation of the Molyneux Problem - Journal of the History of Philosophy 40:1 Journal of the History of Philosophy 40.1 47-65 Color, Space, and Figure in Locke: An Interpretation of the Molyneux Problem Laura Berchielli THIS IS HOW LOCKE, in the second edition of his Essay Concerning Human Understanding , introduces a question that had been suggested to him in a letter from William Molyneux: . . . I (...) shall here insert a Problem of that very Ingenious and Studious promoter of Knowledge, the Learned and Worthy Mr. Molineux, which he was pleased to send me in a Letter some Months since; and it is this: Suppose a Man born blind, and now adult, and taught by his touch to distinguish between a Cube, and a Sphere of the same metal, and nighly of the same bigness, so as to tell, when he felt one and t'other, which is the Cube, which the Sphere. Suppose then the Cube and Sphere placed on a Table, and the Blind Man to be made to see. Quaere, Whether by his Sight, before he touch'd them, he could now distinguish, and tell, which is the Globe, which the Cube. In the standard interpretation of the Molyneux problem as presented in Locke, the question is always linked to the general issue of differences in the ideas of figure received by the various senses. This interpretation -- put forward by Berkeley --says that for Locke, the ideas of figure produced by sight are specifically different from.. (shrink)

Contra Shepard we argue, first, that his presentation of a three-dimensional representational (psychological or phenomenal) colour space is at odds with many results in colour science, and, second, that there is insufficient evidence for Shepard's stronger claim that the three-dimensionality of colour perception has resulted from natural selection, moulded by the particulars of the solar spectrum and its variations. [Shepard].

This chapter discusses the ordering of color percepts, and starts by presenting an overview of the critical issues surrounding the topic and by examining the relationship between stimuli and percepts. Certain types of variability were found by experimental psychology in the relationship between stimulus and response as a result of observation conditions. In the twentieth century, the view that the normal human color-vision system has a standard implementation and that all perceptual data are appropriately treated with normal statistical (...) distribution methodology became the standard paradigm. However, the idea that the large number of color percepts humans can experience must fit into some kind of ordering system is an old one, going as far back to Aristotle and his proposed color categories based on a scale of chromatic colors between white and black. The strengths and limitations of the more recently developed kinds of color order systems are also touched upon here. (shrink)

Color coding is used to guide attention in computer displays for such critical tasks as baggage screening or air traffic control. It has been shown that a display object attracts more attention if its color is more similar to the color for which one is searching. However, what does similar precisely mean? Can we predict the amount of attention that a display color will receive during a search for a given target color? To tackle this (...) question, two color‐search experiments measuring the selectivity of saccadic eye movements and mapping out its underlying color space were conducted. A variety of mathematical models, predicting saccadic selectivity for given target and display colors, were devised and evaluated. The results suggest that applying a Gaussian function to a weighted Euclidean distance in a slightly modified HSI color space is the best predictor of saccadic selectivity in the chosen paradigm. Hue and intensity information by itself provides a basis for useful predictors, spanning a possibly spherical color space of saccadic selectivity. Although the current models cannot predict saccadic selectivity values for a wide variety of visual search tasks, they reveal some characteristics of color search that are of both theoretical and applied interest, such as for the design of human–computer interfaces. (shrink)

So far, color-naming studies have relied on a rather limited set of color stimuli. Most importantly, stimuli have been largely limited to highly saturated colors. Because of this, little is known about how people categorize less saturated colors and, more generally, about the structure of color categories as they extend across all dimensions of color space. This article presents the results from a large Internet-based color-naming study that involved color stimuli ranging across all available (...) chroma levels in Munsell space. These results help answer such questions as how English speakers name a more complex color set, whether English speakers use so-called basic color terms (BCTs) more frequently for more saturated colors, how they use non-BCTs in comparison with BCTs, whether non-BCTs are highly consensual in less saturated parts of the solid, how deep inside color space basic color categories extend, or how they behave on the chroma dimension. (shrink)

Multidimensional scaling of subjective color differences has shown that color stimuli are located on a hypersphere in four-dimensional space. The semantic space of color names is isomorphic with perceptual color space. A spherical four-dimensional space revealed in monkeys and fish suggests the primacy of common neuronal basis.

