Externalism about colour phenomenology claims that the phenomenal character of colour experiences is determined by mind-independent properties of perceptual objects. The structural mismatch argument shows that physical properties of perceived mind-independent things are not similar in ways that correlate with the ways in which the phenomenal character of colour experiences are similar. Structural mismatch has thus been perceived by some to demonstrate that correlative externalism (which takes mind-independent physical properties to correlate systematically with colour (...) class='Hi'>phenomenology) is false. This argument is defused if there are broad physical properties that can bear similarity relations that do correlate with those held by the phenomenal character of colour experiences. I defend the view that disjunctive properties can perform this role by showing that disjunctive properties can account for metamerism, the unique and binary hue distinction, and differences in perceived colours between subjects. Finally, I argue that correlative externalism is better placed than other views to explain why the physical properties identified by the physical sciences correlate with colour experiences with the particular phenomenal character they have. (shrink)

Color relationalism is the view that colors are constituted in terms of relations between subjects and objects. The most historically important form of color relationalism is the classic dispositionalist view according to which, for example red is the disposition to look red to standard observers in standard conditions (mutatis mutandis for other colors).1 However, it has become increasingly apparent in recent years that a commitment to the relationality of colors bears interest that goes beyond dispositionalism (Cohen, 2004; Matthen, 1999, 2001, (...) 2005; Thompson, 1995). Accordingly, it is an important project for those interested in the metaphysics of color to sort through and assess different forms of color relationalism. There is, however, a powerful and general cluster of objections that has been thought by many to amount to a decisive refutation of any and all forms of color relationalism. Although this idea has been developed in a number of ways, the basic thought is that relationalism — qua theory of color — is at odds with the manifest evidence of color phenomenology, and that this clash between theory and data should be resolved by giving up the theory. (shrink)

A major part of the mind–body problem is to explain why a given set of physical processes should give rise to qualia of one sort rather than another. Colour hues are the usual example considered here, and there is a lively debate between, for example, Hardin, Levine, Jackson, Clark and Chalmers as to whether the results of colour vision science can provide convincing explanations of why colours actually look the way they do. This paper examines carefully the type (...) of explanation that is needed here, and it is concluded that it does not have to be reductive to be effective. What needs to be explained more than anything is why inverted hue scenarios are more intuitive than other sensory inversions: and the issue of physicalism versus dualism is only of marginal relevance here. (shrink)

When an object looks red to an observer, the visual experience of the observer has two important features. The experience visually represents the object as having a property—being red. And the experience has a phenomenological character; that is, there is something that it is like to have an experience of seeing an object as red. Let qualia be the properties that give our sensory and perceptual experiences their phenomenological character. This essay takes up two related problem for a nonreductive account (...) of qualia. Some have argued that on such an account there is no room in a physicalist ontology for qualia. Section 1 shows how qualia might fit into a physicalist ontology. The second problem begins with the observation that there is a gap in scientific accounts of color experience; there is no explanation of why the features of the brain that determine our color experiences give those experiences their phenomenological character. Building on the results of Sect. 1, Sect. 2 develops an account of color perception that bridges this gap and shows how qualia give color perception its phenomenological character. To get a grip on the issues involved the paper begins by considering some aspects of a physicalist account of color. (shrink)

Resumen: El presente artículo analiza el problema de la afectividad en la concepción de la Fenomenología de la vida del filósofo francés Michel Henry, quien la concibe como fundamento de la subjetividad y esencia de la manifestación. Henry realiza un análisis de la obra del pintor Vasily Kandinsky, y muestra cómo la pintura abstracta, no figurativa, logra expresar en los colores y formas aquello invisible que es la esencia de la pintura y que coincide a su vez con la Vida. (...) La concepción de abstracción elaborada por Kandinsky refiere al contenido invisible e interior, que se expresa a través de colores y formas, pero que es la vida misma en su pathos subjetivo fundamental. De este modo, según Henry, el arte se transformaría en único lenguaje para expresar la radicalidad de la vida afectiva, porque no representa nada exterior o extraño, su contenido es la vida misma.: The present article analyzes the problem of affectivity in French philosopher Michel Henry's conception of Phenomenology of life, conceived of as the foundation of the subjectivity and the essence of the manifestation. Henry analyzes the work of the painter Vasily Kandinsky, showing how abstract and non-figurative painting expresses in colors and forms something invisible, which is the essence of the painting and coincides with the Life. Kandinsky's conception of abstraction refers to the invisible and the inner content, which expresses itself through colors and forms, being the life itself in its fundamental subjective pathos. In this way, the art becomes the only language capable to express the radicality of the affective life, because it does not represent anything exterior or foreign, being its content the life itself. (shrink)

