The philosophy of color has become popular in recent years and decades in philosophical study as it has yielded some of the greatest debate and most difficult subject-matter of any area of philosophical study.
On the surface, color may appear to be a simple aspect of reality while in fact it is one of the least understood and grasped features of reality for most humans with normal sight. What color is, how to define it, how to classify it as a property of things or experiences, etc. are all parts of the question that falls under aesthetics.
The following numbered thoughts concerning color are referenced with a different colored bold number only for the aesthetics of the colors. The colors of the bold numbers themselves simply change for enjoyment of the diversity of color and not for any meaning conveyed by a particular color, as is the norm for most other pages on hiartx.com.
A detailed chart with the typical meaning of colored words, person names, ideas etc. can be found on the about hiartx.com page a few paragraphs down from the top.
On this page about color, it's a rainbow just to be a rainbow as opposed to any color ranking system; like, for instance, the color ranking system used on the philosophers page where each philosopher's individual name is colored according to my like or dislike of that particular philosophical figure.
[0.0] Color is an event, not a thing. It is an experience, not an object. It is not a property of something like "the property of the redness of an apple". It is, rather, a property of an experience that can be caused by a dispostional causal property of the skin of an apple that, when observed, causes the red experience.
[0.0001] The apple's skin is not red. The experience of one's eyes being affected by light that has come from the skin of the apple is a red experience or qual, which is part of one's qualia or qualitative experience; the content of one's consciousnes.
[0.00001] Red is a fleeting happening, not out there in the world on things. We don't paint colors. We paint things with substances that can affect us to produce color in our minds. Color only exists in minds, not in the world of non-minds. Light wavelengths themselves have no color unless there are at least eyes to be affected by them and some form of mind to pay attention to the experience of being affected.
[0.001] Color exists like a dance between two dancers. The first dancer is (1) [that which is causing the experience of color] and the second dancer is (2) [that mind that is having the experience]. If either (1) or (2) leaves the other alone, then the dance ceases to exist because it is always, for perceptions, a partnership of interaction between two parts of the world where (A) has a causal or dispositional property and (B) has the receptive ability of a mind, with senses, that can be affected by (A).
[0.0012] If one Color is not a property of things it is the resultant experience that, given certain conditions, can be caused by a property of things. It is temporary, fleeting, and can only be sustained as long as the causal relationship is maintained through time.
[0.01] Color is based on a dynamic but it is never an experience that is itself dynamic except through time and I point this out because at every instance in time, like a photograph, there will be a static experience that happens. Even when looking at a movie screen, each frame is static but we forget this because in just one second, there can be thirty frames or more that we experience.
[0.011] Color is not dynamic, the change of the experience of color through time can be dynamic because of the possibility of being exposed to different causal properties in that which is observed.
[0.0111] A movie screen can be just plain white and never change while it is observed. But, it can also show a color movie. In both cases, there will be a static slice of time during observation that is not dynamic, even while observing the changing nature of the particular colorful film that depicts a myriad of color and changing forms throughout the feature.
[0.1] Color is an experience caused by a dispositional property of things in the world out there or in here but the experience of color is only in the mind. The cause can be internal or external but color itself, the perception of red, for example, is always internal. Therefore, if there were no visually perceiving minds, then there would be no color.
[1] So much of the philosophy of color I have read about seems more like a philosophy of color largely given physicalist metaphysical assumptions. Scientists often assume physicalism is true though I have no idea why philosophers must as well.
[1.1] Given a physicalist framework, the green of the grass is still not in the grass itself though it can be said that the grass has the capacity to affect light waves in a way that will, under certain circumstances, produce a sensation of green in a certain type of observer. That certain type of observer being the type of being that, when affected by the waves, will have a perception of green.
[2] Assuming there is a world outside the mind, which is what I think we typically do, color is not in the world, out there, external to the mind, but in the mind during a process of being affected by the world.
[3] The memory of color can store information so that a perception of color can be recalled into one's consciousness. But, the memory itself has no color unless it is consciously accessed. By "world" I also mean the internal world of the brain where the memory of color is stored, given that memory is stored in the biological matter of the brain.
[4] Color is the experience of a type of part of you (which is part of the world, or [PoW] A symbol I use in places like my ) being affected by a part and type of the word just as sound is the experience of a type of part of you being affected by a part and type of the world.
[5] Whether the source of color is external or internal to my mind is a question that can not be answered because neither idealism nor physicalism can be proven and neither really matters to science. Science need not assume any metaphysical position but simply observe and study what is available.
[6] The light waves that come from the grass can cause us to see green but the light waves themselves are not green. So, then, no object in the world is green. Green is a private experience like pain. Green happens and exists dynamically whether it is recalled from memory or seen with the eyes.
[7] One of the interesting features of color is that no amount of description can convey color except for a display and reference of the color itself. In other words, no amount of verbal descriptions will teach a person who has been blind from birth anything about the color red.
