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Perception :: Perceptual qualities :: Color

• Clare Batty (ms). Naive color.   (More)
• Paul Boghossian (2002). Seeking the real.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract:   A critical discussion of Barry Stroud's claim, in his book The Quest for Reality, that we could never rationally arrive at the conclusion that, for example, the world is not really colored
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.springerlink.com/index/BTBA247G7NCM8BDN.pdf
  http://www.springerlink.com/content/btba247g7ncm8bdn/fulltext.pdf
  http://www.kluweronline.com/article.asp?PIPS=403563&PDF=1
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/klu/phil/2002/00000108/F0020001/00403563
  
• Peter Bradley & Michael Tye (2001). Of colors, kestrels, caterpillars, and leaves.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: According to color realism, object colors are mind-independent properties that cover surfaces or permeate volumes of objects. In recent years, some color scientists and a growing number of philosophers have opposed this view on the grounds that realism about color cannot accommodate the apparent unitary/binary structure of the hues. For example, Larry Hardin asserts,

  the unitary-binary structure of the colors as we experience them
  corresponds to no known physical structure lying outside nervous
  systems that is causally involved in the perception of color. This
  makes it very difficult to subscribe to a color realism that is
  supposed to be about red, green, blue, black, and white—that is,
  the colors with which we are perceptually acquainted.1

  Similarly, Evan Thompson says
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.jstor.org/sici?sici=0022-362X(200109)98:9<469:OCKCAL>2.0.CO;2-4
  http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0022-362X(200109)98:9<469:OCKCAL>2.0.CO;2-4
  http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/2678495.pdf
  
• Bill Brewer (2004). Stroud's Quest for reality.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Barry Stroud begins his investigation into the metaphysics of colour with a discussion of the elusiveness of the genuinely philosophical quest for reality. He insists upon a distinction between two ways in which the idea of a correspondence between perceptions or beliefs and the facts may be understood: first, as equivalent to the plain truth of the perceptions/beliefs in question; second, as conveying the metaphysical reality of the corresponding features of the world. I begin by voicing some suspicion about this distinction. Then I go on to consider various aspects of his central argument against the likelihood of any successful unmasking explanation in connection with colour. The final moves of this argument seem to me to be unstable. Either his conclusion that the unmasker’s overall strategy is self-defeating is stronger than is warranted, or his insistence that no conclusive result is established in connection with the fundamental quest for reality is unduly cautious, depending on how precisely the dependence, which he rightly insists upon, of the identification of perceptions of colour upon some identification of colour properties themselves, is to be taken
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1933-1592.2004.tb00353.x
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/ips/ppr/2004/00000068/00000002/art00013
  
• Justin Broackes (2007). Colour, world and archimedean metaphysics: Stroud and the Quest for reality.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Barry Stroud’s book _The Quest for Reality_1 is, I think, the most substantial study of colour realism that has yet been written. It subjects to fundamental criticism a tradition that found its classic expression in Descartes and Locke and which in many ways remains standard today; it argues to be flawed not only the traditional rejection of colours as mere ideas or features of ideas in the mind, but also the view that colours are dispositions or powers in objects to produce ideas in us—which in other quarters sometimes passes as a form of colour realism. Stroud rejects subjectivism, dispositionalism, relativism, and reductionism; but he is deliberately reticent about offering any positive account of what we believe to exist when believe colours to exist (after all, he says, in quiet allusion to Butler, everything is what it is and not another thing). And he is resolute in denying that we can give a philosophical argument to establish such belief as true. Stroud’s general conclusion can be seen as occupying a middle ground between what we might call dogmatic anti-realism and dogmatic realism. He argues (in Ch. 7) that anti-realism (or what Stroud calls the ‘unmasking’ of colours) is a view that cannot be affirmed without a kind of self-refutation—for ‘no one could abandon all beliefs about the colours of things and still _understand_ the colour terms’ (168, my emphasis). On the other hand (in Ch. 9), it remains in some sense a ‘possibility’ (204) that everyday colour beliefs might actually all be false. Stroud’s final judgment is not that we shall or should abandon the ‘Quest for Reality’, though he has expressed many reservations about it.2 The
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.springerlink.com/index/U21VL7744826X811.pdf
  http://www.springerlink.com/content/u21vl7744826x811/fulltext.pdf
  
