A Relationalist’s Guide to Error About Color Perception

Color relationalism is the view that colors are constituted in terms of relations to perceiving subjects. Among its explanatory virtues, relationalism provides a satisfying treatment of cases of perceptual variation. But it can seem that relationalists lack resources for saying that a representation of x’s color is erroneous. Surely, though, a theory of color that makes errors of color perception impossible cannot be correct. In this paper I’ll argue that, initial appearances notwithstanding, relationalism contains the resources to account for errors of color perception. I’ll conclude that worries about making room for error are worries the relationalist can meet. Color relationalism is the view that colors are constituted in terms of relations to perceiving subjects (possibly inter alia). The leading motivation for relationalism is that the view provides a ready solution to disputes involving perceptual variation: where S1 and S2 appear to disagree about x’s color, the relationalist responds that both are right, insofar as x both bears the color red for S1 (in circumstance C1) and fails to bear the color red for S2 (in circumstance C2). But the relationalist’s ease in reconciling apparently conflicting representations of a single stimulus comes with a concomitant cost: while relationalism makes it extremely easy for a representation to be veridical (hence the possibility of reconciling apparently conflicting variants), it can seem that the relationalist lacks resources for saying that a representation of x’s color is erroneous. Surely, though, a theory of color that makes errors of color perception impossible cannot be correct. Does this mean that we should give up color relationalism? I want to argue that we should not. This paper is not principally an attempt to argue for relationalism about color (for that, see Cohen (2004)). Rather, it is an attempt to show how the relationalist can respond to an important anti-relationalist argument — namely, the argument that relationalism cannot