The aim of the study is to clarify the aesthetic concept of color perception from the phenomenological reasoning of Edmund Husserl. Today, the orientation diagram of the field of phenomenological research is formed in various zones: from theological to naturalistic. In which of these zones the structures of the phenomenological analysis of color are located is not an easy question. The coloristic region is constituted according to the degree of consciousness, including aesthetic consciousness. It is extremely difficult to meet with (...) the phenomenon of color, if only because its obviousness is fulfilled only by the fervor of the contemplative consciousness with its aesthetic pathos, a consciousness that distinguishes between, as it were, the reality of transcendent color and the aesthetic "continent of givens". We are talking, as Husserl would say, about the halo of consciousness, referring to the essence of perception performed in the mode of turning to the beauty of color. For the first time, approaches to the study of such a complex phenomenological topic as the description of a coloristic attitude, the eidetics of color experiences in Husserl's philosophy are outlined, the significance of its development for the comprehension of aesthetic and artistic consciousness is revealed. The main conclusions of the study are related to the philosophical interpretation of the idea of color as included in phenomenology in the experience of philosophical surprise, which turns into the acquisition of the essence of "phenomenological color" in general, and in aesthetics it is directly correlated with the appearance of its structures on the horizon of the harmonic synthesis of acts of perceptual performance in the imagination, "primordial giving visions" of color, with the creation of a picture coloristic impressions as cognitive emotions, reduced pure color perception, with an understanding of how art makes the very conditions of color visibility obvious, how its artistic synthesis is made, in the structure of which correlation analysis can see an analogue of a priori empiricism – this fundamental characteristic of purely Husserl synthesis and method revealed in domestic studies. (shrink)

Recent research has suggested that not all grapheme-colour synaesthetes are alike. One suggestion is that they can be divided, phenomenologically, in terms of whether the colours are experienced in external or internal space. Another suggestion is that they can be divided according to whether it is the perceptual or conceptual attributes of a stimulus that is critical. This study compares the behavioural performance of 7 projector and 7 associator synaesthetes. We demonstrate that this distinction does not map on to (...) behavioural traits expected from the higher–lower distinction. We replicate previous research showing that projectors are faster at naming their synaesthetic colours than veridical colours, and that associators show the reverse profile. Synaesthetes who project colours into external space but not on to the surface of the grapheme behave like associators on this task. In a second task, graphemes presented briefly in the periphery are more likely to elicit reports of colour in projectors than associators, but the colours only tend to be accurate when the grapheme itself is also accurately identified. We propose an alternative model of individual differences in grapheme-colour synaesthesia that emphasises the role of different spatial reference frames in synaesthetic perception. In doing so, we attempt to bring the synaesthesia literature closer to current models of non-synaesthetic perception, attention and binding. (shrink)

The paper argues, in a nutshell, that Wittgenstein’s reconsideration, after Ramsey’s review, of the Tractatus provides the rationale for the methodological reflections from the former’s manuscripts, which are less sceptical than Schlick’s, on the viability of a phenomenological philosophy. The argument proceeds like this. Section 1 exposes a charge against a Tractarian account of logical syntax: for Ramsey, early Wittgenstein holds unjustifiably that any proposition taken to exhibit logical impossibility, like the impossibility of a fleck of two colours, is analysable (...) into formal contradiction. Section 2 explores ways in which Ramsey’s charge is taken on board by Wittgenstein’s 1929 “Some Remarks on Logical Form”, while bringing forth the view that propositions like “This is of two colours” cannot be analysed into formal contradiction. Section 3 reconstructs a mirror image of early Wittgenstein’s approach to colour-exclusion, from Schlick’s claim that propositions like “This cannot be of two colours” exhibit logical necessity and amount to formal tautologies. Section 4 isolates two responses two Schlick’s approach to colour-exclusion, suggesting that it is not more viable than early Wittgenstein’s. Section 5 assesses the rationale of Wittgenstein’s reflections on phenomenology, as informed by his approaches to colour-exclusion from early onwards. (shrink)

Colour has often been supposed to be a subjective property, a property to be analysed orretly in terms of the phenomenological aspects of human expereince. In contrast with subjectivism, an objectivist analysis of color takes color to be a property objects possess in themselves, independently of the character of human perceptual expereince. David Hilbert defends a form of objectivism that identifies color with a physical property of surfaces - their spectral reflectance. This analysis of color is shown to provide (...) a more adequate account of the features of human color vision than its subjectivist rivals. The author's account of colro also recognises that the human perceptual system provides a limited and idiosyncratic picture of the world. These limitations are shown to be consistent with a realist account of colour and to provide the necessary tools for giving an analysis of common sense knowledge of color phenomena. (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 ...

