Abstract
Redness is the property that makes things look red in normal circumstances. That seems obvious enough. But then colour is whatever property does that job: a certain reflectance profile as it might be. Redness is the property something is represented to have when it looks red. That seems obvious enough. But looking red does not represent that which looks red as having a certain reflectance profile.
What should we say about this antinomy and how does our answer impact on the contest between realism and subjectivism about colour? I address the issues through the lens of a representationalist position on colour experience.
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Acknowledgements
I am much indebted to the discussion at Bielefeld where an early version of this paper was presented.
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Open Access This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial License ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0 ), which permits any noncommercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author(s) and source are credited.
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Jackson, F. Colour for Representationalists. Erkenntnis 66, 169–185 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-006-9031-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-006-9031-0