Colors are of philosophical interest for a number of reasons. One ofthe most important reasons is that color raises serious metaphysicalissues, concerning the nature both of physical reality and of themind. Among these issues are questions concerning whether color ispart of a mind-independent reality, and what account we can give ofexperiences of color. These issues have been, and continue to be,inextricably linked with important epistemological and semanticissues.

• 1. The Philosophy of Color
  • 1.1 A Problem with Color
  • 1.2 Resistance to Eliminativism/Subjectivism
  • 1.3 The Problem of Color Realism
  • 1.4 Colors as We Ordinarily Talk and Think About Them
  • 1.5 Taxonomy of Rival Theories of Color
• 2. Theories of Color
  • 2.1 Primitivism: The Simple Objectivist View of Colors
  • 2.2 Reductive Color Physicalism
  • 2.3 Color Eliminativism/Irrealism/Fictionalism
  • 2.4 Color Subjectivism
  • 2.5 Color Dispositionalism
  • 2.6 Color Relationalism
  • 2.7 Action-Based Theories of Color
• Bibliography
  • Works Cited
  • Other Important Works
• Academic Tools
• Other Internet Resources
• Related Entries

1. The Philosophy of Color

In this section, we consider some central puzzles that arise in thephilosophy of color, concerning the nature of colors and how they fitinto scientific accounts of the world.

1.1 A Problem with Color

The visual world, the world as we see it, is a world populated bycolored objects. Typically, we see the world as having a rich tapestryof colors or colored forms—fields, mountains, oceans, skies,hairstyles, clothing, fruit, plants, animals, buildings, and so on.Colors are important in both identifying objects, i.e., in locatingthem in space, and in re-identifying them. So much of our perceptionof physical things involves our identifying objects by theirappearance, and colors are typically essential to an object’sappearance, that any account of visual perception must contain someaccount of colors. Since visual perception is one of the mostimportant species of perception and hence of our acquisition ofknowledge of the physical world, and of our environment, including ourown bodies, a theory of color is doubly important.

One of the major problems with color has to do with fitting what weseem to know about colors into what science (not only physics but thescience of color vision) tells us about physical bodies and theirqualities. It is this problem that historically has led the majorphysicists who have thought about color, to hold the view thatphysical objects do not actually have the colors we ordinarily andnaturally take objects to possess. Oceans and skies are not blue inthe way that we naively think, nor are apples red (nor green). Colorsof that kind, it is believed, have no place in the physical account ofthe world that has developed from the sixteenth century to thiscentury.

Not only does the scientific mainstream tradition conflict with thecommon-sense understanding of color in this way, but as well, thescientific tradition contains a very counter-intuitive conception ofcolor. There is, to illustrate, the celebrated remark by DavidHume:

Sounds, colors, heat and cold, according to modern philosophy are notqualities in objects, but perceptions in the mind. (Hume 1738: Bk III,part I, Sect. 1 [1911: 177]; Bk I, IV, IV [1911: 216])

Physicists who have subscribed to this doctrine include theluminaries: Galileo, Boyle, Descartes, Newton, Thomas Young, Maxwelland Hermann von Helmholtz. Maxwell, for example, wrote:

It seems almost a truism to say that color is a sensation; and yetYoung, by honestly recognizing this elementary truth, established thefirst consistent theory of color. (Maxwell 1871: 13 [1970: 75])

This combination of eliminativism—the view that physical objectsdo not have colors, at least in a crucial sense—andsubjectivism—the view that color is a subjectivequality—is not merely of historical interest. It is held by manycontemporary experts and authorities on color, e.g., Zeki 1983, Land1983, and Kuehni 1997. Palmer, a leading psychologist and cognitivescientist, writes:

People universally believe that objects look colored because they arecolored, just as we experience them. The sky looks blue because it isblue, grass looks green because it is green, and blood looks redbecause it is red. As surprising as it may seem, these beliefs arefundamentally mistaken. Neither objects nor lights are actually“colored” in anything like the way we experience them.Rather, color is a psychological property of our visual experienceswhen we look at objects and lights, not a physical property of thoseobjects or lights. The colors we see are based on physical propertiesof objects and lights that cause us to see them as colored, to besure, but these physical properties are different in important waysfrom the colors we perceive. (Palmer 1999: 95)

This quote, however, needs unpacking. Palmer is obviously challengingour ordinary common-sense beliefs about colors. Specifically, he isdenying that objects and lights have colors in the sense ofcolors-as-we-experience-them (orcolors as we seethem). As far as this goes, it is compatible with objects andlights having colors in some other sense, e.g., colors, as defined forscientific purposes. Secondly, he is saying that color (i.e.,color-as-we-experience it) is a psychological property, whichin turn, might be interpreted in different ways. Accordingly, the viewis quite complex (see the next section). If we examine the writings ofothers in the scientific tradition, we find that their views are alsocomplex. The view maybe color-eliminativism, but it is not merelythat.

1.2 Resistance to Eliminativism/Subjectivism

There has been a strong resistance among philosophers, both to theEliminativist tendency within the scientific tradition, and therelated subjectivism. One form this resistance takes reflects the factthat each component of this traditional view is very puzzling. Acommon response is to say that our color terms—red, blue,purple, orange, yellow, green, brown, etc.—are in order: we haveparadigms of colors to which the color terms apply: ripe lemons areyellow, tomatoes and rubies are red, and so on. We have no trouble, byand large, in learning these terms and teaching them in ostensivepractices to children and others. In the second place, it is hard tomake sense of the claim that colors are properties of sensations orare psychological properties: if they are anything they are propertiesof material objects and light sources—of peaches, and emeralds,of skies, of rainbows, of glasses of wine, of headlamps, and soon.

It should be noted, however, that things are more complex than theearlier remarks of Hume and Maxwell suggest. Descartes and Locke, forexample, think that there are no colors in the physical world—nocolors, as we ordinarily and naively understand them to be. But theyare also widely interpreted as holding a secondary quality view ofcolors, i.e., holding the view that colors are powers or dispositionsto cause experiences of a certain type. It is instructive to try tounderstand this dual position. We find, for example, this passage inDescartes’Principles of Philosophy:

It is clear then that when we say we perceive colors in objects,it is really just the same as saying that we perceived inobjects something as to whose nature we are ignorant but whichproduces in us a very clear and vivid sensation, what we call thesensation of color. (Descartes 1644 [1988]: para. 70; see also paras68–70)

The implication of “it is really just the same as saying”is that this is not what it is ordinarily taken to be saying. AsDescartes later explains, the ordinary way involves the mistake of“judging that the feature of objects that we call‘color’ is something ‘just like the color in oursensation’”. However, Descartes is not implying that weshould dispense with our ordinary talk. Instead, it is beingsuggested, we should go on using our ordinary color talk, but give ita novel interpretation: when we say “X”, then itis as though we said “Y”. That is to say, weshould not understand the sentences literally, but rather translatethem into other more appropriate sentences. Descartes, here, isfollowing the principle common to many thinkers of the time, theprinciple of “talking with vulgar, and thinking with thelearned”. The justification for this proposal is that itacknowledges that our color language serves very useful purposes: thereconstruction allows the language to continue to serve thosepurposes, while avoiding metaphysical error. Thus, there is at least apartial response to the common-sense criticism: the reconstructioncentral to this form of eliminativism embraces a principle of respectfor our ordinary language.

There are also complications with respect to the subjectivistcomponent of the traditional view. When philosophers such as Descartesand Locke wrote of sensations of color, or of (sensory) ideas ofcolor, there are different interpretations of what is meant by theterms. The common interpretation is that a sensation of red is asensory experience in which a certain subjective quality is presented.Expressed in modern terms, the subjective qualities are construed asqualia, or as qualities of sensory individuals such as sensa orsense-data or as sensational properties. There is, however, analternative interpretation: a sensation of color is a sensoryexperience, which represents something as having a certain quality(the experience has a certain intentional content). On this secondinterpretation, Descartes’ view would be that the relevantquality our color experience represents objects as having is one thatno object possesses. Accordingly, it would not be inappropriate tocall the theory “fictionalist” rather thansubjectivist.(For discussion of Color Fictionalism, see Gatzia 2008[2015]). This interpretation, we should note, allows for qualia orsensa, but does not mandate them. And some Cartesian scholars denythat Descartes, in particular, was committed to qualia.

Finally, there is yet another complication. It is in fact possible tocombine the two versions in a single interpretation. That is to say,the representationalist view does not rule out a version withsubjectivist elements. For such a view allows for a type ofprojectivism, whereby the experience both presents a sensory quality,and represents a physical object as having that quality. Theexperience is said to “project” the subjective, sensoryqualities onto the physical objects. A model for this would be theexperience of pain: the supposition is that when one has a toothache,the experience represents the pain as being in the tooth. (Thisprojectivist view seems to suit Hume’s thought, but in any case,it fits modern projectivist accounts.)

We might note the it is common to find, in authoritative texts,definitions like

• “Color attributes are attributes of visual sensations, e.g.,hue, saturation and brightness”;
• “hue: attribute of color perception denoted by the termsyellow, red, blue, green and so forth”;
• “Brightness is the attribute of a visual sensation accordingto which a given visual stimulus appears to be more or lessintense”.

There is a range of ways we might interpret these definitions:

Several of these ways understanding the definitions leave it openwhether physical objects actually have the attributes or not, andwhether the attributes (that form part of the representational contentof the experiences) might have subjective components.

