Entry Number 1 - Eric M Rubenstein

Contemporary debates within the Philosophy of Color have their origin in the development of modern science in the 16th and 17th centuries. The emerging scientific picture demoted color and other “subjective” qualities to a second-class status, according them the pejorative title of “secondary qualities”. Primary qualities, on the other hand, including shape, size, motion, and number, seemed sufficient to explain the behavior of physical objects and were thereby countenanced by the new physics as the truly real. Apparently explanatorily idle- at least from the perspective of physics, secondary qualities such as color were deemed, at best, to be present in bodies just as complex structures of primary qualities- and thus do not resemble our ideas or experience of them; at worst, mere appearance and illusion. The world was seen as not colored- or at least, if there is color in reality, it bears little resemblance to the color we are so intimately aware of.

With this background, contemporary philosophers face a choice of sorts. Should color be assimilated, on the one hand, to shape and size, and thus accountable in a scientific manner, not requiring appeal to sensory experience? Or, on the other hand, are colors more like sensations of pain, and thus personal, subjective features of experience? Taking the former route, philosophers examine the various accounts of science put forth, with an eye to whether the scientific results are philosophically satisfying. For instance, it is known that very different physical circumstances can trigger identical color experiences. Yet there seems nothing in common between these circumstances to let us say that red, for example, is just a particular physical state. Instead, it appears that all we can say is that the color red is this physical circumstance, or this very different physical circumstance, or this one, or that one, etc. Would such an explanation, which leaves us with this open-ended list of “or”s truly capture the essence of color? If that is the best science has to offer, should we look elsewhere for an account of color- perhaps to the experience of it?

But, on the other hand, if color is more like pain than it is like physically describable properties, then color seems inevitably private and subjective. The language of color, however, is public and learnable by appeal to public objects. How can the private, subjective nature of color then be reconciled with these public features? What’s more, if color is like pain, personal and private, can we even be sure other peoples experiences of color are like ours at all? Are we each trapped within the confines of our mind, forever cut-off from the experiences of others?

These questions, and many more, continue to vex minds of philosophers from all schools of thought and from all philosophical orientations. As the philosopher Wittgenstein noted, color prompts us to philosophize.

Entry Number 2 - Eric M Rubenstein

Philosophy, Psychology and Art: Relations to Color
Eric M. Rubenstein

When it comes to exploring the essence of color, Philosophy, Psychology and Art have an interesting point of contact in the role they accord color relations. Students of art, for instance, learn early on that colors on the so-called color-wheel bear important relationships to each other- ones to avoid or emphasize, depending on the artistic goal. And the juxtaposition of different colors, we know, will alter the appearance of an individual color. Josef Albers work, for instance, brings to light the importance of such color relations and juxtapositions.

For the psychologist interested in color perception, relations between colors are also key. The opponent processing theory of color vision exploits the contrary relations of colors (Green and Red; Yellow and Blue; Black and White), in order to explain the colors we see, as well as why certain colors seem impossible, such as a reddish-green. That there may be certain, rare conditions where the impossible colors are seen will itself depend on complex relationships between colors and viewing conditions.

A philosophical perspective on color wonders whether these instances of relations between colors is but an interesting footnote to the nature of color. Many have become convinced, however, that far from beking tangential, relations between colors provide for the essence of color itself. To be more precise, colors may be understood as “internally related” to other colors, as opposed to being in another kind of relation we would call, “external relations”. External relations are the sorts of relations between things in which the relation plays no role in making things what they truly are. For instance, a glass of water is externally related to the table it sits on. The relation is external in that it is not part of the nature of essence of the glass or table to be in that relation. If the glass and table cease to be so related, neither will cease to be the things they are.

In contrast we have internal relations, where the relations are essential to the nature of the items related. To say that colors are internally related to colors means that the nature of a particular color depends on its relations to other colors, other members the colorarray. To speak of a color as the color it is requires reference to its relational place within the color array. Orange, for instance, is the color it is because of its relations to both yellow and red, in this case, it is related to them in being between them on the color-wheel (or in a similar spatial relation on a more complicated color model, such as the doublecone). Orange couldn’t be orange if it suddenly resembled blue more than it resembles red, or if it switched places on the color-wheel. The impossibility of such changes suggests we’ve found something essential to color.

On this view then, these relations, such as those of betweenness or resemblance, colors capture the essence of color. More fully, each color has its proper place within the color array (say, the color-wheel or double cone) because of the particular color it is, while at the same time, it is the particular color it is because of its particular place within the color array. The intrinsic nature of color is captured by speaking of these relation between colors. And though this may seem an odd account of color, you might test how well it does by trying another strategy. For instance, how would you define the essence of red if it weren’t by speaking of how it relates to the other colors? As St. Augustine noted when he reflected on the passage of time , it seems that we just as easily know what a color, such as red is, until we are asked. But once asked, it is hard to know how to answer. This account of internal relations offers a promising beginning.

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