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Ross 2000
Ross 2000
ROSS
1. INTRODUCTION
Against Smart’s physicalism, Hardin and Clark point out that the color
a physical object looks (or, as I’ll say, its perceived color) varies relative
to perceiver and viewing conditions. For example, visual science has un-
covered a remarkable example of the relativity of color which seems to
present a particularly difficult challenge for the physicalist. Psychophysical
findings show that it’s common for different individuals with normal color
vision to see the same physical object in the same viewing conditions as
slightly different determinate colors. One person might see the object as
bluish green and another might see it as a green that’s not bluish at all.
But which of these perceivers sees the veridical color of the object?
It seems that if colors are physical properties of physical objects, there
should be a nonarbitrary answer specified in terms natural to physics. The
purported problem for Smart’s physicalism is that any answer this view
can provide would be arbitrary (Hardin 1993, 79–81; Clark forthcoming,
Chap. 6).
Furthermore, in addition to relativity to individual perceiver, Hardin
and Clark describe a second sort of relativity, namely, relativity of color
to perceiver type, which they hold also presents a problem for Smart’s
physicalism. In the next section, I’ll further explain Smart’s view. Then
I’ll describe the problem this second sort of relativity poses for it, and state
why, given these problems due to relativity, physicalism is worth defending
as a proposal about the nature of color.
I’ll then provide responses to these problems. Both problems assume
that veridical color must be specified in terms natural to physics, inde-
pendently of our interests. I’ll contend that this account of veridical color
is mistaken. I’ll defend Smart’s appeal to an alternative account of veridical
color in addressing the problem of relativity to perceiver type. According
to this alternative account, veridical color is specified in terms of favored
conditions of perceptual access, independently of any specification of the
physical nature of color. I’ll then address the problem of relativity to
individual perceiver from the standpoint of this alternative account.
2. DISJUNCTIVE PHYSICALISM
be a proposal about turquoise and teal, I’ll defend the disjunctive version
of physicalism.
However, disjunctive physicalism has two serious problems of its own.
One problem, which I won’t address, is that despite its claim that de-
terminate perceived colors are disjunctive, we certainly don’t experience
colors as disjunctive.11 A second problem, which will be my focus, is that
disjunctive physicalism can’t adequately characterize veridical color.
At the very least, the relativity of color – most strikingly the relativity of
color to individual perceivers – provides a serious challenge to the view
that colors are physical properties of physical objects. Why think that it’s
worth the trouble of defending this view?
Setting aside the distinction between its disjunctive and nondisjunct-
ive versions, physicalism is worth defending because it has the following
virtues: (a) consistency with an explanation of our perception of colors as
located on the surfaces of physical objects in terms of colors possessed
by surfaces; and (b) consistency with the naturalization of color, that is,
an explanation of perceived color in nonchromatic (for example, physical
or neural) terms. These are virtues, not constraints. Perhaps it will turn out
that the correct proposal about the constituting nature of color doesn’t have
these virtues. But for reasons that I’ll discuss, we’re motivated to hold on
to a proposal that has them, if we can.
While physicalism has both virtues, each of the other common pro-
posals about the constituting nature of color lacks at least one virtue.14
Subjectivism lacks (a) (or, on some versions, both (a) and (b));15 primitiv-
ism and impressionism, as well as the standard version of dispositionalism,
lack (b).
Subjectivism lacks (a) because it claims that perceived colors are men-
tal properties, processes, or events. Therefore, it must explain how we
perceive colors as located on the surfaces of physical objects even though
surfaces are colorless.
Furthermore, we’re motivated to hold a proposal about the constituting
nature of color that has (a) because there’s currently no plausible way to
explain our perception of colors as located on the surfaces of objects except
in terms of colors possessed by surfaces. The subjectivist’s options for
alternatives seem to be limited to either a sense datum theory of perception,
which holds that colors are properties of mental objects, namely, sense
data, or a projectivist theory color perception, which holds that colors are
110 PETER W. ROSS
we have perceptual access to physical colors. This view holds that transient
colors are physical colors as picked out by reference-fixing descriptions of
such causal relations.
