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Abstract
I propose a strategy for a metaphysical reduction of perceived color, that is, an identification of perceived color with properties characterizable in non-qualitative terms. According to this strategy, a description of visual experience of color, which incorporates a description of the appearance of color, is a reference-fixing description. This strategy both takes color appearance seriously in its epistemic role and avoids rendering color as intractably mysterious. I'll also argue that given this strategy, a plausible account of perceived color claims that colors are physical properties of physical objects.
Keywords:
Acknowledgements
I am grateful to David Rosenthal, Larry Hardin, Jonathan Cohen, Richard Gray, Amy Kind, Eric Schwitzgebel, and two anonymous reviewers for comments on early or late versions and large or small portions of this paper.
Notes
Peter W. Ross is an Associate Professor in the Philosophy Department at California State Polytechnic University – Pomona.
Notes
[1] Physicalism is held in different forms by, for example, Byrne and Hilbert (Citation1997b, 2003a), Hilbert (Citation1987), Lewis (Citation1997), and Smart (Citation1975/1997).
[2] Dispositionalism has been proposed by, for example, Johnston (Citation1992/Citation1997).
[3] Subjectivism is proposed in different versions by, for example, Boghossian and Velleman (Citation1989/1997), Hardin (Citation1993), and McGilvray (Citation1994). A terminological point: what I am calling subjectivism often goes by the term ‘eliminativism’. I prefer the label ‘subjectivism’ in order to avoid a purely negative label for this view, which, after all, must show us that the claim that the external world is colorless can be combined with a plausible positive account of color perception.
[4] Proponents include McGinn (Citation1996). Primitivism also has eliminativist versions, which I would categorize as versions of anti-reductive subjectivism. For a helpful discussion of primitivist views, see Byrne and Hilbert (Citation2007).
[5] As will become clear, the reduction I’m proposing is not that a particular perceived color such as perceived orange is a physical natural kind, but merely that it be physically realized in all of its instances.
[6] For further description of the psychological color space, see Clark (Citation1993, pp. 119–122).
[7] For a description of the appearance of color as simple, also see Armstrong (Citation1993, p. 281). Texture, by contrast, has spatial complexity which can be identified by either sight or touch (Warren & Rossano, Citation1991, pp. 120–121 & 129–132).
[8] Boghossian and Velleman (Citation1989/1997) and McGinn (Citation1996) stress these points about a description of the appearance of color.
[9] However, Revelation leaves it open that there are other aspects of the constituting nature of color which aren't specified by the appearance of color—such as whether colors are mental or sui generis.
[10] Byrne and Hilbert (Citation2007, pp. 76–77), also make this point. However, Johnson only endorses the idea that we have access to supposed essences of particular colors, and so only endorses a “qualified form of Revelation” (1992/1997, p. 167).
[11] This is a metaphysically loaded meaning of ‘qualia’, according to which qualia are physically irreducible properties that are what it's like to be conscious of color. Another common use of the term ‘qualia' is to describe them in terms of what it's like to be conscious of qualitative properties but reject the metaphysical conclusion that they are simple, monadic, and categorical. This non-metaphysical way of characterizing qualia would reject Revelation (and Semi-Revelation, described below).
[12] I am using the expression ‘merely reference fixing description’ specifically for descriptions which pick out referents without specifying constituting natures; indeed, as I’ll argue, these descriptions pick out referents while being misleading about constituting natures.
[13] Another possibility is that color does not exist—that is, it is not instantiated by anything at all—and so has no constituting nature. I’ll consider this view in the section 2.2.
[14] Thus I embrace what is called an error theory in the sense that the appearance of color is misleading with regard to the constituting nature of color. However, I do not embrace an error theory in the sense that perception is systematically erroneous in representing colors as properties of physical objects. (See Ross, Citation1999, pp. 240–242, for more discussion of different meanings of ‘error theory'.)
[15] Chalmers, who Byrne and Hilbert (Citation2007, p. 80) classify as ‘sympathizing’ with the claim that colors are not instantiated by anything, admits that “if perfect redness is never instantiated in our world, then we have never had contact with any instances with it” (Chalmers, Citation2006, p. 83). (Perfect redness is a simple, monadic, categorical property [Chalmers, Citation2006, p. 66]. Chalmers imagines an ‘edenic’ world in which perception reveals the ‘intrinsic nature’ of things without causal mediation. The ‘intrinsic nature’ of colors seems to combine the constituting nature of color and the places of particular colors in qualitative ordering. But, distinguishing these, if we can deny that perception reveals the constituting nature of color, then supposing that we can classify objects by color category without causal mediation might be idle.)