• Alex Byrne & David Hilbert (1997). Colors and reflectances.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: When we open our eyes, the world seems full of colored opaque objects, light sources, and transparent volumes. One historically popular view, _eliminativism_, is that the world is not in this respect as it appears to be: nothing has any color. Color _realism_, the denial of eliminativism, comes in three mutually exclusive varieties, which may be taken to exhaust the space of plausible realist theories. Acccording to _dispositionalism_, colors are _psychological_ dispositions: dispositions to produce certain kinds of visual experiences. According to both _primitivism_ and _physicalism_, colors are not psychological dispositions; they differ in that primitivism says that no reductive analysis of the colors is possible, whereas physicalism says that they are physical properties. This paper is a defense of physicalism about color
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://tigger.uic.edu/~hilbert/papers/colref.html
  http://web.mit.edu/abyrne/www/colors&reflectances.html
  
• Alex Byrne (2003). Color and similarity.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Anything is similar to anything, provided the respects of similarity are allowed to be gerrymandered or gruesome, as Goodman observed.2 But similarity in non-gruesome or—as I shall say—genuine respects is much less ecumenical. Colors, it seems, provide a compelling illustration of the distinction as applied to similarities among properties.3 For instance, in innumerable gruesome respects, blue is more similar to yellow than to purple. But in a genuine respect, blue is more similar to purple than to yellow (genuinely more similar, as I shall sometimes put it)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1933-1592.2003.tb00282.x
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/searching/Expand?pub=infobike://ips/ppr/2003/00000066/00000003/art00005&unc=
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/ips/ppr/2003/00000066/00000003/art00005
  http://web.mit.edu/abyrne/www/Color&Similarity.pdf
  
• Alex Byrne (2006). Color and the mind-body problem.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: b>: there is no “mind-body problem”, or “hard problem of consciousness”; if there is a hard problem of something, it is the problem of reconciling the manifest and scientific images
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://mit.edu/abyrne/www/color_and_mind-body_prob.pdf
  http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1746-8361.2006.01061.x
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/bpl/dltc/2006/00000060/00000003/art00002
  
• Alex Byrne (2006). Comments on Cohen, mizrahi, Maund, and Levine.   (More)
• Alex Byrne & David Hilbert (2006). Color primitivism.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: The realist preference for reductive theories of color over the last few decades is particularly striking in light of the generally anti-reductionist mood of recent philosophy of mind. The parallels between the mind-body problem and the case of color are substantial enough that the difference in trajectory is surprising. While dualism and non-
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://web.mit.edu/abyrne/www/colorprimitivism.pdf
  http://mit.edu/abyrne/www/colorprimitivism.pdf
  http://www.springerlink.com/index/N5R6G35753667564.pdf
  http://www.springerlink.com/content/n5r6g35753667564/fulltext.pdf
  
• Alex Byrne & David Hilbert (2003). Color realism and color science.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: The target article is an attempt to make some progress on the problem of color realism. Are objects colored? And what is the nature of the color properties? We defend the view that physical objects (for instance, tomatoes, radishes, and rubies) are colored, and that colors are physical properties, specifically types of reflectance. This is probably a minority opinion, at least among color scientists. Textbooks frequently claim that physical objects are not colored, and that the colors are "subjective" or "in the mind." The article has two other purposes: first, to introduce an interdisciplinary audience to some distinctively philosophical tools that are useful in tackling the problem of color realism and, second, to clarify the various positions and central arguments in the debate
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://web.mit.edu/abyrne/www/ColorRealism.html
  http://www.bbsonline.org/documents/a/00/00/22/51/bbs00002251-00/bbs.byrne.htm
  http://tigger.uic.edu/~hilbert/papers/ColorRealism.html
  http://www.bbsonline.org/documents/a/00/00/22/51/
  http://web.mit.edu/abyrne/www/colorrealismandcolorscience.pdf
  http://mit.edu/abyrne/www/colorrealismandcolorscience.pdf
  http://www.cs.sfu.ca/~colour/publications/BBS-2003/BBS-2003.pdf
  http://www.bbsonline.org/documents/a/00/00/22/51/index.html
  http://journals.cambridge.org/article_S0140525X03350010
  http://www.journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0140525X03000013
  http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=14598439&dopt=Citation
  http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&list_uids=14598439&dopt=Citation
  http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0140525X03000013
  http://journals.cambridge.org/article_S0140525X03480011
  
• Alex Byrne & David Hilbert (2004). Hardin, Tye, and color physicalism.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Larry Hardin has been the most steadfast and influential critic of physicalist theories of color over the last 20 years. In their modern form these theories originated with the work of Smart and Armstrong in the 1960s and 1970s1 and Hardin appropriately concentrated on their views in his initial critique of physicalism.2 In his most recent contribution to this project3 he attacks Michael Tye’s recent attempts to defend and extend color physicalism.4 Like Byrne and Hilbert5, Tye identifies color with the reflecting properties of objects (“reflectance physicalism”). Specifically, the determinate and determinable colors are identified with types of reflectances. (Setting some complications aside, the reflectance of an object is the proportion of light that it reflects at each wavelength in the visible spectrum.) These reflectance types are, in the terminology of Hilbert, anthropocentric—in the terminology of Lewis6, they are not very “natural”
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://web.mit.edu/abyrne/www/HardinTyeColorPhysicalism.pdf
  