Finally, we should note that part of the explanation for theresistance to Color Eliminativism is that it is not widelyacknowledged that the theory takes different forms. More accurately,the thesis can be combined with different other theses, which have theresult of making the theory more positive than it sounds on firsthearing. Some forms of the theory are better thought of as being ColorFictionalism. Not only does the title suggest something positive; itimplies that there is something worth preserving in our ordinaryconceptual practices concerting colors—the way we ordinarilytalk and think about colors—but it follows through on thepromise. With respect to a vast number of ordinary color sentences, itimplies that we should adopt a certain attitude: we should makebelieve the sentences are true. (See Gatzia 2008 [2015] for strongdefences of Color Fictionalism). We shall return to this theme inSection 2.3, below

1.3 The Problem of Color Realism

From our discussion of the scientific tradition on colors, it is clear(enough) that two questions face us:

1. What is the right account of colors-as-we-experience-them? ofcolors-as-we-see-them? colors-as-we-ordinarily-talk-and-think ofthem?
2. Are there such colors?

For obvious reasons, these questions present us with what we mightcall “the Problem of Color Realism”. The discussion alsoindicates that finding answers may be a little tricky. (We should alsonote that there are complexities associated with our understanding ofRealism, that we will need to slide over—see the entryonrealism.)

Let us turn to a more recent description of the problem. Byrne andHilbert (2003) say, of the problem of color realism, that it“concerns various especially salient properties that objectsvisually appear to have”. By way of clarification, they say:

If someone with normal color vision looks at a tomato in good light,the tomato will appear to have a distinctive property—a propertythat strawberries and cherries also appear to have, and which we call“red” in English. The problem of color realism is posed bythe following two questions. First, do objects like tomatoes,strawberries and radishes really have the distinctive property thatthey do appear to have? Second, what is this property? (Byrne &Hilbert 2003: 3–4)

It would seem that Byrne and Hilbert give us anotherexpression—“the color things appear to be” or“the color things look to have”—to go with ourearlier expressions, “colors-as-we-experience-them”,“colors as-we-see-them”. (As we shall see, with eachexpression, there is an ambiguity which will need to be taken carewith, but, it would seem, the same ambiguity applies to eachexpression.)

The use of the expression“colors-as-we-see-them” hascertain advantages, in that it brings out certain important featuresof colors. The first is that it implies that a comprehensive accountof color is going to depend on an account of perceptual experience.Given the controversies on that topic, it is likely to mean thatsimilar disputes will spill over to the subject of color. For example,on some views, colors-as-we-see-them will be certain propertiespresented in experience. According to other views, they will becertain properties that material things are represented as having. Ona third view, Color Projectivism, the qualities presented in visualexperiences are subjective qualities, which are“projected” on to material objects: the experiencesrepresent material objects as having the subjective qualities. Thosequalities are taken by the perceiver to be qualities instantiated onthe surfaces of material objects—the perceiver does notordinarily think of them as subjective qualities. (For the moment weare thinking of colors of material sources. The account can beextended so as to apply to film colors and colors of lightsources.)

Deciding the questions with which we began, in this Section, willdepend on theories of representational content (intentional content)perceptual experiences carry; see the entry onthe problem of perception. Some important readings that delve, extensively, into these areas areByrne & Hilbert 1997c; Shoemaker 1994 [1997]; Chalmers 2006.

1.4 Colors as We Ordinarily Talk and Think About Them

It is commonplace for color theorists to introduce their study byreference to the color terms used in everyday common language,e.g.,“red” and “yellow” and“green” and “blue”. For example, Hardin, inhis highly influential book,Color for Philosophers (1988[1993] writes):

What’s essential to chromatic phenomena, and what’saccidental? What might we safely dispense with? Rather thanundertaking to identify, characterize and then sort through all of thefolk notions of color, I shall say what it is that I have in mind whenI think and talk about colors. Primarily, what I have in mind are redand yellow and green and blue, though I am also inclined to includewhite and black and gray as well, along, perhaps, with a special placefor brown. (Hardin 1993: xx)

Byrne and Hilbert, when they introduce the problem of color realism,say:

If someone with normal color vision looks at a tomato in good light,the tomato will appear to have a distinctive property—a propertythat strawberries and cherries also appear to have, and which we call“red” in English. (Byrne & Hilbert 2003:3–4)

They then characterize the problem of color realism as posed by thefollowing two questions. First, do objects like tomatoes, strawberriesand radishes really have the distinctive property that they do appearto have[and which we call “red” in English]?Second, what is this property

It will be noted that I have re-instated their characterization of theproperty as “one that we call ‘red’ inEnglish”. The point is that we need this clause to identify theproperty in question. So, among other things, the enquiry is directedat uncovering the property which our ordinary color terms, such as“red”, designate.

It is no accident that theorists proceed in this way. As defenders ofa naive realist theory of color note, there is a well-established setof conceptual and linguistic practices which imply everyday conceptsof color, a set of practicees which, by and large, is quitesuccessful, even flourishing. Given this fact, an important issuearises: does color realism apply to these concepts of color? Theupshot is that it is hard to see how we can avoid questions concerninghow our color terms are ordinarily used and understood.

One important approach to answering the questions is that followed byJohnston, in a highly influential paper (Johnston 1992). In thatpaper, he implicitly acknowledges the existence of a set of linguisticand conceptual practices that underpin what might be called “ourordinary thinking about color”. This thinking is not meant tocomprise theoretical thinking or theorizing about color, or at least,it is much more than that. It comprises our thinking and talking thatinvolves our exercise of concepts of color. Johnston asks the questionof which principles such thinking about color must consist in, inorder to count as exercising those concepts of color.

Johnston says that the ordinary concept of color is a “clusterconcept”, which incorporates a wide set of beliefs. There are,he points out, many beliefs about color to which we are susceptible,beliefs resulting from our visual experience and our tendency to takethat visual experience in certain ways. Johnston says that some ofthese beliefs are “core” beliefs, which we can contrastwith the more “peripheral” beliefs. The point about thecore beliefs is this: were such beliefs to turn out not to be true, wewould then have trouble saying what they were false of, i.e., we wouldbe deprived of a subject matter, rather than having our views changedabout a given subject matter. By contrast, the peripheral beliefs aresuch that “as they change we are simply changing our mind abouta stable subject matter” (Johnston 1992 [1997: 137]).

Taking canary yellow as an illustrative example, he writes thatbeliefs with a legitimate title to be included in a core of beliefsabout canary yellow include:

1. Paradigms. Some of what we take tobe paradigms of canary yellow things (e.g., some canaries) are canaryyellow.
2. Explanation. The fact of asurface or volume or radiant source being canary yellow sometimescausally explains our visual experience as of canary yellowthings.
3. Unity. Thanks to its nature and thenature of the other determinate shades, canary yellow has its ownunique place in the network of similarity, difference and exclusionrelations exhibited by the whole family of shades.
4. Perceptual Availability. Justified belief about thecanary yellowness of external things is available simply on the basisof visual perception. That is, if external things are canary yellow weare justified in believing this just on the basis of visual perceptionand the beliefs, which typically inform it.
5. Revelation. The intrinsic nature ofcanary yellow is fully revealed by a standard visual experience as ofa canary yellow thing.

Canary yellow is an example. More generally, for each color propertyF, beliefs that are legitimately included in the core ofbeliefs concerningF, will include the relevant instances ofthebeliefs (1) to (5). Johnston goes on to argue that in fact there are no properties forwhich all of these beliefs hold true. Accordingly, “speakingever so inclusively”, the world is not colored. However, hemaintains, “speaking more or less inclusively”, the worldis colored, for there are properties which make true enough of thesebeliefs, so as to deserve to be called colors. Johnston then goes onto defend the view that the closest candidates for the various colorsare the dispositional properties, dispositions to look yellow, to lookblue, etc. The item in the list that provides most trouble isitem (5) the doctrine of Revelation. To drop this from the list, he thinks, isa price worth paying, to preserve that claim that there really arecolors.

However, when we look at the items of Johnston’s list, it seemsdifficult to maintain this view about the status of the various items.Takeitem (5), Revelation. Whatever its status, it doesn’t look like a folkbelief. It looks more like something a philosopher might come up with.In the second place, it seems to have a peculiar status. Experiencesof color, it is claimed, are enough to inform us of the nature ofcolor. If it is true or if it is a folk belief, it is hard to see whatneed there is of the other items in the list. Perhaps, though, thisformulation of the doctrine is misleading, and there is a betterformulation available. One possibility is that the doctrine should beinterpreted as addressing certain necessary conditions, rather thanall necessary conditions, or all necessary and sufficient conditions.This point is important since there is group of philosophers who aresympathetic to Primitivism and/or Naïve Realism, who seem tofavor a principle that differs in this way from Johnston’sformulation (see section 2.1).

Let us concentrate onitem, (3), which Johnston labels “Unity”. What it points to is thefact that the various colors can be ordered systematically, in astructured array of all the colors, where that array is based on thesystem of relations of similarity, difference and exclusion holdingamong the colors. The color “yellow” is said to have ahighly distinctive place in this array. Johnston explains theprinciple in more detail:

Think of the relations exemplified along the axes of hue, saturationand brightness in the so-called color solid. The color solid capturescentral facts about the colors, e.g., that canary yellow is not assimilar to the shades of blue as they are similar among themselves,i.e., that canary yellow is not a shade of blue. (Johnston 1992 [1997:138])

There is little doubt that this is an important principle, one whichplays a central part in the reasoning of many philosophers who havewritten on color, e.g., Wittgenstein 1977; Harrison 1973; Hardin 1988[1993], 2003; Thompson 1995; Maund 1995. It is regarded as animportant factor which physicalist-realist theories of color mustexplain, and have a problem in explaining.

