Abstract
Colours appear to instantiate a number of structural properties: for instance, they stand in distinctive relations of similarity and difference, and admit of a fundamental distinction into unique and binary. Accounting for these structural properties is often taken to present a serious problem for physicalist theories of colour. This paper argues that a prominent attempt by Byrne and Hilbert (Behav Brain Sci 26:3–21, 2003) to account for the structural properties of the colours, consistent with the claim that colours are types of surface spectral reflectance, is unsuccessful. Instead, it is suggested that a better account of the structural properties of the colours is provided by a form of non-reductive physicalism about colour: a naïve realist theory of colour, according to which colours are superficial mind-independent properties.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Explore related subjects
Discover the latest articles, news and stories from top researchers in related subjects.Notes
The claim that the structural properties are necessary properties of the colours is not always sharply distinguished from the claim that they are essential properties. But necessary and essential properties are not obvious identical: as Fine (1994) argues, Socrates is plausibly necessarily, but not essentially, a member of the singleton set {Socrates}. The essentialist claim seems to me to better capture the content of the relevant intuition, although I will not argue for this here. Note that the weaker claim that the structural properties are necessary properties of the colours is sufficient to set non-trivial constraints on what the colours could be.
The claim that the structural properties of the colours are essential properties of the colours is consistent with treating colours as kinds, assuming that kinds have certain properties essentially. However, it is does not necessarily imply that colours are natural kinds, if this means that colours are properties with a complex physical or micro-physical essence. According to the naïve realist theory of colour defended below, colours can be thought of as superficial kinds.
Some versions of the Argument from Structure do not rely on the claim that colours are necessary or essential properties of the colours. The version of the argument presented here is more controversial in this respect, but stronger as a result. The distinction between non-modal and modal versions of the argument is noted by Cohen (2003); see below for some discussion.
Related argument with epistemic premisses are presented by Boghossian and Velleman (1991) and Johnston (1992). Johnston, for instance, argues that if colours are physical properties, then their structural properties could only be discovered by empirical investigation. But this violates a what he takes to be core common sense belief about the colours, Availability, that ‘Justified belief about the canary yellowness of external things is available simply on the basis of visual perception’ (1992: 138). The advantage of the present argument is that it does not appeal to this principle, which it would be open to physicalists to reject.
An alternative way of developing this general line of response is to argue that the structural properties are properties of experience that are falsely attributed to the colours (e.g. Churchland 2007). This is problematic for broadly the same reasons as the view considered in the text. A more radical response is to deny that the structural properties of the colours are essential properties of anything at all, as opposed to being artefacts of our linguistic representations (e.g. Saunders and van Brakel 1997; Mizrahi 2009). I will not address this form of relativism here, but for some relevant discussion see Jraissati (2014).
The phenomenological claim that colours appear to be mind-independent properties of things in the environment—rather than, say, mind-dependent dispositional or relational properties—is sometimes denied (e.g. Cohen 2009; Chirimuuta 2011). However, for defences of this claim, see e.g. Allen 2007; Roberts et al. (2014).
Davies (2014) defends a view of this kind, comparing this response to ‘type-B’ physicalist accounts of the mental. Davies’s defence of this approach is programmatic, noting that colour physicalists can adapt whatever turns out to be the best type-B physicalist account of the mental. Assuming that a viable type-B physicalism about the mental is forthcoming, it would still need to be shown that this approach can be adapted to allow for experience to provide knowledge of essential structural properties of the colours without collapsing into a form of a dual aspect theory. Type-B physicalists often appeal to phenomenal concepts to explain the different mode of access to physical properties that experience provides. However, phenomenal concepts are often taken to provide only a ‘thin’, demonstrative, characterization of their referents, in which case it is difficult to see how they could provide substantive knowledge of the essential structural properties of the colours. Alternatively, if phenomenal concepts provide more substantive characterisations of their referents that allow for knowledge of their structural properties not provided by physical concepts (as e.g. Schroer 2010 suggests), then it begins to sound as though colours are properties whose essential nature is not fully physical.
Or to account for coloured light sources, types of productance more generally (e.g. Byrne and Hilbert 2003). However, I will focus on SSR’s here.
The microphysical properties of objects with which some physicalists identify colours appear even less plausible candidates for instantiating the relevant structural properties.
It was initially thought that opponent cells in the laternal geniculate nucleus (LGN) discovered in the 1960s were the neural realisers of the psychophysical opponent channels hypothesised by Hering to explain (amongst other things) the unique-binary structure of the hues. However, it now seems that experiences of the unique hues cannot be explained solely by the activity of opponent cells in the LGN firing in response to signals from the retinal receptors, and a third stage of processing has been hypothesised, the neural basis for which has yet to be identified (e.g. De Valois and De Valois 1993; Abramov 1997; for discussion, see e.g. Jameson and D’Andrade 1997; Jraissati 2014; Degenaar and Myin 2014).
Even if you reject the Lockean simplicity intuition, it is further question whether colour experience exhibits precisely the kind of complexity that Byrne and Hilbert ascribe to it. See Sundström (2013) for discussion of two different ways colours might appear to be complex, only one of which corresponds the complexity attributed by Byrne and Hilbert.
