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)

The physical properties of color and its influence on the organism -- The source of the myths about experience : the principle of the being and thinking identity.

Color provides an instance of a general puzzle about how to reconcile the picture of the world given to us by our ordinary experience with the picture of the world given to us by our best theoretical accounts. The Red and the Real offers a new approach to such longstanding philosophical puzzles about what colors are and how they fit into nature. It is responsive to a broad range of constraints --- both the ordinary constraints of color experience (...) and the more theoretical constraints of color science, psychology, semantics, and ontology. (shrink)

Reflectance physicalism only provides a partial picture of the ontology of color. Byrne & Hilbert’ account is unsatisfactory because the replacement of reflectance functions by productance functions is ad hoc, unclear, and only leads to new problems. Furthermore, the effects of color contrast and differences in illumination are not really taken seriously: Too many “real” colors are tacitly dismissed as illusory, and this for arbitrary reasons. We claim that there cannot be an all-embracing ontology for (...) class='Hi'>color. (shrink)

A review of Cohen's *The Red and the Real*.

In this paper, I present the enactive theory of color that implies a form of color relationism. I argue that this view constitutes a better alternative to color subjectivism and color objectivism. I liken the enactive view to Husserl’s phenomenology of perception, arguing that both deconstruct the clear duality of subject and object, which is at the basis of the other theories of color, in order to claim the co-constitution of subject and object in the (...) process of experience. I also extend the enactive and phenomenological account of color to the more general topic of the epistemological and ontological status of sensory qualities (qualia), outlining the fields of enactive phenomenology and enactive ontology. (shrink)

Reflectance realism is an important position in the philosophy of colour. This paper is an examination of David R. Hilbert’s case for there being scientific support for the theory. The specific point in question is whether colour science has shown that reflectance is recovered by the human visual system. Following a discussion of possible counter-evidence in the recent scientific literature, I make the argument that conflicting interpretations of the data on reflectance recovery are informed by different theoretical assumptions about the (...) nature of
colour, and of perception. If this is so, there cannot be neutral empirical
evidence on this point, and this does seem to undermine Hilbert’s claim for
empirical support. In the end, I suggest alternative ways of thinking about the relationship between colour ontology and empirical work on colour. (shrink)

This paper considers whether there can be any such thing as a naturalized metaphysics of color—any distillation of the commitments of perceptual science with regard to color ontology. I first make some observations about the kinds of philosophical commitments that sometimes bubble to the surface in the psychology and neuroscience of color. Unsurprisingly, because of the range of opinions expressed, an ontology of color cannot simply be read off from scientists’ definitions and theoretical statements. (...) I next consider two alternative routes. First, conceptual pluralism inspired by Mark Wilson's analysis of scientific representation. I argue that these findings leave the prospects for a naturalized color ontology rather dim. Second, I outline a naturalized epistemology of perception. I ask how the correctness and informativeness of perceptual states is understood by contemporary perceptual science. I argue that the detectionist ideal of correspondence should be replaced by the pragmatic ideal of usefulness. I argue that this result has significant implications for the metaphysics of color. (shrink)

This paper considers whether there can be any such thing as a naturalized metaphysics of color—any distillation of the commitments of perceptual science with regard to color ontology. I first make some observations about the kinds of philosophical commitments that sometimes bubble to the surface in the psychology and neuroscience of color. Unsurprisingly, because of the range of opinions expressed, an ontology of color cannot simply be read off from scientists’ definitions and theoretical statements. (...) I next consider two alternative routes. First, conceptual pluralism inspired by Mark Wilson's analysis of scientific representation. I argue that these findings leave the prospects for a naturalized color ontology rather dim. Second, I outline a naturalized epistemology of perception. I ask how the correctness and informativeness of perceptual states is understood by contemporary perceptual science. I argue that the detectionist ideal of correspondence should be replaced by the pragmatic ideal of usefulness. I argue that this result has significant implications for the metaphysics of color. (shrink)

