Abstract

Color has often been supposed to be a subjective property: a property which has its correct analysis in terms of phenomenological aspects of human experience. The most influential form of subjectivism with respect to color has been the dispositional analysis of Locke and Newton. On this view the color of an object is analyzed in terms of its disposition to produce certain kinds of experiences. ;In contrast with subjectivism an objectivist analysis of color takes color to be a property objects possess in themselves, independently of the character of human perceptual experience. I defend a form of objectivism that identifies color with a physical property of surfaces: their spectral reflectance. This particular form of objectivism with respect to color is shown to be superior to dispositional analyses in doing justice to both the facts of color perception and our common sense intuitions about color. ;Two important features of human color vision are shown to be better accounted for by this form of objectivism than by its rivals. First, the existence of color constancy points to the identification of color with a property of objects such as spectral reflectance rather than with any property of light. Second, the existence of variation in color perception among normal human observers is much more easily accounted for by a objectivist analysis than by a dispositional one. This sort of variation points to the existence of differences of color that are imperceivable by a normal observer in normal circumstances: a fact that conflicts with the main features of dispositional accounts. ;The realization that perception and language give us access to kinds of colors and not to individual determinate colors allows for an account of color perception and language that is consistent with the identification of color with surface spectral reflectance. Color perceptions and color terms convey information about anthropocentric yet objective kinds of reflectances. ;The identification of color with surface spectral reflectance can be defended against the main arguments in favor of subjectivism and preserves most of our pre-analytic beliefs about color.