Sensory qualities are objective properties; indeed, on the evidence, they are physical properties. However, what makes a physical property the sensory quality it is is its relationship to sensory experiences of perceivers. For instance, the redness of a surface is a physical property of the surface; what makes that physical property surface red is the fact that it disposes surfaces to look red to appropriate visual perceivers in appropriate viewing circumstances. What it is like for something to look red—that is, (...) the actual phenomenal character of visual experiences as of something red—is also a physical property; on the evidence, it is a physical property of the brain. (shrink)

Palmer's strategy of saving functionalism by constraining spectrum inversions cannot succeed because (1) there remain many nontrivial transformations not ruled out by Palmer's constraints, and (2) the constraints involved are due to the contingent makeup of our visual systems, and are therefore not available for use by functionalists.

Palmer's attempt to dust off Locke's construct of “inverted spectrum” is discussed here to examine its plausibility. Perceptual inversion could be fulfilled by adopting the notion of “inverted trichromacy” rather than by the proposed existence of “red-green reversed trichromats.” Although the former alternative conforms to a hypothetical world of vampires, it fails to conform to the realities of genetics and neuroscience.

Modern color science finds its birth in the middle of the nineteenth century. Among the chief architects of the new color theory, the name of the polymath Hermann von Helmholtz stands out. A keen experimenter and profound expert of the latest developments of the fields of physiological optics, psychophysics, and geometry, he exploited his transdisciplinary knowledge to define the first non-Euclidean line element in color space, i.e., a three-dimensional mathematical model used to describe color differences in (...) terms of color distances. Considered as the first step toward a metrically significant model of color space, his work inaugurated researches on higher color metrics, which describes how distance in the color space translates into perceptual difference. This paper focuses on the development of Helmholtz’s mathematical derivation of the line element. Starting from the first experimental evidence which opened the door to his reflections about the geometry of color space, it will be highlighted the pivotal role played by the studies conducted by his assistants in Berlin, which provided precious material for the elaboration of the final model proposed by Helmholtz in three papers published between 1891 and 1892. Although fallen into oblivion for about three decades, Helmholtz’s masterful work was rediscovered by Schrödinger and, since the 1920s, it has provided the basis for all subsequent studies on the geometry of color spaces up to the present time. (shrink)

Taking the real Newtonian colour circle – and not the one Palmer depicts as Newton's – we don't have to wait 300 years for Palmer to say no to the Lockean aperçu about the inverted spectrum. One of the aims of this historical detour is to show that one's commitment about the “topology” of the colour space greatly affects Palmer's argument.