For instance, Shamey et al. (2011) found that the majority of subjects agreed with the physical sample that the NCS describes as unique red, they mostly agreed with NCS unique green, but a majority disagreed with the samples described by the NCS as unique blue and yellow. In each case, the mean samples picked as representing unique hues varied between subjects.
According to Koenderink ‘I fail to see red and blue in a pure purple, just as I fail to see red and green in a pure yellow (2010: 579). He argues further that the six basic hue model captures alterations of brightness amongst the hues (that yellow, cyan, and magenta are relatively bright, and red, green, and blue relatively dark), and allows for the basic hues to be equally spaced around the colour circle.
Compare Shamey et al. (2011) who conclude that ‘The above finding supports that uHs [unique hues] are a well established concept in the minds of subjects that have not had extensive exposure to the idea’. Describing these ‘cognitive references’ as ‘built-in’ suggests that they are innate; a slight variation on this would be to hold that they are learnt through experience.
Compare Mizrahi (2009). Mizrahi defends a form of conventionalism about the unique/binary distinction. However, the view that perceiving similarities between the colours involves a form of ‘seeing as’ does not entail conventionalism, if certain ways of seeing colours are privileged.
As Sivik remarks describing the decision to arrange the hues ordered by the NCS around a circle, rather than a square: ‘since the hue circle is such a well established concept, everybody yielded to this convention. One should, however, be aware of the fact that the hue circle is conceptually not one scale but four’ (Sivik 1997: 176).
This is noted as a potential problem by Byrne (2003: 661, n. 40) but no attempt is made to address it.
Primitivism is sometimes characterised as a view that comes in realist and eliminativist forms, depending on whether colours are primitive properties that physical objects (actually) instantiate (e.g. Pautz 2006). As I understand it, naïve realism is not neutral in this respect. For further discussion, see e.g. Allen (2011).
Compare Dorsch (2010). Pautz (2006) uses the Argument from Structure to motivate a form of eliminativist primitivism. However, Pautz’s eliminativism does not sit easily with the ‘Relational View’ of colour experience that he uses to motivate primitivism, according to which ‘the structural properties of colours are simply inherited from (or amount to) the structural properties of the colours that we are sensorily related to in having those colour experiences’ (2006: 543). The most natural interpretation of the Relational View is that the properties of objects that we are sensorily related to in perception are actually instantiated by those objects. In denying this, Pautz appears to accept an error theory of the general kind that he is otherwise keen to avoid.
References
Abramov, I. (1997). Physiological mechanisms of color vision. In C. L. Hardin & L. Maffi (Eds.), Color categories in thought and language (pp. 89–117). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Allen, K. (2007). The mind-independence of colour. European Journal of Philosophy 15(2), 137–158.
Allen, K. (2009). Inter-species variation in colour perception. Philosophical Studies 142(2), 197–220.
Allen, K. (2010). Locating the unique hues. Rivista di Estetica 43, 13–28.
Allen, K. (2011). Revelation and the nature of colour. dialectica 65(2), 153–176.
Berkeley, G. (1713/1734). Three dialogues between Hylas and Philonous. In M. Ayers (ed) Philosophical works. London: Everyman.
Boghossian, P., & Velleman, D. (1991). Physicalist theories of colour. Philosophical Review, 100, 67–106.
Brewer, B. (2011). Perception and its objects. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Byrne, A. (2003). Color and similarity. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 66(3), 641–665.
Byrne, A., & Hilbert, D. (1997). Colors and reflectances. In A. Byrne & D. Hilbert (Eds.), Readings on color: The philosophy of color (pp. 263–288). Cambridge: MIT Press.
Byrne, A., & Hilbert, D. (2003). Color realism and color science. Behavioural and Brain Sciences, 26, 3–21.
Byrne, A., & Hilbert, D. (2007). Color primitivism. Erkenntnis, 66, 73–105.
Campbell, J. (1993). A simple view of colour. In J. Haldane & C. Wright (Eds.), Reality, representation, and projection. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Chirimuuta, M. (2011). Touchy-feely colour. In C. P. Biggam, C. A. Hough, & D. R. Simmons (Eds.), New directions in colour studies. John Benjamins: Amsterdam and Philadelphia.
Churchland, P. (2007). On the reality (and diversity) of objective colors: How color-qualia space is a map of reflectance-profile space. Philosophy of Science, 74, 119–149.
Cohen, J. (2003). On the structural properties of the colors. Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 81(1), 78–95.
Cohen, J. (2009). The red and the real. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Davies, W. (2014). The inscrutability of colour similarity. Philosophical Studies, 171(2), 289–311.
De Valois, R. L., & De Valois, K. K. (1993). A multi-stage color model. Vision Research, 33(8), 1053–1065.
Degenaar, J., & Myin, E. (2014). The structure of color experience and the existence of surface colors. Philosophical Psychology, 27(3), 384–400.
