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Color constancy and dispositionalism

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Abstract

This article attempts to do two things. The first is to make it plausible that any adequate dispositional view of color will have to associate colors with complex functions from a wide range of normal circumstances to a wide range of (simultaneously) incompatible color appearances, so that there will be no uniquely veridical appearance of any given color. The second is to show that once this move is made, dispositionalism is in a position to provide interesting answers to some of the most challenging objections that have been pressed against it. It explains why colors do not seem to “come on” when the lights come on, and why the right thing to say seems to be that the light causes the objects to reveal their colors. It explains why the content of visual experience need not be problematically circular. It eliminates the problem of intrapersonal variation in color appearance. And it even provides resources for dealing with the problem of interpersonal variation. It is true that in moving to the more complex view, the dispositionalist becomes subject to a new objection, which has been called “the problem of unity.” The paper offers a solution to this problem as well.

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Notes

  1. Kalderon (2008).

  2. Jackson and Pargetter (1997) and Blackburn (1993).

  3. Bigelow et al. (1990) have argued that there is in fact no problem here—that just as simple words can represent complex entities, so too can relatively simple features of experience represent complex features of the world. But this response is unsatisfying. Verbal representations are not seemings, while visual experiences are. And if things do not seem to be as they are—if, for example, colors are dispositions, but do not seem to be dispositions—a fair conclusion is that we have a case of misrepresentation.

  4. Byrne and Hilbert (1997) and Tye (2000).

  5. See Cohen (2008). I include as an opponent of color realism anyone who denies that objects can have such color properties as redness and greenness. Thus the color relationalist, who holds that the basic color properties are relational properties such as dark-red-to-Adam-in-condition-C, counts as an anti-realist on my understanding of the term. Obviously such theorists count as realists on another understanding. The multiple-aspect view of color seems to me to undermine much of the motivation for relationalist views. However, a full defense of this claim is beyond the scope of the present article, which is merely the impact of facts about color constancy on the prospects of an adequate dispositionalist view.

  6. Arend and Reeves (1986).

  7. Hardin (1993, pp. 80–91) and Cohen (2004).

  8. Byrne and Hilbert (2003, p. 21 n. 50) compare our lack of epistemic access to the “correct” spectral locations of specific colors to our lack of epistemic access to, for example, the murderer of Professor Plum. But many have objected to this analogy.

  9. It is possible to think of the apparent shape as a perceiver-independent relational property: the apparent shape of a coin from an angle of 45° is an ellipse. But such a property will be correlated very tightly with a visual experience that one can also describe using the word ‘ellipse’. For present purposes there is no need to distinguish apparent shapes as perspectival properties from apparent shapes as visual responses to shape.

  10. In the context of a discussion of dispositionalist or response-dependent views, to say that an object has a certain apparent color should be taken as equivalent to the claim that it elicits a certain visual response. This is to be distinguished from another sense of ‘apparent color’ according to which the apparent color of an object is a mind-independent but perspectival property.

  11. See Noë (2004), Broackes (1997), and Gert (2010b).

  12. See Peacocke (1997) and Johnston (1992).

  13. Noë seems to miss this consequence, despite advocating a view very similar to the one presented here. See Noë (2004, pp. 132–137).

  14. Compare Broackes (1997, pp. 215–216).

  15. See Johnston (1992, pp. 226–227).

  16. Johnston (1992, p. 223). Not all theorists accept Revelation. See Gert (2008) and Byrne (2001).

  17. Primitivists about color, who take colors to be irreducible sui generis properties, do better than either physicalists or dispositionalists with respect to Revelation and similar theses. I defend primitivism in Gert (2008). But my goal in this article is not to argue for any particular view of color. Rather, I am simply trying to argue that the best version of dispositionalism will be a multiple-aspect version, and to show how such a view avoids certain recurring objections.

  18. Boghossian and Velleman (1989, p. 86).

  19. McGinn (1996).

  20. McGinn (1996, p. 540).

  21. McGinn (1996, p. 540).

  22. At least, if we take visual functions (functions from viewing circumstances to appearances) to go proxy for modal claims, he should admit that if our visual sense functions, we sense visual functions.

  23. McGinn (1996, p. 544, fn. 8).

  24. Since objective colors are located in HSB space only in this derivative way, the current view avoids worries expressed by some color theorists, that objective colors are in fact nothing other than apparent colors. But since objective colors are located in HSB space in some way, the current view also avoids the charge that what it calls ‘objective color’ is in fact something quite distinct from the commonsense notion of color.

  25. Boghossian and Velleman (1989, pp. 88–91) and McGinn (1996, pp. 543–544).

  26. Compare McGinn (1996, p. 543).

  27. Peacocke (1997).

  28. Blackburn (1993, p. 276).

  29. Arguably, this is how Peacocke could be interpreted, but it is very hard to determine. If so, Peacocke’s view is very similar to the view this article is presenting, except that Peacocke has a single-aspect view rather than a multiple-aspect view.

  30. See Kalderon (2008, pp. 950–952).

  31. Kalderon (2008, p. 950). Though I agree with the propriety of the unity question in general, it may be worth registering that I disagree with Kalderon’s particular claims about CDs; in my view CDs do have a distinctive color. See Gert (2006).

  32. In fact, one answer to this metaphysical question is that all clusters count as colors: just not colors that are instantiated in this world. Kalderon’s question then turns into the following more epistemological one: How is it that we human beings manage to determine an object’s color (that is, the cluster of dispositions it instantiates), given only a finite visual sampling? The present section is directed at the initial metaphysical question, on the assumption that not all clusters of dispositions count as colors. If one denies this assumption, then the suggestion of the section can be construed as an answer to the more epistemological question.

  33. Gert (2008).

  34. The phenomenon of a place seeming familiar, for example, is an instance in which we are made aware of connections that still exist in our memories, even if we are not presently recalling those memories.

  35. This speculative remark receives some support from data regarding the plasticity of color vision in mice. Normal mice have only one color receptor. When genetic intervention gives them a second, the result is that opponent channels similar to those in animals with two color receptors subsequently develop in post-retinal processing. See Jacobs (2009, pp. 62–63).

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  1. Department of Philosophy, College of William and Mary, P. O. Box 8795, Williamsburg, VA, 23187-8795, USA

    Joshua Gert

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Gert, J. Color constancy and dispositionalism. Philos Stud 162, 183–200 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-011-9754-x

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