However, whatever the status of this principle, it is not a folkbelief (and few of these last-mentioned theorists say that it is). Noris it plausibly a tacit belief. For example, it does not seem a beliefit is necessary to have, in order to have mastery of concepts of colorand, in particular, of a concept of yellow. It is surely quite asophisticated belief, which requires considerable experience withcolors. For one thing, the dimensions mentioned by Johnston—hue,saturation and brightness—apply to aperture colors or filmcolors, which few folk would be aware of, and not to surface colors.Aperture colors are colors perceived under a special mode of viewing:one views the objects or light sources through a small aperture in ascreen (of an achromatic color). The appearance of these colorsdiffers from that of colors seen under more usual circumstances.“Surface colors” are the colors of illuminated samplesseen under conditions in which it is possible for the viewer todistinguish the color of the surface from that of the ambient light.Indeed, for surface colors, there are two sets of dimensions: hue,chroma, and lightness (the Munsell system) and hue, chromaticness andwhiteness/blackness (the Swedish Natural Color system, NCS).Nevertheless, Unity (or a set of Unities) is an important principleand it has something to do with our concepts of color. Wittgenstein,for example, thought it was central to our having the concepts ofcolor that we do, but he says that “we do not want to find atheory of color … but rather the logic of color concepts”(Wittgenstein 1977: 43e). (We are touching on deep issues ofphilosophical methodology, which we are not going to settle here; seethe entry onanalysis, which, interestingly, discusses Jackson’s analysis of color.)On this topic, of a framework for ordering colors, we might note thework of theorists who describe color order systems. One major figureis Kuehni; see, in particular, his paper, “Color Spaces andColor Order Systems”, in Cohen & Matthen 2010. Another isBriggs (2020): “Color Spaces”.

A useful way of thinking of the methodology for the philosophy ofcolor is that given by D. Hilbert in an early work:

[T]he question of the objectivity of color is in the end a conceptualone. To settle the question, we need to discover which way ofconceptualising color allows us to account for both pre-theoreticalintuitions regarding color and the wide range of known colorphenomena. (Hilbert 1987: 16)

This view seems to accommodate a modified version of Johnston’sapproach. It also allows the possibility that a theorist might defenda theory of color by rejecting some of the “pre-reflectiveintuitions”, while explaining why those intuitions might beheld. A recent work that addresses some these issues is Z.Adams 2016.Adams argues that the modern debate between certaincolor-eliminativists and Oxford color-dispositionalists is affected bythe fact that members of each side are guided by differentcolor-intuitions, ones that have historical sources. One does not haveto agree fully with Adams to appreciate that he raises a serious issuefor thought about the metaphysics of color.

In a more recent article, Adams—with Hansen—returns to thetopic (Adams & Hansen 2020). They discusses a series ofexperiments in which experimenters attempted to ascertain the views oncolors held by large groups of subjects. More accurately, theexperimenters wished to find out whether the subjects held arelationalist view of color or, alternatively, an intrinsic propertyview. Interestingly, they find subjects to be divided, roughlyequally. As a result, Adams and Hansen draw the conclusion that thevery notion of “the ordinary conception of color is amyth”. The topic is certainly interesting, but it may bepremature to draw the conclusion that Adams and Hansen draw.

The issues raised in this section involve complex issues ofphilosophical methodology, about which there is much contemporarydispute. No short discussion of such issues can hope to becomprehensive. Different philosophers hold sharply differing viewsabout both the nature of conceptual analysis and its significance.Part of the aim of this section was to bring out that the practice ofdifferent groups of philosophers is closer than one would expect fromtheir official views. (For further discussion, see the entries onanalysis andconcepts.)

In this section, we have discussed “the ways we ordinarily talkand think about colors.” There are important topics andquestions that we have set to one side. There are important questionsabout whether, and to what extent, culture affects our thought andlanguage about colors, e.g., our color-naming practices, as well asour perception of colors. It does seem that we categorize colors incertain ways, and there is an important question as to whether thereis some universalist structure to these categories. General overviewsof the topic and questions are provided by Briscoe (2020) and Dedrick(2020). At they both point out, there has been, in Philosophy,Anthropology, and Linguistics, a long-standing debate on the merits,or otherwise, of “universalist” and“relativist” claims. While that debate seems at varioustimes to be quite intense, it seems that, more recently, both sideshave come to qualify their positions in important ways (see Briscoe2020). Much of this debate considers empirical findings and theirinterpretation, thee is also the question to be considered is to whatextent do these empirical findings affect philosophical debatesbetween various philosophical accounts of color: realists,eliminativists and subjectivists. A good guide on such matters isHardin (2005).

1.5 Taxonomy of Rival Theories of Color

As we saw above, there are two issues concerning color realism:

• what sort of properties are colors?
• do objects really possess those properties?

With respect to the first issue, there is deep division betweendifferent color realists (as well as between them and eliminativists).Setting out the views of major realists and eliminativists, we havethe following major rival categories:

1. Colors are “primitive”properties—simple,sui generis, qualitative propertiesthat physical bodies possess or appear topossess:Primitivism. It is important to notethatPrimitivism comes in very different forms:RealistPrimitivism andEliminativist Primitivism
2. Colors are “hidden” properties ofbodies—complex, physical properties that dispose bodies to lookblue, pink, yellow, etc.:Reductive Physicalism
3. Colors are perceiver-dependent, dispositionalproperties—powers to look in distinctive ways to appropriateperceivers, in appropriate circumstances:Dispositionalism
4. Colors are subjective qualities “projected” ontophysical objects and light-sources—qualities which visualexperiences represent objects as having:Projectivism.
5. Colors are subjective qualities—either qualities presentedin experience or qualities of experiences:Subjectivism.
6. Colors are “hybrid” properties: physical andphenomenological.

Note:

1. Questions can be asked about the framework set out above, whichcompares different theories. Like many taxonomies, there may well bestrong arguments that one or other item comes in different forms whichshould be acknowledged. For an astute discussion of some of theseissues, see Robinson 2020: “Mentalist Approaches toColor”.
2. Theories in category 3 are relational theories of color.Historically, they have been interpreted in terms of normal/standardobservers, and standard viewing conditions. Recently there havedeveloped versions of the theory which relax these requirements.
3. This taxonomy is a first approximation. Some theorists would holdthat there is more than one kind of color: dual referent theorists,e.g., Descartes 1644; D.H. Brown 2006.
4. Subjectivist theories come in different forms: (i) dualistsubjectivism, according to which subjective qualities are irreducibleto physical properties; (ii) subjectivist theories which allow thepossibility that the subjective qualities are identical to physicalproperties, e.g., those of the brain. For more detailed discussion ofthese issues, see Robinson 2020.

For further details, see the supplementary documents:

• Color Science: Some Complexities
• Color: Special Topics

The latter includes discussion ofthe phenomenal character and intentional content of color experiences, and a discussion ofcolor constancy.

2. Theories of Color

InSection 1.5 above, the major rival theories of color were set out. They comprisevarieties of color realism and color eliminativism/fictionalism. Inthis section, we will examine specific versions of these theories.Many of the general issues that have been touched upon will come upfor discussion.

2.1 Primitivism: The Simple Objectivist View of Colors

One of the most prominent views of color is that color is anobjective, i.e., mind-independent, intrinsic property, one possessedby many material objects (of different kinds) and light sources. (By“objective” here, I mean “ontologicallyobjective”, i.e., mind-independent—see Searle 2015: 16.)This view, call itColor Objectivism, takes different forms,however. One form it takes is that colors are simple qualities, whichshow their natures on their face: they aresui generis,simple, qualitative, sensuous, intrinsic, irreducible properties.Thisview has come to be called “Color Primitivism”. Anothercommon form is that colors are objective (mind-independent),properties of material bodies and light sources, whose natures are“hidden” from us, and require empirical investigation todiscover. I shall use the terms “Reductive ColorPhysicalism” or “Color Physicalism”, for short, torefer to it. (SeeSection 2.2 for discussion of this thesis.)

Color Primitivism comes in two forms: a realist version and aneliminativist version. Realist Color Primitivism is the view thatthere are in nature colors, of a distinctive kind that we are allfamiliar with, i.e., that colors are simple intrinsic, non-relational,non-reducible, qualitative properties. They are qualitative featuresof the sort that stand in the characteristic relations of similarityand difference that mark the colors; they are not micro-structuralproperties or reflectances, or anything of the sort. There is noradical illusion, error or mistake in color perception (onlycommonplace illusions): we perceive objects to have the colors thatthey really have. Such a view has been presented by Hacker (1987) andby J. Campbell (1993, 2005) and has become increasingly popular:McGinn (1996); Watkins (2005); Gert (2006, 2008, 2017); Allen (2011,2015, 2016). This view is sometimes called “The Simple View ofColor” and sometimes “A Naïve Realist view ofColor”.

Realist Color Primitivism may be thought of as containing a conceptual(and semantic) thesis about our ordinary understanding of color, and ametaphysical thesis, namely, that physical bodies actually have colorsof this sort. It is possible to accept the conceptual thesis but denythe metaphysical thesis. This gives us an eliminativist form of ColorPrimitivism. (In this section, we will concentrate on PrimitivistRealism, and leave discussion of the Eliminativist form untilSection 2.3.) (We should note that Allen who defends what he calls “ANaïve Realist Theory of Colour” rejects the practice ofthinking of different versions of Primitivism, as Realist and asEliminativist versions. He thinks it is misleading and unhelpful.)

