Colors, Color Relationalism, and The Deliverances of Introspection

Let color relationalism be that form of color realism according to which colors are constituted (partly) in terms of relations to subjects (possibly inter alia).1 Color relationalism can be usefully contrasted against non-relationalist views according to which colors are, say, non-relational physical properties of objects (Tye, 2000; Byrne and Hilbert, 2003). One (historically important) way to bring out the conflict between these two sorts of views is to ask whether, in cases where subjects appear to disagree in the colors they ascribe to a common object, it must be the case that at most one of the ascriptions can be veridical. For example, suppose that you look at a ripe tomato, that it appears to be red and that you report as much when asked; and now suppose that an alien being, with very different perceptual apparatus, views the same ripe tomato, but that it appears to her to be green, and that she reports as much when asked. Would one of the two reports of the ripe tomato’s color have to be mistaken, or is it possible that both of them could be correct? Anti-relationalist views about color predict that, in such cases of perceptual variation with respect to color, just as in the case where you and I disagree in (say) the shape we ascribe to an object, at most one report can be correct in what