• Alex Byrne & David Hilbert (forthcoming). Philosophical issues about colour vision.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: The primary issues concern whether objects have colours, and what sorts of properties the colours are. Some philosophers hold that nothing is coloured, others that colour are powers to affect perceivers, and others that colours are physical properties
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://mit.edu/abyrne/www/ColourVision.pdf
  
• Alex Byrne & David Hilbert (2007). Truest blue.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Physical objects are coloured: roses are red, violets are blue, and so forth. In particular, physical objects have fine-grained shades of colour: a certain chip, we can suppose, is true blue (unique, or pure blue). The following sort of scenario is commonplace. The chip looks true blue to John; in the same (ordinary) viewing conditions it looks (slightly) greenish-blue to Jane. Both John and Jane are “normal” perceivers. Now, nothing can be both true blue and greenish-blue; since the chip is true blue, it is not greenish-blue. Hence Jane, unlike John, is misperceiving the chip. Generalizing, the conclusion is that there is widespread misperception of fine-grained shades. According to Tye (2006), and Cohen, Hardin, and McLaughlin (2006), the previous paragraph amounts to a paradox: an apparently unacceptable conclusion has been drawn from apparently acceptable premises via apparently acceptable reasoning. (See also Hawthorne and Kovakovich 2006: 180-1.) Tye swallows the conclusion, aided by a dose of evolutionary speculation. Hardin (1988), on the other hand, rejects the first premise, and denies that physical objects are coloured. Cohen (2004) and McLaughlin (2003) claim that both Jane and John have the colour of the chip right. Our opening paragraph concealed a crucial parameter. In fact, the chip looks greenish-blue-relative-to- circumstances-C to Jane, and true-blue-relative-to-circumstances-C* to John, and the chip has both these relativized colours.¹ All this ingenious philosophizing would be in vain, of course, if the conclusion of the opening paragraph were not puzzling or problematic. So, why is it supposed to be? According to Tye, the conclusion is puzzling because John and Jane are both “_normal_ perceivers” (xx). He seems to think that it is (prima facie) plausible to assume that there is no variation in perceptual accuracy among normal perceivers. But he does not explain why this assumption should be made..
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://uic.edu/~hilbert/papers/truestblue.pdf
  http://tigger.uic.edu/~hilbert/papers/truestblue.pdf
  http://www.utexas.edu/cola/depts/philosophy/faculty/tye/truestblue.pdf
  http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1467-8284.2007.00654.x
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/bpl/anal/2007/00000067/00000293/art00014
  
• Alex Byrne (2002). Yes, Virginia, Lemons are yellow.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract:   This paper discusses a number of themes and arguments in The Quest for Reality: Stroud's distinction between philosophical and ordinary questions about reality; the similarity he finds between the view that coloris unreal and the view that it is subjective; his argument against thesecondary quality theory; his argument against the error theory; and the disappointing conclusion of the book
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://amor.cms.hu-berlin.de/~h0998dgh/color/Byrne_YesVirginia.pdf
  http://web.mit.edu/abyrne/www/YesVirginia.pdf
  http://mit.edu/abyrne/www/YesVirginia.pdf
  http://www.blutner.de/color/Byrne_YesVirginia.pdf
  http://www.springerlink.com/content/k05jjk61mb5hq03x/fulltext.pdf
  http://www.springerlink.com/index/K05JJK61MB5HQ03X.pdf
  http://www.kluweronline.com/article.asp?PIPS=403562&PDF=1
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/klu/phil/2002/00000108/F0020001/00403562
  
• John Campbell (1993). A simple view of colour.   (More)
• John Campbell (2006). Manipulating colour.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: It seems a compelling idea that experience of colour plays some role in our having concepts of the various colours, but in trying to explain the role experience plays the first thing we have to describe is what sort of colour experience matters here. I will argue that the kind of experience that matters is conscious attention to the colours of objects as an aspect of them on which direct intervention is selectively possible. As I will explain this idea, it is a matter of being able to use experience to inform linguistic or conceptual thought about what would happen were there to be various interventions on an object. Against this background, I will review Locke’s fundamental argument that since we can change the colour of an almond by pounding it, there must be an error embodied in our ordinary concepts of colour: there is no such thing as intervening directly on the colour of an object. The analysis I present brings out the force of Locke’s argument. But I will propose a vindication of our commonsense conception of colour as an aspect of objects on which direct intervention is selectively possible
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=paqmMMfP8t0C&oi=fnd&pg=PA31&ots=_ol-wcAyBF&sig=6asMQkICYjj_a-Z6LyOSVWzZogw
  http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=WUW3sLZ9tIAC&oi=fnd&pg=PA31&ots=I0WGkBD7kp&sig=OpUxojqTIy4hZ_H5Yzyv31LyyNA
  http://ist-socrates.berkeley.edu/~jcampbel/documents/ManipulatingColour.pdf
  