In a promising working note to the Visible and Invisible, Merleau-Ponty proposes that we understand Being according to topological space – relations of proximity, distance, and envelopment – and move away from an image of Being based on homogeneous, inert Euclidean space. With reference to treatments of cross-sensory perception, color-blindness, and the concept of quale or qualia, I seek to rehearse this shift from Euclidean to topological Being by illustrating how modern science confines color itself to a Euclidean (...) model of color space. I discuss “being as Object” in Merleau-Ponty’s later work before showing how color, and indeed all perception, is reduced to being as Object in the form of “quale”. Next, I address discussions in Merleau-Ponty’s work and contemporary research to illustrate how synesthesia and so-called color-blindness are rendered abnormal by this objectified being of color. Merleau-Ponty’s reading of synesthesia follows directly from his rejection of quale, and his use of color perception serves as a rejection of solipsism. With appeal to his proposed topological model of Being, I conclude by recognizing the problematic nature of synesthesia and color-blindness as being ontological, not psychological.Dans une note de travail, à mon sens décisive, du Visible et l’Invisible, Merleau-Ponty propose que l’on comprenne l’Être à partir de l’espace topologique – relations de proximité, distance et enveloppement – allant à l’encontre d’une l’image de l’Être fondée sur un espace euclidien homogène et inerte. En faisant référence aux traitements de la perception synesthésique, au daltonisme et au concept de quale ou qualia, j’essayerai de décrire ce passage de l’Être euclidien à l’Être topologique en montrant que la science moderne finit par confiner la couleur dans un modèle euclidien d’espace-couleur. J’examinerai « l’Être-objet » dans les derniers écrits de Merleau-Ponty avant de montrer comment la couleur, et plus en général la perception, est réduite à être comme un Objet dans la forme d’un « quale ». Ensuite, en examinant les analyses merleau-pontiennes et les recherches contemporaines, je montrerai comment la synesthésie et le daltonisme sont donc considérés comme anormaux à partir de cette objectivation de la couleur. La lecture que Merleau-Ponty donne de la synesthésie est la conséquence directe de son refus du quale, et l’utilisation qu’il fait de la perception des couleurs sert comme un refus du solipsisme. En faisant appel au modèle topologique de l’Être qu’il propose, je conclurai en constatant que la nature problématique de la synesthésie et du daltonisme est ontologique et non pas psychologique.In una nota di lavoro al Visibile e l’invisibile, Merleau-Ponty propone di comprendere l’Essere a partire da uno spazio topologico – secondo le relazioni di prossimità, distanza e avvolgimento – e abbandona l’immagine di un Essere fondato su uno spazio omogeneo, inerte, euclideo. Facendo riferimento ai trattamenti per le percezioni sinestetiche, al daltonismo e al concetto di quale o qualia, si cercherà di provare questo passaggio da un Essere euclideo a uno topologico, illustrando quanto la scienza moderna tenda a ridurre il concetto stesso di colore a un modello euclideo di spazio-colore. Si esaminerà l’“Essere-oggetto” degli ultimi lavori di Merleau-Ponty, mostrando come il colore, e in realtà la percezione tout court, vengano ridotti a oggetto nella forma di “quale”. Infine, si esaminerà l’opera merleau-pontiana e la ricerca contemporanea al fine di illustrare quanto la sinestesia e il daltonismo siano resi anormali da questa oggettivazione dell’essere del colore. L’interpretazione merleau-pontiana della sinestesia deriva proprio dal suo rifiuto del quale, e il suo uso della percezione del colore funge da rifiuto del solipsismo. Ricorrendo al modello topologico di Essere elaborato da Merleau-Ponty, si conclude riconoscendo che il problema della sinestesia e del daltonismo è, a tutti gli effetti, ontologico e non psicologico. (shrink)

I motivate and defend a previously underdeveloped functionalist account of the metaphysics of color, a view that I call ‘quality-space functionalism’ about color. Although other theorists have proposed varieties of color functionalism, this view differs from such accounts insofar as it identifies and individuates colors by their relative locations within a particular kind of so-called ‘quality space’ that reflects creatures’ capacities to discriminate visually among stimuli. My arguments for this view of color are abductive: I propose (...) that quality-space functionalism best captures our commonsense conception of color, fits with many experimental findings, coheres with the phenomenology of color experience, and avoids many issues for standard theories of color such as color physicalism and color relationalism. (shrink)

We need to reconsider and reconceive the path that will take us from innate perceptual saliencies to basic colour language. There is a space between the perceptual and the linguistic levels that needs to be filled by an account of the rules that people use to generate relatively stable reference classes in a social context.

Summary In the visual arts, the constructions of the spatial and chromatic structures of pictures can hardly be separated from each other. The phenomenological approach from the perspective of the arts provides an independent and worthwhile approach to the topic of colour and space. We address some matters of composition in design and, to some extent, in naturalistic painting. The phenomenological approach from the perspective of the arts reveals various topics that invite further investigation by the means of generic vision (...) science. However, although such studies might lead to increased academic insight, a thorough inquiry by the means of experimental phenomenology might well lead to formal descriptions that come somewhat closer to possible applications in the visual arts. (shrink)

Argues for a reading of H. P. Lovecraft’s 1927 short story, "The Colour out of Space," as an affective response to the problem of induction. Lovecraft weighs the meaning of our epistemic frailty, drawing on George Santayana’s "Scepticism and Animal Faith." His writing elicits inductive vertigo, the fear that our concepts fail to carve nature at the joints.

