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The Self-Locating Property Theory of Color

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Abstract

The paper reviews the empirical evidence for highly significant variation across perceivers in hue perception and argues that color physicalism cannot accommodate this variability. Two views that can accommodate the individual differences in hue perception are considered: the self-locating property theory, according to which colors are self-locating properties, and color relationalism, according to which colors are relations to perceivers and viewing conditions. It is subsequently argued that on a plausible rendition of the two views, the self-locating theory has a slight advantage over color relationalism in being truer to the phenomenology of our color experiences.

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Notes

  1. I have defended this theory under different labels in, among other places, Brogaard (2009, 2010, 2012a: Chap 8, b).

  2. In their talk at the color and philosophy conference at Auburn University, March 2–3, 2012, Byrne and Hilbert used ‘color relativism’ as a label for my self-locating property theory and Jonathan Cohen’s relational theory. Elsewhere I have used the label ‘color relativism’ more narrowly for the self-locating property theory. See Brogaard (2012b). There are, of course, numerous other defenders of these or similar views of color. One that immediately comes to mind is Chirimuuta (2015). Chalmers (2006) defends a kind of color physicalism but takes the content of color perception to include self-locating properties.

  3. Individuals and times cannot be chosen at random. For example, there is no centered world containing the time 2000 BC and me at the center, as I didn’t exist then.

  4. See e.g., discussion here. http://notes-from-dreamworlds.blogspot.com/2013/06/fluorescent-colors-of-reef-coral.html.

  5. Here I have in mind people who think that the phenomenology of perception is externalist and who think that high-level properties, like that of being water, is presented in perception.

  6. Thanks to Mazviita Chirimuuta and an anonymous reviewer for very helpful comments on an earlier version of this paper.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Miami, Miami, FL, USA

    Berit Brogaard

  2. University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway

    Berit Brogaard

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  1. Berit Brogaard
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Correspondence to Berit Brogaard.

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Brogaard, B. The Self-Locating Property Theory of Color. Minds & Machines 25, 133–147 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11023-015-9373-y

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