Cortical Color and the Cognitive Sciences

Back when researchers thought about the various forms that color vision could take, the focus was primarily on the retinal mechanisms. Since that time, research on human color vision has shifted from an interest in retinal mechanisms to cortical color processing. This has allowed color research to provide insight into questions that are not limited to early vision but extend to cognition. Direct cortical connections from higher‐level areas to lower‐level areas have been found throughout the brain. One of the classic questions in cognitive science is whether perception is influenced, and if so to what extent, by cognition and whether a clear distinction can be drawn between perception and cognition. Since perception is seen as providing justification for our beliefs about properties in the external world, these questions also have metaphysical and epistemological significance. The aim of this paper is to highlight some of the areas where research on color perception can shed new light on questions in the cognitive sciences. A further aim of the paper is to raise some questions about color research that are in dire need of further reflection and investigation. The aim of this contribution is to highlight some of the areas where research on color perception can shed new light on questions in the cognitive sciences. A further aim of the piece is to raise some questions about color research that are in dire need of further reflection and investigation

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

KEEPING UP APPEARANCES: COLORS AND THEIR LOOKS

This thesis concerns the utility of color appearances given the tricky relationship between our visual system, the phenomenology of color experiences and the urge for the ontological status of colors. On the one hand, the color constancy phenomena is generally thought to motivate color realism and on the other hand, so-called impossible color phenomena is generally thought to motivate the irrealist accounts. I show that none of these two gives us grounds to adopt either of the ontological positions. Instead, I argue that color appearances do not give us direct information about the alleged externality or internality of colors. Following this line of thought, I propose to stay agnostic about the ontological status of colors derived from their appearances. Moreover, I argue that the primary function of color vision is to discriminate among rather than detect properties. I conclude by showing that color vision understood as non-primal discriminatory capacity does nevertheless, has important roles in visual perception. Among others, its perquisites are effortlessness and usefulnessness