One major criticism with Primitivism concerns whether the argumentsfor it depends on a questionable form of the doctrine ofRevelation. (See Byrne & Hilbert 2007a, for an expressionof this criticism, among a set of other criticisms.) In response, manyauthors argue that the form of Revelation set out by Johnston is toostrong, and there is a more moderate form of the doctrine that is moreplausible (see Campbell 2005; Gert 2008; Allen 2011). It is worthnoting that while Johnston and others cite Bertrand Russell and GalenStrawson as advocates of the doctrine, these two authors actually sayvery different things, in the quotes given to illustrate the doctrine.Russell, for example, places stress on the perceiver being acquaintedwith instances of color.

One of the major problems, historically, with Realist Primitivism,concerns whether the putative intrinsic color features can be thoughtof as having a causal role in our experiences of colors. Theproperties that do the causing of these experiences seem to becomplex, micro-structural properties of surfaces of bodies (andsimilar properties for seeing volume colors, diffraction colors,scattering colors, etc). This problem is addressed by Hacker in hisdefense of the claim that colors are intrinsic features of physicalbodies. He insists that colors are properties that are used to providecausal explanations. There is no more reason to deny this, he says,than there is to deny the parallel claim for solidity and liquidity.So, the explanation is not vitiated by the discovery thatmicrostructural processes are involved, any more than explanationsconcerning solidity and liquidity are rendered otiose by the discoveryof the microstructural base for these properties. A possible criticismof this analogy would be that, in the case of solidity and liquidity,it is plausible to analyze these properties functionally: to be solidis to have some structure that is the causal basis for such and suchways of behaving. This is not the sort of analysis that thePrimitivist requires (see also Campbell 1993). One might also pointout an important difference between the two situations. In the case ofliquidity and solidity, the theory does explain why liquids have theircharacteristic form, rather than that of solids and gases. There is noparallel explanation in the case of reflectances and putativesuigeneris colors (see Pautz 2017 for discussion).

A specific form of the objection from causal considerations is called“The Causal Exclusion Argument”. Given that thePrimitivist/Naïve Realist account of colors requires that colorsare causally involved in the production of color experiences, it isargued that this would imply that there is causal over-determinationin that production. The color experiences of material surfaces wouldbe caused both by the colors and by the microscopic particles that arein the surface. Allen (2016) provides a penetrating analysis of, anddefence against, this argument. In so doing, he argues for a thesisthat he callsCausal Compatibilism. that the two causalstories (narratives)—appealing to colors and to (the grounds of)spectral reflectances, independently, are compatible. There isover-determination, he concludes, but not a pernicious one.

As Allen also points out, there is a separate line of support forCausal Compatibilism, which depends on arguing that there aredifferent kinds of causes and different kinds of causal explanation.It is now widely accepted that the structure of causal explanation iscomplex, and that often different explanations apply to differentaspects of the events being explained. The point is that for manysituations, there are different explanatory spaces available, and thatdifferent explanations—operating at differentlevels—occupy different explanatory spaces. (See the entry oncausal approaches to scientific explanation.) Gert (2008, 2017, 2020) and many others make judicious use of theseconsiderations in defence of Color Primitivism. Making progress onthese questions, as we can see, will require making progress ontheories of visual perception.

Another major problem for the realist version of Color Primitivism isone that Hardin (1988 [1993], 2004, 2008) and Cohen (2009) haveespecially stressed. They draw attention to a vast range of factsconcerning the variety of conditions under which objects appear tohave the colors they do, and the variety of classes of observers forwhom the colors appear. Since the only way to determine whatprimitivist color a body has is by the way it appears, this raises thequestion of which is the body’s real color. Normal perceivers,for example, divide into different groups on whether a body’scolor is, say, unique blue, or rather, a slightly reddish-blue, aneven more reddish blue, or, alternatively, a greenish blue. Cohen andHardin argue that there is no non-arbitrary way to pick out one groupof perceivers as identifying the “real” color. At most,one group is correct, but we would not know which; for all we know,none of the groups is identifying the real color. Averill (1992)presents a pair of arguments that also depend on difficulties thatstem from trying to give a non-arbitrary account of normal observersand standard viewing conditions. We can easily suppose changes ineither our eyes (and hence in normal observers) or in standard viewingconditions, such that some objects that previously were yellow wouldlook red, and others would still look yellow—while remainingotherwise physically unchanged. If primitive colors are supposed to besupervenient on physical microstructures, then it is difficult to seehow we could accommodate this sort of change. A possible, but radical,response to this problem is to modify the Realist position and to holdthat objects can have more than one color (indeed have many colors).See Kalderon 2007 and Mizrahi 2006 for a defense of this view.

A stronger form of this objection is what is called “theInter-Species Variation”. Allen concedes that this version ismuch harder to dismiss: Color perception varies much more dramaticallyacross the animal kingdom than it does amongst human perceivers. Thesolution to this problem, he says is

to allow that at least some of the varying experiences of differentcolour perceivers are veridical because physical objectssimultaneously instantiate a plurality of colours that differentperceiver types veridically perceive. (Allen 2016: 66)

That is to say, he draws upon the Color Pluralism defended by Kalderonand Mizrahi. For some, this move seems a desperate one, but it is hardto give a stronger objection.

2.2 Reductive Color Physicalism

Another common form of Color Objectivism is that colors are objective(mind-independent), properties of material bodies and light sources,whose natures are “hidden” from us, and require empiricalinvestigation to discover. This theory is commonly known asPhysicalist Color Realism orColor Physicalism, butperhaps the most informative title isReductive ColorPhysicalism. (The properties that constitute the colors, forColor Primitivism, are “physical” in one good sense of theterm.)

Perhaps the earliest defender of this second form of Color Objectivismwas Thomas Reid, the eighteenth century Scottish philosopher. Morerecent examples are Armstrong (1969); Hilbert (1987): Matthen (1988);Jackson (1996, 1998, 2007); Tye (2000); Byrne & Hilbert (2003);and McLaughlin (2003). Reid held a striking view of how “thefolk” think of color.

Reid wrote that:

By colour, all men who have not been tutored by modern philosophyunderstand, not a sensation of the mind, which can have no existencewhen it is not perceived, but a quality or modification of bodies,which continues to be the same whether it is seen or not. (Reid 1764:ch. 6, sect. 4 [1970: 99])

It would seem that, so far, Reid is simply displaying the common sensefor which he is famous. More controversially, however, he goes on tosay that when we perceive the color of body,

That idea, which we have calledthe appearance of colour,suggests the conception and belief of some unknown quality in the bodywhich occasions the idea, and it is to this quality and not the idea,that we give the name ofcolour. (Reid 1764: ch. 6, sect. 4[1970: 100])

On the face of it, this view of Reid seems counter-intuitive. Many of“those men not tutored by modern philosophy”, have a lotto say about colors, and would be surprised to be told that colors areunknown qualities (and women, too, one suspects). Red, for example, isthe color used by many revolutionary parties, good for annoying bulls,my favorite color, the color of my true love’s lips, and so on.We can give paradigms of blue, red, yellow, turquoise, mauve, etc. Weoften say things such as “that is a better blue thanthis”. One suspects that they (the untutored) would be puzzledby the remark that red is some unknown quality (for more on this, seeHacker 1987: 186).

Reid’s view may be extreme but it helps us appreciate thesignificance of the view of a contemporary color physicalist,McLaughlin, who singles Reid out as anticipating his account of color.McLaughlin explicitly endorses this view of Reid though, in fact, hisposition is subtly different. He defends a functionalist analysis ofcolor, according to which a color, say redness, is the occupant of acertain functional role:

Redness is that property which disposes its bearers to look red, tostandard visual perceivers in standard conditions of visualobservation, and which must (as a matter of nomological necessity) beheld by everything so disposed. (McLaughlin 2003: 479)

McLaughlin adds that this proposal is intended as providing aconceptual analysis:

The proposal is intended as a functional or topic-neutral analysis ofthe concept of redness. The role description “that propertywhich …” is intended not only to fix the referent of theconcept, but also to express a condition that is necessary andsufficient for satisfying it. Thus, if the proposal is correct, thenall it takes for a property to be redness is for it to fill theredness role. (McLaughlin 2003: 479)

McLaughlin’s proposal is different, in a crucial respect, fromReid’s. It does not explicitly state that the property, which isthe occupant of the functional role, is a property“unknown” to the observer. His proposal is designed to be“topic-neutral”. This means that colors could either besome complex physical properties, that could only be discovered byscientific investigation, or they could be the sort of propertiesdescribed by Primitivists:sui generis, simple, intrinsic,qualitative, non-relational, non-reducible properties of physicalbodies. McLaughlin argues that scientific investigation makes ithighly plausible that the occupant of the role is some complexphysical property—that is, that Color Physicalism istrue—and that no good reason favors the Primitivist option.

One of the virtues of this form of Color Physicalism is that it offersa plausible explanation for the phenomenon of color constancy, thefact that there is strong tendency for the same object to look to havethe same color in a wide variety of illuminations. Against this claim,however, it has been argued that other theories have the resources toexplain the phenomenon (to the extent that it occurs, for which thereare certain limits—see Hardin 1988, Cohen 2009, Chirimuuta2008.)