• John Campbell (2006). Manipulating colour: Pounding an Almond.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: It seems a compelling idea that experience of colour plays some role in our having concepts of the various colours, but in trying to explain the role experience plays the first thing we have to describe is what sort of colour experience matters here. I will argue that the kind of experience that matters is conscious attention to the colours of objects as an aspect of them on which direct intervention is selectively possible. As I will explain this idea, it is a matter of being able to use experience to inform linguistic or conceptual thought about what would happen were there to be various interventions on an object. Against this background, I will review Locke’s fundamental argument that since we can change the colour of an almond by pounding it, there must be an error embodied in our ordinary concepts of colour: there is no such thing as intervening directly on the colour of an object. The analysis I present brings out the force of Locke’s argument. But I will propose a vindication of our commonsense conception of colour as an aspect of objects on which direct intervention is selectively possible
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~jcampbel/documents/ManipulatingColour.pdf
  http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=paqmMMfP8t0C&oi=fnd&pg=PA31&ots=_ol-wcAzHN&sig=FMEuosL0HQUJc5pSLcEgeLK2F4U
  http://ist-socrates.berkeley.edu/~jcampbel/documents/ManipulatingColour.pdf
  
• Austen Clark (1996). True theories, false colors.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: University of Connecticut Storrs, CT 06279-2054 Abstract. Recent versions of objectivism can reply to the argument from metamers. The deeper rift between subjectivists and objectivists lies in the question of how to explain the structure of qualitative similarities among the colors. Subjectivism grounded in this fashion can answer the circularity objection raised by Dedrick. It endorses skepticism about the claim that there is some one property of objects that it is the function of color vision to detect. Color vision may enable us to detect differences in spectral composition without granting us the capacity to detect identities
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://selfpace.uconn.edu/paper/falseco.pdf
  http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0031-8248(199609)632.0.CO;2-8
  http://www.jstor.org/sici?sici=0031-8248(199609)63:32.0.CO;2-0
  http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/188521.pdf
  
• Jonathan Cohen (online). A guided tour of color.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: One of the most salient facts about our experience of the world is that objects appear to have colors. This feature of our experience is both striking and pervasive. Indeed, representations of colors of objects are among the most notable deliverances of the visual modality, which is perhaps our most important source of information about the world. For this reason, among others, questions about the nature of color have crucial significance for a variety of philosophical subjects including perception, ontology, epistemology, semantics, and philosophy of mind. But the nature of color is a fascinating philosophical topic in its own right, and there has been a significant increase in the philosophical attention paid to this matter in recent years. In this essay I'll survey some of the main views about the nature of color in the contemporary literature and attempt to lay out some of the arguments that have been used to support or reject various of these accounts
• Jonathan Cohen (2003). Barry Stroud, the Quest for reality: Subjectivism and the metaphysics of colour.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: In The Quest for Reality: Subjectivism and the Metaphysics of Colour [Stroud, 2000], Barry Stroud carries out an ambitious attack on various forms of irrealism and subjectivism about color. The views he targets - those that would deny a place in objective reality to the colors - have a venerable history in philosophy. Versions of them have been defended by Galileo, Descartes, Boyle, Locke, and Hume; more recently, forms of these positions have been articulated by Williams, Smart, Mackie, Ryle, and Hardin, among others. Stroud's aim is to argue not only that these writers fail to make their cases, but that no conceivable argument could ever convince us that colors are not a part of objective reality
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://aardvark.ucsd.edu/color/stroud.html
  http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/1468-0068.00450
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/bpl/nous/2003/00000037/00000003/art00007
  
• Jonathan Cohen (web). Color.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Questions about the ontology of color matter because colors matter. Colors are (or, at least, appear to be) extremely pervasive and salient features of the world. Moreover, people care about the distribution of these features: they expend money and effort to paint their houses, cars, and other possessions, and their clear preference for polychromatic over monochromatic televisions and computer monitors have consigned monochromatic models to the status of rare antiques. The apparent ubiquity of colors and their importance to our lives makes them a ripe target for ontological questions such as the following:

  • What is the nature of colors?

