Are Objects Coloured?

A detailed Summary of Are Objects Coloured?

The dictionary definition of colour describes the phenomena as 'a sensation produced on the eye by rays of light when resolved into different wavelengths, as by a prism, selective reflection, etc.'1 ; inferring that the perception of colour is produced by a 'sensation' caused by differing wavelengths of light acting on the eye rather than colour being a property inherent in the object being viewed. Light itself is also defined as 'the natural agent that stimulates sight and makes things visible, and consists of electromagnetic radiation of wavelength between about 390 and 740 nm2 ', again the inference is that sight is stimulated within the viewer-subject by specific wavelengths of electromagnetic radiation and not from the object in itself. This view is the one of the subjectivist and is the dominant perceived wisdom of our time, however the philosophy of colour has conceived many and different theories as to the nature of colour and our perception of it, a few of which I'll!

Our world as we 'see' it, is full of extended objects, three dimensional things with surfaces, each identifiable in part by their colour. Our view is of a bricolage of these coloured objects and our language refers to these obje

However there is an alternative position about colour which basically holds that colour is a property which is a primary attribute of an object, in that it is as fundamental to it as say shape and size are. The argument is that physical colours are surface reflectance's which have a determinate colour, although objects of differing reflectance can be perceived as having the very same determinate colour(referred to as metamers). This is due to what David Hilbert calls an anthropocentric way of perceiving colour, perceived colours are not necessarily determined by the inherent colour of the physical object, but once again mediated through human neurophysiology. Some physicalist colour theories seem to dismiss this anthropocentric argument and go whole hog for the idea that what you see is what you get. They say that there is no distinction between an object's physical colour, and what is perceived by the viewer. In another slant on the physicalist view to colour, Sidney Shoemaker proposes the idea of colour qualia, suggesting that colour perception is perhaps a qualitative assessment of the actual physical colour of an object. The objective colour itself sparks an intentional act of perception in the viewer which is in turn the mental act of fixing a colour term, or a socially determined colour nomenclature, related to prior experience.

1 Ed. Judy Pearsall & Bill Trumble, "Colour," Oxford English Reference Dictionary, Second ed.: 286.

The scientific explanation of colour seems to be the most persuasive when one considers it from a relativist position. Consider the experiences of two creatures A and B for example, A will perceive the world through the function of A's own particular sensory structures and so similarly will B though it's sensory structures differ from A's. Neither A nor B can be considered as having superior sensory structures in relation to the another so neither can be considered as to being able to perceive 'correctly'. From this argument one can only conclude that the process of perception is simply a subjective, mind dependent process which is individual idiosyncratic. This proposition, though purely hypothetical, has an experimental precedent in the use of, for example, phenol theo-urea, which when tasted produces an extremely bitter taste in a large proportion of the human population, yet is completely tasteless in the remainder.

In humans, the communication of colour perception is bounded to language so the assumption can be made that 'green' or 'greenness' as a language predicate can be inferred. But this does not mean simply that each of us perceives 'green' or 'greenness', or any other colour, in exactly the same way. It is not the dispositio

Some common words found in the essay are:
A's Neither, , Galileo Descartes, JJC Smart, Sidney Shoemaker, David Hilbert, Reference Dictionary, colour perception, colour object, sensory structures, 'green' 'greenness', primary attribute, physical objects, electromagnetic radiation, sense data, sense data experience, colour property, colour qualia, 'green' 'greenness' colour,

Approximate Word count = 1815
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: History