The increase in emotional consumption reflects the increased emotional appeal of people in modern life. As a place for people’s daily life and consumption, the indoor environment has been regarded as a symbol of quality of life and esthetic taste. The purpose of this paper is to study how to analyze and study the color factor and space humanization in interior design based on emotional needs, and describe the neural network. This paper puts forward the problem of emotional needs, (...) which is based on the neural network model, and then elaborates on its concept and related algorithms, and designs and analyzes the case design and analysis of the humanized design of interior color and space based on emotional needs. The experimental results show that in the evaluation of the emotional needs of indoor environment users, the emotional needs of users for the three levels are all above 3.00. Users have the highest emotional needs at the usage level, reaching 4.24. It shows that users pay more attention to the practical value of the indoor environment, and hope to obtain a pleasant emotional experience by meeting the needs of practical value. (shrink)

Summary Colour and space are pervasive topics in both perception and art. This article investigates the role of colour and pattern in relation to space and time in the art works by two artists: Frank Stella, a well-known Post-War American abstract painter, and Pieter Vermeersch, an emerging Belgian abstract painter, representing a contemporary trend to break the barriers between artistic disciplines. While Stella adheres to the Modernist logic of non-illusionistic, non-spatial, non-referential art as object, perceived instantaneously, Vermeersch explores ways to (...) enhance the viewers’ spatial and temporal experiences through complex art installations with multiple objects and architectural elements interacting with each other and with the spaces in which they are embedded. We discuss these major themes in some representative art works, and in the way they are perceived and appreciated by contemporary viewers, investigated in four empirical studies: two laboratory experiments using well-controlled stimuli derived from at works, and two museum studies employing a variety of methods, including mobile eye-tracking and questionnaires. (shrink)

How, if at all, does the internal structure of human phenomenological color space map onto the internal structure of objective reflectance‐profile space, in such a fashion as to provide a useful and accurate representation of that objective feature space? A prominent argument (due to Hardin, among others) proposes to eliminate colors as real, objective properties of objects, on grounds that nothing in the external world (and especially not surface‐reflectance‐profiles) answers to the well‐known and quite determinate internal structure of human (...) phenomenological color space. The present paper proposes a novel way to construe the objective space of possible reflectance profiles so that (1) its internal structure becomes evident, and (2) that structure’s homomorphism with the internal structure of human phenomenological color space becomes obvious. The path is thus reopened to salvage the objective reality of colors, in the same way that we preserved the objective reality of such features as temperature, pitch, and sourness—by identifying them with some objective feature recognized in modern physical theory. (shrink)

Metaphysical and epistemological commitments seem to determine the course of research in the field of logic as well as its theoretical interpretation. What we take the objects of logical investigation to be determines our views on how they are to be known, and our view of the possible types of knowledge in turn places restrictions on what kinds of things those objects could be. Perhaps it is true that logical studies can be pursued to great lengths without indulging in general (...) declarations about the nature of reality or of human knowledge. But to say this is very far from admitting the possibility of “logic without ontology.” The thoughtful beginning student in logic quickly wants to know what it is he or she is really studying and what, precisely, it has to do with the real worlds. The slightest philosophical stimulation will lead him or her, further, to ask about the evidence supporting the various sorts of claims made as the course progresses, and about the methodology of logic from a scientific point of view. Rarely is any answer given to such questions, much less a reasonable and well elaborated one. Questions of this type are usually discouraged and avoided by text books and instructors, and there may even be some suggestion that to ask them evidences confusion and stupidity. But when they are pressed it turns out that logic as a field of knowledge and inquiry remains in chaos at its philosophical foundations. I mean by this that the leading investigators cannot agree—indeed, they disagree in dimensions categorial—concerning what the subject of logical knowledge is, and concerning the modes of logical knowledge. (shrink)