An initial problem is “the problem of multiplerealizations”: there is a wide range of different types ofbodies that have colors—light sources, illuminants, surfaces(e.g., of apples, cars, cloths, paintings, …), volumes (e.g.,wine, glass, atmospheres, …), bodies that scatter light, bodiesthat diffract light, films, and luminescent bodies. The causes of thecolors objects appear to have, are many and varied. For mosttheorists, however, the most plausible physicalist candidates for thecolors are light-related properties, e.g., capacities to emit,reflect, absorb, transmit or scatter light to varying degrees. Forphysical surfaces, the color is taken to be related to theobject’s reflectance profile, i.e., the capacity todifferentially reflect wavelengths from different regions of theincident illumination. It turns out, however, that, for each surfacecolor, there is no single reflectance curve associated with thatcolor, but many. The situation is similar, in the case of film colorsor aperture colors. That is to say, for each color, there is a set ofmetamers. (Two stimuli—bodies, sources of light, etc.—thatdiffer in their physical characteristics, but are matched inappearance under a certain illumination, by the same observer, aremetamers for that observer, in that illumination. Two bodies that aremetamers in one illumination need not be metamers under a differentillumination, or for a different observer.)

The favored response to this problem is to say, for example, that agiven color, red, say, is not a specific color reflectance, but a typeof reflectance, i.e., one that is a member of a certain group.However, there are still problems. Averill (1992, 2005), for example,presents some interesting arguments, which are based on plausibleconjectures about how normal observers and standard conditions mighteasily enough change, with consequent metameric change. The colorphysicalist seems to be committed to a very arbitrary grouping ofreflectances into the various types.

This problem is related to one that Hardin (1988 [1993], 2004) andCohen (2009) have drawn attention to. It has to do with the problem ofidentifying, in a non-arbitrary way,normal conditions, andstandard observers. The objectivist account requires that weidentify the “real” color for objectX as acertain causal basis (e.g., the reflectance profile) for the way itappears, to normal observers and in standard conditions. The problemis that, as Hardin has persuasively pointed out, particularly, inHardin 2004, this cannot be done except in a highly arbitrary way. Notonly is there a minority of color perceivers who are anomalous (onlyslightly, but appreciably so) with respect to normal observers, butthere is a considerable statistical spread even within the group ofnormal observers. For example, the reflectance profile for uniquegreen will differ for different members of the “normalgroup”. One can decide, of course, on a standard and fix onereflectance profile as green, but the procedure is highly arbitrary.As we have seen, there are few interesting causal powers associatedwith colors apart from the way objects affect perceivers. (Thisargument has led to a vigorous debate in the pages ofAnalysis, see Byrne & Hilbert 2007b; Cohen, Hardin &McLaughlin 2006, 2007; and Tye 2006a,b, 2007.)

To counter this problem, McLaughlin suggests that we extend aproposal, which Jackson and Pargetter (1987) made, originally toovercome the problem of multiple realizations. They proposedrelativising the concept of color, to kinds of objects andcircumstances. McLaughlin’s suggestion is that we could extendthe objectivist concept of color, by relativising it to individualobservers.

Another major objection to the physicalist (reductive) accountconcerns whether the properties can satisfy the principle of“Unity”, as described by Johnston, (see section 1.4). This principle points to the fact that the various colors, it wouldseem, are the kinds of properties that fit together in characteristicways to form structured color arrays, with a distinctive 3-dimensionalcharacter, built on attributes such as hue/saturation/brightness (orhue, chroma, lightness). The principle of Unity would seem to pose aserious problem for the Color Physicalist (see Hardin 1988 [1993];Thompson 1995; Maund 1995, 2011). As McLaughlin concedes, the problemis that no physical properties that are even remotely plausiblecandidates for being the properties essentially participate in thesepatterns of relationships. (McLaughlin 2003: 487) His solution to theproblem is that the comparative claims, e.g., about red, orange andblue—orange is more similar to red than to blue—are truein virtue of a comparative fact about the visual experiences inquestion.

Colors themselves participate in the similarity and differencerelationships derivatively—in virtue of the participation of thevisual experiences that they dispose their bearers to produce.(McLaughlin 2003: 487)

The claim, here, is that what it is like for something to look red ismore similar towhat it is like for something to look orangethan it is towhat it is like for something to look blue.This solution, however, raises the question of what features of theexperience are relevant ones, i.e., are the features which stand inthe relations of similarity and difference. There seem to be twopossibilities: (i) they are features of the experiences themselves;(ii) they are features presented in experience or represented in them,i.e., they are features of regions of visual fields, or of sensa, orof material objects. There are some prima facie problems which ensue.Assuming the former possibility, then our color experiences involvemassive error. The judgments of similarity and difference are appliedto the colors and not to our experiences. If the second possibility isadopted, i.e., it is held that there are certain features, presentedin, or represented in, experience, then they stand in the relations ofsimilarities and differences. These features are different fromreflectances, so the color physicalist needs to say what they are.

Tye (2000) and Byrne and Hilbert (2003), have proposed a solution tothis last problem, one that depends on exploiting theopponent-processing model of color vision (seeSupplement: Color Science—Some Complexities). It is to specify the relevant groups of spectral reflectances,associated with each color, in terms of their capacity to producesuitable responses of the visual system. The proposal, by Byrne andHilbert, has two parts:

1. color experience are characterized as having a certainrepresentational content: they represent objects as having what Byrneand Hilbert call “hue magnitudes”;
2. the hue-magnitudes are explained in terms of being certainphysical properties, i.e., reflectance-types.

Over-simplifying, the physical properties contribute to therepresentational content of experiences by virtue of stimulatingrespective types of cones in such a way as to ground the judgementsconcerning the hues—both unique and binary. As they argue, if wecan give the right account of how the magnitudes contribute to therepresentational content, then we can explain the similarity relationsamong the hues and the binary/unique distinction, in terms of thecontent of color experience. On their proposal, the representationalcontent of color experience has an underlying complexity. Thisproposal, in turn, has been subject to criticism from several authors,e.g., Hardin (2003), Pautz (2006, 2020), Maund (2011), and Allen(2015, 2016). Allen presents a clear and sympathetic reading of thehue-magnitude proposal, although he thinks it does not work.

There has been a very interesting recent development in the debateabout the Argument from Structure. In a paper in 2019, W. Wright drawsattention to a range of (mostly) recent empirical studies whichchallenges some key assumptions that have underpinned that debate. Hewrites:

Examination of relevant empirical findings shows that claims about theunique hues which play a central role in the argument from phenomenalstructure should be rejected. Chiefly, contrary to widespread beliefamongst philosophers and scientists, the unique hues do not play afundamental role in determining all color appearances. (W. Wright2019: 1514)

Wright believes that the received thinking about unique hues to bedeeply flawed in a way that undermines this whole line of argumentagainst physicalism. It should be noted that this approach does notvindicate color Physicalism—there are other arguments againstit—but it does mean that one of the most common argumentsagainst is flawed. He argues that the four canonical unique hues arenot nearly as special as they are claimed to be and that they do nothave the fundamental, organizing role in color experience routinelyaccorded to them. The empirical findings are significant in view ofthe fact that previous empirical work in color science seemed tocohere with the phenomenological readings.

Wright also highlights the work of Malkoc et al., where they writethat “the unique hues do not emerge as special and do not alonefully anchor the structure of color appearance for anindividual.” (W. Wright 2019: 1527–28 quoting Malkoc etal. 2005: 2155). Commenting on this and other work, Wright says:

In the light of their findings and the rest of the research examinedso far, I would go further and say that it is difficult to see why theunique hues should be accorded any privileged status (in theorizingabout perception) or thought to play a fundamental role in determiningall color appearances. (W. Wright 2019: 1528)

He concludes:

The empirical problems that have emerged for the standard account ofthe unique hues are significant and undermine its psychophysical,neural, and phenomenological plausibility. Thus it is appropriate toconsider theories of color that are not grounded in the unique hueconstruct (Jameson and D’Andrade 1997, p. 309; Wool et al. 2015:9). (W. Wright 2019: 1528]

There is a very informative article on the role and status of theunique hues by Matthen (2020). The essay is an extensive study oftheories and experimental work focusing on the unique hues. In thispaper, Matthen argues that the function of opponent processing isnon-informational: to enhance discriminability and to format color ina way that admits of combining distinct elements. This indicates, hesays, that individual differences that relate to the opponentrepresentation of color—the unique hues, the proportion of huemagnitudes in perceived color, the color categories—have nosignificance regarding external reality. He writes:

Some philosophers have suggested that some things in the world areuniquely blue independently of any perceptual system. This contradictsthe function of opponent processing as I have presented it. Matthen2020: 172–173)

Matthen cites work by J. Neitz & M. Neitz (2008), Mollon (2009),Stoughton & Conway (2008), Conway & Stoughton (2009).

2.3 Color Eliminativism/Irrealism/Fictionalism

There is a group of views about color, which come under one or all ofthe labels, Color Irrealism, Color Eliminativism, The Illusory Theoryof Color, Color Fictionalism. These theories are ones that deny thatmaterial objects and light sources actually have colors, i.e., thatlemons are yellow, skies are blue, some horses are chestnut, etc.These titles are a little misleading, since it is possible for anEliminativist to also talk of there being colors in the sense of theirbeing dispositions to cause experiences of a characteristic type,and/or being (attributes in/of) sensations. Some of the central colorphysicists are prone to talk in this way, e.g., Descartes, Newton,Boyle, Maxwell, (and Locke too). We may assume that they wererecommending a way of proceeding. We may take it, however, that whatthe color-Eliminativist is denying,usually, is that materialobjects, and sources of lights, (and illumination) have colors of acertain kind: certain properties that we ordinarily, andunreflectingly, take the bodies to have (see Section 1.2, above).(Contemporary Eliminativists include Averill [2005], Boghossian &Velleman [1989], Hardin [1988 [1993]], Maund [1995, 2006, 2011],Gatzia [2008 [2015]], and Pautz [2006, 2017, 2020]).

