In the seventeenth century, Newton used bis famous prism to found the physics of spectral light, thus revolutionising our thinking about colours; more than a hundred years later, Goethe protested against Newton's theory and discovered a number of new prismatic colour phenomena. Did these episodes in the history of science have any influence on the visual arts? For a decade now my visits to art museums have had an agenda: I have been looking for nineteenth-century paintings with certain spectral (...) colour (which will be described in the first half of this paper). While my search has been unsuccessful in traditional Western art, I found what I was looking for in Japa­nese art: in woodblock prints by Hokusai and Hiroshige. This is surprising; little Western science had reached Japan in their time. The second half of the paper pre­sents this riddle, which I am nowhere near solving. Even without a solution, however, a riddle can be instructive. In this case, it may help to bring into focus the fascinating exchange between two distant cultures. Much has been written on the cultural relativ­ity of colour perception, colour systematisation and colour aesthetics; I want to intro­duce a new and so far unknown case that might contribute to this debate - though the debate itself remains beyond the scope of this paper. (shrink)

Goethe's theory of colours is here revisited within the context of the question whether ‚alternatives’ to modern natural science are possible. To ensure comparability a rather weak criterion for scientificity is taken as a point of departure : science is systematic knowledge. Goethe's theory of colours is a systématisation of the domain of colour phenomena, including ‚structural laws’ and the principles governing the appearance of colours. The difference between Goethe's science and modern natural science is investigated through a direct (...) confrontation of Goethe's polemics against Newton and Newton's Opticks, In particular the questions are treated, why Goethe's science does not include the idea of an endless progress of knowledge and how intersubjectivity is warranted in a „perceptionscience” like Goethe's. The conclusion of the paper is, that Goethe's science contains a functional equivalent at each point where it deviates from modern natural science. So it is rather a question of social interest whether a science of this type will be developed in areas other than colour phenomena. (shrink)

I argue against a class of philosophical views of color perception, especially insofar as such views posit the existence of color sensations. I argue against the need to posit such nonconceptual mental intermediaries between the stimulus and the eventual conceptualized perceptual judgment. Central to my arguments are considerations of certain color illusions. Such illusions are best explained by reference to high-level, conceptualized knowledge concerning, for example, object identity, likely lighting conditions, and material composition of the distal stimulus. Such explanations obviate (...) the need to appeal to nonconceputal mental links in the causal chains eventuating in conceptualized color discriminations. (shrink)

Probably colour is the best worked-out example of allegedly neurophysiologically innate response categories determining percepts and percepts determining concepts, and hence biology fixing the basic categories implicit in the use of language. In this paper I argue against this view and I take C. L. Hardin's Color for Philosophers [1988] as my main target. I start by undermining the view that four unique hues stand apart from all other colour shades (Section 2) and the confidence that the solar (...) spectrum is naturally divided into four categories (Section 3). For such categories to be truly universal, they have to be true for all peoples and in Section 4 I show that Berlin and Kay's [1969] widely quoted theory of basic colour categories is not sufficiently supported to lend it any credibility.Having disposed of the view that inspection of language or ‘pure’ perception unveils the universal colour categories. I turn to neurophysiological and psychophysical theories of colour vision to see whether they provide a more solid basis for deciding what the innate response categories are. In Section 5 I show that Hardin's account of the opponent-process theory neither supports his view that ‘colour-coding’takes place early in the visual neural pathway, nor his view that knowledge of colour vision science will help us solve many philosophical mysteries about colour.In Section 6 I give a more detailed review of what is known today about the neurophysiology of colour vision and I show that there's nothing in the brain which could be called a colour module, let alone a module with homunculi for particular basic colour categories. In Section 7 I show that psychophysical models do not support such rigid constraints on category formation either. Hence (Section 8), at least in the case of colour, current science supports a plasticity in the formation of categories that goes far beyond the requirements of those naturalistic philosophers who would like to ground primitive concepts in biology. (shrink)

This paper considers Kamp and Partee's account of graded membership within a conceptual spaces framework and puts the account to the test in the domain of colors. Three experiments are reported that are meant to determine, on the one hand, the regions in color space where the typical instances of blue and green are located and, on the other hand, the degrees of blueness/greenness of various shades in the blue–green region as judged by human observers. From the locations of the (...) typical blue and typical green regions in conjunction with Kamp and Partee's account follow degrees of blueness/greenness for the color shades we are interested in. These predicted degrees are compared with the judged degrees, as obtained in the experiments. The results of the comparison support the account of graded membership at issue. (shrink)

Categorical perception (CP) is said to occur when a continuum of equally spaced physical changes is perceived as unequally spaced as a function of category membership (Harnad, S. (Ed.) (1987). Psychophysical and cognitive aspects of categorical perception: A critical overview. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). A common suggestion is that CP for color arises because perception is qualitatively distorted when we learn to categorize a dimension. Contrary to this view, we here report that English speakers show no evidence of lowered discrimination (...) thresholds at the boundaries between blue and green categories even though CP is found at these boundaries in a supra-threshold task. Furthermore, there is no evidence of different discrimination thresholds between individuals from two language groups (English and Korean) who use different color terminology in the blue-green region and have different supra-threshold boundaries. Our participants' just noticeable difference (JND) thresholds suggest that they retain a smooth continuum of perceptual space that is not warped by stretching at category boundaries or by within-category compression. At least for the domain of color, categorical perception appears to be a categorical, but not a perceptual phenomenon. (shrink)

John Cottingham; XIII*—Descartes on Colour, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 90, Issue 1, 1 June 1990, Pages 231–246, https://doi.org/10.1093/ari.