In spatial sequence synaesthesia ordinal stimuli are perceived as arranged in peripersonal space. Using fMRI, we examined the neural bases of SSS and colour synaesthesia for spoken words in a late-blind synaesthete, JF. He reported days of the week and months of the year as both coloured and spatially ordered in peripersonal space; parts of the days and festivities of the year were spatially ordered but uncoloured. Words that denote time-units and triggered no concurrents were used in a control condition. (...) Both conditions inducing SSS activated the occipito-parietal, infero-frontal and insular cortex. The colour area hOC4v was engaged when the synaesthetic experience included colour. These results confirm the continued recruitment of visual colour cortex in this late-blind synaesthetes. Synaesthesia also involved activation in inferior frontal cortex, which may be related to spatial memory and detection, and in the insula, which might contribute to audiovisual integration related to the processing of inducers and concurrents. (shrink)

Against the Newtonian view of color, according to which the world is colorless and colors are subjective sensations, phenomenologists keep insisting that colors are in the world. In order to defend this view of the “being in the world” of colors, this paper tries to elucidate the essential spatiality of colors on the basis of James’s thesis of the intrinsic spatiality of sensation, Katz’s phenomenological description of various spatial characters of color, and Gibson’s ecological optics. The noticeable correspondence (...) between Katz’s phenomenology and Gibson’s ecological optics indicates to us a possible way to an ecological phenomenology of colors. (shrink)

Philosophers and scientists have long speculated about the nature of color. Atomists such as Democritus thought color to be "conventional," not real; Galileo and other key figures of the Scientific Revolution thought that it was an erroneous projection of our own sensations onto external objects. More recently, philosophers have enriched the debate about color by aligning the most advanced color science with the most sophisticated methods of analytical philosophy. In this volume, leading scientists and philosophers examine (...) new problems with new analytic tools, considering such topics as the psychophysical measurement of color and its implications, the nature of color experience in both normal color-perceivers and the color blind, and questions that arise from what we now know about the neural processing of color information, color consciousness, and color language. Taken together, these papers point toward a complete restructuring of current orthodoxy concerning color experience and how it relates to objective reality. Kuehni, Jameson, Mausfeld, and Niederee discuss how the traditional framework of a three-dimensional color space and basic color terms is far too simple to capture the complexities of color experience. Clark and MacLeod discuss the difficulties of a materialist account of color experience. Churchland, Cohen, Matthen, and Westphal offer competing accounts of color ontology. Finally, Broackes and Byrne and Hilbert discuss the phenomenology of color blindness. Contributors: Justin Broackes, Alex Byrne, Paul M. Churchland, Austen Clark, Jonathan Cohen, David R. Hilbert, Kimberly A. Jameson, Rolf Kuehni, Don I.A. MacLeod, Mohan Matthen, Rainer Mausfeld, Richard Niederée, Jonathan Westphal The hardcover edition does not include a dust jacket. (shrink)

Sections R1 to R3 attempt to take the sting out of hostile commentaries. Sections R4 to R5 engage Berlin and Kay and the World Color Survey to correct the record. Section R6 begins the formulation of a new theory of colour as an engineering project with a technological developmental trajectory. It is recommended that the colour space be abandoned.

In the editor's notes, King explains students of color desire for social studies education that speaks to their humanity. He introduces the articles in this special issue and defines unofficial and unconventional social studies spaces. He also argues for a more complete social studies education that helps the field understand other places where social studies is performed.