This chapter, which describes the spatiality of conscious phenomena, such as colours and sounds, addresses James Gibson’s ecological approach to confirm and develop further the Husserlian phenomenological view of colours and sounds. The ecological approach to perception could be regarded as an attempt to undertake empirical research corresponding to the phenomenological insight of perception. In this context, in addition to the Husserlian concept of “adumbration” and the Gibsonian concept of “ecological optics,” the differentiation of various modes of colour appearances, (...) which David Katz explicated, is focused on, developed and applied further to the phenomena of sounds. On the basis of these discussions, the multi-dimensional character of colours and sounds are explicated, and traditional views on colours and sounds, which neglect this character, are criticized. The concept of multi-dimensionality discovers the remarkable diversity of the world of colours and sounds, which demonstrate the diversity and multiple dimensionality of the field of consciousness. (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)

The relations among consciousness, brain, behavior, and scientific explanation are explored in the domain of color perception. Current scientific knowledge about color similarity, color composition, dimensional structure, unique colors, and color categories is used to assess Locke.

The orthodox monadic determination thesis holds that we represent colour relations by virtue of representing colours. Against this orthodoxy, I argue that it is possible to represent colour relations without representing any colours. I present a model of iconic perceptual content that allows for such primitive relational colour representation, and provide four empirical arguments in its support. I close by surveying alternative views of the relationship between monadic and relational colour representation.

The philosophical debate over the nature of color has been governed by what we have learnt from color vision science and what color phenomenology suggests to us. It is usually thought that color eliminativism, which maintains that physical objects do not have any properties that can be identified with colors, can account for the former but not the latter. After all, what could be more obvious than the external world to be colored? Here I outline one color eliminativistic response (...) to the objections based on phenomenology. (shrink)

Blindsight, the ability to blindly discriminate wavelength and other aspects of stimuli in a blind field, sometimes occurs in people with lesions to striate (V1) cortex. There is currently no consensus on whether qualitative color information of the sort that is normally computed by double opponent cells in striate cortex is indeed computed in blindsight but doesn’t reach awareness, perhaps owing to abnormal neuron responsiveness in striate or extra-striate cortical areas, or is not computed at all. The existence of primesight, (...) the experience of colored afterimages in blindsight, has been taken to suggest that qualitative color information is computed either in pre-striate or striate cortical areas but is not broadcast to working memory. I argue here that a recent study in which color phosphenes were induced in a blindsighter using bilateral transcranial magnetic stimulation indicates that computations necessary for conscious color vision are lost in blindsight. Owing to this loss, the neural responsiveness in extrastriate cortical areas is abnormal and hence is unable to give rise to color awareness. Blindsight is thus degraded vision in which the computations necessary for conscious color vision have been lost. (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)

Representationalism, the view that phenomenal character supervenes on intentional content, has attracted a wide following in recent years. Most representationalists have also endorsed what I call 'standard Russellianism'. According to standard Russellianism, phenomenal content is Russellian in nature, and the properties represented by perceptual experiences are mind-independent physical properties. I argue that standard Russellianism conflicts with the everyday experience of colour constancy. Due to colour constancy, standard Russellianism is unable to simultaneously give a proper account of the phenomenal (...) content of colour experience and do justice to its phenomenology. (shrink)

We can start with a definition. “[C]olour constancy is the constancy of the perceived colours of surfaces under changes in the intensity and spectral composition of the illumination.” (Foster et al. 1997) Given the definition we can now ask a question: Does human color vision exhibit color constancy?1 The answer to the question depends in part on how we interpret it. If the question is understood as asking whether human color vision displays constancy for every possible scene across every possible (...) illumination then the answer is no.2 If the question is understood as asking whether human color vision displays some degree of constancy for some scenes across some range of illuminants then the answer is yes. The more interesting questions involve characterizing the degree of constancy human vision displays, the types of scenes and ranges of illuminants for which approximate constancy can be achieved and the.. (shrink)