Nonphysicalist proposals claim that differences in an object’s transient
colors always involve differences in properties held to be constitutive of
the nature of color, for example, mental properties or processes, or sui
generis properties. Physicalism, by contrast, generally can’t account for
differences in an object’s transient colors in terms of differences in physical
properties of the object since most differences in transient colors are not
due to differences in these physical properties. Physicalism must instead
account for differences in an object’s transient colors in terms of differ-
ences in perceptual access to the same physical color in virtue of different
color experiences.22
It is intuitive that differences in transient color must be explained in
terms of perceptual access to differences in properties constitutive of the
nature of color, as opposed to differences in perceptual access to the same
physical color. Furthermore, due to this intuitive claim, the physicalist’s
notion of physical color seems prima facie to be mistaken. It seems that
since an object’s transient color can differ while its reflectance property
remains unchanged, this reflectance property is not what’s perceived as
color. Rather, it seems that what the physicalist calls physical color is just
the physical stimulus of visual experience of color, and the constituting
nature of color must involve properties apart from this physical stimulus
(Hardin 1993, 64–66; Clark forthcoming, chapter 6)).
However, this intuitive claim rests on the assumption that differences
in transient color inform us of differences in properties constitutive of the
nature of color. Physicalism holds, to the contrary, that descriptions of the
causal relations of color experiences merely serve to fix the reference of
color terms. Thus, ordinary visual experience tells us nothing about these
constituting properties. And in this case, differences in transient colors
need not be explained in terms of perceptual access to differences in prop-
erties constitutive of the nature of color. Rather, these differences can be
explained in terms of differences in perceptual access to the same physical
color.
But if the difference between an object looking red in one lighting and
brown in another is simply a difference in perceptual access to the same
physical color, which perceptual access is veridical? Is the object red or
brown? I’ll now turn to a defense of a characterization of veridical color in
terms of favored conditions of perceptual access.
THE RELATIVITY OF COLOR 113
6. RELATIVITY TO STANDARDS
sensitive retinal cells called cones, and thus are trichromatic. Any two
lights that have an identical effect on our three types of cones will be
identical in appearance (Cornsweet 1970, 170–172). A disjunction of phys-
ically different properties look teal because a disjunction of such properties
have an identical effect on our cones, and this effect encodes teal.
The neural explanation of metamerism indicates that our ordinary color
categories correspond with and are explained by certain neural processes of
our trichromatic visual systems.32 Furthermore, color blind perceivers with
fewer than three functioning cone types have different color categories
(and therefore different psychological color spaces). Thus, color categories
are relative to perceiver types.33
Hardin (1993, 66) and McGilvray (1994, 202–203) offer the following
argument both against physicalism and in favor of a version of subjectivism
which claims that colors are mental processes or events which are identi-
fied with neural processes or events. Visual science shows that determinate
colors aren’t physical kinds, but rather that our ordinary color categories
correspond with and are explained by certain neural processes. Assuming
that colors are identified with a range of properties which corresponds with
and explains our ordinary color categories, colors cannot be identified with
physical properties of physical objects, but rather are identified with neural
processes.
The disjunctive physicalist response, however, is to reject this
assumption.34 For this theorist claims that neural processes are an aspect
of perceptual access, and thus distinguishes the constituting nature of color
from an account of perceptual access to color in virtue of certain neural
processes. For example, Smart claims:
. . . the disjunction of physical properties which is the physical property of greenness seems
to be a very disjunctive and idiosyncratic physical property. We single it out only because of
certain highly complex facts about the human eye and nervous system. This is because in-
finitely many different mixtures of light of various wavelengths and intensities can produce
the same discriminatory response. (Smart 1975, 3)
perceptual access to the difference between turquoise and teal, the tur-
quoise or teal that we attribute to physical objects aren’t themselves neural
processes. These transient colors are the physical properties of objects to
which we have perceptual access in virtue of certain neural processes.35
Visual science shows that our ordinary color categories are not physical
kinds, but rather are relative to our trichromatic visual systems. However,
we still have no reason to think that the disjunctive physicalist can’t hold
a favored access model of veridical color. Indeed, relativizing color cat-
egories to trichromatic human perceivers is just a matter of characterizing
them in terms of standard perceivers. Thus, so long as we consider neural
processes aspects of perceptual access, characterizing veridical color in
terms of the color categories of trichromatic human perceivers is just a
matter of characterizing it in terms of the visual experiences of standard
perceivers.