This paper critically discusses role functionalism about color and suggests that it is not such a sui generis position as it is often considered to be. The discussionfocuses upon one, hopefully, central point. The main proponent of the idea of role functionalism is Jonathan Cohen who in his book The Red and the Real (2009)suggests a Refined Taxonomy of positions on color ontology. Namely, his proposal implies that color ontology should be divided into relationalist and (...) non-relationalist accounts. Generally, he endorses the relationalist theory of color which roughly claims that colors are constituted in terms of some relation between objects and subjects (inter alia). Specifically, Cohen defends Role Functionalism as the best version of relationalism according to which the relations that constitute colors are functional relations. Based on his role functionalist stance, he distances himself from dispositionalists. However, in this paper I show that he could be interpreted as one and therefore needs to reconsider his Refined Taxonomy of positions on color ontology. (shrink)

This expanded edition of C L Hardin's ground-breaking work on colour features a new chapter, 'Further Thoughts: 1993', in which the author revisits the dispute ...

The paper presents color as a case study for the analysis of phenomena that pertain to several levels of reality and are typically framed by different sciences and disciplines. Color, in fact, is studied by physics, biology, phenomenology, and esthetics, among others. Our thesis is that color is a different entity for each level of reality, and that for this reason color generates different observables in the epistemologies of the different sciences. By analyzing color as (...) a paradigmatic case of an entity naturally spreading over different levels of reality, the paper raises the question as to whether making explicit the usually implicit ontological assumptions embedded within the different observables exploited by the different sciences may eventually clarify some of the difficulties of developing a comprehensive theory of color. (shrink)

Colour Relationalism asserts that colours are non-intrinsic or inherently relational properties of objects, properties that depend not only on a target object but in addition on some relation that object bears to other objects. The most powerful argument for Relationalism infers the inherently relational character of colour from cases in which one’s experience of a colour contextually depends on one’s experience of other colours. Experienced colour layering—say looking at grass through a tinted window and experiencing opaque green through transparent grey—demands (...) a contextual interdependency of one’s experience of one of these colours on one’s experience of the other. However, most if not all colour ontologies, and core perceptual experiential mechanisms like acquaintance and representation, can accommodate colour layering. It follows that experienced colour layering is consistent with colours being non-relational—this contextual interdependency of colours does not entail the constitutive dependency of one colour on the other. I utilize colour layering to examine the inference from the contextual to the constitutive interdependency of colours as it is employed in a well-known argument for Relationalism. I conclude that our justification for Relationalism is far weaker than Relationalists suggest. I first introduce readers to colour layering, then to Relationalism, and following this focus on the intersection of these topics. (shrink)

In his 1995 book Colour vision (New York: Routledge), Evan Thompson proposes a new approach to the ontology of color according to which it is tied to the ecological dispositions-affordances described by J.J. Gibson and his followers. Thompson claims that a relational account of color is necessary in order to avoid the problems that go along with the dispute between subjectivists and objectivists about color, but he claims that the received view of perception does not allow (...) a satisfactory relational account of color. Hence to avoid the problems of the subjectivist/objectivist dispute one must abandon the received view of perception. I describe an account which is similar to Thompson's, but which invokes instead the physical dispositional properties described by the received view. All of the distinguishing characteristics that Thompson claims separate his ecological dispositions from physical dispositions are in fact found in the physical dispositions appealed to by my proposed theory. Because my proposed theory is similar to subjectivism, Thompson's departure from the received view is not as radical as he claims. In a final section I describe the a posteriori manner in which a substantive departure from the received view must be carried out by describing an example of ecological experimentation. (shrink)

