Color and Perceptual Variation Revisited: Unknown Facts, Alien Modalities, and Perfect Psychosemantics

An adequate ontology of color must face the empirical facts about perceptual variation. In this paper I begin by reviewing a range of data about perceptual variation, and showing how they tell against color physicalism and motivate color relationalism. Next I consider a series of objections to the argument from perceptual variation, and argue that they are unpersuasive. My conclusion will be that the argument remains a powerful obstacle for color physicalism, and a powerful reason to believe in color relationalism instead. Suppose that colors are real rather than illusory properties of objects. Then what sorts of properties are they? Two competing views that have attracted philosophical adherents are the following: Color Physicalism Colors are mind-independent, circumstance-independent (typically, physical) features of their bearers. They are, in this respect, analogous to shape properties such as being square. Color Relationalism Colors are relational properties — properties constituted in terms of a relation between their bearers and subjects (possibly inter alia). They are, in this respect, analogous to a property such as being a sister. ∗Department of Philosophy, University of California, San Diego, 9500 Gilman Drive, La Jolla, CA 92093-0119, [email protected] 1‘Physicalism’ is a curious label for this view, especially in the context of the contrast with relationalism. For (i) relationalism also allows that colors are physical (as do, for that matter, many other views that self-described color physicalists reject), and (ii) the view presently under consideration comes without any substantive characterization of the physical. That said, I’ll adhere to the label preferred by the defenders of the view for present purposes.