I’ve argued that disjunctive physicalism can characterize veridical color
as a kind of standing color, namely, transient color relative to standards.
However, as it turns out, different individuals who are standard perceiv-
ers can see the same physical object in the same viewing conditions as
having slightly different transient colors. Since standards are determined
pragmatically, they are ordinarily vague. Even our precise color terms can
be used to apply to a range of slightly different transient colors. Thus, these
individual differences in color perception aren’t discovered in the course
of ordinary usage of color terms.
How do we determine which of the slightly different transient colors
is the veridical color of the object? If what counts as favored perceptual
conditions doesn’t serve to distinguish among the subtly different transi-
ent colors seen by different individual standard perceivers, then so far as
the favored access model goes, the distinction is arbitrary. Assuming that
disjunctive physicalism must make a determination, it seems that this view
can’t provide an adequate characterization of veridical color.
Next I’ll focus on the problem of relativity of color to individuals. I’ll
argue that disjunctive physicalism can account for individual differences
in color perception in terms of perceptual access to physical color in a way
that avoids making a determination of veridical color which distinguishes
among the subtly different transient colors seen by different individual
standard perceivers.
THE RELATIVITY OF COLOR 119
7. RELATIVITY TO INDIVIDUALS
tems. Rather, one can hold that red – green blind perceivers have different
perceptual access from standard perceivers to the properties red and green,
which are constituted by reflectance properties.
Similarly, the psychophysical evidence of individual differences, along
with their neural explanation, is consistent with the claim that individuals
are slightly different perceptual gauges of the physical colors of objects.
Due to differences among individuals in their cone absorptions, individuals
have slightly different perceptual access to physical colors. Thus, we can
explain individual differences in color perception in terms of these slight
differences in perceptual access to the same physical color.
are merely reference fixers, and don’t specify the constituting nature of
color. Transient colors are physical properties of physical objects as picked
out by these descriptions. And since an object’s veridical color is just its
transient color relative to favored perceptual conditions, its veridical color
is also a physical property of physical objects.38
Some recent proposals about the constituting nature of color, in par-
ticular those offered by Thompson (1995, 243) and Johnston (manuscript,
Chap. 5), claim that colors are complex relations between perceivers and
objects perceived. I think their claim that colors are relations gets a funda-
mental point right – that is, that transient colors supervene on complex
relations. However, it conflates the constituting nature of color, which
is monadic, and our perceptual access to color in virtue of perceptual
experiences, which is relational.39
By characterizing veridical color in terms of favored perceptual access
along with drawing a distinction between the physical nature of color
and our perceptual access to it, the disjunctive physicalist successfully
addresses the problems posed for this theory due to the relativity of color.
Although more needs to be said to give a full fledged defense of disjunctive
physicalism, it is tenable so far as these problems are concerned.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
NOTES
1 For simplicity, I’ll only discuss attribution of colors to the surfaces of physical objects.
But I do not mean to suggest that only physical surfaces have color (as is claimed by
Hilbert (1992)). Rather, I submit that volumes of glass or water, and physical processes
such as lightning have color as well.
2 Those who hold subjectivism include Hardin (1993), McGilvray (1994), Clark (1996
and forthcoming) and Boghossian and Velleman (1989).