[16] One might object that there can be a level of description according to which properties of neural processes are described as simple, monadic, and categorical. To the contrary, however, assuming that introspection tells us that mental colors are simple, monadic, and categorical, Semi-Revelation claims that there is no level of description at which mental colors have structure. And in that case, they can't be neural processes, since neural processes have physical structure.
[17] Kripke seems to be a color physicalist who also accepts mental colors, and characterizes mental colors as color qualia (1972/1980, pp. 140, 152, & 128). Although Kripke doesn't say much about color qualia, as Lewis (Citation1995) points out, Kripke embraces the revelation intuition with respect to pain. As Stoljar (Citation2009) discusses, interpretation of both Lewis and Kripke is a complicated matter. However, whatever else Lewis has in mind by what he terms the Identification Thesis (Citation1995, p. 142) or the doctrine of revelation (1997, p. 338), he takes it to include the claim that experience reveals the structural aspect of constituting natures: “but if nothing essential about the qualia is hidden, then if they seem simple, they are simple” (1995, p. 142). And this particular claim about structure, i.e., that qualia are simple, monadic, and categorical, fits with Kripke's anti-reductionism.
[18] Although Churchland claims (Citation2007, pp. 125–137 & 147–148) that there are idealized ways of describing commonsense colors such as perceived orange in non-disjunctive physical terms, he admits that few objects satisfy such idealized descriptions (2007, p. 141). Ultimately, he rejects commonsense colors altogether (Churchland, Citation2007, pp. 140–144). However, he never considers holding that commonsense colors are disjunctive properties, which I’ll argue is an acceptable alternative.
[19] By contrast with Clark (Citation2000, p. 2), I am using the term ‘qualitative property' in a general sense which encompasses any properties, of the mind or of external objects, which can be ordered into a psychological quality space. The qualification that similarities be amongst phenomenally simple properties avoids counting relative similarities amongst, for example, cars, as orderable into psychological spaces, and thus counting carhood as a qualitative property.
[20] For a discussion of relative similarity, see Clark (Citation1993, pp. 79, 91–94, & 117–119).
[21] For a discussion of mental colors as properties inferred from perceived colors, see Clark (Citation2000, pp. 8–10).
[22] For a classic proposal of two mirroring ranges of color properties, see Sellars (Citation1956/Citation1997, pp. 110–112, 1963/1991, pp. 418–419). Also see Rosenthal's (Citation2005) for a development of Sellars's proposal.
[23] Churchland (Citation2007) disagrees with this point with respect to reflectance properties. However, I am including rainbows and flames as being physical orange.
[24] For a more complete description of viewing conditions, see Clark (Citation2000, p. 213).
[25] For a recent expression of this common way of connecting utility and reality, and one which is relevant to disjunctive physical object colors, see Antony (Citation2003, pp. 12–13). Also, there is empirical evidence that the reference of color terms in fact isn’t merely a matter of arbitrary linguistic convention (Kay & Regier, Citation2006).
[26] I wasn’t clear about this distinction in Ross (Citation2000), as Byrne and Hilbert (Citation2003b, p. 792) rightly point out.
[27] So I retract my disagreement in Ross (Citation2003). In fact, as I should have seen, the sharp distinction physicalism draws between the metaphysics and epistemology of color strongly suggests this solution.
[28] From the standpoint of Kalderon's (Citation2007) helpful structuring of the debate into the problem of conflicting appearances (having to do with determining which, if any, qualitative property is truly attributed to an physical or mental entity) and Sellars's problem of the manifest (having to do with characterizing physical object colors in non-qualitative terms), this is a point at which the former gives rise to the latter.
[29] Cohen is clear that for a property to be a color, it must be disposed to produce color experiences: “any property lacking this functional role, ipso facto, is not a color property” (2003, p. 29). Also see Cohen (Citation2005, section 2.1).
[30] Byrne and Hilbert (Citation1997a, pp. xxi–xxii) make this point with respect to dispositionalism, but it applies to relationalist views generally.