Despite myths of color-blindness in the Netherlands, Black women are marginalized by mainstream expectations of racial and cultural homogeneity. I use Amsterdam Black Women as a case study to illustrate the lived experiences of women affected by this exclusion. In this space, women freely critique Dutch society through mundane moments of truth-telling, venting, and joking, which enable individual problems to rise to a community level. I explore how subtle configurations of Black feminist organizing can be key sites of healing, (...) experimentation, and political engagement. This research complicates how we understand experiences of misogynoir when race consciousness is blended in a transnational context and how Amsterdam Black Women has made possible the refusal of Dutch norms that require members to accept their oppression silently and support false narratives of progressiveness and color-blindness. (shrink)

An expression-induction model was used to simulate the evolution of basic color terms to test Berlin and Kay's (1969) hypothesis that the typological patterns observed in basic color term systems are produced by a process of cultural evolution under the influence of biases resulting from the special properties of universal focal colors. Ten agents were simulated, each of which could learn color term denotations by generalizing from examples using Bayesian inference, and for which universal focal red, yellow, (...) green, and blue were especially salient, but unevenly spaced in the perceptual color space. Conversations between these agents, in which agents would learn from one another, were simulated over several generations, and the languages emerging at the end of each simulation were investigated. The proportion of color terms of each type correlated closely with the equivalent frequencies found in the World Color Survey, and most of the emergent languages could be placed on one of the evolutionary trajectories proposed by Kay and Maffi (1999). The simulation therefore demonstrates how typological patterns can emerge as a result of learning biases acting over a period of time. (shrink)

An expression-induction model was used to simulate the evolution of basic color terms to test Berlin and Kay's (1969) hypothesis that the typological patterns observed in basic color term systems are produced by a process of cultural evolution under the influence of biases resulting from the special properties of universal focal colors. Ten agents were simulated, each of which could learn color term denotations by generalizing from examples using Bayesian inference, and for which universal focal red, yellow, (...) green, and blue were especially salient, but unevenly spaced in the perceptual color space. Conversations between these agents, in which agents would learn from one another, were simulated over several generations, and the languages emerging at the end of each simulation were investigated. The proportion of color terms of each type correlated closely with the equivalent frequencies found in the World Color Survey, and most of the emergent languages could be placed on one of the evolutionary trajectories proposed by Kay and Maffi (1999). The simulation therefore demonstrates how typological patterns can emerge as a result of learning biases acting over a period of time. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:A Picture Is a Patchwork of Color Laid Out in a Private Space in Which Lie Flat Imitations of LifeDavid Socher, Independent ScholarThe fish to be fried has an ontological head, an epistemic belly, and an aesthetic tail.1 A picture is a patchwork of color laid out in a private space in which lie flat imitations of life. Such a patchwork constitutes a make-believe visual field. I (...) roll out this suggestion under the following headings: Intention, Form and Content, Ontology, Picture Space, Make-believe, Photography, and Resemblance (see Figure 1).In Annie and Alfred's house the wallpaper has daisies, the linoleum has pine trees, the carpet has tigers, and the upholstery has sailboats. In Betty and Bill's house the wallpaper is plaid, the linoleum is checkerboard, the carpet is paisley, and the upholstery herringbone. Annie, Alfred, Betty, and Bill all have a few one-dollar bills and a few five-dollar bills. As you of course know, the ones have Washington on them and the fives have Lincoln on them. It goes without saying that these daisies, pine trees, tigers, sailboats, Washingtons, and Lincolns are, in fact, pictures, a word I have not used until now. The absence of that word was not particularly noticeable. That is just the way a daisy is on wallpaper and that is just the way a president is on currency. (The word picture is not the only word to act this way, to drop out in this fashion. Take the word name. When I am on a list it is because my name, or perhaps my number is on the list.) For starters let us bring aboard the term picture to include these daisies, trees, tigers, sailboats, and presidents. And let us note that there are no pictures in Betty's wallpaper, linoleum, carpet, and upholstery.Some pictures work harder than Annie's daisies. Consider, for example, the use of pictures in pedestrian traffic lights. The pedestrian WALK sign pictures (in plain white light) a walking figure. And the DON"T WALK sign pictures (in flashing red light) an upraised hand enjoining us to stop.2 The first directs us to walk by showing us an example of walking, by picturing a walking person. We do what the figure does. It walks, we walk. In the second picture we sort of make-believe it is the hand of a traffic officer holding [End Page 105] his hand up for us to stop. This picture does not operate by example. We are certainly not expected to hold up our hand; we are expected to stop. With this sign a picture is used to command by picturing a command. In the WALK sign a picture is used to command by picturing compliance. So these are two ways of using a picture to direct our actions—picturing compliance and picturing a command. Here is a third sign—a picture of a cigarette is overlaid with a red X. The sign tells us not to smoke. It does not picture either command or compliance. It pictures, rather, the prohibited thing. This sign has a non-pictorial content, the X. It signals the prohibition. Click for larger view View full resolutionFigure 1.Annie's daisies, sailboats, and presidents are not to be imitated like the walking figure, nor obeyed like the halting hand, nor avoided like the prohibited cigarette. In merely displaying their subject these pictures fulfill their mission (see Table 1).IntentionBut what is the subject of a picture? What determines who or what is pictured? The Cracker Jack box features a boy in a sailor suit. Shortly before that [End Page 106] confection went into production, the founder's young grandson died, and the founder put that picture on the box in his memory. Since, whatever the founder had in mind, we do not take the sailor boy on the box to be that grandson, it is not him. Excluding the important special case of photographs we require, as Wolheim put it, intention fulfilled to specify the subject of a picture.3 In this case, even if the founder regarded his memorializing gesture as one of putting his grandson... (shrink)