As we have seen in the preceding Sections of this entity, there aredifferent theories as to what kinds of properties colors are (whetheror not they exist). The Eliminativist first argues (or assumes) thatthere are certain conditions that properties must satisfy in order tobe colors, and second, s/he argues that there are no properties thatboth satisfy these conditions, and are instantiated. It is againstthat background that the Eliminativist denies that material bodies(and source of light, and illumination) have colors.

There is, however, a second requirement. In the earlier discussion,Section 1.2, it was suggested that a credible theory of ColorEliminativism would need to come in two parts: (a) providing reasonsfor denying that objects—material surfaces, and sources oflight—have colors; (b) explaining why our linguistic practicescovering the use of color concepts and terms should seem asviable/valuable to the extent that they are. The reason is one thatRealist Primitivists insist upon: the ordinary color talk and thoughtis highly successful. The Eliminativist better have a goodexplanation.

The most general argument for Color Irrealism/Eliminativism isaddressed to this ordinary conception of color (and the use ofordinary color terms.) In the most common form of the Argument, wetake it that the colors denied are properties of a certain sort:sui generis, qualitative, irreducible features, thatcollectively form a highly structured array of colors. In other words,the Eliminativist is a Color Primitivist, but of a different sort fromRealist Primitivists. Against the latter, s/he will present objectionsof the sort discussed inSection 2.1. Primitivist Realism is the major target, but it is not the only one.Against the other theories, the Eliminativist will mount objections,of the sort raised in the various Sections in this entry.

Most versions of Color Eliminativism/Irrealism commit one to an errortheory of visual experience. As Boghossian and Velleman put it:

visual experience is ordinarily naively realistic, in the sense thatthe qualities presented in it are represented as qualities of theexternal world. (1989 [1997: 93]; see also Averill 2005 and Maund2011)

This leads them to explain how this happens by adopting a Projectivistaccount of color experience: The projection posited by this accounthas the result that the intentional content of visual experiencerepresents external objects as possessing qualities that belong, infact, only to regions of the visual field. By “gilding orstaining all natural objects with the colors borrowed from internalsentiments”, as Hume puts it, the mind “raises in a mannera new creation” (Boghossian & Velleman 1989 [1997: 95]).

In ordinary color experience, it is implied, physical objects arerepresented (or presented) as having certain qualities that areillusory, and accordingly, that experience involve errors. It isimportant to keep in mind that such claims are not simply negative.Illusions and errors can serve positive functions. The claim thatexperiences represent objects as having qualities with a certaincharacter, can explain why we form the concepts we do, why we identifyand recognize objects, and so on. This means that it is still the casethat there are important reasons for retaining our ordinary colorconcepts, even though they are not actualized. This fact motivates thethought that the proper attitude to adopt towards our color languageis a fictionalist one: for many purposes we should think of the colorsentences with their ordinary meaning—but treat them only as ifthey are true: we should make-believe that they are true (see Gatzia2007, 2008 [2015]).

Reference to Projectivism raises the suggestion that the visualexperience involves the presentation of a mental item, e.g., a sensedatum that has the color quality in question, e.g., reddishness, orperhaps some reddish-like quality, which is involved in theprojection. Sense-data are thought by some to be completelydiscredited, but they have been defended by a number of authors whohave pointed out the weakness of the “discreditingarguments”, e.g., Robinson (1994), Crane 2000, Lowe (2008),Maund (2003). There is not enough space to pursue this discussion. Itis important, however, to note that Pautz 2020 has presented a strongdefence of Irrealist Representationalism that does not depend on thepostulation of mental items. On his account, our color experienceshave representational content, where the property of being reddish isco-instantiated with the property of being round.

So itseems that these properties are instantiated togetherbefore you. But, in fact, the property of being reddish is notinstantiated byanything …. There is no reddish thingthere of any kind, even though there seems to be one. So the propertybeing reddish is a bit like the propertybeing aunicorn: it is an entirely uninstantiated property. When it comesto sensible colours at least, the brain is a kind of “partialvirtual reality machine”, which projects onto objects somefeatures that they don’t really have. (Pautz 2020: 380)

One important form, Color Eliminativism can take, is ColorFictionalism. This theory entails Color Eliminativism (or moreaccurately, a strong version of color Eliminativism) but it impliesmore positive theses. It implies that—with respect to a largebody of talk about colors, we should continue to use the terms in theway we have learned. With respect to a vast number of color sentences,it implies that we should adopt a certain attitude: we should makebelieve the sentences are true. The world may not be filled withcolored objects, on this thesis, but the thesis also claims that theworld is such thatit is as if it contains colored objects.And for many purposes, that is as good as the real thing. (It is asgood as it gets.) (For a defense of Color Fictionalism, see Gatzia2007, 2008 [2015]).

Neither the properties posited by the Primitivist, nor those positedby the Color Physicalist, it is argued, can satisfy all the requiredconstraints for being colors. As we saw in the last two sections, bothsorts of theorists have a response to this objection. The debatebetween the Color Eliminativists and their opponents will thus dependon the plausibility of such responses, and counter-responses (see theearlier§2.1 and§2.2). As far as Realist Primitivism is concerned, one central issue isthis. The defense of this position, it seems, would need to appeal tosome version of Naïve Realism, and/or Disjunctivism, and thereare strong arguments against these accounts. For example, it is notclear how these accounts can handle the fact that many of ourexperiences have both veridical and illusory elements: the Muller-Lyerlines look unequal, when they are not; but they also look thin, andlook to be in front of me, and look black (see the entry onthe disjunctivist theory of perception). (See Brewer 2008 on a reply; see also Pautz 2011, and the collectionof essays in Haddock & Macpherson 2008.) Another important issueis the one Hardin (2004, 2008) and Cohen (2009) raise: that it dependson some non-arbitrary identification of standard conditions, andnormal observers, one that cannot be satisfied (seesection 2.1, above).

Being an error theory of visual experience, Color Eliminativism issometimes thought to leave us with a severe problem (see Byrne &Hilbert 2007a). If there are no properties that satisfy therequirements for being colors: how did the ordinary concept develop? Aplausible answer to this problem is found in the fact that the waythat the concepts of color operate, to serve their various functionsand roles, is through the way colors appear. For these purposes androles, objects do not need to have colors. It will be sufficient ifthey appear to have them. For these purposes, it is sufficient that“it is as if they have the colors”. We should also bear inmind that errors and illusions and misrepresentations can bebeneficial and not deleterious, especially if the errors aresystematic. Mendelovici (2016, 2020) has developed an account ofreliable misrepresentation.

Further, in response to the evolutionary problem, we might allow thatthe reason why color vision evolved might be quite complex. Akins andHahn (2014) have a long, detailed, paper about the evolutionaryimplications of color vision. They argue the reasons often assumeddon’t measure up: they are based on the notion that the functionof color vision is “to detect the colors”. Things are farmore complex, they argue. (Chirimuuta [2015] argues for a similarconclusion.) K.Akins and M. Hahn ask the question: What is thefunction of human color vision? They go on:

For most vision researchers, both philosophers and scientists, theanswer is obvious, they point out, nay, a tautology: color vision is“for” seeing the colors,whether or not color is agenuine property of the external world (my emphasis). We havecolor vision to see the sky as blue, apples as red, and Heineken beerbottles as translucent green. (Akins & Hahn 2014: 126)

Akins and Hahn argue that the explanation for evolutionary advantageis more complex, and it depends on characteristics of the visualsystem underpinning color vision, and the overall structure/functionof the visual system. Additionally, Akins and Hahn stress that what isimportant in acquiring wavelength information is not information ofthe relevant physical properties, but rather information ofcontrasts between properties. The Eliminativist can make thepoint here that contrasts between two errors can be just as valuableas contrasts between two real things. A chessboard with red and yellowpieces (or white and yellow, or …) can be just as efficient asone with black and white pieces (ditto for the squares).

2.4 Color Subjectivism

The reference that has just been made to the evolutionary developmentof color vision brings out an important point that is often lost sightof in critiques of Color Eliminativism/Color Fictionalism. Thinking ofthe theory as a form of Color Eliminativism (which it is) highlightsthe negative aspect to the theory. However there is also a positiveaspect to the theory, one that is brought to the front by thoseversions of the theory that defend Color Subjectivism.