Anything is similar to anything, provided the respects of similarity are allowed to be gerrymandered or gruesome, as Goodman observed.2 But similarity in non-gruesome or—as I shall say—genuine respects is much less ecumenical. Colors, it seems, provide a compelling illustration of the distinction as applied to similarities among properties.3 For instance, in innumerable gruesome respects, blue is more similar to yellow than to purple. But in a genuine respect, blue is more similar to purple than to yellow (genuinely more similar, (...) as I shall sometimes put it). (shrink)

In this paper, I consider a view that explains colour experience by the independent representation of surface and illumination. This view implies that surface colour is a phenomenal perceptual content. I argue from facts of colour phenomenology to the conclusion that surface colour is not a phenomenal perceptual content. I then argue from results of surface-matching experiments to the conclusion that surface colour is neither a perceptual content of any kind nor any sort of (...) computational output of the perceptual system. These conclusions contradict widely accepted views in both the philosophy of perception and colour science. I finish by considering and rejecting a competing account of the surface-matching results, according to which surface colour is represented indeterminately in perception. (shrink)

This edited volume explores the different and seminal ways colours matter to philosophy. Each chapter provides an insightful analysis of one or more cases in which colours raise philosophical problems in different areas and periods of philosophy. This historically informed discussion examines both logical and linguistic aspects, covering such areas as the mind, aesthetics and the foundations of mathematics. The international contributors look at traditional epistemological and metaphysical issues on the subjectivity and objectivity of colours. In addition, they also assess (...) phenomenological problems typical of the continental tradition and contemporary problems in the philosophy of mind. The chapters include coverage of such topics as Newton’s and Goethe’s theory of light and colours, how primary qualities are qualitative and colours are primary, explaining colour phenomenology, and colour in cognition, language and philosophy. "This book beautifully prepares the ground for the next steps in our research on and philosophising about colour" Daniel D. Hutto "It is not an overstatement to say that How Colours to Philosophy is a ground breaking publication" Mazviita Chirimuuta "Anyone interested in philosophical issues about color will find it highly stimulating." Martine Nida-Rümelin "The high quality papers included in this anthology succeed admirably in enriching current philosophical thinking about colour” Erik Myin “This is certainly the most complete collection of philosophical essays on colours ever published” André Leclerc “All in all this collections represents a new milestone in the ongoing philosophical debate on colours and colour expressions” Ingolf Max. (shrink)

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)

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 aesthetics, 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 analysing 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)

In this paper I examine whether representationalism can account for various thought experiments about colour inversions. Representationalism is, at minimum, the view that, necessarily, if two experiences have the same representational content then they have the same phenomenal character. I argue that representationalism ought to be rejected if one holds externalist views about experiential content and one holds traditional exter- nalist views about the nature of the content of propositional attitudes. Thus, colour inver- sion scenarios are more damaging (...) to externalist representationalist views than have been previously thought. More specifically, I argue that representationalists who endorse externalism about experiential content either have to become internalists about the content of propositional attitudes or they have to adopt a novel variety of externalism about the content of propositional attitudes. This novel type of propositional attitude externalism is investigated. It can be seen that adopting it forces one to reject Putnam. (shrink)

Color -order systems highlight certain features of color phenomenology while neglecting others. It is misleading to speak as if there were a single “psychological color space” that might be described by a rather simple formal structure. Criticisms of functionalism based on multiple realizations of a too-simple formal description of chromatic pheno-menal relations thus miss the mark. It is quite implausible that a functional system representing the full complexity of human color phenomenology should be realizable by radically different qualitative (...) states. (shrink)

This chapter considers the ways in which whiteness as a skin color and ideology becomes a dominant level that sets the background against which all things, people and relations appear. Drawing on Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology, it takes up a series of films by Bruce Nauman and Marlon Riggs to consider ways in which this level is phenomenally challenged providing insights into the embodiment of racialization.