  • Are they, as they seem to be, properties of objects?
• Jonathan Cohen (2006). Color and perceptual variation revisited: Unknown facts, alien modalities, and perfect psychosemantics.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: An adequate ontology of color must face the empirical facts about per- ceptual variation. In this paper I begin by reviewing a range of data about perceptual variation, and showing how they tell against color physicalism and motivate color relationalism. Next I consider a series of objections to the argument from perceptual variation, and argue that they are un- persuasive. My conclusion will be that the argument remains a powerful obstacle for color physicalism, and a powerful reason to believe in color relationalism instead
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1746-8361.2006.01057.x
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/bpl/dltc/2006/00000060/00000003/art00006
  
• Jonathan Cohen (forthcoming). Colors, functions, realizers, and roles.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: You may speak of a chain, or if you please, a net. An analogy is of little aid. Each cause brings about future events. Without each the future would not be the same. Each is proximate in the sense it is essential. But that is not what we mean by the word. Nor on the other hand do we mean sole cause. There is no such thing
• Jonathan Cohen (2004). Color properties and color ascriptions: A relationalist manifesto.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Are colors relational or non-relational properties of their bearers? Is red a property that is instantiated by all and only the objects with a certain intrinsic (/non-relational) nature? Or does an object with a particular intrinsic (/non-relational) nature count as red only in virtue of standing in certain relations - for example, only when it looks a certain way to a certain perceiver, or only in certain circumstances of observation? In this paper I shall argue for the view that color properties are relational (henceforth, relationalism), and against the view that colors are not relational (henceforth, anti- or non-relationalism)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://aardvark.ucsd.edu/color/relational.html
  http://www.jstor.org/sici?sici=0031-8108(200410)113:4<451:CPACAA>2.0.CO;2-S
  http://philreview.dukejournals.org/cgi/content/citation/113/4/451
  http://philreview.dukejournals.org/cgi/reprint/113/4/451
  http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/4147999.pdf
  
• Jonathan Cohen (2006). Color, variation, and the appeal to essences: Impasse and resolution.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Many philosophers have been attracted by the view that colors are mind- independent properties of object surfaces. A leading, and increasingly popular, version of this view that has been defended in recent years is the so-called physicalist position that identifies colors with (classes of) spectral reflectance distributions.¹ This view, has, however, come in for a fair bit of criticism for failing to do justice to the facts about perceptual variation.²
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.springerlink.com/content/j7p06u46p7854816/fulltext.pdf
  http://www.springerlink.com/index/J7P06U46P7854816.pdf
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/klu/phil/2007/00000133/00000003/00009076
  
• Jonathan Cohen (online). It's not easy being green: Hardin and color relationalism.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: But Hardin hasn’t contented himself with reframing traditional philosoph- ical issues about color in a way that is sensitive to relevant empirical con- straints. In addition, he has been a staunch defender of color eliminativism — the view that there are no colors, qua properties of tables, chairs, and other mind-external objects, and a vociferous critic of several varieties of re- alism about color that have been defended by others (e.g., [Hardin, 2003], [Hardin, 2005]). These other views include the so-called color physical- ism of [Hilbert, 1987], [Byrne and Hilbert, 1997a], [Byrne and Hilbert, 2003], and [Tye, 2000],¹ and, inconveniently, even the relationalist view defended in [Cohen, 2003a], [Cohen, 2004a], [Cohen, 2003b], [McLaughlin, 2003], and [Jakab and McLaughlin, 2003]
• Jonathan Cohen (2003). On the structural properties of the colours.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Primary quality theories of color claim that colors are intrinsic, objective, mind-independent properties of external objects — that colors, like size and shape, are examples of the sort of properties moderns such as Boyle and Locke called primary qualities of body.¹ Primary quality theories have long been seen as one of the main philosophical options for understanding the nature of color
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.informaworld.com/index/713659586.pdf
  http://taylorandfrancis.metapress.com/index/XXMMTMMURYLG1AD0.pdf
  http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/./ftinterface~content=a713659586~fulltext=713240930
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/routledg/ajphil/2003/00000081/00000001/art00078
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/oup/ajphil/2003/00000081/00000001/art00078
  
• Jonathan Cohen (2003). Perceptual variation, realism, and relativization, or: How I learned to stop worrying and love variations in color vision.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: In many cases of variation in color vision, there is no non-arbitrary way of choosing between variants. Byrne and Hilbert insist that there is an unknown standard for choosing, while eliminativists claim that all the variants are erroneous. A better response relativizes colors to perceivers, thereby providing a color realism that avoids the need to choose between variants
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0140525X03260015
  http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0140525X03260015
  