Simplifying, Color Subjectivism can take either of two forms:

1. As part of a Dual Referent theory: there are two different typesof context in which color terms apply, one in which the color termsapply to a subjective quality; one in which the terms are intended toapply to some property possessed by material objects, lights,illumination, etc. (see D.H. Brown 2006). Adopting this theory iscompatible with either realist or eliminativist accounts of objectivecolors (colors attributed to material objects, volumes, illumination,etc.). Hardin would seem to hold the eliminativist version of thistheory (though he does not explicitly address the question).
2. As playing an explanatory role in explaining how our colorconcepts take the form that they do. One version of this alternativeis the theory defended by C. Peacocke (1984). Another version is onein which subjective qualities form part of a Projectivist theory ofvisual experiences. On one version of this account, there aresubjective qualities which our visual system attributes to materialobjects and lights, etc. These subjective qualities are qualitieswhich belong to (are intrinsic to) the visual experience. They aresometimes marked as being the properties blue*, red*, yellow*,orange*, etc. Again, this theory is compatible with either realist oreliminativist views of objective colors. (Arguably, the famous colorphysicists—Descartes, Newton, Young, Maxwell, etc.—heldeliminativist versions of this theory. So do Boghossian & Velleman1989). A comprehensive discussion of these issues is presented inRobinson (2020) and D.H. Brown 2010. Projectivism is set out anddefended in Boghossian and Velleman 1989 [1997], W. Wright 2003,Averill 2005.

One of the interesting topics that involve Color Subjectivism concernsthe relation, if any, between colors and shapes. Reflection on ourexperiences of color would seem to suggest that we should accept thefollowing principle about the modal relations between shape andcolor:

it is impossible for something to have a color without having a shape,i.e., without being spatially extended in some way.

There is a question here as to whether the principle holds withrespect to the ways these properties appear, i.e., to thephenomenology of our experiences, or whether it applies to themetaphysics of the situation, i.e., to the properties of colors andshapes.

Cutter 2018 has an interesting discussion of the topic. He points outthat many philosophers, especially in the wake of the seventeenthcentury, have endorsed aninegalitarian view of shape andcolor, according to which shape is objective or mind-independent,while color is subjective or mind-dependent. Cutter argues that themodal relations between shape and color make this combination of viewsuntenable. Instead, he holds, we must embrace some form ofegalitarianism, according to which shape and color are, in asense to be clarified, either both objective or both subjective.

This is an interesting topic. There does seem to be an intimaterelation between colors and shapes—at least with respect to thevisual experience of colors and shapes. One avenue, however, whichmight need to be explored in greater detail concerns whether we needto acknowledge two types of colors: subjective and objective colors.and two types of shapes, subjective and objective shapes. As we sawabove, D.H.Brown’s Dual Referent theory implies that there aretwo different types of context in which color terms apply: one inwhich the color terms apply to a subjective quality; another, in whichthe terms are intended to apply to some property possessed by materialobjects, lights, illumination, etc. For a theory which appeals tosubjective colors as part of an explanation of color experiences, itis open to them to posit subjective shapes, as well, as part of theexplanation.

2.5 Color Dispositionalism

Color-Dispositionalism is the view that colors are dispositionalproperties: powers to appear in distinctive ways to perceivers (of theright kind), in the right kind of circumstances; i.e., to causeexperiences of an appropriate kind in those circumstances. Becausethey involve responses on the part of color-perceivers, such theoriesare often called “subjectivist”.

This theory takes different forms. One form it takes is thatassociated with people in the scientific tradition, e.g., Descartes,Boyle, Newton and Locke. This is the view that colors are secondaryqualities. However, as we saw earlier, insection 1.2, this form of the dispositionalist view was part of a complex package,related to the emerging scientific world-view. For our currentpurposes, there are two crucial components to this package. The firstis the idea that we should distinguish between two notions ofcolor: color as a property of physical bodies, and color asit is in sensation (or, as it is sometimes described,“color-as-we-experience-it”). The second is that thesecondary quality view is not thought of as capturing thecommon-sense, or “vulgar”, way of thinking of color.Rather, it is thought of as a revision or reconstruction of theordinary concept.

There is a different form the dispositionalist view of colors has morerecently taken, and which has many philosophical defenders, e.g.,Bennett (1971), Dummett (1979), McDowell (1985), McGinn (1983),Peacocke (1984), Johnston (1992), and Levin (2000). These philosophersreject the claim that the dispositionalist view is in conflict withany commonsense view of color. It is held by some thatdispositionalism can be defended as an analytic thesis, concerning themeaning of color terms; it is held, or implied, by others thatpossession of the concept of color is neutral on the precise nature ofthe colors, a nature which consists in being dispositional. One virtueof this account is that, if it is correct, there is no need to agreethat science is in conflict with our intuitive notions of color, orthat it shows that ordinary color talk is mistaken, or in need ofreconstruction. Another virtue would be that it would explain whatseems to be an important feature of color concepts, as opposed toprimary quality concepts: that in order to grasp, fully, colorconcepts, it is necessary to have color experiences. (It isinteresting that, as Adams [2016] points out, Aristotle’saccount of color rejects this assumption: For Aristotle, the functionof vision is to detect colors, perceiver-independent colors.)

A prominent defender of dispositionalism is Johnston (1992), whoseaccount of the major constraints upon a theory of color we examined inan earlier section. He concedes that dispositionalism has difficultyhandling the constraint imposed by commitment to the doctrine ofRevelation but, he thinks, giving this up is a small price to pay. Hemaintains that, nevertheless, the theory can handle all the otherconstraints, and in so doing has major advantage over rival accounts.One of the theory’s merits is that it can account for thePrinciple of Unity,item (3) in his list, although as we have seen, this principle needs to be extended.Another merit of Johnston’s version of dispositionalism is thatit handles what seems to be a difficulty for other versions, theproblem of explaining the causal role of color in the perception ofcolors, that is to say, the problem of meetingconstraint (2) on his list:

2. Explanation. The fact of asurface or volume or radiant source being canary yellow sometimescausally explains our visual experience as of canary yellowthings.

It has been argued that dispositionalist accounts of color cannothandle this causal requirement, e.g., Jackson 1998. Johnston’sreply to this objection is that the dispositions do not have to bethought of as bare dispositions. We can, instead, think of them as“constituted dispositions”, which are thought of asfollows:

A constituted disposition is a higher-order property of having someintrinsic properties which, oddities aside, would cause themanifestation of the disposition in the circumstances ofmanifestation. (Johnston 1992 [1997: 147])

Thus it is part of what it is to have a constituted disposition tohave some property, which is the causal ground of the manifestation ofthe disposition.

There have been two major objections to dispositionalism. These havebeen discussed (and rejected) by Levin (2000). One objection is thatthe dispositionalist theory cannot give a satisfactory account of thephenomenology of visual color experiences. Let us come back to thisobjection. The second major problem is that it cannot dissolve whatmany think is the central problem of dispositionalism, the problem ofcharacterizing just what the colors of objects are supposed to be,“without vacuity, circularity, regress or any other suchdamaging vice” (Levin 2000: 162). The circularity problemreflects the way the dispositionalist thesis is usuallyformulated:

If we understand the phrase “to look red”, on the righthand side, to mean “to look to be red”, then it would seemwe have troubles. As Levin puts it:

If an object is red iff it’s disposed to look red (underappropriate conditions), then an object must be disposed to look rediff it’s disposed to look to be disposed to look red …and so on, ad infinitum. (Levin 2000: 163)

There is a range of techniques that Dispositionalists have devised toavoid the circularity problem. They include proposals to understand“looks red” differently from that assumed above, andproposals to characterize the disposition differently. In addition, itis sometimes argued that the circularity is benign. (For furtherdiscussion, see Levin 2000 and Byrne & Hilbert 2011.)

One particularly interesting solution to the circularity problem isthat provided by Peacocke 1984 [1997]. Peacocke defends what he callsan “experientialist’s version” of the theory, onewhich requires the introduction of a third property, besides those ofbeing red, and looking red—a sensational property, that of beingred*. According to this account, the property red is explained not interms of looking red, but in terms of causing the perceiver to havepresented to him, sensational properties in a visual field. (Fordiscussion, see Boghossian and Velleman 1989 [1997])

The more pressing problem, however, for Color Dispositionalism iswhether it can give an adequate account of the phenomenology of visualexperience. The phenomenological problem, as McGinn describes it, isthat color properties do not look much like dispositions to producecolor experiences, so that an error theory of color perception comesto seem inescapable. Colors turn out not to look the way they are saiddispositionally to be, “which is to say that ordinary colorperception is intrinsically and massively misleading” (McGinn1996: 537). Rather than adopting a dispositionalism with thatconsequence, McGinn falls back on a Primitivist view of color, a viewthat resists both criticisms leveled at dispositionalism.

Levin 2000 has provided a powerful reply, on behalf of thedispositionalist, to McGinn’s argument. Her challenge iscomplex, highlighting the assumptions that underpin McGinn’scriticism (and has a detailed discussion of the relevance of thedoctrine of Revelation). An important question seems to remain,however. In McGinn’s formulation of the phenomenologicalproblem, there are two distinct claims, each of which is crucial:

1. Colors do not look like the sorts of dispositionalproperties they would have to be if the dispositional thesis werecorrect: “Colors turn out not to look the way they are saiddispositionally to be”.
2. Colors look like non-dispositional properties: when wesee an object as red we see it as having a simple, monadic, localproperty of the object’s surface.

The second claim is expanded as follows:

When we see an object as red … [the] color is perceived asintrinsic to the object, in much the same way that shape and size areperceived as intrinsic. No relation to perceivers enters into how thecolor appears; the color is perceived as wholly on the object, not assomehow straddling the gap between it and the perceiver. (McGinn 1996:541–542)

One possibility that this claim raises is that even if it is true, asLevin argues, that our visual experiences are such that objects lookto have dispositional properties of the sort thecolor-dispositionalist is committed to, it will also be the case(often at least) that the colored objects look to be manifesting thatdisposition. McGinn’sclaim (2) may then apply to the manifestation of the disposition. If so, thedispositionalism would seem to be allied to an error theory, as hesuggests.