The radical autonomy of innovation – regardless of who it depends on – must be pursued with no external pressure to make it more suitable for contemporary challenges. The challenge is to look at innovation as a production or vector of phenomena, and therefore no longer be interested in its consequences. Just as non‐standard philosophy can be considered as an invention in philosophy, phenomenology can be perceived as a recommencing of philosophy, a renewal, a rebirth. The authors propose to (...) focus on the method of phenomenology, its detailed constitution both in its theories and in its modalities of implementation, and to compare each aspect systematically, each step of this philosophy, to measure a possible contribution to (re)thinking innovation. Science, psychology and philosophy color Husserl's phenomenology. What will transpire from its introduction is the rigor that emerges, a rigor that translates into a method, tools, almost procedures, for this phenomenology to be established. (shrink)

The author presents a varied menu of ideas and experiences in many areas - in research, in diagnosis, and in psychotherapy, each using art media with patients of all ages. She integrates art, phenomenology and gestalt psychology, describing specific techniques and findings. Part I of the book lays out the theoretical foundations and the techniques; Part II addresses the formal components used in art therapy - line, shape and colour in their interrelated dynamics and discusses other aspects and (...) modes of symbolic expression found in clients' work. Part III looks at symbolic expression through the scribble, offering a system of classification, diagnostic possibilities and case studies of work with eating disorders. Part IV focuses on art expression for art therapy diagnostics, including a method for qualitative diagnostics, and a first full diagnostic battery for adolescents. Part V is devoted to Holocaust children's art expressions, highlighting the power of art expression in children under ultimate stress, the intensity of their inner experience, and its visualization in the structure of the pictures. The book is for art therapists and advanced students. It can be used as a textbook on phenomenological art therapy; for therapeutically-oriented art teachers, educators and social workers; and for practicing psychotherapists, to see that art is a source of expression demonstrating how a person is. (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)

Let me begin by indicating where I think Harman and I are in agreement. We both think that "subjective reactions" must come into an account of color, although we have different views about how they do. We both think that perceptual experience has a "presentational or representational character," and that color is represented by our visual experiences as a feature of external objects, not as a feature of our experience. Moreover, we agree that, as Harman puts it, "color is experienced (...) as a simple basic quality, rather than a disposition or complex of causal properties." As Harman emphasized in an earlier paper, 1 what we are introspectively aware of in our experience is its presentational or representational content, not any "mental paint" which bestows this content. I shall refer to all of this as Harman's "phenomenological point." Because we agree on this, we also agree that if his characters George and Mary were spectrum inverted relative to each other, supposing that to be possible, this would have to involve their perceiving the same objects as having different properties, this despite the fact that as normal perceivers they would perceive these objects as having the same colors. And I think we agree that in this case the properties would have to be relational ones, defined or constituted by their relations to the experiences of the subject perceiving them. (shrink)

This phenomenological research investigates how it is possible to determine the extent to which a chromatic colour appears white and black in order to use it to build a new Colour Rendering Index. We tested two methods of subjective evaluation; in the first, the perceptual presence of white (and black) in a colour alone was assessed on a unipolar intensity scale, independently for the two attributes. In the second method, evaluations of whiteness (and blackness) were conducted for (...) colours presented in a sequence ordered from the least to the greatest presence of the respective attribute. In both tests evaluations were made either by moving an arrow on a slider from left (minimum) to right (maximum) or by choosing a grey cylinder that matched the same degree of similarity to white (and black) as the test colour. In four experiments, 16 colours of 4 hues and 4 different shades were studied; in a fifth experiment, 48 colours, 12 for each quadrant of the colour wheel, were studied; finally, in another test, 10 greys were studied. In the first three experiments, the results were unexpected, as the evaluations of whiteness and blackness were complementary, adding up to 100%, while in the current NCS, 100% includes not only the evaluation of white and black but also that of chromaticness, therefore white and black are not complementary. In the fourth and fifth experiments, the sum of the evaluations of white and black was always less than 100%, in accordance with the present NCS. In the last experiment, the evaluations of white and black given independently to the 10 greys samples were complementary, confirming the bipolar nature of white-black continuum. Suggestions have been provided to resolve the discrepancy between the results of this research and the structure of the current NCS. (shrink)