Both Hardin (in personal communication) and McGilvray (1994, 211–212) hold that
colors are mental processes or events. Nevertheless, Hardin also claims that describing
THE RELATIVITY OF COLOR 123
colors as mental processes or events doesn’t satisfactorily fit with our experience of colors
as properties of physical objects. Rather, Hardin claims that Maund’s (1995) view that
colors are virtual properties better suits our experience of colors (in this context, virtual
properties are merely represented physical properties of physical objects). (For objections
to this account of color experience, see my ‘The Location Problem for Color Subjectivism’
(forthcoming).) However, in referring to Hardin’s view I’ll simply say that he claims that
colors are mental processes or events.
3 Physicalists include Smart (1975), Armstrong (1968, 1987); Lewis (1997), Hilbert
(1987), Tye (1995), Dretske (1995), Harman (1996), Lycan (1996), Shoemaker (1996) and
Byrne and Hilbert (1997).
4 Dispositionalism has been supported by McGinn (1983), Peacocke (1984) and Johnston
(1992). McGinn and Johnston have since retracted their support (see McGinn (1996) and
Johnston (manuscript)).
5 Campbell (1993) proposes primitivism; McGinn (1996) proposes impressionism.
6 But, of course, this recent development occurs within the context of a long history of
addressing the problem of how color fits into a scientific description of the world; scientific
considerations have provided reasons for rejecting color realism at least since the time of
Galileo.
7 There are other versions of dispositionalism. In the most general terms, dispositionalism
holds that colors are dispositions to produce perceptual responses in perceivers. Different
versions of dispositionalism characterize perceptual responses in different ways. For ex-
ample, prior to becoming a physicalist, Smart (1961) proposed a dispositionalist view in
which he characterized perceptual responses in terms of discriminatory behavior, such as
sorting objects by color.
8 Shoemaker proposes a version of physicalism which, unlike Smart’s version, charac-
terizes visual experiences in terms of color qualia, mental qualitative properties of visual
experience which are what it’s like to be conscious of color. Shoemaker draws a distinc-
tion between the intentional contents and the qualitative contents of visual experiences
of color. He claims that the colors of physical objects are physical properties of physical
objects, and that these colors are included in intentional contents. But he claims that these
physical properties aren’t perceived colors; he holds that perceived colors are what he calls
phenomenal properties, and that phenomenal properties are included in qualitative con-
tents. Furthermore, these phenomenal properties are (nondispositional) relations between
physical colors and visual experiences with color qualia (Shoemaker 1996). I’ll defend
Smart’s version of physicalism because I agree with Smart’s rejection of color qualia.
9 It may not be fair to claim that Hilbert held nondisjunctive physicalism in Color and
Color Perception (1987), for he also claims there that the colors we perceive physical
objects as having are disjunctive physical properties. He calls these disjunctive physical
properties anthropocentric colors (1987, 27). In any event, Hilbert now holds disjunctive
physicalism (Byrne and Hilbert 1997).
10 Hardin (1993, 64–65) makes this point. However, Dretske (1995, 88–93) argues that
considerations about the evolution of color vision allow a nondisjunctive physicalist to
claim that only one metameric disjunct is the real turquoise or the real teal – it is the dis-
junct that it was adaptive for the visual system to detect. Other disjuncts are free riders. But
this argument rests on the controversial claim that the biological function of color vision is
to promote the detection of physical object surfaces by way of physical properties, namely,
particular surface reflectance properties, and thus characterize the biological function of
color vision in physical terms.
124 PETER W. ROSS
relations among colors, such as that orange is qualitatively more similar to red than it is to
teal (there will be more on such explanations below).
Also, see McGilvray (1994) for a subtle defense of a different version of a projective
theory of color perception. McGilvray claims that not only the colors, but also the spatial
locations we visually experience, are mental events which can be identified with neural
events. In ‘The Location Problem for Color Subjectivism’ (forthcoming), I provide an
extended argument against color projectivism, including McGilvray’s version.
18 See Peacocke (1983, 5) and McGinn (1983, 8–9) for examples of this proposal.
19 However, see my ‘The Appearance and Nature of Color’ (1999) in which I show that
Revelation motivates certain anti-naturalist views (such as Boghossian and Velleman’s
subjectivism and McGinn’s impressionism), and argue that we should reject Revelation.