Loosely put, colour constancy for example occurs when you experience a partly shadowed wall to be uniformly coloured, or experience your favourite shirt to be the same colour both with and without sunglasses on. Controversy ensues when one seeks to interpret ‘experience’ in these contexts, for evidence of a constant colour may be indicative a constant colour in the objective world, a judgement that a constant colour would be present were things thus and so, et cetera. My primary aim is (...) to articulate a viable conception of Present Constancy, of what occurs when a constant colour is present in experience, despite the additional presence of some experienced colour variation (e.g., correlating to a change in illumination). My proposed conception involves experienced colour layering – experiencing one opaque colour through another transparent one – and in particular requires one of those experienced layers to remain constant while the other changes. The aim is not to propose this layering conception of colour constancy as the correct interpretation of all constancy cases, but rather to develop the conception enough to demonstrate how it could and plausibly should be applied to various cases, and the virtues it has over rivals. Its virtues include a seamless application to constancy cases involving variations in filters (e.g., sunglasses) and illuminants; its ability to accommodate experiences of partial colours and error-free interpretations of difficult cases; and its broad theoretical-neutrality, allowing it to be incorporated into numerous perceptual epistemologies and ontologies. If layered constancy is prevalent, as I suspect it is, then our experiential access to colours is critically nuanced: we have been plunged into a world of colour without being told that we will rarely, if ever, look to a location and experience just one of them. (shrink)

Questions about the ontology of color matter because colors matter. Colors are extremely pervasive and salient features of the world. Moreover, people care about the distribution of these features: they expend money and effort to paint their houses, cars, and other possessions, and their clear preference for polychromatic over monochromatic televisions and computer monitors have consigned monochromatic models to the status of rare antiques. The apparent ubiquity of colors and their importance to our lives makes them a ripe (...) target for ontological questions such as the following: " • What is the nature of colors? " • Are they, as they seem to be, properties of objects? (shrink)

The typical kind of color realism is reductive: the color properties are identified with properties specified in other terms (as ways of altering light, for instance). If no reductive analysis is available — if the colors are primitive sui generis properties — this is often taken to be a convincing argument for eliminativism. That is, realist primitivism is usually thought to be untenable. The realist preference for reductive theories of color over the last few decades is particularly (...) striking in light of the generally anti-reductionist mood of recent philosophy of mind. The parallels between the mind—body problem and the case of color are substantial enough that the difference in trajectory is surprising. While dualism and non-reductive physicalism are staples, realist primitivism is by and large a recent addition to the color literature. And it remains a minority position, although one that is perhaps gaining support. In this paper, we investigate whether it should be accepted, and conclude it should not be. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that color is a relational feature of the distal objects of perception, a way of appearing. I begin by outlining three constraints any theory of color should satisfy: physicalism about the non‐mental world, consistency with what is known from color science, and transparency about color experience. Traditional positions on the ontological status of color, such as physicalist reduction of color to spectral reflectance, subjectivism, dispositionalism, and primitivism, fail, I claim, (...) to meet all three constraints. By treating color as a relational property, a way of appearing, the three constraints can be met. However, serious problems for this view emerge when considering the relation between illusory color experiences and veridical color experiences. I do not propose a solution to these problems. (shrink)

If all the participants in the color ontology debate are naturalists with good sciences on their side, how could color subjectivism win? The apparent reason is that subjectivism is supported by the opponent process theory that is a successful neurophysiological reduction of colors. We will argue that the real reason is the unique reductive methodology of the opponent paradigm. We will undermine subjectivism by arguing against the methodology.

What is the relationship between color experience and color? Here, I defend the view that it is semantic: color experience denotes color in a code innately known by the perceiver. This semantic theory contrasts with a variety of theories according to which color is defined as the cause of color experience (in a special set of circumstances). It also contrasts with primary quality theories of color, which treat color as a physical quantity. (...) I argue that the semantic theory better accounts for the kinds of knowledge we have regarding both the color of objects that we see and of the colors themselves. (shrink)

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.