We wish to defend Jonathan Westphal's view that colour is complex against a recent ‘phenomenological’ criticism of Eric Rubenstein. There is often thought to be a conflict between two kinds of determinants of colour, physical and phenomenal. On the one hand there are the complex physical facts about colour, such as the determination of a surface colour by an absorption spectrum. There is also, however, the fact that the apparently simple phenomenological quality of what is seen (...) is a function of the physiological and psychological state of the viewing subject. Should the physical trump the phenomenal, or is it the other way round? Much of the phenomenal variation of colour, however, is explained by physical facts. There is a physics and a psychophysics of colour. Colours appear, to the colour scientists at least, to be in some sense objective, a sense not explained by the view that they are purely phenomenal. Taking physics and psychophysics into account will mean rejecting the claim that the content of what our concepts of colours are concepts of is exhausted by the purely phenomenal, or that we can determine these concepts simply by gazing at a colour. Taking account of physics will lead, as Westphal argued, instead to a view about white and the other colour terms like Putnam's account of gold. Necessary truths about colours cannot be explained without reference to the logic of the compossibility of what is given in reflection and absorption spectra, the analogue of H2O. (shrink)

Primitivism is the view that colors are sui generis properties of physical objects. The basic insight underlying primitivism is that colours are as we see them, i.e. they are categorical properties of physical objects—simple, monadic, constant, etc.—just like shapes. As such, they determine the content of colour experience. Accepting the premise that colours are sui generis properties of physical objects, this paper seeks to show that ascribing primitive properties to objects is, ipso facto, ascribing to objects irreducible dispositions to (...) look coloured, and that anything that primitive redness can do, the non-reductive disposition to look red can do just as well. What makes primitivism suspect is not the commitment to sui generis properties, but instead the claim that colours are more than dispositions. Since, as I show, whatever primitivism appeals to for the purpose of arguing that colours are more than dispositions—objectivity, explanation, causation, phenomenology, constancy, etc.—can also be invoked... (shrink)

Dispositionalist accounts of colour concepts are now largely discarded. But a number of recent and influential objections to this type of theory can be readily answered providing the dispositionalist account contains the key elements it should---which actual versions in the literature do not. I explicate some of the conceptual components needed in such an account once we correctly understand the anthropocentricity of the colour concepts involved. When these components are incorporated into dispositionalism, including one crucial distinction in particular, (...) some powerful seeming objections against this revised dispositionalism fail. In addition, dispositionalism has extra advantages over the far more popular physicalist theories, and I therefore contend that we should explore vigorously this kind of enriched dispositionalist account. (shrink)

Very often, objects in the scene before us are somehow perceived to be constant or uniform or unchanging in color, shape, size, or position, even while their appearance with respect to these features somehow changes. This is a familiar and pervasive fact about perception, even if it is notoriously difficult to describe accurately let alone adequately account for. These difficulties are not unrelated—how we are inclined to describ the phenomenology of perceptual constancy will affect how we are inclined to (...) accoun for it. (shrink)

In The Subjective View,' I defended (unoriginally) a dispositional theory of color and drew out some consequences of that theory. The dispositional theory (DT) maintains, roughly speaking, that for an object to instantiate a color property is for it to have a disposition to cause experiences as of an object having that property in normal perceivers in normal conditions. This theory has notable merits in capturing (assuming one wants them captured) the subjectivity and relativity of ascriptions of color, while allowing (...) that it is external ob- jects themselves that are colored. It makes colors both sense depen- dent and object qualifying.2 But it runs into prima facie problems in giving a plausible account of the phenomenology of color percep- tion, as I ruefully observed in my earlier book (op. cit., pp. 132-37). (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.

I am looking at an apple. The apple has a lot of properties and some, but not all, of these are part of my phenomenology at this moment: I am aware of these properties. And some, but not all, of these properties that I am aware of are part of my perceptual (or sensory) phenomenology. If I am attending to the apple’s color, this property will be part of my perceptual phenomenology. The property of being a granny (...) smith apple from Chile is unlikely to be part of my perceptual phenomenology. Here are two problems for anyone who is interested in conscious experience in general, and perceptual experience in particular: (a) How can we tell which properties are part of our phenomenology and which ones are not? (b) How can we tell which properties are part of our perceptual phenomenology and which ones are part of our non-perceptual phenomenology? I will focus on (b) in this paper. My aim is twofold: I propose a methodology for answering the question of which properties are part of our perceptual phenomenology and I provide an example for how this methodology could be applied. (shrink)

Rationalizing the perceptual effects of spectral stimuli has been a major challenge in vision science for at least the last 200 years. Here we review evidence that this otherwise puzzling body of phenomenology is generated by an empirical strategy of perception in which the color an observer sees is entirely determined by the probability distribution of the possible sources of the stimulus. The rationale for this strategy in color vision, as in other visual perceptual domains, is the inherent ambiguity (...) of the real-world origins of any spectral stimulus. (shrink)

For all animals, color is an indicator of the substance and state of objects, for which purpose reflectance is just one among many relevant optical properties. This broader meaning of color is confirmed by linguistic evidence. Rather than reducing color to a simple physical property, it is more realistic to embrace its full phenomenology.