20 I’ll use the expression ‘representational contents’ to avoid the question of whether per-
ceptual contents are conceptual or nonconceptual, and what the distinction between these
sorts of contents is.
21 As Boghossian and Velleman put it with respect to color perception, “. . . [intentionalist
theories claim] that visual experience involves colour only to the extent of representing it”
(Boghossian and Velleman 1989, 91). For other characterizations of intentionalism along
these lines, see, for example, Harman (1990, 34–40), Shoemaker (1994, 227–228) Dretske
(1995, 34–36), Tye (1995, 105–108), Lycan (1996, 11, 70–72) (those of this group that
hold intentionalism are Harman, Dretske, Tye and Lycan); intentionalism characterized in
this way is also called the “extreme perceptual theory” (Peacocke 1983, 8).
I’m accepting intentionalism as stated to simplify the defense of a disjunctive phys-
icalist account of the colors of physical objects. I think that a more complete theory of
color should hold a modified intentionalism which rejects that visual experiences have
color qualia, and claims that the colors we are aware of in visual experience (including
hallucination) are always physical properties of (sometimes merely intentional) objects,
but which also allows that visual experiences have nonrelational mental colors, which are
identified with neural processes or events. The motivation and defense of mental colors, so
described, goes beyond the scope of this paper.
22 It may seem circular to identify transient colors in terms of color experiences, and –
due to intentionalism – identify color experiences in terms of transient colors. However,
transient colors and color experiences aren’t interdefined in a vicious way; merely the
same description (of a causal relation between physical properties of objects and color
experiences) which picks out colors also picks out color experiences.
23 Others have provided similar arguments. See Campbell (1969, 143–146), Thompson
(1995, 118–120, 246) and Clark (forthcoming, Chap. 6). (Thompson and Clark cite
Hardin.)
24 Hardin doesn’t put his argument in terms of transient and standing colors.
25 But see Thompson et al. (1992, 20–21), Thompson (1995, 200–202) and Johnston (man-
uscript, Chap. 5) for criticism of the claim that there is a characterization of veridical shape
in terms natural to physics, independently of our interests.
26 Although my focus is to defend disjunctive physicalism, a version of standardizing
realism, against this attack, it is notable that Hardin generalizes this argument to apply
to any version of color realism that specifies veridical color as relative to types of per-
ceivers and viewing conditions, even if perceivers and viewing conditions are technically
described in the context of visual science. For he points out that, as visual scientists know,
there’s no principled – that is, interest free – basis for relativizing the veridical colors of
126 PETER W. ROSS
objects to any perceivers or any viewing conditions. So, according to Hardin, it’s not just
relativizing to standards that’s problematic, but relativizing to any types of perceivers or
viewing conditions at all (1990, 562–564).
27 Of course, since illusory colors are transient colors, they also are physical properties.
However, it seems difficult to understand how some illusory colors are physical properties.
For example, a Benham disk is a round disk with a black and white pattern on its face,
including a number of curved black lines. When the disk is rotated between five and ten
times per second, desaturated red, green, and blue rings appear along the curved black lines
(Hurvich 1981, 190).
Whereas it seems plain that these illusory colors are not simply reflectance properties,
nevertheless, they may be identified with some other physical property (just as the color
of physical processes such as lightning are identified with some other physical property) –
in this case, some complex physical property of the spinning disk. Hardin would consider
such a complex physical property to be merely the physical stimulus of color experience.
However, the disjunctive physicalist would consider it to be a physical color.
28 Dispositionalism also denies that we must characterize veridical color in terms of
the constituting nature of color, and gives a pragmatic account of veridical color. Thus,
the following discussion is relevant to defending dispositionalism as well as disjunctive
physicalism.
29 Clark (forthcoming, Chap. 6) also forcefully states this objection.
30 Nondisjunctive physicalism claims that objects do have a single veridical color because
this view holds that colors are physical kinds, namely, reflectance properties. But, as Hardin
argues, there’s good reason to reject nondisjunctive physicalism on the basis that it’s not a
proposal about perceived colors, which are realized by a disjunction of physical properties.