• Jonathan Cohen (2001). Subjectivism, physicalism or none of the above? Comments on Ross's The Location Problem for Color Subjectivism.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: In “The Location Problem for Color Subjectivism,” Peter Ross argues against what he calls subjectivism — the view that “colors are not describable in physical terms, ... [but are] mental processes or events of visual states” (2),¹ and in favor of physicalism — a view according to which colors are “physical properties of physical objects, such as reflectance properties” (10). He rejects an argument that has been offered in support of subjectivism, and argues that, since no form of subjectivism is able to account for our perception of color, we are better off adopting physicalism
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S1053810000904793
  http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=11273631&dopt=Citation
  http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?db=pubmed&uid=11273631&cmd=showdetailview&indexed=google
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/ap/cc/2001/00000010/00000001/art00479
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/els/10538100/2001/00000010/00000001/art90479
  
• Jonathan Cohen, C. L. Hardin & Brian McLaughlin (2006). True colours.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: (Tye 2006) presents us with the following scenario: John and Jane are both stan- dard human visual perceivers (according to the Ishihara test or the Farnsworth test, for example) viewing the same surface of Munsell chip 527 in standard conditions of visual observation. The surface of the chip looks “true blue” to John (i.e., it looks blue not tinged with any other colour to John), and blue tinged with green to Jane.¹ Tye then in effect poses a multiple choice question
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://aardvark.ucsd.edu/color/tye_response.pdf
  http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1467-8284.2006.00638.x
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/bpl/anal/2006/00000066/00000292/art00011
  
• Jonathan Cohen (2001). Two recent anthologies on color.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Although philosophers have puzzled about color for millennia, the recent explosion in philosophical interest in the topic can largely be traced to C. L. Hardin’s widely-read and deservedly-praised Color for Philosophers: Unweaving the Rainbow [Hardin, 1988]. While Hardin has had no more than the usual, limited success in convincing other philosophers to adopt the substance of his views, he has been quite influential about a point of philosophical methodology: he has convinced many that responsible philosophical work on color simply must make contact with the vast body of empirical color science, and thereby has effected an enormous (and to my mind, extremely salutary) change in the terms of recent philosophical discussion of color.¹ Indeed, writers have been so eager to take Hardin’s lesson on board that one is hard-pressed to find a recent philosophical book on color that does not acknowledge it, crediting Hardin by name
• Naomi Eilan (ms). On the reality of color.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: The Quest for Reality, contains, amongst much else, a sustained and deeply illuminating investigation of the thesis Barry Stroud labels ’subjectivism’ about colours. The grounds he relentlessly amasses for rejecting the thesis are, in my view, compelling. There is a sense, indeed, in which I think they are more compelling than he says he himself finds them. For as I understand his arguments, they contain the materials for delivering a positive answer to the question: are objects really coloured? As Stroud himself presents the outcome of his investigation, they do not. Actually, to put it in this ’headline-grabbing’ way is misleading. The real issue turns on the main concern of his book-- his immensely thought-provoking investigation of the questions: what counts as a metaphysical account of reality? And, in the test case of colours, can the task of addressing the question of whether they are or are not part of reality be successfully undertaken? The suggestion I will be making is that his rejection of subjectivism contains the materials for asking about the metaphysical reality of colour in a way that is distinct from the way he shows cannot work; and that on this distinct way, the answer to the question of whether objects are really coloured is: yes. So, he might either reject the very idea that this alternative way of framing the question about colours does count as an example of a metaphysical quest for their reality; or he might agree that it is one, but disagree with the positive answer I sketch on his behalf, so to speak
• Jonathan Ellis (2006). Color, error, and explanatory power.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: At least since Democritus, philosophers have been fond of the idea that material objects do not “really” have color. One such view is the error theory, according to which our ordinary judgments ascribing colors to objects are all erroneous, false; no object has any color at all. The error theorist proposes that everything that is so, including the fact that material objects appear to us to have color, can be explained without ever attributing color to objects—by appealing merely to, e.g., surface reflectance properties, the nature of light, the neurophysiology of perceivers, and so on. The appeal of the error theory stems in significant part from the prevalent thought that such explanations are strongly suggested by our present scientific conception of the world.¹
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://fortytwo.ucsc.edu/~jellis/Papers/StroudOnColor.pdf
  http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1746-8361.2005.01047.x
  
