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Parsing the rainbow

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Abstract

Navigating the ontology of color used to be a simple affair. There was the naive view that colors really are in objects the way they appear, and the view that they are secondary qualities to cause certain experiences in us. Today, there are myriad well-developed views but no satisfactory taxonomy of philosophical theories on color. In this article, I first examine the two newest taxonomies on offer and argue that they are inadequate. In particular, I look at Brogaard’s taxonomy and then Cohen’s. One of the reasons I am displeased with Brogaard and Cohen’s taxonomies is that I find it implausible that dispositions are relational properties. I provide an argument against this way of classifying dispositions. Having learned from the vices and virtues of Brogaard and Cohens’ taxonomies, I provide what I believe is a much-enhanced way of taxonomizing philosophical views on color. My taxonomy rules out certain views, clarifies others, and shows that there is an unnoticed view worthy of consideration.

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Notes

  1. Brogaard (2010a) does not consistently stick to her category scheme, but she has confirmed via written correspondence that the taxonomy I attribute to her captures her scheme.

  2. Cohen (2004); Cohen (2009) does not clearly differentiate between relations and relational properties. Relations are not the right type of things to be the colors. Objects can have colors, but they can only stand in relations. So, to be charitable I interpret Cohen as holdings the view that the colors are relational properties not relations.

  3. Cohen (2009) ends up endorsing a role functionalist view, but this view is not identical with what is called “Cohen’s view.” According to Cohen, his role functionalist view is a species of what he calls “Relationalism.” Cohen’s view captures the idea of “relationalism” given in part 1.3 of Cohen (2009).

  4. The view I cite to Noë above is similar to the one Brogaard cites to him. However, Noë’s view is far from clearly presented, so unsurprisingly, the view that Allen (2009) cites to Noë is not unambiguously the same view that I cite to him. Allen’s interpretation can be considered Noë’s view*. What is Allen’s interpretation? He says that according to Noë the colors are patterns of organization in how things look (pp. 648–649).

  5. Brogaard’s taxonomy differentiates between reflectance physicalism and the views under her dispositionalism node like this. Reflectance physicalism holds that the colors are realizer functionalist, whereas the views under the dispositionalism node hold that the colors are role functionalist. This is an odd way of differentiating these views given how I understand them, because reflectance physicalism being dispositionalist is not naturally understood as a first-level view. Dispositions are naturally understood as second level. One could distinguish between different stages of the second level, but this seems as if it would get confusing fast.

  6. To be fair, Cohen (2009, p. 11, footnote 18) says that contemporary dispositionalism may collapse into role functionalism. If there is such a collapse, it seems to me that it would go in the opposite direction, because contemporary dispositionalism provides a more fundamental answer to “what are the colors?” than role functionalism. Role functionalism provides a rather indirect way of saying what the colors are.

  7. Notice that contrary to what Cohen (2009, p. 3, footnote 4) thinks, whether reflectances are physical types is irrelevant to whether reflectance physicalism is a token identity view. Reflectance physicalism proposes a type reduction of the colors. So, if reflectance dispositions were not physical types, then this would only imply that reflectance physicalism is a non-physical type identity view. It would not imply that it is a token identity view.

  8. Khamara (1988) gives analyses of positive and impure relational properties using the notion of ‘consisting in.’ The improved analysis could be stated with this notion as well. Humberstone (1996) provides a way of understanding the notion of ‘consisting in’. The improved analysis could also be stated using the notion of ‘constitution.’ Cohen (2004); Cohen (2009) holds that relational properties are constituted by relations.

  9. As the simple conditional analysis of dispositions is unpopular, it is unclear how exactly dispositions are related to counterfactuals. See Johnston (1992); Bird (1998), and Martin (2008) for arguments against the simple conditional analysis. However, even though the simple conditional analysis is unpopular, basically everyone agrees that there is some connection between dispositional properties and counterfactuals.

  10. There is a concern that arguments similar to the second one I raised against the relational option (i.e. the argument to the effect that the relation postulated by the option does no explanatory work) will apply to Bird and Armstrong’s views (Barker and Smart 2012; Barker 2013), but such discussion is outside the scope of this article.

  11. My argument is neither an argument that we cannot see dispositions (McGinn 1996, p. 540) nor an argument to the effect that colors do not look like dispositions (Boghossian and Velleman 1989, 1991, p. 86). It is only an argument that we do not experience any circumstances in our visual experiences as of colored objects, and so if colors are dispositional properties, we do not experience what they are (their natures) in our visual experiences as of colored objects. Thus, there can be no non-reductive dispositional views given how I understand “reductive” etc. This would only imply that the colors are not dispositional properties if one assumes that we experience what the colors are (their natures) in our visual experiences as of colored things. Johnston (1992) thinks that something like this is a core belief about the colors. If he is right, there is reason to worried about all reductive views.

  12. Egan (2010) proposes that attributing the property being green to an object delivers the centered worlds proposition that is true at a world (\(w\)), time (\(t\)), and individual (\(i\)) iff the object is disposed to look green to \(i\) in the circumstances \(i\) occupies at \(t\) in \(w\). This sounds like a relativist, internal dispositionalist view. If so, it could be placed in my taxonomy as a type of internal dispositionalism. However, as Egan states the view as one about when ‘being green’ is true using an ‘iff’, it is difficult to be sure exactly of what he is saying the colors are.

  13. There is a circularity in Cohen’s view that is worrying to his opponents (Tye 2012). Because of this circularity, one may reasonably doubt whether his view succeeds in giving a reduction of the colors.

  14. It is worth mentioning that there has been an attempt to develop a relativist, non-relational primitivism in order to better account for worries about ad hoc stipulation (Brogaard 2010b). According to this view objects can only have non-relational primitive color properties relative to a viewer in a normal condition.

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Acknowledgments

I am especially grateful to Philip Percival for helping me to think through the contents of this paper. I am also thankful to Stephen Barker and Benjamin Smart. Their 2012 article inspired some of what I say in Sect. 3. In addition, I am thankful to Harold Noonan and Jonathan Tallant for their helpful advice. Last but not least, I would like to thank two anonymous referees for their insightful comments.

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Correspondence to Pendaran Roberts.

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Roberts, P. Parsing the rainbow. Synthese 191, 1793–1811 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-013-0368-z

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