Even though there is an ineluctable abyss between Analytic and Continental Philosophy, it is not hard to argue that in his later works Ludwig Wittgenstein draws a closer philosophical attitude to the latter in terms of that the notions developed by him, such as language-games, family resemblances, meaning-in-use or rule-following, apart from his earlier nomological approach to language, leave room for various understandings and uncertainty in language. In the present work, my primary task is to concentrate on the close relationship (...) between the Wittgenstein’s notion of family resemblances and Gadamer’s idea of the fusion of horizons. But both philosophers, coincide in criticizing the authority of the Cartesian subject and private language and in allowing different understandings and uncertainty in language. Starting from this point of view, the linguistic turn, I will turn my remarks on the question how we learn color concepts since the structure of these concepts radically differs from the words that are able to subject to ostensive definitions. This last section will also offer a hermeneutical reading of Wittgenstein’s notion of family resemblances. (shrink)

At first pass, colour constancy occurs when one sees a thing in one’s environment to have a stable colour despite differences in the way it is illuminated. The phenomenon is intuitively grounded for example in everyday experiences in which something is partly shadowed but, in some sense, looks to be uniformly coloured. After a brief introduction to the colour constancy concept (§0) and the science of colour constancy (§1), my focus is on the significance of colour constancy for two intertwined (...) philosophical issues. The first is colour ontology, where constancy has been used to argue for the objectivity of colour, and in particular for a reductive form of it (see §2). The second is colour constancy’s complicated connection to colour experience and colour epistemology. Colour constancy is a subtle phenomenon: it is situated at the intersection of perceptual experience and judgement; it is influenced by myriad forces within our visual-cognitive systems; and is likely a composite of interestingly disparate phenomena. I approach this suite of issues from the perspective of the given in colour perception (§3). As will become plain, the ontological and epistemic issues are related in important ways. This does not, however, detract from the value of focusing on each individually. (shrink)

An adequate ontology of color must face the empirical facts about per- ceptual variation. In this paper I begin by reviewing a range of data about perceptual variation, and showing how they tell against color physicalism and motivate color relationalism. Next I consider a series of objections to the argument from perceptual variation, and argue that they are un- persuasive. My conclusion will be that the argument remains a powerful obstacle for color physicalism, and a (...) powerful reason to believe in color relationalism instead. (shrink)

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. (shrink)

This chapter focuses on the notion of color as a property of the surfaces of objects. It considers three positions on what colors are: objectivist, subjectivist, and relationalist. Examination of the arguments of the objectivists will help us understand how they seek to reduce color to a physical property of object surfaces. Subjectivists, by contrast, seek to argue that no such reduction is possible, and hence that color must be wholly subjective. This chapter argues that when functional (...) considerations are taken into account, a relationalist position best accommodates the primary data concerning color perception, and permits a better understanding of the ways in which color is both objective and subjective. The chapter ends with a reconsideration of the notions of objectivity and subjectivity themselves, and a consideration of how modern technology can foster misleading expectations about the specificity of color properties. (shrink)

Colour is, according to prevailing orthodoxy in perceptual psychology, a kind of autonomous and unitary attribute. It is regarded as unitary or homogeneous by assuming that its core properties do not depend on the type of ‘perceptual object’ to which it pertains and that‘colour per se’ constitutes a natural attribute in the functional architecture of the perceptual system. It is regarded as autonomous by assuming that it can be studied in isolation of other perceptual attributes. These assumptions also provide the (...) pillars for the technical field of colorimetry, and have proved very fruitful for neurophysiological investigations into peripheral colour coding. They also have become, in a technology-driven cultural process of abstraction, part of our common-sense conception of colour. With respect to perception theory, however, both assumptions are grossly inadequate, on both empirical and theoretical grounds. All the same, the idea of an internal homogeneous and autonomous attribute of ‘colour per se’, mostly taken not as an empirical hypothesis but as a kind of truism, became a guiding idea in perceptual psychology. Here, it has impeded the identification of relevant theoretical issues and consequently has become detrimental for the development of explanatory frameworks for the role of ‘colour’ within the structure of our perceptual system. The chapter argues that enquiries into colour perception cannot be divorced from general enquiries into the structure of the conceptual forms underlying perception. (shrink)

