Direct Color Realism via Productance Physicalism

Reply to Marchesk

Thank you for sharing this article, it is so interesting and it reminds me and feel nostalgic about John Locke's empiricism. Even the article stars saying:

Color is the subject of a vast and impressive body of empirical research and theory

I want, if you do not mind, share here an important study of John Locke related to colour and our perception. Quoting John Locke.

We learn that there are three "primary colors," : magenta, yellow, and cyan, and that when we mix these colors, we get intermediate colors, like green, orange, and purple. Mixing them all gets something like black, but then adding black or white separately can produce a large variety of different shades and tones of color. This is what Isaac Newton himself did when he first understood the spectrum of light

If we match up the color wheel with the electromagic spectrum of light, it passes through all the colours, but not through purple. Violet may look a bit like purple, but it has nothing to do with red. What is going on?

It is so beautiful that the time give reasons and proofs to John Locke theory about imaginary colours because the article you shared explains:

Color is a psychological property of our visual experiences when we look at objects and lights, not a physical property of those objects or lights. (1999b, p. 95)
And:

There may be light of different wavelengths independent of an observer, but there is no color independent of an observer, because color is a psychological phenomenon that arises only within an observer. (1999b, p. 97)[3]

Quoting Marchesk

. If we're directly acquainted with productance surfaces, why does it take modern science to realize that? We're aware that objects looked colored.

I think science develops such principle because it wants to explain what is going on with colorblind people. They see the shaped objects colorful but with different tones or at least different from our "global world rule of colours that supposedly are common in the world". Why are they wrong if they see a tree as "yellow" instead of "green" when they were taught with such vocabulary?
Another important quote:
Quoting John Locke

If we block a child in a room all of his childhood teaching him the green colour while is actually yellow. Will he name all of his life “green” when he would actually see yellow? In this topic John Locke answered this is a perfect empirical experiment so he put the following sentence:
What you are trying to say is that complex terms like colours are not innate because we can teach children to misunderstand mixing them. I guess this is the same example of fearness. You can feel the fear because previously someone taught you what is darkness, witches, demons, etc...

This OP about colours are so interesting! Good article I will print it

Physicalism is not a particularly popular theory of color. Sometimes philosophers malign it as the product of a "scientistic" ideology that unthinkingly takes science as the touchstone of what is real. Some color scientists would complain that physicalism does not respect science enough. Proper attention to the facts of color vision, they would say, shows that colors are really "in the brain."

Agreed :up: :100:

Reply to javi2541997 It seems to me that Byrne and Hilbert in the article are unwittingly defending the popular idea that colors are in the brain, by acknowledging them to be perceptual representations of some physical property in the world (productance or reflectance). So basically they are agreeing with Locke without realizing it. I'm guessing Locke would be fine with there being a material/physical source colors represent. But that source would be a combination of number, shape, mass, chemical composition or whatever that creates types of emission, transmission and reflectance. The colors themselves would remain secondary qualities.

Quoting Marchesk

But that source would be a combination of number, shape, mass, chemical composition or whatever that creates types of emission, transmission and reflectance. The colors themselves would remain secondary qualities.

True! I defend why this article is important and I enjoyed with a quickly review. I will read it deeply later on. It is interesting how modern studies develop the study of colours when in the times of John Locke were just "secondary attributes/qualities" as you explained :up:

Quoting Marchesk

It seems to me that Byrne and Hilbert are unwittingly defending the popular idea that colors are in the brain, by acknowledging them to be perceptual representations of some physical property in the world (productance or reflectance).

It seems to me that color (perception in general) is a process, a verb, not a thing or a noun.
There is a direct chain of causal efficacy involved in the color perception of any species that can perceive that wavelength.
I am not sure the division of properties into primary and secondary has been all that useful to philosophy or for that matter to physics. Most properties are in fact relationships produced by interactions and color in a philosophical sense seems no different. So the warmth or the sun and the redness of the sky are as much properties in the world as our descriptions of wavelength and molecular motion.

Quoting prothero

There is a direct chain of causal efficacy involved in the color perception of any species that can perceive that wavelength.

Yes, but we're not aware of that chain. We're aware of things being colored. That chain is something science carefully teased out using properties of wavelength, frequency, molecular surfaces, cones, electrical impulses and neuronal activity. Color only comes into play as the resulting experience of all that for visual perceivers.

