Color and Color Perception: A Study in Anthropocentric Realism (Center for the Study of Language and Information - Lecture Notes)

Colour has often been supposed to be a subjective property, a property to be analysed orretly in terms of the phenomenological aspects of human expereince. In contrast with subjectivism, an objectivist analysis of color takes color to be a property objects possess in themselves, independently of the character of human perceptual expereince. David Hilbert defends a form of objectivism that identifies color with a physical property of surfaces - their spectral reflectance. This analysis of color is shown to provide a more adequate account of the features of human color vision than its subjectivist rivals. The author's account of colro also recognises that the human perceptual system provides a limited and idiosyncratic picture of the world. These limitations are shown to be consistent with a realist account of colour and to provide the necessary tools for giving an analysis of common sense knowledge of color phenomena. IF ONE LOOKS through the writings of psychologists and other scientists for their views on the ontological status of color, one is likely to find the claim that colors are properties of the brain or central nervous system and not of physical objects. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS lx 1 CONCEPTIONS OF COLOR 1 2 THE ARGUMENT FROM MICROSCOPES 29 3 COLOR AND SCIENCE 43 4 COLOR AND REFLECTANCE 61 5 METAMERS 81 6 INDETERMINACY AND COLORS 101 7 THE REALITY OF COLOR 119 BIBLIOGRAPHY 135 David R. Hilbert. Bibliography: P. 135-141.