Abstract
Are the following propositions true of the colors: No object can be more than one determinable or determinate color all over at the same time (Incompatibility); the colors of objects are mind-independent (Objectivism); and most human observers usually perceive the colors of objects veridically in typical conditions (Veridicality)? One reason to think not is that the empirical literature appears to support the proposition that there is mass perceptual disagreement about the colors of objects amongst human observers in typical conditions (P-Disagreement). In this article, we defend Incompatibility, Objectivism, and Veridicality by calling into question whether the empirical literature really supports P-Disagreement.
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Notes
Byrne and Hilbert (2007, footnote 5) mention that task type is important but other than this example we are unaware of any philosophers who have talked about task type in relation to P-Disagreement.
One may argue that the world color study deals with focal colors, not unique colors. This discrepancy is not problematic to our claims as Miyahara (2003) found that participants’ mean focal colors and unique hues were strikingly similar for red, green, blue and yellow.
Some believe that dispositionalism is a form of relationalism (for example see Cohen 2009). For the purposes of this article, we understand relationalism to be incompatible with dispositionalism, because relationalism but not dispositionalism is the denial of Objectivism.
A likely concern is to worry about the fluorescent lighting used in the room in which we conducted our experiment. Since we were concerned with comparing disagreement in the naming task with disagreement in the matching one, the only reason to be worried about the lighting would be if there were good reasons to suspect that it differentially affected our tasks. However, not only are our results for each task independently predicted by the psychophysical data (see p. 8–10), but also our pilot experiment conducted in natural daylight found comparable results (see p. 11).
The letters in the initialism ‘CMYK’ stand for Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Black respectively.
The black ink was added so as to decrease the lightness and prevent the items from appearing washed out. The green items needed more black ink than the red ones to obtain this goal.
We used the terms “True Green” and “True Red,” because it is our understanding that these terms in the vernacular mean what “unique green” and “unique red” mean respectively to color scientists. We defined “true green” and “true red” for our participants in the same way that “unique green” and “unique red” are defined in color science (see p. 11).
The largest exception to this general pattern is Ayama et al. (1987). The small number of participants (N = 2) in Ayama et al.’s experiment can explain the observed deviation, because such small numbers of participants likely make variation larger. Also, it is interesting to note the absence of data available for unique red in Ayama et al.’s experiment. Unique red is a non-spectral color and the tasks compared by Ayama et al. all use spectral stimuli.
One reason to be suspicious as to whether the relevant factor can influence what our perceptual systems represent is that it would seem that how the colors phenomenally look to people does not change based on their concepts of the particular colors. Here is an argument: Assume that how the colors phenomenally look changes based on peoples’ concepts of them. Necessarily, if two experiences E1 and E2 differ in phenomenal character, then they differ in representational content (Representationalism). So, we get that when someone first forms a concept of a color like aquamarine, he comes to represent something new. However, the correct view of what is happening when someone first forms the concept of a color like aquamarine is that he has come to have the concept of the color property represented by his visual system when in his life he had phenomenally aquamarine experiences. Thus, we can conclude that how the colors phenomenally look does not change based on peoples’ concepts of them.
A concept is only broad or narrow relative to another concept. A concept C1 is broader than another C2 = df a greater number of differing entities can satisfy C1 than C2. A concept C1 is narrower than another C2 = df a fewer number of differing entities can satisfy C1 than C2.
In order to test whether participants have a larger number of relatively narrow concepts or one or more broad concepts associated with ‘unique green,’ we propose a one trial test thus avoiding the above worry. In our proposed test, participants would be presented with either green or red worksheets like the naming sheets in Fig. 1. Participants who received the red worksheet would be asked to circle every box that exemplifies unique red and participants who received the green worksheet would be asked to circle every box that exemplifies unique green. It is important that participants be informed that a unique color is one that appears to have no neighboring hues in it, as plausibly they would not know what the word ‘unique’ means given the context. Our pilot experiment (which was very similar to the main experiment of this paper) suggests that if participants are not specifically instructed to only circle one box, they will circle multiple boxes to exemplify a unique color.
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Roberts, P., Schmidtke, K. In Defense of Incompatibility, Objectivism, and Veridicality About Color. Rev.Phil.Psych. 3, 547–558 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13164-012-0114-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13164-012-0114-3