• Jonathan Ellis (2005). Colour irrealism and the formation of colour concepts.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: According to colour irrealism, material objects do not have colour; they only appear to have colour. The appeal of this view, prominent among philosophers and scientists alike, stems in large part from the conviction that scientific explanations of colour facts do not ascribe colour to material objects. To explain why objects appear to have colour, for instance, we need only appeal to surface reflectance properties, properties of light, the neurophysiology of observers, etc. Typically attending colour irrealism is the error theory of ordinary colour judgement: ordinary judgements in which colour is ascribed to a material object are, strictly speaking, false. In this paper, I claim that colour irrealists who endorse the error theory cannot explain how we acquire colour concepts (yellow, green, etc.), concepts they must acknowledge we do possess. Our basic colour concepts, I argue, could not be phenomenal concepts that we acquire by attending to the colour properties of our experience. And, I explain, all other plausible explanations render colour concepts such that our ordinary colour judgements involving them are often true. Given the explanatory considerations upon which the irrealist's position is based, this is a severe problem for colour irrealism
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://fortytwo.ucsc.edu/~jellis/Papers/Color.pdf
  http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/./ftinterface~content=a713734787~fulltext=713240930
  http://taylorandfrancis.metapress.com/index/G71TW31197834480.pdf
  http://www.informaworld.com/index/713734787.pdf
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/routledg/ajphil/2005/00000083/00000001/art00004
  
• D. Foster (2003). Does colour constancy exist?   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://personalpages.umist.ac.uk/staff/david.foster/Research/My_PDFs/Foster_TiCS_03_proofs.pdf
  http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&list_uids=14550490&dopt=Citation
  http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=14550490&dopt=Citation
  
• Kathrin Gluer (forthcoming). Colors Without Circles?   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: The dispute between realists about color and anti-realists is actually a dispute about the
  nature of color properties. The disputants do not disagree over what material objects are
  like. Rather, they disagree over whether any of the uncontroversial facts about material
  objects – their powers to cause visual experiences, their dispositions to reflect incident
  light, their atomic makeup, and so on – amount to their having colors. The disagreement
  is thus about which properties colors are and, in particular, whether colors are any of the
  properties in a particular set that is acknowledged on both sides to exhaust the properties
  of material objects (1991, 67)
• Kathrin Glüer-Pagin (2007). Colors without circles?   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: forthcoming in Theories of Color Perception, ed. R. Schumacher, special issue of Erkenntnis 2007
• Allan Hazlett & Edward Averill (online). A problem for relational theories of color.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: We argue that relationalism entails an unacceptable claim about the content of visual experience: that ordinary ‘red’ objects look like they look like the look like they’re red, etc
• David Hilbert (online). Theories of colour.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: The world as perceived by human beings is full of colour. The world as described by physical scientists is composed of colourless particles and fields. Philosophical theories of colour since the scientific revolution have been primarily driven by a desire to harmonize these two apparently conflicting pictures of the world. Any adequate theory of colour has to be consistent with the characteristics of colour as perceived without contradicting the deliverances of the physical sciences. Given this conception of the aim of a theory of colour, there are three possibilities for resolving the apparent conflict between the scientific and perceptual facts. The first possibility is to deny that physical objects have colours. Theories of this kind admit that objects appear coloured but maintain that these appearances are misleading. The conflict is resolved by removing colour from the external world. Second, it might be that colour is a relational property. For an object to possess a particular colour it must be related in the right way to a perceiver. One common version of this view analyzes colour as a disposition to cause particular kinds of perceptual experiences in a human being. Since the physical sciences deal only with the intrinsic properties of physical objects and their relations to other physical objects and not their relations to perceiving subjects, the possibility of conflict is removed. A third possible response to the conflict is to maintain that colour really is a property of external objects and that the conflict is merely apparent. Some theories of this form maintain that colour is identical to a physical property of objects. Others maintain that colour is a property that physical objects possess over and above all their physical

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  properties. Philosophical discussions of colour typically take the form of either elaborating on one of these three possibilities or attempting to show more generally that one of these three types of responses is to be preferred to the others..
• David Hilbert (1992). What is color vision?   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: There are serious reasons for accepting each of these propositions individually but there are apparently insurmountable difficulties with accepting all three of them simultaneously if we assume that color is a single property. 1) and 2) together seem to imply that there is some property which all organisms with color vision can see and 3) seems to imply that there can be no such property. If these implications really are valid then one or more of these propositions will have to be rejected in spite of whatever reasons can be given for their apparent acceptability. Before going on to discuss possible resolutions of this apparent contradiction it is worth pointing out there our three propositions are not all of a kind. Proposition 1) is a metaphysical thesis about the ontological status of color and proposition 3) is an empirical thesis about what properties organisms with color vision are capable of detecting. If you accept 1) then 2) will appear to verge on the trivial, but if 1) is denied then the status of 2) will appear more problematic. In what follows I will have more to say about why we either should or should not accept all three of these propositions
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.humbul.ac.uk/output/redirect.php?URI=http://tigger.uic.edu/~hilbert/papers/wcv.pdf
  http://tigger.uic.edu/~hilbert/papers/wcv.pdf
  http://www.springerlink.com/content/x108594365w01575/fulltext.pdf
  http://www.springerlink.com/index/X108594365W01575.pdf
  