Synaesthesia is a condition in which one type of stimulation evokes the sensation of another, as when the hearing of a sound produces photisms, i.e. mental percepts of colours. R is a 20 year old colour blind subject who, in addition to the relatively common grapheme-colour synaesthesia, presents a rarely reported cross modal perception in which a variety of visual stimuli elicit aura-like percepts of colour. In R, photisms seem to be closely related to the affective valence (...) of stimuli and typically bring out a consistent pattern of emotional responses. The present case study suggests that colours might be an intrinsic category of the human brain. We developed an empirical methodology that allowed us to study the subject's otherwise inaccessible phenomenological experience. First, we found that R shows a Stroop effect elicited by photisms despite the fact that he does not show a regular Stroop with real colours. Secondly, by manipulating the colour context we confirmed that colours can alter R's emotional evaluation of the stimuli. Furthermore, we demonstrated that R's auras may actually lead to a partially inverted emotional spectrum where certain stimuli bring out emotional reactions opposite to the normal ones. These findings can only be accounted for by considering R's subjective colour experience or qualia. Therefore the present paper defends the view that qualia are a useful scientific concept that can be approached and studied by experimental methods. (shrink)

According to the monitoring theory of consciousness, a mental state is conscious in virtue of being represented in the right way by a monitoring state. David Rosenthal, William Lycan, and Uriah Kriegel have developed three different influential versions of this theory. In order to explain colour experiences, each of these authors combines his version of the monitoring theory of consciousness with a specific account of colour representation. Even though Rosenthal, Lycan, and Kriegel disagree on the specifics, they all (...) hold that colours are represented by a single type of mental state. The main goal of this paper is to show that a more complex account of colour representation is needed for the monitoring theory of consciousness to do justice to the phenomenology of colour experiences. In particular, I will argue that the fine-grained character of colour experience—that is, the fact that perceivers can become conscious of small differences between colours—requires that colour representation be construed in terms of two different types of mental states, namely sensory states that represent appearance properties and colour representations that represent physical colours. (shrink)

One way to track the many critical impacts of women of color feminisms is through the powerful structural analyses of gendered and racialized oppression they offer. This article discusses diverse lineages of women of color feminisms in the global South that tackle systemic structures of power and domination from their situated perspectives. It offers an introduction to structuralist theories in the humanities and differentiates them from women of color feminist theorizing, which begins analyses of structures from embodied and phenomenological st¬¬andpoints--with (...) the day-to-day concerns of our lives. The essay is divided into three sections. In section one, I discuss theories of structure in the humanities and sciences, differentiating them from women of color’s analysis of structure as diagnostic of the ways colonial power relations are functionalized through social structures. In section two, I discuss the diverse contexts of interpretation that background women of color feminisms, outlining key themes and ideas related to theories of structure. I argue against a unified theory of women of color structural feminisms that supplants difference, favoring a rehabilitated concept of structure for the purposes of making targeted interventions in contemporary radical anti-colonial politics. I offer the example of systematic marginalization produced by colonial violence and mythology as one reason to take up this approach. In section three, I outline four provisional characteristics of women of color structural feminisms. I conclude that, when divested from colonial myths that guide mainstream notions of structure, it can be a useful hermeneutic tactic in the fight for liberation from ongoing colonial violence. (shrink)

Can the phenomenal character of perceptual experience be altered by the states of one's cognitive system, for example, one's thoughts or beliefs? If one thinks that this can happen then one thinks that there can be cognitive penetration of perceptual experience; otherwise, one thinks that perceptual experience is cognitively impenetrable. I claim that there is one alleged case of cognitive penetration that cannot be explained away by the standard strategies one can typically use to explain away alleged cases. The case (...) is one in which it seems subjects' beliefs about the typical colour of objects affects their colour experience. I propose a two-step mechanism of indirect cognitive penetration that explains how cognitive penetration may occur. I show that there is independent evidence that each step in this process can occur. I suspect that people who are opposed to the idea that perceptual experience is cognitively penetrable will be less opposed to the idea when they come to consider this indirect mechanism and that those who are generally sympathetic to the idea of cognitive penetrability will welcome the elucidation of this plausible mechanism. (shrink)