Do English-speakers think about anger as “red” and sadness as “blue”? Some theories of emotion suggests that color(s) - like other biologically-derived signals- should be reliably paired with an emotion, and that colors should differentiate across emotions. We assessed consistency and specificity for color-emotion pairings among English-speaking adults. In study 1, participants (n = 73) completed an online survey in which they could select up to three colors from 23 colored swatches (varying hue, saturation, and light) for each (...) of ten emotion words. In study 2, different participants (n = 52) completed a similar online survey except that we added additional emotions and colors (which better sampled color space). Participants in both studies indicated the strength of the relationship between a selected color(s) and the emotion. In study 1, four of the ten emotions showed consistency, and about one-third of the colors showed specificity, yet agreement was low-to-moderate among raters even in these cases. When we resampled our data, however, none of these effects were likely to replicate with statistical confidence. In study 2, only two of twenty emotions showed consistency, and three colors showed specificity. As with the first study, no color-emotion pairings were both specific and consistent. In addition, in study 2, we found that saturation and lightness, and to a lesser extent hue, predicted color-emotion agreement rather than perceived color. The results suggest that previous studies which report emotion-color pairings are likely best thought of experiment-specific. The results are discussed with respect to constructionist theories of emotion. (shrink)

Studying colour vision across various species suggests that different species perceive different colours (the Disunity Hypothesis). It is plausible that all species’ color visual systems are, at least in principle, equally correct/veridical regarding colour (Ecumenicism). Assuming that colours are mind-independent features of material objects (Objectivism), it follows that objects simultaneously have different colours for different species (Pluralism). But are all these colours compatible with one another? Some have argued that they are on grounds that, while comparisons between colours are (...) possible within a given species’ colour space, they are not possible across the colour spaces of different species. Since colours from different spaces are not comparable, they cannot be incompatible. Hence, a given object can have a colour from as many colour spaces as needed to explain interspecies variations in colour perception. I argue that this reasoning is flawed in two ways. First, colour spaces that are non-comparable in pure or abstract reasoning, may nonetheless be comparable in applied contexts. Second, in our applied context – our world – evidence suggests that incompatibilities between colours from different species’ spaces are extremely likely when Colour Objectivism is presumed. But then the Pluralist solution to interspecies variation seems unavailable to the colour objectivist. (shrink)