An adequate ontology of color must face the empirical facts about perceptual variation. In this paper I begin by reviewing a range of data about perceptual variation, and showing how they tell against color physicalism and motivate color relationalism. Next I consider a series of objections to the argument from perceptual variation, and argue that they are unpersuasive. My conclusion will be that the argument remains a powerful obstacle for color physicalism, and a powerful reason (...) to believe in color relationalism instead. (shrink)

If all the participants in the color ontology debate are naturalists with good sciences on their side, how could color subjectivism win? The apparent reason is that subjectivism is supported by the opponent process theory that is a successful neurophysiological reduction of colors. We will argue that the real reason is the unique reductive methodology of the opponent paradigm. We will undermine subjectivism by arguing against the methodology.

Naive observers viewed a sequence of colored Mondrian patterns, simulated on a color monitor. Each pattern was presented twice in succession, first under one daylight illuminant with a correlated color temperature of either 16,000 or 4,000 K and then under the other, to test for color constancy. The observers compared the central square of the pattern across illuminants, either rating it for sameness of material appearance or sameness of hue and saturation or judging an objective property—that is, (...) whether its change of color originated from a change in material or only from a change in illumination. Average color constancy indices were high for material appearance ratings and binary judgments of origin and low for hue–saturation ratings. Individuals’ performance varied, but judgments of material and of hue and saturation remained demarcated. Observers seem able to separate phenomenal percepts from their ontological projections of mental appearance onto physical phenomena; thus, even when a chromatic change alters perceived hue and saturation, observers can reliably infer the cause, the constancy of the underlying surface spectral reflectance. (shrink)

There are serious reasons for accepting each of these propositions individually but there are apparently insurmountable difficulties with accepting all three of them simultaneously if we assume that color is a single property. 1) and 2) together seem to imply that there is some property which all organisms with color vision can see and 3) seems to imply that there can be no such property. If these implications really are valid then one or more of these propositions will (...) have to be rejected in spite of whatever reasons can be given for their apparent acceptability. Before going on to discuss possible resolutions of this apparent contradiction it is worth pointing out there our three propositions are not all of a kind. Proposition 1) is a metaphysical thesis about the ontological status of color and proposition 3) is an empirical thesis about what properties organisms with color vision are capable of detecting. If you accept 1) then 2) will appear to verge on the trivial, but if 1) is denied then the status of 2) will appear more problematic. In what follows I will have more to say about why we either should or should not accept all three of these propositions. (shrink)

Our modern scientific explanation of colour as a subjective impression has replaced a ‘pre-theoretical’ notion of colour as an intrinsic property of objects, which was mainstream in ancient thought. Why have we lost such pre-theoretical notion, and what have we lost by losing it? I argue that most ancient Greek philosophers exploited this pre-theoretical assumption – one that was obvious to them – in terms and ways that are still worthy of attention in the context of contemporary philosophy of colour. (...) I offer an in-depth analysis of the theories of a number of early Greek philosophers, as well as of Plato in the Timaeus, showing that they tend to share the idea that colour is an essential property of external bodies and therefore plays a causal role in perception. Then I focus on a comparison between Democritus’ stance and Aristotle’s in order to highlight a significant contrast between the two. Democritus' theory is an exception in ancient thought because it traces the colour phenomenon back to a refraction of atmospheric light through atomic aggregates. Aristotle, instead, posits the presence of colour and light in the bodies themselves. Finally, I interpret Aristotle's account as the most complex attempt in ancient thought to weld together what we call the ‘manifest image’ of colour and its ‘scientific image’. (shrink)

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)