Quoting prothero

So the warmth or the sun and the redness of the sky are as much properties in the world as our descriptions of wavelength and molecular motion.

Sure, when we take into account perceivers being part of the world. The problem is that warmth and redness are not part of the scientific explanations of the world, except as labels for temperature ranges humans typically find warm, or EM wavelengths humans can detect. If we say the world is physical, but physical does not include warmth or redness, then that is a conceptual problem for physicalism.

Quoting Marchesk

Yes, but we're not aware of that chain. We're aware of things being colored. That chain is something science carefully teased out using properties of wavelength, frequency, molecular surfaces, cones, electrical impulses and neuronal activity. Color only comes into play as the resulting experience of all that for visual perceivers.

This is what Whitehead refers to as "the artificial bifurcation of nature". The artificial division of the "world or reality" into so called primary qualities and secondary qualities.

From the SEP Whitehead
. [i]In practice they rely on sense data, but in theory they abstract from most of the data of our five senses (sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch) to focus on the colorless, soundless, odorless, and tasteless mathematical aspects of nature. Consequently, in a worldview inspired not by the actual practices of physicists, but by their theoretical speculations, nature—methodologically stripped from its ‘tertiary’ qualities (esthetical, ethical, and religious values)—is further reduced to the scientific world of ‘primary’ qualities (mathematical quantities and interconnections such as the amplitude, length, and frequency of mathematical waves), and this scientific world is bifurcated from the world of ‘secondary’ qualities (colors, sounds, smells, etc.). Moreover, the former world is supposed, ultimately, to fully explain the latter world (so that, for example, colors end up as being nothing more than electromagnetic wave-frequencies).
Whitehead spoke of the “bifurcation of nature into two systems of reality” (1920 [1986: 30]) to denote the strategy—originating with Galileo, Descartes, Boyle and Locke—of bifurcating nature into the essential reality of primary qualities and the non-essential reality of “psychic additions” or secondary qualities, ultimately to be explained away in terms of primary qualities. Whitehead sided with Berkeley in arguing that the primary/secondary distinction is not tenable (1920 [1986: 43–44]), that all qualities are “in the same boat, to sink or swim together” (1920 [1986: 148]), and that, for example,
the red glow of the sunset should be as much part of nature as are the molecules and electric waves by which men of science would explain the phenomenon. (1920 [1986: 29])[/i]


Quoting Marchesk

Sure, when we take into account perceivers being part of the world. The problem is that warmth and redness are not part of the scientific explanations of the world, except as labels for temperature ranges humans typically find warm, or EM wavelengths humans can detect. If we say the world is physical, but physical does not include warmth or redness, then that is a conceptual problem for physicalism.

And this is the so called "Fallacy of Misplaced Concreteness" where mathematical formulas and conceptual abstractions like wavelength and taken to more real than our experiences in and of the world.

From the SEP
Whitehead’s alternative is fighting “the Fallacy of Misplaced Concreteness”—the “error of mistaking the abstract for the concrete”—because “this fallacy is the occasion of great confusion in philosophy” (1926a [1967: 51]). The fallacy of misplaced concreteness is committed each time abstractions are taken as concrete facts, and “more concrete facts” are expressed “under the guise of very abstract logical constructions” (1926a [1967: 50–51]). This fallacy lies at the root of the modern philosophical confusions of scientific materialism and progressive bifurcation of nature. Indeed, the notion of simple location in Newton’s scientific materialism is an instance of the fallacy of misplaced concreteness—it mistakes the abstraction of in essence unrelated bits of matter as the most concrete reality from which to explain the relatedness of nature. And the bifurcating idea that secondary qualities should be explained in terms of primary qualities is also an instance of this fallacy—it mistakes the mathematical abstractions of physics as the most concrete and so-called primary reality from which to explain the so-called secondary reality of colors, sounds, etc.

The use of these two common fallacies in thought and philosophy results in what Whitehead describes
“[i]The reason for this blindness”, according to Whitehead, “lies in the fact that such science only deals with half of the evidence provided by human experience” (1934 [2011: 66])
Nature is a dull affair, soundless, scentless, colourless; merely the hurrying of material, endlessly, meaninglessly. (1926a [1967: 54])[/i]

Quoting Marchesk

Yes, but we're not aware of that chain. We're aware of things being colored. That chain is something science carefully teased out using properties of wavelength, frequency, molecular surfaces, cones, electrical impulses and neuronal activity. Color only comes into play as the resulting experience of all that for visual perceivers.

