Abstract:
A major reason philosophers have addressed the issue of color
realism is its apparent relevance to perception theory. An account of
the nature of color should tell us what, if anything, we see when we
are subject
to color experiences. Thus resolving the color realism debate is
expected to make a foundational contribution to the sciences that
are
concerned with color phenomena. This paper argues that the traditional
debate over color realism, at least with respect to its supposed
relevance to empirical research on perception, is a product of
embracing a faulty understanding of certain important aspects of actual
scientific practice. Those misunderstandings are mutually reinforcing
with a widely held commitment to a suspect conception of our perceptual
systems. This paper spells out the role these errors play in the
philosophical literature on color and exposes their failings.