In this major reinterpretation, Howard Caygill argues that all of Benjamin's work is characterized by its focus on a concept of experience derived from Kant but applied by Benjamin to objects as diverse as urban experience, visual art, literature and philosophy. The book analyzes the development of Benjamin's concept of experience in his early writings showing that it emerges from an engagement with visual experience, and in particular the experience of colour. By representing Benjamin as primarily a thinker of (...) the visual field, Caygill is able to bring forward previously neglected texts on inscription and the visual field and to cast many of his more familiar texts, for instance the Work of Art in an Age of Mechanical Reproduction in a new light. (shrink)

According to naïve realist (or primitivist) theories of colour, colours are sui generis mind-independent properties. The question that I consider in this paper is the relationship of naïve realism to what Mark Johnston calls Revelation, the thesis that the essential nature of colour is fully revealed in a standard visual experience. In the first part of the paper, I argue that if naïve realism is true, then Revelation is false. In the second part of the paper, I defend (...) naïve realism against a number of objections. (shrink)

Drawing on remarks scattered through his writings, I argue that Leibniz has a highly distinctive and interesting theory of color. The central feature of the theory is the way in which it combines a nuanced subjectivism about color with a reductive approach of a sort usually associated with objectivist theories of color. After reconstructing Leibniz's theory and calling attention to some of its most notable attractions, I turn to the apparent incompatibility of its subjective and reductive components. I argue that (...) this apparent tension vanishes in light of his rejection of a widely accepted doctrine concerning the nature of bodies and their geometrical qualities. (shrink)

I describe a new, comparative, version of the argument from interpersonal variation to subjectivism about color. The comparative version undermines a recent objectivist response to standard versions of that argument (Gómez-Torrente 2014).

I analyse conceptual change and conceptual engineering in the special case of colour concepts. The case raises the prospects of conceptual engineering because a precise standard for measuring the amelioration of the structure of concepts is available. On the other hand, the study highlights the problems with controlling conceptual engineering pointed out by Cappelen. I argue that in the case of conceptual change of colour concepts varying degrees of optimization, design and control are possible. I submit that this (...) observation can be generalized to other classes of concepts. As a result, the scope of conceptual engineering is reduced considerably; conceptual engineering appears as a limit case of conceptual change. (shrink)

To process information selectively and to continuously fine-tune selectivity of information processing are important abilities for successful goal-directed behavior. One phenomenon thought to represent this fine-tuning are conflict adaptation effects in interference tasks, i.e. reduction of interference after an incompatible trial and when incompatible trials are frequent. The neurocognitive mechanisms of these effects are currently only partly understood and results from brainimaging studies so far are mixed. In our study we validate and extend recent findings by examining adaption to recent (...) conflict in the classical Stroop task using functional magnetic resonance imaging. Consistent with previous research we found increased activity in a fronto-parietal network comprising the medial prefrontal cortex, ventro-lateral prefrontal cortex, and posterior parietal cortex when contrasting incompatible with compatible trials. These areas have been associated with attentional processes and might reflect increased cognitive conflict and resolution thereof during incompatible trials. While carefully controlling for non-attentional sequential effects we found smaller Stroop interference after an incompatible trial (conflict adaptation effect). These behavioral conflict adaptation effects were accompanied by changes in activity in visual color-selective areas (V4, V4α), while there was no modulation by previous trial compatibility in a visual word-selective area (VWFA). Our results provide further evidence for the notion, that adaptation to recent conflict seems to be based mainly on enhancement of processing of the task-relevant information. (shrink)

Physicalism about colour is the thesis that colours are identical with response-independent, physical properties of objects. I endorse the Argument from Structure against Physicalism about colour. The argument states that Physicalism cannot accommodate certain obvious facts about colour structure: for instance, that red is a unitary colour while purple is a binary colour, and that blue resembles purple more than green. I provide a detailed formulation of the argument. According to the most popular response to (...) the argument, the Physicalist can accommodate colour structure by explaining it in terms of colour experience. I argue that this response fails. Along the way, I examine other interesting issues in the philosophy of colour and colour perception, for instance the relational structure of colour experience and the description theory of how colour names refer. (shrink)

If you trained someone to emit a particular sound at the sight of something red, another at the sight of something yellow, and so on for other colors, still he would not yet be describing objects by their colors. Though he might be a help to us in giving a description. A description is a representation of a distribution in a space (in that of time, for instance).

