Colour Irrealism and the Formation of Colour Concepts
Abstract
Jonathan Ellis
According to color irrealism, material objects do not have color; they only appear to have color. The appeal of this view, prominent among philosophers and scientists alike, stems in large part from the conviction that scientific explanations of color facts do not ascribe color to material objects. To explain why objects appear to have color, for instance, we need only appeal to surface reflectance properties, properties of light, the neurophysiology of observers, etc.
Typically attending color irrealism is the error theory of ordinary color judgment: ordinary judgments in which color is ascribed to a material object are, strictly speaking, false. In this paper, I claim that color irrealists who endorse the error theory cannot explain how we acquire color concepts (yellow, green, etc.), concepts they must acknowledge we do possess. Our basic color concepts, I argue, could not be phenomenal concepts that we acquire by attending to the color properties of our experience. And all other plausible explanations, I explain, render color concepts such that our ordinary color judgments involving them are often true. Given the explanatory considerations upon which the irrealist’s position is based, this is a severe problem for color irrealism.