This paper presents a new response to the colour similarity argument, an argument that many people take to pose the greatest threat to colour physicalism. The colour similarity argument assumes that if colour physicalism is true, then colour similarities should be scrutable under standard physical descriptions of surface reflectance properties such as their spectral reflectance curves. Given this assumption, our evident failure to find such similarities at the reducing level seemingly proves fatal to colour physicalism. I argue that we should (...) dispense with this assumption, and thus endorse the inscrutability of colour similarity. This strategy is inspired by parallels between the colour similarity argument and the explanatory gap between mind and body made vivid by Jackson’s (1986) knowledge argument, and in particular by type-B physicalist responses to that argument. This inscrutability response is further motivated by cases in chemistry and biochemistry in which analogous scrutability theses fail to hold. Along the way, I present a challenge to standard formulations of the colour similarity argument based on the extreme context sensitivity of the similarity relation. Most presentations of the argument fail to control for such contextual variation, which raises the distinct possibility that the argument equivocates on the similarity relation across its premises. Although ultimately inconclusive, this context challenge forces a significant reformulation of the colour similarity argument, and highlights the need for much greater care in handling claims about colour similarity. (shrink)

Redness is the property that makes things look red in normal circumstances. That seems obvious enough. But then colour is whatever property does that job: a certain reflectance profile as it might be. Redness is the property something is represented to have when it looks red. That seems obvious enough. But looking red does not represent that which looks red as having a certain reflectance profile. What should we say about this antinomy and how does our answer impact on the (...) contest between realism and subjectivism about colour? I address the issues through the lens of a representationalist position on colour experience. (shrink)

From an Ontological Point of View is a highly original and accessible exploration of fundamental questions about what there is. John Heil discusses such issues as whether the world includes levels of reality; the nature of objects and properties; the demands of realism; what makes things true; qualities, powers, and the relation these bear to one another. He advances an account of the fundamental constituents of the world around us, and applies this account to problems that have plagued recent work (...) in the philosophy of mind and metaphysics (color, intentionality, and the nature of consciousness). (shrink)

This article is a brief presentation and defense of response-dispositionalist intentionalism against a family of objections. The view claims that for a surface to have an objective stable color is to have a disposition to cause in normal observers a response, namely, intentional phenomenal-color experience. The objections, raised recently by M. Johnston, B. Stroud, and by Byrne and Hilbert, claim that any dispositionalist view is unfair to the naive perceiver-thinker, saddles her with massive error and represents her as (...) maladaptated to her environment. The paper reconstructs the main line of thought in favor of response-intentionalism and argues that it is in fact rather charitable and fair to naïve cognizers, and also avoids a cluster of related objections. (shrink)

A broadly dispositionalist account of colour is sketched and defended in the context of a discussion of primary and secondary qualities. Secondary qualities are complex primary qualities picked out by reference to their effects on human observers. These effects, properly seen as mutual manifestations of dispositions present in light radiation and in observers, are colour experiences.

There is growing body of knowledge about how humans and animals perceive col- ours; we may safely say that both physiology and physics of colour perception are becoming less and less mysterious. Still it doesn't help to solve a philosophical puzzle: What do exactly mean expressions like “perceived red” or “perceived green”? What do perceived colours refer to in the world? There are three problem fields I am touching on in this paper: (i) semantics of colour names, (ii) ontological status (...) of colours, (iii) cognitive relevance of colours. I am trying to formulate onto- logical and epistemological assumptions for semantics of colour names. I am espe- cially focused on classical problem of objectivity of colours. While pursuing my task I am making some critical remarks about Wittgenstein's views on colours as formulated in “Tractatus” and modified in “Remarks on Colours”. I am using. (shrink)

Objectivism and projectivism are standardly taken to be incompatible theories of color. Here we argue that this incompatibility is only apparent: objectivism and projectivism, properly articulated so as to deal with basic objections, are in fundamental agreement about the ontology of color and the phenomenology of color perception.