Connecticut College Digital Commons @ Connecticut College Philosophy Honors Papers Philosophy Department 2015 What, if Anything, is Colored?: Color Perceptions - Color Judgments - Without Color Olivia Ziegler Connecticut College, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.conncoll.edu/philhp Part of the Cognitive Neuroscience Commons, and the Philosophy of Mind Commons Recommended Citation Ziegler, Olivia, "What, if Anything, is Colored?: Color Perceptions - Color Judgments - Without Color" (2015). Philosophy Honors Papers. 8. http://digitalcommons.conncoll.edu/philhp/8 This Honors Paper is brought to you for free and open access by the Philosophy Department at Digital Commons @ Connecticut College. It has been accepted for inclusion in Philosophy Honors Papers by an authorized administrator of Digital Commons @ Connecticut College. For more information, please contact [email protected]. The views expressed in this paper are solely those of the author. Ziegler 1 What, if Anything, is Colored? Color Perceptions – Color Judgments – Without Colors Olivia Ziegler Thesis Advisor: Andrew Pessin Department of Philosophy Connecticut College April 30, 2015 Ziegler 2 Table of Contents Acknowledgments . .03 Introduction . .04 Chapter 1: The Folk Conception of Color . 08 Chapter 2: Color in Bodies . .15 Chapter 3: Color in Light . .30 Chapter 4: Color as a Property of Perceivers . .47 Chapter 5: The Color of Experiences . 72 Chapter 6: Color Judgments without Color . 90 Index of Figures . 124 Endnotes . .129 Ziegler 3 Acknowledgments: This paper represents not only my honors thesis in the philosophy department, but also my capstone project for my self designed major, Neurophilosophy. Neurophilosophy is the application of neuroscientific ideas and techniques to ask and answer philosophical questions about the nature of the mind. While this can take many forms my particular focus has been the nature of perception, specifically the nature of color vision. As such, this paper is the culmination of both my coursework in the philosophy and neuroscience departments and an exploration of the intersection of these disciplines. Both my major and this thesis would have been impossible without cross- departmental support and the invaluable input from professors in several departments. Without their help this paper would not have been possible. I would like to especially thank: Professors Grahn, of the neuroscience department, has been my advisor since freshman year. She has been instrumental in grounding me in neuroscience, and has provided tremendous support throughout my academic career. Without her, my Neurophilosophy major could never have been designed and my neuroscientific knowledge would have no practical foundation. Professor Schroeder, also from the neuroscience department, provided me with the first real foray into how neuroscience and philosophy can overlap. Much of the content of chapter 6 is the direct result of an independent study with him. His input as a reader, especially regarding the more neuro-scientifically focused aspects of this paper, has been crucial to its development and success. Professor Turner, of the philosophy department, has provided me with so much excellent advice and feedback; his input has helped hone my arguments and pointed me in directions I would have never considered. This paper would be philosophically impoverished without his work as a reader. Professor Marks, of the art department has also been indispensible. Her color theory class has allowed me to apply my color knowledge in a practical sense. Furthermore, input from someone who actually uses color has given my thesis tremendous depth and has provided me with great insight into the strange behaviors of color. Several of the figures in this paper are from assignments for her color theory class. Professor Downs, of the history department provided a great deal of useful feedback. His suggestions have helped ground the motivation for this paper; making me ask, and hopefully answer, the rather difficult question: “So what?” Without Professor Pessin, of the philosophy department, neither my major nor this thesis would have ever been considered. Professor Pessin ignited my interest in philosophy and encouraged me to pursue my interests in both the philosophy and neuroscience departments through my self-designed major. I would also like to especially thank my friends and family for their tireless support throughout this very long process. Ziegler 4 INTRODUCTION: Why Study Color? We are dissolved in color. It pervades our environments and our experiences. But despite, or perhaps because of, its ubiquity, the strangeness and magic of color are often ignored. Color is dismissed far too easily. It is thought of as a simple property of objects or of light. Alternatively color is seen as a production of the brain or the mind. Yet treating color in these simple ways makes it either intractably