Color relationalism and relativism

This paper critically examines color relationalism and color relativism, two theories of color that are allegedly supported by variation in normal human color vision. We mostly discuss color relationalism, defended at length in Jonathan Cohen's The Red and the Real, and argue that the theory has insuperable problems

Relativity and Degrees of Relationality

Some things are relative. Left and right are relative to spatial orientation, for example, and legality is relative to jurisdiction. We also wonder about more controversial cases. Is morality relative to culture? Is color relative to type of perceiver? In this essay I am not concerned with any particular relativistic thesis. Rather, I am concerned with the prior question: What is it for one thing to be relative to another

Redness, Reality, and Relationalism: Reply to Gert and Allen

In this paper I reply to two sets of criticisms—a first from Joshua Gert, and a second from Keith Allen—of the relationalist view of color developed and defended in my book, The Red and the Real: An Essay on Color Ontology

Objectivist reductionism

A survey of arguments for and against the view that colors are physical properties

Outside color

I raise some objections to the theory presented in *Outside Color*

Reply to Justin D’Arms

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/43371/1/11098_2005_Article_2319.pd

How Does Colour Experience Represent the World?

Many favor representationalism about color experience. To a first approximation, this view holds that experiencing is like believing. In particular, like believing, experiencing is a matter of representing the world to be a certain way. Once you view color experience along these lines, you face a big question: do our color experiences represent the world as it really is? For instance, suppose you see a tomato. Representationalists claim that having an experience with this sensory character is necessarily connected with representing a distinctive quality as pervading a round area out there in external space. Let us call it “sensible redness” to highlight the fact that the representation of this property is necessarily connected with the sensory character of the experience. Is this property, sensible redness, really co-instantiated with roundness out there in the space before you

Taking Empire Seriously

Calls to 'decolonize' sociology and make social science more responsive to the concerns of postcolonial thought have proliferated in recent years. But what exactly is the postcolonial critique, and what are its dangers and possibilities? This lecture builds upon these calls to decolonize sociology while also pushing the postcolonial project further. It offers an analysis of the lineage of postcolonial thought and its apparent opposition to sociological thought. It then specifies the postcolonial critique of sociology and asks how sociology can best respond. A range of examples from social theory, the history of empire, and militarized policing help us better appreciate the need for the postcolonial turn

Daylight savings: what an answer to the perceptual variation problem cannot be

Significant variations in the way objects appear across different viewing conditions pose a challenge to the view that they have some true, determinate color. This view would seem to require that we break the symmetry between multiple appearances in favor of a single variant. A wide range of philosophical and non-philosophical writers have held that the symmetry can be broken by appealing to daylight viewing conditions—that the appearances of objects in daylight have a stronger, and perhaps unique, claim to reveal their true colors. In this note we argue that, whatever else its merits, this appeal to daylight is not a satisfactory answer to the problem posed by perceptual variation