Dorsch, F. (2010). Colour realism and colour resemblance. Rivista di Estetica, 43, 85–108.
Evans, G. (1982). Varieties of reference. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Fine, K. (1994). Essence and modality. Philosophical Perspectives, 8, 1–16.
Fuld, K., Werner, J., & Wooten, B. (1983). The possible elemental nature of brown. Vision Research, 23, 631–637.
Hård, A., Sivik, L., & Tonnquist, G. (1996). NCS, Natural Color System—From concept to research and applications, parts 1 and 2. Color Research and Application, 21, 180–220.
Hardin, C. L. (1993). Color for philosophers. Indianapolis: Hackett.
Hering, E. (1920). Outlines of a theory of the light sense (L. M. Hurvich, & D. Jameson, Trans.). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Hilbert, D. (1987). Color and color perception. Stanford: Center for the Study of Language and Information.
Hume, D. (1739–1740). A treatise of human nature. In D. F. Norton & M. J. Norton (Eds.). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Indow, T. (1988). Multidimensional studies of Munsell solid. Psychological Review, 95(4), 456–470.
Jackson, F. (1996). The primary quality view of color. Philosophical Perspectives, 10, 199–219.
Jameson, K., & D’Andrade, R. G. (1997). Its not really red, green, yellow, blue: An inquiry into perceptual color space. In C. L. Hardin & L. Maffi (Eds.), Color categories in thought and language (pp. 295–319). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Johnston, M. (1992). How to speak of the colors. Philosophical Studies, 68, 221–263.
Jraissati, Y. (2014). Proving universalism wrong does not prove relativism right: Considerations on the ongoing color categorization debate. Philosophical Psychology, 27(3), 401–424.
Kalderon, M. (2011). The multiply qualitative. Mind, 120, 239–262.
Koenderink, J. (2010). Color for the sciences. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Kuehni, R. (2005). Focal color variability and unique hue stimulus variability. Journal of Cognition and Culture, 5(387), 407.
Lewis, D. (1997). Naming the colors. Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 75(3), 325–342.
Locke, J. (1975). An essay concerning human understanding. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Matthen, M. (2005). Seeing, doing, and knowing. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Maund, B. (1995). Colours: Their nature and representation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
McLaughlin, B. (2003). Color, consciousness, and color consciousness. In Q. Smith & A. Jokic (Eds.), Consciousness: New philosophical perspectives (pp. 97–154). New York: Oxford University Press.
Mizrahi, V. (2009). Is colour composition phenomenal? In D. Skusevich & P. Matikas (Eds.), Color perception: Physiology, processes and analysis (pp. 185–202). New York: Nova Science Publishers.
Pautz, A. (2006). Can the physicalist explain colour structure in terms of colour experience? Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 84(4), 535–564.
Roberts, P., Andow, J., & Schmidtke, K. (2014). Colour relationalism and the real deliverances of introspection. Erkenntnis, 79(5), 1173–1189
Saunders, B., & van Brakel, J. (1997). Are there non-trivial constraints on color categorisation? Behavioural and Brain Sciences, 20, 167–232.
Schroer, R. (2010). Where’s the beef? Phenomenal concepts as both demonstrative and substantial. Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 88(3), 505–522.
Shamey, R., Sedito, M., & Kuehni, R. (2010). Comparison of unique hue stimuli determined by two different methods using Munsell color chips. Color Research and Application, 35(6), 419–424.
Shamey, R., Shepherd, S., Abed, M., Chargualaf, M., Garner, N., Dippel, N., et al. (2011). How well are color components of samples of the Natural Color System estimated? Journal of the Optical Society of America A, 28(10), 1962–1969.
Shoemaker, S. (2003). Content, character, and color. Philosophical Issues, 13, 253–278.
Sivik, L. (1997). Color systems for cognitive research. In C. L. Hardin & L. Maffi (Eds.), Color categories in thought and language (pp. 163–193). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Stroud, B. (2000). The quest for reality. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Sundström, P. (2013). Are colours visually complex? In C. Svennerlind, J. Almäng, & R. Ingthorsson (Eds.), Johanssonian investigations: Essays in honour of Ingvar Johansson on his seventieth birthday (pp. 627–639). Frankfurt: Ontos Verlag.
Thompson, E. (1995). Colour vision: A study in cognitive science and the philosophy of perception. London: Routledge.
Tye, M. (2000). Consciousness, color, and content. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Watkins, M. (2010). A posteriori primitivism. Philosophical Studies, 150(1), 123–137.
Wittgenstein, L. (1953). Philosophical investigations. Oxford: Blackwell.
Yablo, S. (1995). Singling out properties. Philosophical Perspectives, 9, 477–502.
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank Mazviita Chirimuuta and an anonymous referee for Minds and Machines for extremely helpful comments. Earlier versions of this material were presented at Durham and York's Mind and Reason group. Thanks to everyone for their comments and questions on these occasions.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Allen, K. Colour Physicalism, Naïve Realism, and the Argument from Structure. Minds & Machines 25, 193–212 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11023-014-9353-7
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11023-014-9353-7