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JONATHAN COHENCOLOR: A FUNCTIONALIST PROPOSAL(Received in revised version 9 October 2002)ABSTRACT. In this paper I propose and defend an account of color that I call
color functionalism. I argue that functionalism is a non-traditional species of
primary quality theory, and that it accommodates our intuitions about color and
the facts of color science better than more widely discussed alternatives.Colour is the most sacred element of all visible
things.John Ruskin, Modern Painters III, IV, xiv, 42Color provides a focused domain within which to pursue general
questions (emphasized, for example, in Sellars (1963)) about
whether and how we can reconcile the description of the world given
to us by our ordinary perceptual experience, on the one hand, and
the description of the world given to us by scientific and philosophical inquiry, on the other. In this paper I attempt to carry out this
pursuit by offering a proposal about the nature of color that I call
color functionalism. I shall lay out and explain the view I want
to defend (1), assess that view in terms of the contrast between
primary and secondary qualities (2), and then contrast color functionalism against other, more traditional, views about color (3).
Ill conclude that color functionalism is a plausible alternative to
traditional proposals about the nature of color.1. COLOR FUNCTIONALISMWe may begin our search for a theory of color with this platitude:
certain objects look colored to us.1 Of course, they look colored
to us only under certain circumstances for instance, when we
are looking at them and they are illuminated. To be more precise,
then, we might say that certain objects are disposed to look colored
to us. For example, the ripe lemon before me now has such aPhilosophical Studies 113: 142, 2003.
2003 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.2 JONATHAN COHENdisposition: when I attend to the lemon (under the conditions I
am now in), the lemon looks yellow to me it produces in me,
under these conditions, the characteristic kind of visual experience
of looking yellow. More generally, it seems hard to deny that color
properties (if they exist) occasion particular visual experiences in
certain kinds of organisms under appropriate circumstances, and
that things that have color properties are disposed to occasion
particular visual experiences in...