Byrne and Hilbert (2011) provide a detailed examination of ColorDispositionalism, which they stress, can take different forms. Theythink that several of these forms can escape both the circularity andphenomenological problems, highlighted by McGinn, in part because theydisagree with him on the phenomenology. They have different criticismof the theory: that there is no good reason for accepting the theory.They argue that the best reasons for accepting it depend on a highlyimplausible theory of perception.

Finally, another difficulty with dispositionalism, as it is standardlyexpressed, is the one that Hardin (1988 [1993], 2004) has stressed. Asour knowledge of color vision has grown, it has become increasinglymore difficult to specify normal observers, and standard viewingconditions in any but an arbitrary way, arbitrary from the point ofview of metaphysics. To be sure, there are conventional reasons forpicking out some observers and some viewing conditions as special, butwe can, without too much trouble, imagine these changing. And withrespect to normal observers, we have found that in fact, as thingsstand, there is a wide range of variation among competent colorperceivers. As we shall see in the following section, theseconsiderations have led Cohen to modify the standard dispositionalistaccount in favor of a “more ecumenical” colorrelationalist theory, one that relativizes the dispositions to groupsof perceivers, and types of viewing conditions.

2.6 Color Relationalism

One of the most important developments in recent philosophy of colorhas been the emergence of a radical relationalist view of colors.Averill (1992) proposed a relational view of color, one that involvesa strong modification of the standard dispositional position. Hepresents two arguments against both physicalist and dispositionalistaccounts, which depend on raising difficult questions for theirdependence on normal observers and standard viewing conditions. Intheir place, he offers an account according to which colors of bodiesare relational properties. In explanation, he asks us to:

Suppose that “yellow” is regarded as a relational termhaving two suppressed argument places, one argument takes populationsas values and ties any instance of being yellow to the normalobservers of a population, the other takes environments as values andties any instance of being yellow to the optimal viewing conditions ofan environment. (Averill 1992: 555)

Cohen (2004, 2009) holds a similar position, though he has produced amore general argument. For Cohen, Color Relationalism is themetaphysical thesis that colors are relational properties of a certainsort—relational with respect to perceivers and circumstances ofviewing. According to Color Relationalism, there are no suchproperties asblue,red,yellow,orange, etc. To be more precise, there are no such propertiesasblue simpliciter, red simpliciter, and so on. What thereare, instead, are relational properties: blue-for-perceiverA-in-circumstances C1, red-for-perceiverB-in-circumstances C2, yellow-for-perceiverD-in-circumstances C3, and so on.

At the heart of Cohen’s account is a certain argument, which hecalls his “Master Argument”. This argument depends onpointing out the extent to which the colors things look to have, varywith different viewing conditions, different classes of perceivers,and different types of animals. In short, it is built upon the premisethat there is a vast range of situations in which there are variationsin the way something looks, either to the same subject under differentviewing conditions, or to different subjects under the sameconditions.

Then follows the crucial question: Can we select one amongst theseperceptual variants that should be regarded as veridicallyrepresenting the color of the object (where this would mean that theother variants are representing the object’s color erroneously)?It is just this question, Cohen suggests, to which it is difficult toimagine a well-motivated, principled, and non-question-begging answer,and thus leads to the formulation of the Master Argument. Given thatthere is no well-motivated reason for singling out any single variant(at the expense of the others), he argues, an ecumenicalreconciliation of the variants is preferable to an unmotivatedstipulation in favor of just one of them. He concludes: the best wayto implement such an ecumenical reconciliation between apparentlyincompatible variants is to view them as the result of relativizingcolors to different values of different parameters (Cohen 2009:24).

The thrust of the Master Argument, powerful as it is, is largelynegative. It seems to rebut all objectivist theories of color, whetherthe objectivist theory is one of the standard forms of colorrealism—physicalist realism or primitivist realism—orwhether it is framed in terms of a disposition to appear, incharacteristic ways, to normal perceivers in standard circumstances.On the face of it, only two candidates remain: Color Relationalism andColor Irrealism. Cohen holds that Color Relationalism provides thebest solution to the problem outlined, but he concedes that ColorIrrealism also offers a solution. He thinks that that view ought to berejected, on independent grounds. The argument against Color Irrealismis that it is a “theory of last resort”, one that weshould accept only after all other candidates have been rejected, whenno other alternative remains. The crucial issue between these twotheories, it would seem, is whether Color Relationalism can accountadequately for the phenomenology of visual experience. Cohen’sresponse to this problem is similar to that of Levin, in her defenseof Color Dispositionalism (see Maund 2012).

2.7 Action-Based Theories of Color

There are other forms of color relationalism which deserve a sectionof their own. They tend to see colors as hybrid properties combiningaspects of the perceiver’s environment and phenomenology.

One form has links to action-based theories of perception, asdeveloped principally by the psychologist, J. J. Gibson. A leadingexample is the theory defended by Thompson,The EcologicalView of Colors. On this account, colors are taken to bedependent, in part, on the perceiver and so are not intrinsicproperties of a perceiver-independent world. Being colored, instead,is construed as a relational property of the environment, connectingthe environment with the perceiving animal. In the case of the colorof physical surfaces, “being coloured corresponds to the surfacespectral reflectance as visually perceived by the animals”(Thompson 1995: 240; see also Ch. 5, pp. 242–250).

In more detail this account is spelled out in the following way:

being coloured a particular determinate colour or shade … isequivalent to having a particular spectral reflectance, illuminance,or emittance that looks that colour to a particular perceiver inspecific viewing conditions. (1995: 245)

Thompson insists that this account is to be distinguished from both aLockean dispositionalist account and an error theory of colors.Whether it is or not will depend on what account he can give of“as visually perceived by the animal”.

Another important example of an action-based approach to perception isthe theory in Noë 2004. Noë defends what he callstheenactive approach to perception. As in the case of Thompson, histheory is guided by Gibson’s work, albeit with modification.Noë sets his view of color within this account, arguing thatcolor is a relational property, involving the object and theenvironment, and crucially related to perceivers. In his theory ofperception, Noë emphasizes the role of perspectival properties.He distinguishes, for example, between size and perspectival size,i.e.,size in the visual field orhow things look withrespect to size from here.

Size in the visual field is distinct property from size. Itcorresponds to the size of the patch that one must fit in on givenplane perpendicular to the line sight in order to perfectly occlude anobject from view. (Noë 2004: 83)

Actually, Noë makes a distinction between three kinds ofproperties. Associated with the shape (and size) of an object, say, acube, is itsvisual potential:

Thevisual potential of a cube (at least with respect toshape) is the way its aspect changes as a result of movement (of thecube itself or of the perceiver around the cube). Any movementdetermines a set of changes in perceived aspect; any set of changes inperceived aspects determines equivalent classes of possible movements.(Noë 2004: 77)

Accordingly, in the case of shape and size, we can distinguish betweenthree kinds of properties: e.g., vision-independent shape,shape’s visual potential and perspectival shape. Noë modelshis theory of color on the second kind of property: “colors areways colored things change their appearances as color-criticalconditions change” (Noë 2004: 141). This is an intriguingtheory. What isn’t so clear is what exactly perspectival coloris.

More recently, other forms of relational theories have emerged:theories defended by Brogaard 2012, Chirimuuta 2015, and Chirimuuta& Kingdom 2015. Chirimuuta advocates a version of colorrelationalism which she callsColor Adverbialism:

On this last account, colors are not properties of external physicalobjects, or of brains, or of our mental states; instead, they areproperties of perceptual processes or interactions which involveobjects, brains and mental states. So, according to colouradverbialism, “seeing the colours” means “seeing ina colourful way”. (Chirimuuta & Kingdom 2015: 226)

She appeals, with Kingdom, to recent research on color vision, relatedto the function of color vision, to argue that it provides greatdifficulties for Objectivist color realism—both Primitivist andReductionist Physicalist—(see also Akins & Hahn 2014). Whilethey admit that anti-realism, especially the form favored by Hardin,is in a better position, they think that Color Adverbialism presentsthe best explanation.

Another important recent contributions to the philosophy of color isthe book by Matthen (2005). In this work, Matthen articulates a theoryof sense-perception in which color plays a prominent role. The work issignificant for the theory of color that he presents, one that drawsheavily on comparative studies of color vision among differentspecies. Matthen replaces his earlier objectivist views on color by anaccount that has more in common with the ecological theory favored byThompson. Matthen agrees with Hardin, Thompson and others that thephenomenology of color is not captured, or accounted for, by any ofthe standard objectivist accounts. Nevertheless, he claims to bedefending a realist theory of color and to be rejecting standardirrealist theories, including Hardin’s. Matthen’s accountis complex. The idea is that the senses (the visual sensory system) docategorize objects as “blue”, “yellow”, etc.,but these qualities are related to actions that perceivers canperform, and in particular, to “epistemic affordances”.The sensory systems are held to be devices that are in the business ofclassifying distal stimuli (physical objects) as having certainproperties, which stand in similarity and difference relations witheach other. These categories are constructed by the system and do not,at least in the case of color, correspond to any objective propertiesthat are independent of perceivers.

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Other Internet Resources

• Causes of Color, WebExhibits online museum.
• The Science of Vision and the Emergence of Art, WebExhibits online museum.

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analysis |concepts |consciousness: and intentionality |Descartes, René |determinates and determinables |intentionality: phenomenal |perception: the disjunctive theory of |perception: the problem of |qualia |realism |reduction, scientific |scientific explanation: causal approaches to |supervenience