mysterious or else so simple as to be readily ignored. Furthermore, each of these conceptions, in their reduction of color to single aspects of our world or of our minds, is flawed. But what does it matter? Poring over the particulars of color definitions seems irrelevant. After all, before writing this paper and developing a deeper understanding of color, I easily got through my day. But color is incredibly important. Though it may be overlooked, a sensitivity to color is incredibly valuable, not only in art or fashion, but also in the natural world, in advertising, architecture, surgery, and neuroscience. To give a few examples of the utility of color: Green scrubs are widely used in operating rooms. When surgeons are focused on the surgical field their eyes become desensitized to red, if this area is surrounded by red’s opposite – green – this fatigue can be ameliorated with a quick glance, allowing the surgeon to easily rest her eyes throughout long procedures.1 Color is also important in advertising – notice how almost all social media sites are blue? This may be because blue is the most popular ‘favorite color,’ which might explain why studies suggest that people spend significantly longer on predominately blue websites than identical websites in other colors.2 Countless guides exist on the practical use of color in presentations, informational guides, and data sets. These usually focus on aesthetic choices, and the interactions of particular colors. For instance, which is easier to read: .This,. or .This?. An excellent IBM publication 3 details why effective use of color gradients in data representation is essential; without sensitivity to the use of color, artifacts, and indeed blatant misrepresentation are common. Color clearly matters. These applications are only a tiny percentage of the many uses of color. Though they may seem unrelated to philosophy they are the result of a cultivated understanding of our relationship with color. We clearly have strong ties to color. By examining the Ziegler 5 nature of color, we can thus discover a great deal about ourselves. Though in this paper I seek to answer the question: “What, if anything, is colored?” In doing so I hope not only to reveal the nature of color, but also our relationship with it and how we can use this relationship to learn about ourselves. A Brief Summary In this paper I argue that color does not exist anywhere, physical or non-physical. This will amount to what I call a “double error” theory of color: Not only are we mistaken in our ordinary belief that physical objects are colored, we are also mistaken in believing that we perceive colors at all. I begin with a discussion of our usual ideas about color. We usually think of color in the following way: color is a property of objects and/or light, it is simple and unanalyzable, and its nature is revealed to us with ordinary observation. These beliefs are then compared to rather more complex theories of color. First, I examine the strengths and weaknesses of color-object realism, the view that color is a property of physical objects. Ultimately this theory fails to capture the importance of light in determining color and thus is discarded. Next, I examine color- light realism, the view that color is a property of light. This theory has a lot of support from physics and chemistry, but it too has fatal shortcomings, namely an inability to account for variation in color perception between perceivers. If you and I can both look at the same rose and the light it reflects and potentially see different versions of what we both call ‘red,’ then color cannot be a property that is really in the world, in either physical objects or in light. I then consider color as a property of perceivers. This seems to hold up very well, as cellular processes explain many of the behaviors of color. For example, that there are three primary colors is thought to be the result of the three types of color sensitive cells in our eyes. However, many philosophers are unsatisfied with this approach to color and assert that our experiences of color cannot be reduced to brain activity. As such I next compare color as a property of the brain to color as a property of mind. Ziegler 6 Colors cannot literally be in the brain, though they may be the result of brain activity. If this is the case colors must either not exist anywhere, or exist somewhere non- physical. Non-physical color, in the form of color experiences, (what we might call color qualia) is discussed next. I argue this conception of color is deeply problematic. Though I do not deny the existence of qualia, I do suggest that colors cannot exist as qualia. I then conclude that color does not exist anywhere. There is simply no place left for it. Color is not a property of light, of objects, or of physical perceivers, nor of their potentially non-physical experiences. This may seem incredible, as we still seem to experience color.