A further comment on this is what you mean is we are not "consciously aware" of the underlying chain of causal efficacy. The body (the organism) is aware and we intuitively know contrary to Hume and other skeptics that we are perceiving things in the external world. Without causual efficacy there is no explanation for "experience" whatsoever, it is implied in the very process of perception. Most awareness and experience of the world (by a variety of creatures and systems) is not conscious experience.

Quoting prothero

Whitehead spoke of the “bifurcation of nature into two systems of reality” (1920 [1986: 30]) to denote the strategy—originating with Galileo, Descartes, Boyle and Locke—of bifurcating nature into the essential reality of primary qualities and the non-essential reality of “psychic additions” or secondary qualities, ultimately to be explained away in terms of primary qualities.

Culminating in Nagel's What is it like to be Bat. But it also goes back to the ancient skeptics where the honey might taste sweet to you and bitter to me. What are we to do with perceptual relativity? Is sweetness a property of honey?

If bees and birds see the world colored in a different way than we do, then what makes color objective? Is the world different color schemes depending on who's looking? The division into primary and secondary qualities was meant to provide a grounds for scientific investigation independent of perceptual relativity.

Quoting prothero

A further comment on this is what you mean is we are not "consciously aware" of the underlying chain of causal efficacy. The body (the organism) is aware and we intuitively know contrary to Hume and other skeptics that we are perceiving things in the external world.

Yes, but take vision for example. The ancient view of vision was we are looking out at the world through our eyes. And that's how it seems to be when we're not taking the science of vision into account. But we know that vision goes the other way. Light comes into the eyes and starts the perceptual process.

Quoting Marchesk

If bees and birds see the world colored in a different way than we do, then what makes color objective?

The problem is in trying to make "color" the fixed property of an "object". It is not. Color is the result of a process of interaction in the world but that "process" that "result" is as much a part of the "real world" as any abstract concept like "wavelength". In fact more a part of the real world.

Reply to prothero I agree it is, but that means the real world is more than physics. In the case of color realism, it means that colors are not physical, even if the thing they represent in the world is.

Quoting Marchesk

Yes, but take vision for example. The ancient view of vision was we are looking out at the world through our eyes. And that's how it seems to be when we're not taking the science of vision into account. But we know that vision goes the other why. Light comes into the eyes and starts the perceptual process. It's also 2D and upside down.

This starts into the area of so called hard core intuitions. The correctness of the chain causal efficacy and the interaction with a "real" external world is not altered by these minor nuances of the process. The ancients were right in their intuition just not in their details.

Quoting Marchesk

?prothero I agree it is, but that means the real world is more than physics. In the case of color realism, it means that colors are not physical, even if the thing they represent in the world is.

To paraphrase Whitehead, physics is a dull, lifeless, souless affair without taste, color, sound or feel.
Too much physics can infect your worldview and not in a good way.
Having said that, there is much in the realm of quantum physics that would indicate, even physics at its most fundamental level is composed of processes or events, and perceived properties are relationships as the result of process and interaction, not inherent or fixed. The world is also connected in ways that suggest deeper interweavings than local causality or fixed determinism. The world is definitely more than physics especially more than the mechanistic deterministic reductionist brand of physics so commonly assumed..

Reply to Marchesk

Just to share another reference related to this thread with you: the electromagnetic spectrum.

James Clerk Maxwell:What is significant about this part of the spectrum, however, is that the particular spectrum of radiation emitted by the Sun peaks right in the yellow wavelengths of visible light. Of all the colors of light, yellow seems to us to be the closest in bightness and transparency to white light itself. This is not a coincidence. The Sun is a yellow star.

Interesting! Isn’t it? Consider “yellow” as one of the most purest colors because it comes from sun and then, lights.

Link of the study explanation: https://www.friesian.com/quanta.htm#note-4

Quoting Marchesk

The article linked below defends a view of colors being representative of real physical properties in the world. Most of the article focuses on types of reflectance. Section 3.1.2 broadens the scope to include dispositions to emit, transmit or reflect a proportion of light. So the colors we see represent surfaces emitting, transmitting or reflecting light. This includes filters.