• Donald Hoffman (2001). The data problem for color objectivism.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?db=pubmed&uid=11273628&cmd=showdetailview&indexed=google
  http://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S1053810000904768
  http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=11273628&dopt=Citation
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/els/10538100/2001/00000010/00000001/art90476
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/ap/cc/2001/00000010/00000001/art00476
  
• Susan Hurley & Alva Noë (forthcoming). Can hunter-gatherers hear color?   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Philip Pettit (2003) argues that color looks should be explained in terms of manifest powers. He indicates that his view is broadly allied with our own dynamic sensorimotor approach to conscious experience (O’Regan and Noë 2001a, b, c; Hurley 1998, Hurley and Noë 2003a
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.warwick.ac.uk/staff/S.L.Hurley/papers/hunter_gatherers.pdf
  http://www.warwick.ac.uk/staff/S.L.Hurley/papers/hunter gatherers.pdf
  http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~noe/hunter-gatherers.pdf
  
• Michael Jacovides (2000). Cambridge changes of color.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/1468-0114.00100
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/bpl/papq/2000/00000081/00000002/art00100
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/bpl/papq/2000/00000081/00000002/art00003
  
• Zoltán Jakab (2006). Metameric surfaces: The ultimate case against color physicalism and representational theories of phenomenal consciousness.   (More)
• Kent Johnson & Wayne Wright (2006). Colors as properties of the special sciences.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: We briefly examine the pros and cons of color realism, exposing some desiderata on a theory of color: the theory should render colors as scientifically legitimate and correctly individuated, and it should explain how we have veridical color experiences. We then show that these desiderata can by met by treating colors as properties of the special sciences. According to our view, some of the major disputes in the literature about color—anti-realism vs. dispositionalism vs. reductionism—are not well-founded at this stage of scientific inquiry
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.mindstuff.net/ColorRealism_KJ-WW.doc
  http://www.lps.uci.edu/~johnsonk/Case/Color9.doc
  http://www.lps.uci.edu/~johnsonk/Publications/JohnsonWright.ColorsAsPropertiesOfTheSpecialSciences.pdf
  http://www.springerlink.com/content/870k12521gm43017/fulltext.pdf
  http://www.springerlink.com/index/870K12521GM43017.pdf
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/klu/erke/2006/00000064/00000002/00004310
  
• Joseph Levine (2006). Color and color experience: Colors as ways of appearing.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: In this paper I argue that color is a relational feature of the distal objects of perception, a way of appearing. I begin by outlining three constraints any theory of color should satisfy: (i) physicalism about the non-mental world, (ii) consistency with what is known from color science, and (iii) transparency about color experience. Traditional positions on the ontological status of color, such as physicalist reduction of color to spectral reflectance, subjectivism, dispositional- ism, and primitivism, fail, I claim, to meet all three constraints. By treating color as a relational property, a way of appearing, the three constraints can be met. However, serious problems for this view emerge when considering the relation between illusory color experiences (particularly hallucinations) and veridical color experiences. I do not propose a solution to these problems
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1746-8361.2006.01056.x
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/bpl/dltc/2006/00000060/00000003/art00004
  http://www.umass.edu/philosophy/PDF/Levine/Color%20and%20Color%20Experience.pdf
  
• Mohan Matthen (online). Our knowledge of color.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Scientists are often bemused by the efforts of philosophers essaying a theory of colour: colour science sports a huge array of facts and theories, and it is unclear to its practitioners what philosophy can or is trying to contribute. Equally, philosophers tend to be puzzled about how they can fit colour science into their investigations without compromising their own disciplinary identity: philosophy is supposed to be an _a priori_ investigation; philosophers do not work in psychophysics labs – not in their professional capacity, anyway
• Mohan Matthen (1999). The disunity of color.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: What is color? What is color vision? Most philosophers answer by reference to humans: to human color qualia, or to the environmental properties or "quality spaces" perceived by humans. It is argued, with reference to empirical findings concerning comparative color vision and the evolution of color vision, that all such attempts are mistaken. An adequate definition of color vision must eschew reference to its outputs in the human cognition and refer only to inputs: color vision consists in the use of wavelength discrimination in the construction of visual representations. A color quality is one that is generated from such processing
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://cogprints.org/897/00/color.asc.txt
  http://cogprints.org/897/
  http://cogprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/archive/00000897/
  http://cogprints.org/897/0/color.asc.txt