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Color Perception and Neural Encoding: Does Metameric Matching Entail a Loss of Information?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2022

Gary Hatfield
Gary Hatfield*
Affiliation:
University of Pennsylvania
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Extract

It seems intuitively obvious that metameric matching of color samples entails a loss of information. Metamers are distributions of wavelength and intensity (or “spectral energy distributions“) that perceivers cannot discriminate. Consider two color samples that are presented under ordinary white light and that appear to normal observers to be of the same color. It is well-established that such color samples can have quite different surface-reflective properties; e.g., two samples that appear to be the same shade of green may in fact reflect strikingly different patterns of wavelengths within the visible spectrum (see Figure 1). In this case, sameness of appearance under similar conditions of illumination does not entail sameness of surface reflectance. Spectrophotometrically diverse materials appear the same. It would seem then that information has been lost, that the visual system has failed in its task of chromatic discrimination.

Type
Part XII. Issues in the Philosophy of Psychology
Information
PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association , Volume 1992 , Issue 1: Volume One: Contributed Papers 1992 , 1992 , pp. 492 - 504
Copyright
Copyright © 1992 by the Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

1

An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Cornell Cognitive Science Symposium and to the Departments of Psychology and Philosophy of Dalhousie University, both in June, 1991.I thank each audience for their stimulating discussion. Larry Shapiro has given me helpful comments and criticisms on a more recent draft.

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