There is no evidence of light, only of changing colors.

Hard to square the confidence about the mission

to introduce an interdisciplinary audience to some distinctively philosophical tools that are useful in tackling the problem of color realism and, second, to clarify the various positions and central arguments in the debate.

with

When someone looks at a tomato in good light, she undergoes a visual experience. This experience is an event, like an explosion or a thunderstorm: it begins at one time and ends at a later time. The object of the experience is the tomato, which is not an event (tomatoes don't occur).

Like, er??

3

Reply to bongo fury Meaning the experience is an event taking place in the perceiver, while the tomato is an object with potentially some property related to the perceiver seeing red. My opinion is that unless that property is the red we see, color realism, at least as the colors apppear to us, is false. Color primitivism is the only color realist theory which attempts to preserve that, as far as I can tell.

I just don't see how color primitivism can work. At any rate, the authors of this article are defending color representation via productance. So not exactly the same thing.

Quoting Marchesk

Meaning the experience is an event taking place in the perceiver, while the tomato is an object with potentially some property related to the perceiver seeing red.

I don't yet get how all the positions are meant to depend on each other. Mine is that colours are out there, but as classes of visual stimuli, which are best construed as illumination events, like (it seems to me) musical stimuli are sound events.

Only derivatively would you want to be trying to correlate colours with material surfaces or other objects removed from the events. Like only derivatively would you associate sound qualities with instruments. (I can see how that might seem the wrong way round.)

Or with physical properties, of the surfaces or resonating bodies respectively. Why the hurry, and not seeing it as derivative? "Events, dear boy, events."

From my position, everything is out there already, just ordered and classified through aesthetic practice.

Quoting Marchesk

the red we see,

You're interested in the nature of some kind of correlation, I think, between inner and outer? I need to have another go at understanding whether that's an assumption shared by the authors.

35

From the Article in the Opening Post:

It is a very detailed article and a nice review of the physics and physiology of color perception including variations and cross species comparison. It might be good to note one of the authors is from Linguistics as I think language is a big part of the problem in reading about the philosophy of color. I spent a few hours on the SEP and other sites trying to sort out what the problem is with little clarity resulting.

Abstract: The target article is an attempt to make some progress on the problem of color realism. Are objects colored? And what is the nature of the color properties? We defend the view that physical objects (for instance, tomatoes, radishes, and rubies) are colored, and that colors are physical properties, specifically types of reflectance. This is probably a minority opinion, at least among color scientists. Textbooks frequently claim that physical objects are not colored, and that the colors are "subjective" or "in the mind." The article has two other purposes: first, to introduce an interdisciplinary audience to some distinctively philosophical tools that are useful in tackling the problem of color realism and, second, to clarify the various positions and central arguments in the debate.

The first part explains the problem of color realism and makes some useful distinctions. These distinctions are then used to expose various confusions that often prevent people from seeing that the issues are genuine and difficult, and that the problem of color realism ought to be of interest to anyone working in the field of color science. The second part explains the various leading answers to the problem of color realism, and (briefly) argues that all views other than our own have serious difficulties or are unmotivated. The third part explains and motivates our own view, that colors are types of reflectances, and defends it against objections made in the recent literature that are often taken as fatal.

It seems it all depends on what one means by stating “objects are colored”. They are clearly not colored in the way we perceive them, when no light is shining on them, when there is no perceptual observer and under numerous other circumstances. Objects have reflectance, a physical property but it is confusing to assert that reflectance is identical to perceived color. I maintain color (as perceived and spoken of) is not an independent property of the object or a mere production of the mind. Color is the result of the interaction between, incident light, the reflective properties of the object and the perceptual system of the organism. Thus color is not a fixed independent property but a relationship, a process. This incidentally holds true for all perceptual process although color makes a nice example.

The thing that seems to make the subject so controversial and difficult is the temptation to think of color as a fixed independent property rather as a relationship, interaction or process. The various uses of language and terminology also appears a source of needless confusion and controversy. Color is not present independently in the reflective object or present just in the mind. Color is the result of a process, a chain of causal efficacy which results in the production of “presentational immediacy” in the mind to which we give a color name. Color is neither here nor there but is only present in the interaction and relationship. I am even after reading through the SEP and other sources unclear as to how to classify this point of view but it seems relational.