[Colour is king in our innate quality space, but undistinguished in cosmic circles.] Most philosophers would agree with at least the second half of Quine's dictum. It is indeed on the general view wrong to believe that, as qualities, colours are extra-mentally actual in even the humblest role. Mind-independent material things have on the general view powers to cause sensations of red or blue, but if, in [sensations of red or blue], [red] and [blue] name qualities, we are not to (...) believe that these qualities are possessed by things causing the sensations. My first thesis, defended in section 2, is that partly because we do count colours as eminent among qualities, we would on reflection want it to be true that some things have such qualities when they are not perceived. It would therefore be sad subsequently to discover the wrongness of believing that this is how things are. My second thesis, defended in sections 3 and 4, is that there is in fact no danger as yet of this kind of disappointment. So far, the philosophers have not shown that, if we believe that colour qualities exist as contents of experience, we ought not also to believe that things have these qualities when they are not perceived. One might of course deny that colour qualities exist even as contents of experience, so that the desire for them to be mind-independently exemplified evaporates on the realization that it lacks an intelligible object. Our pre-scientific concept of red, according to Armstrong, is, apart from being the concept of something falling under a determinable, [all blank or gap]. (shrink)

I argue that naturalistic pictures provide a guide and a justification for our concept of colour. The crucial relation between pictures and colours is to be brought out, not by reference to the ‘internal’ relations between colours (for example, what differentiates green from red), but by considering how colours are differentiated from the wider range of visually discriminable qualities. Naturalistic pictures effect such a differentiation by simulating colour-like qualities such as gold, amber, and blond, while requiring nothing beyond the three-dimensional (...) manifold of colour space. The seeming simplicity and salience of colour in our visual experience should be recognized as depending on our familiarity with this reductive power of naturalistic pictures. While some sense of these issues has been given expression by many thinkers, the idea is significantly articulated in remarks of Wittgenstein's that were prompted by his reading of a letter the painter Runge wrote to Goethe. (shrink)

Canadian Schools of Nursing rest upon white, colonial legacies that have shaped and defined what is valued as nursing knowledge and pedagogy. The diversity that exists in clinical nursing and is emerging within the graduate student population is not currently reflected within nursing faculty and academic leadership. Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) nurse leaders, historically and presently, are repeatedly left unacknowledged as knowers and keepers of nursing knowledge. This lack of diversity persists across nursing knowledge generation, research, (...) and healthcare practices that ultimately aim to serve the increasingly diverse Canadian population. This narrative inquiry study examined the experiences of eight BIPOC graduate nursing students as they navigated white academic nursing spaces. The findings are presented to reflect their experiences of entrenched in whiteness, erasure of identity, and navigating belonging. These study findings highlight the importance of surfacing academic nursing history shaped by colonialism and racism, the need to diversify nursing faculty and the graduate nursing student population, and implementing nursing curricular and syllabi audits to ensure that they reflect the multitude of ways of knowing to expand dominant Eurocentric and Western knowledge in nursing education. (shrink)

One of the most important objections to sense data theory comes from the phenomenon of indeterminate perception, as when an object in the periphery of one’s visual field looks red without looking to have any determinate shade of red. As sense data are supposed to have precisely the properties that sensibly appear to us, sense data theory evidently has the implausible consequence that a sense datum can have a determinable property without having any of its determinates. In this article, I (...) show that a parallel objection applies to standard forms of colour relationism. In light of the phenomenon of indeterminate perception, the colour relationist must either reject intuitively obvious claims about the determinate–determinable structure of colour space or reject the plausible and widely accepted principle that nothing can have a determinable without having one of its determinates. (shrink)

This paper argues that phenomenal or internal metrical spaces are redundant posits. It is shown that we need not posit an internal space-time frame, as the physical space-time suffices to explain geometrical perception, memory and planning. More than the internal space-time frame, the idea of a phenomenal colour space has lent credibility to the idea of internal spaces. It is argued that there is no phenomenal colour space that underlies the various psychophysical colour spaces; it is parasitic (...) upon physical and psychophysical colour spaces. The argumentation is further extended to other sensory spaces and generalised quality spaces. (shrink)