Where have all the colors gone: a metaphysical analysis of color

Abstract

Science provides us with important information about how we experience color-it explains how objects reflect light at certain wavelengths, it describes how our perceptual faculties work regarding color vision, etc. But science doesn't provide us with a concept of color. It doesn't explain what it's like to experience color or how we come to know color. These conceptual issues arise in philosophical discussion. In order to have an adequate color theory, then, one needs to combine insight gained from color science with an explanation of the phenomenology of color (what it's like to experience the colors), an epistemology of color (how we come to know what things, if any, are colored), and the metaphysics of color (what, if anything, are the colors). The primary focus of this thesis is to examine some of the philosophical positions one can take concerning the nature and existence of the colors. One such position is physicalism, which states that color is some physical property of the object. Another color theory is dispositionalism, which states that color is the power an object is disposed to look like to certain perceivers in standard conditions. Both of these color theories are compatible with the intuition that our color experiences are veridical. Yet, there are others, illusion theorists, who claim that the external world is not colored. Some illusion theorists state that color can only exist within our experience and that we wrongly project these colors onto the world. Others claim that color is an illusion because there are too many scientific facts pointing to the conclusion that nothing specifically can be denoted as being a certain color. In this thesis, I will explore each of these positions and conclude that dispositionalism is the most adequate color theory.