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Objectivism and the Evolutionary Value of Colour Vision

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 April 2010

Don Dedrick
Don Dedrick
Affiliation:
University of Toronto
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Extract

In Color for Philosophers, C. L. Hardin argues that chromatic objectivism—a view that identifies colour with some or other property of objects—must be false. The upshot of Hardin's argument is this: there is, in fact, no principled correlation between physical properties and perceived colours. Since that correlation is a minimal condition for objectivism, objectivism is false. Mohan Matthen, who accepts Hardin's conclusion for what can be called “simple objectivism,” takes it that an adaptationist theory of biological function applied to colour is able to surmount the problems Hardin describes. It is Matthen's view that I am primarily concerned with in this paper. I will argue that it entails an overly simple view of adaptive value—as, perhaps, do all objectivist views.

Type
Articles
Information
Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review / Revue canadienne de philosophie , Volume 34 , Issue 1 , Winter 1995 , pp. 35 - 44
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Philosophical Association 1995

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References

Notes

1 Judd, D. B. and Wyszecki, G., Color in Business, Science, and Industry, 2nd ed. (New York: Wiley, 1963), p. 103Google Scholar.

2 Ibid, pp. 103–4.

3 Hardin, C. L., Colorfor Philosophers: Unweaving the Rainbow (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 1988), pp. 64–65Google Scholar.

4 Matthen, Mohan, “Biological Functions and Perceptual Content,” Journal of Philosophy, 85, 1 (01 1988): 5–27. Also:CrossRefGoogle Scholar“Intensionality and Perception: A Reply to Rosenberg,” Journal of Philosophy, 86, 12 (12 1989): 727–33CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 Matthen, , “Intensionality and Perception,” p. 729Google Scholar.

6 Matthen, , “Biological Functions and Perceptual Content,” p. 13Google Scholar.

7 Fodor, Jerry, The Modularity of Mind(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1983), p. 71Google Scholar.

8 Dennett, Daniel, The Intentional Stance (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1989), p. 278Google Scholar.

9 See Muntz, W. R. A., “Inert Absorbing and Reflecting Pigments,” in Handbook of Sensory Physiology, edited by Dartnell, H. J. A. (Berlin: Springer Verlag, 1972), pp. 529–65Google Scholar. Another account of the biological function of the oil droplets can be found in Lythgoe, J. N., The Ecology of Vision (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979), pp. 180–83. This account claims that the biological function is to allow the tern to see other terns and, in particular, other terns feeding (through haze; over long distances at sea). For the purpose at hand it does not matter which of these accounts is correct, if either isGoogle Scholar.

10 Dennett, , The Intentional Stance, p. 280Google Scholar.

11 There are numerous papers by Land and his associates. See, for example, Land, Edwin, “The Retinex Theory of Color Vision,” Scientific American, 237, 6 (06 1977): 108–28CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

12 These developments in the computational theory of colour vision and their philosophical implications are discussed in Thompson, Evan, Colour Vision: A Study in Cognitive Science and the Philosophy of Perception (London: Routledge, forthcoming)Google Scholar.

13 A clear account of opponent colour theory can be found in Hardin, , Colorfor Philosophers, pp. 26–58Google Scholar.

14 I am oversimplifying here. For instance, it is often claimed or assumed that the arithmetical values mentioned represent the spiking frequencies of post-retinal opponent cells and, as such, specify a neural code for colour. This is a problematic claim, as Hardin himself notes (Colorfor Philosophers, p. 57). The neuro-physiology of colour vision is more complicated than the psychophysical model of colour perception suggests. For a discussion of this issue see Teller, Davida, “The Domain of Visual Science,” in Visual Perception: The Neurophysiological Foundations, edited by Spillman, L. and Werner, J. S. (New York: Academic Press, 1990), pp. 13–14Google Scholar.

15 I do not think that, having abandoned objectivism, we must accept Hardin's neural subjectivism. Hardin claims that colours reduce to neural states and that object colours are illusions (Colorfor Philosophers, pp. 111–12). This is just the other side of a traditional ontological coin: either colours are in things or colours are in the mind/brain. An ecological approach to colour vision may do away with this dichotomy. For an argument along these lines see Thompson, Evan, Adrian Palacios and Francisco Varela, “Ways of Colouring,” Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 15, 1 (03 1992): 1–74CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

16 I would like to thank Mohan Matthen for his comments on earlier versions of this paper. Thanks also to Evan Thompson, Louis Charland and the unnamed referees.