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10 - On the Reality (and Diversity) of Objective Colors: How Color-Qualia Space Is a Map of Reflectance-Profile Space

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 July 2009

Paul Churchland
Affiliation:
University of California, San Diego
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Summary

Abstract: How, if at all, does the internal structure of human phenomenological color space map onto the internal structure of objective reflectance-profile space, in such a fashion as to provide a useful and accurate representation of that objective feature space? A prominent argument (due to Hardin, among others) proposes to eliminate colors as real, objective properties of objects, on grounds that nothing in the external world (and especially not surface-reflectance profiles) answers to the well-known and quite determinate internal structure of human phenomenological color space. The present paper proposes a novel way to construe the objective space of possible reflectance profiles so that (1) its internal structure becomes evident, and (2) that structure's homomorphism with the internal structure of human phenomenological color space becomes obvious. The path is thus reopened to salvage the objective reality of colors, in the same way that we preserved the objective reality of such features as temperature, pitch, and sourness – by identifying them with some objective feature recognized in modern physical theory.

Introduction to the Problem

At least since Locke, color scientists and philosophers have been inclined to deny any objective reality to the familiar ontology of perceivable colors, on grounds that physical science has revealed to us that material objects have no qualitative features at their surfaces that genuinely resemble the qualitative features of our subjective color experiences. Objective colors are therefore dismissed as being, at most, “a power in an object to produce in us an experience with a certain qualitative character.”

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2007

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