Color conveys critical information about the flavor of food and drink by providing clues as to edibility, flavor identity, and flavor intensity. Despite the fact that more than 100 published papers have investigated the influence of color on flavor perception in humans, surprisingly little research has considered how cognitive and contextual constraints may mediate color–flavor interactions. In this review, we argue that the discrepancies demonstrated in previously-published color–flavor studies may, at least in part, reflect differences in the sensory expectations that (...) different people generate as a result of their prior associative experiences. We propose that color–flavor interactions in flavor perception cannot be understood solely in terms of the principles of multisensory integration but that the role of higher-level cognitive factors, such as expectations, must also be considered. (shrink)

Philosophical Investigations, Volume 45, Issue 2, Page 107-129, April 2022.

Early psychophysical methods as codified by Fechner motivate the development of quantitative theories of subjective experience. The basic insight is that just noticeable differences between experiences can serve as units for measuring a sensory domain. However, the methods described by Fechner tacitly assume that the experiences being investigated can be linearly ordered. This assumption is not true for all sensory domains; for example, there is no trivial linear order over all possible color sensations. This paper discusses key developments in the (...) history of psychophysical methods for measuring color experience. In particular, a clear distinction between topological and metrical structure allowed Helmholtz to use opponent colors as a standard for measuring the gross structure of color space. Once this gross structure had been determined, lines through color space could be defined and Fechner-style methods employed for determining local structure. Extensions of these methods due to Wright, MacAdam, and others provide detailed evidence for the degree of agreement in the qualities of color experience across individuals. This allows a precise statement of the evidential support for the claim that your experience of color and mine are the same. (shrink)

This chapter focuses on a factor widely considered by the standard view to be the basis for color-naming phenomena and explores some plausible, comparatively uninvestigated factors that might underlie color naming. These are illustrated, in part, through a reexamination of World Color Survey data as it has been presented by Kuehni. The aim of this chapter is to examine the appropriateness of the Hering opponent-color construct as a theoretical foundation for explaining patterns of color naming in datasets like the WCS, (...) which include many languages that do not use Hering color terms. The main conclusion reached is that a proper explanation for cross-cultural color naming and categorization should not depend on the Hering opponent-color construct. (shrink)

We make three points. First, the concept of productance value that the authors propose in their defense of color physicalism fails to do the work for which it is intended. Second, the authors fail to offer an adequate physicalist account of what they call the hue-magnitudes. Third, their answer to the problem of individual differences faces serious difficulties.

What is the experience of someone who is “colour‐blind” like? This paper presents the results of a study that uses qualitative research methods to better understand the lived experience of colour blindness. Participants were asked to describe their experiences of a variety of coloured stimuli, both with and without EnChroma glasses—glasses which, the manufacturers claim, enhance the experience of people with common forms of colour blindness. More generally, the paper provides a case study in the nascent field (...) of experimental philosophy of experience. (shrink)

Over the last 25 years, there has been a concerted effort to settle questions about multiple realization by bringing detailed scientific evidence to bear. Ken Aizawa and Carl Gillett have pursued this scientific approach to multiple realization with a precise theory and applications. This paper reviews the application of the Dimensioned approach to human color vision, addressing objections that have appeared in the literature.

The evolution of a variety of important chromophore‐dependent biological processes, including microbial light sensing and mammalian color vision, relies on protein modifications that alter the spectral characteristics of a bound chromophore. Three different color opsins share the same chromophore, but have three distinct absorptions that together cover the entire visible spectrum, giving rise to trichromatic vision. The influence of opsins on the absorbance of the chromophore has been studied through methods such as model compounds, opsin mutagenesis, and computational modeling. The (...) recent development of rhodopsin mimic that uses small soluble proteins to recapitulate the binding and wavelength tuning of the native opsins provides a new platform for studying protein‐regulated spectral tuning. The ability to achieve far‐red shifted absorption in the rhodopsin mimic system was attributed to a combination of the lack of a counteranion proximal to the iminium, and a uniformly neutral electrostatic environment surrounding the chromophore. (shrink)

We have used fMRI to measure responses to chromatic and achromatic contrast in retinotopically defined regions of macaque and human visual cortex. We make four observations. Firstly, the relative amplitudes of responses to color and luminance stimuli in macaque area V1 are similar to those previously observed in human fMRI experiments. Secondly, the dorsal and ventral subdivisions of macaque area V4 respond in a similar way to opponent (L j M)-cone chromatic contrast suggesting that they are part of a single (...) functional area. Thirdly, we find that macaque area V4, like area V1, responds preferentially to chromatic contrast compared to luminance contrast and the degree of preference is strongly influenced by the temporal frequency of the stimulus. Finally, we observe that while macaque V4d is a region on the dorsal surface of the macaque visual cortex that responds robustly to chromatic stimuli, human chromatic responses to identical stimuli are largely confined to the ventral surface suggesting a fundamental difference in the topographical organization of higher visual areas between humans and macaques. (shrink)