31 Hardin has been foremost in informing philosophers of the physical messiness of our
ordinary color categories. But others have discussed it as well, for example, Campbell
(1969), Smart (1975) and Hilbert (1987).
32 See Saunders and van Brakel (1997) for objections to this claim on the basis that color
categories are culturally determined; but see Ross (1997) for a response.
33 It may also be that there are color perceivers of other species, and that they have different
color categories. Thompson (1995, Chap. 4) provides a very informative discussion of
comparative color vision, which examines differences in the visual systems of different
species; he also provides conjectures as to how to describe the psychological color spaces
of nontrichromatic color perceivers of other species.
However, Hilbert (1992) disputes whether other species have color vision at all. Even if
they don’t, differences in the color categorizations of normal as compared to color blind
human perceivers indicate that color categories are relative to perceiver types.
34 I offer an argument against this assumption in ‘The Location Problem for Color Subject-
ivism’ (forthcoming). I argue that we should reject subjectivism due to problems this view
faces in explaining color perception. With respect to Hardin’s and McGilvray’s argument,
I point out that the falsity of subjectivism shows that we should reject one or both of (a)
the claims from visual science, or (b) the claim that colors are identified with a range
of properties which corresponds with and explains our ordinary color categories; I then
contend that we should reject (b).
35 See also Armstrong (1987, 41), Dretske (1995, 34–38) and Harman (1996, 253) for
similar points.
36 The absorption spectrum of a given cone type specifies the probability with which the
cone absorbs light for each wavelength of the visible spectrum. The three cone types differ
THE RELATIVITY OF COLOR 127
in their sensitivity to light, that is, they differ with respect to the region of the spectrum
where the absorption of light is most probable.
For discussions of the explanation of individual differences in terms of individual differ-
ences in absorption spectra, see Boynton (1979, 384); Hurvich (1981, 222–223, 229–230);
Hardin (1993, 78–80); Hilbert (1987, 97). Clark (1993, 44) points out that determinate
hues are associated with specific ratios of cone absorptions.
37 Hardin (1993, xxiii–xxiv, 78–81) and Clark (forthcoming, chapter 6) offer this reas-
oning in support of subjectivism about the nature of color. But it can be used to support
dispositionalism as well.
Byrne and Hilbert (1997, 272–274), in a defense of disjunctive physicalism, lay out a
similar argument and reject it. They hold that individual differences indicate that “some
ways of being unique green are also ways of being bluish green” (1997, 273). I think
the only way to understand their claim is by distinguishing physical color and perceptual
access to physical color, and explain individual differences in transient colors in terms of
differences in perceptual access to the same physical color.
Various thought experiments, notably Block’s (1990) Inverted Earth thought experiment,
purport to show that visual experiences have color qualia. Since color qualia are held to be
mental qualitative properties which are what it’s like to be conscious of color, this thought
experiment seems to indicate that perceived colors aren’t physical properties of physical
objects. The psychophysical evidence of individual differences is perhaps more compelling
because it supports the claim that perceived colors aren’t physical properties of physical
objects while avoiding the contentious question of whether visual experiences have qualia.
38 Of course, proving that colors are physical properties of objects is a much more ambi-
tious task, which would have to address other objections to disjunctive physicalism. I’m
merely trying to show that as far as examples of the relativity of color are concerned,
disjunctive physicalism remains tenable.
39 Both Thompson and Johnston also criticize the claim that there is a characterization
of veridical shape in terms natural to physics, independently of our interests (Thompson
1995, 200–202; Johnston manuscript, Chap. 5; see also, Thompson et al. 1992, 20–21 for
similar objections to this claim). Interestingly, they both suggest an account of veridical
shape along the lines of the disjunctive physicalist account of veridical color – that is, as
a physical property picked out by a reference-fixing description of favored conditions of
perceptual access to shape.
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