Primitive Colors

This book is both an account of the nature of color and color perception, and an exercise in neo-pragmatist theorizing. Neo-pragmatism rejects representationalism, which is the standard strategy for solving “placement problems” in philosophy. Instead, it makes use of deflationary accounts of truth and reference. In the domain of color, the result is color primitivism: a view of color according to which colors are sui generis properties of objects, irreducible to physical or dispositional properties. Objective colors are also—contrary to current dogma—insufficiently determinate in their nature to allow them to be associated with precise points in standard color spaces. Rather, standard color spaces are appropriate for the description of color appearances, which are to be understood in line with a moderate form of adverbialism. A central analogy here is between the perceptible three-dimensional shape of an object and the various ways in which that shape appears from various perspectives. The book also offers an account of color constancy, a moderated version of representationalism about visual experience, and a criticism of the thesis of the transparency of experience. Also included are detailed discussions of rival views, including those of Alex Byrne and David Hilbert, C. L. Hardin, Jonathan Cohen, Mark Kalderon, Keith Allen, and Derek Brown.