[8] There is a debate in philosophy about exactly what colors are or how to define them.
[8.1] I do not think it is appropriate to think of a particular color as being a conceptual thing or entity. We do not, I think, have a concept of red. Rather, the color red is a simple idea or representation with no corresponding connections to other ideas or representations.
When we think of an apple, red is a component of the concept of an apple but red itself has no components. The perception of red means itself or nothing whereas the word "red" means the perception.
[9] We do, however, have a concept of color. Our concept of color points to the linguistic particular color referents and their memorial representations as well as, for philosophers, an understanding of what color is in terms of its relationship to the world.
The diversity of our concept of color is related to the number of fine prismatic divisions and corresponding color-names we have learned.
[10] Imagine that some person A has only ever seen the swirling color blob to the upper left of this web page and nothing else. Then, imagine that person A was taught the names of the colors from the blob.
Person A's concept of color would then include "Green", "Red", "Blue", "Light Blue", "Yellow", "Magenta", "White", "Black" and nothing else. If I ask person A what "Orange" is, they can not tell me, because they have never seen it or been taught it.
[10.1] If I say that "Orange" is the resultant color derived from blending the "Red" and the "Yellow", I do not think this helps person A understand orange because mental color blending does not seem like the kind of thing you or I can remember without already having done it.
A computer mind might well be able to do this where a normal human mind could not.
[11] I do not think color is an objective, perceiver-independent property of the world as spatial dimension is. It can certainly be said that an artificial apparatus can detect the frequency of various light waves and report a particular color.
But, this does not mean that the artificial apparatus has a qualitative perception of red in the way humans perceive red. It also does not mean that there is no qualitative perception in the artificial apparatus like that of humans because this can never be proven or disproven, principally. |
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[11.1] To say that color exists objectively is like saying pain exists objectively. Perhaps color and pain can exist objectively in terms of an actual relationship between an observer and a thing, given specific circumstances such as a normal human observer and a blade of green grass.
To say that the observer will, given normal conditions, perceive green, is an objective statement. But, this does not, in my mind, qualify color as something that exists in the same way planets do nor does it capture the perception of green itself.
[11.2] What things like sound and color would be like if nothing was around to interpret them requires a metaphysical assumption about the nature of reality.
If reality is a computer simulation and I am the only consciousness in reality (ie, the computer itself), then my existence supports reality. For those who may wonder if it is ridiculous that I posit that reality could be all in my (or your) mind, is it not just as ridiculous that there was a big bang that produced this universe that does have a finite space?
[12] The fininite space of the universe, existing independently of all other existence, is possible. So, then, too, is it possible that all reality is in a single finite mind. If reality is a three-dimensional space that exists independently of my mind, and other people will be here regardless of my consciousness, then of course sounds and colors will go on being perceived.
[13] Color is one of the most debated concepts in contemporary philosophy and what it is may not be agreed upon with any consistency because of the rather subjective nature of the debate.
There is, in at least one important sense, no way to scientifically observe color but only the reports of people and the functional and/or behavioral traits. We can see the neurons light up and we can here someone say "I am seeing green" but, nowhere in the empirical scheme or data is "green" itself.
Thoughts from 05.15.2011:
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I simply love color. As an artist as well as a writer on this site, color plays a central role in my decade or so long career as a canvas, mural, and graphical or digital painter. A website here, at artbyai.com, is devoted to showing all of my paintings on individual pages that can be accessed from clicking on any one in a large array of thumbnails on the home page or from an extensive, alphabetical list of my paintings on the art list page, here.
Color is one of the most important aspects of the particular impressionist and expressionist abstract paintings that I create and, because of this, I am the opposite of a minimalist and I have been called a "colorist" by several of my peers.
Often, I create pieces where the color may be too intense for some who may find the strong and saturated surfaces overwhelming. Sometimes I go subtle and subdued, as in purples and blues of The Dancer which can be seen here. Many other times, I put as much and as many colors as I can in the most vibrant fashion possible as in the multicolored abstract depiction of an Oxford University building called the "Oxford Radcliffe Camera", which can be seen here.
I think color is beautiful and therefore, as my attempts are to make beautiful paintings and artworks, I will use color accordingly. Some art is meant to be ugly and I do dabble in the darker subjects and presentations on occassion. However, my view of the historical and political world of humans can often be excessively dark and, therefore, I choose to paint things that bring color and beauty to their surroundings.
Where my thoughts and philosophy are often depressingly bleak and derrogatory, my art is an attempt to bring balance to this with the joyous brightnesst of intense pigments and heavy glosses that make light dance through the extra-dense multicolored paint. It is not for everyone and no art is. But, for now and as far as I can see, it is for me and it is pleasing to many in many ways.
Color is a secondary topic:
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There are individual pages on individual colors under the secondary topic of color, which is, itself a topic under aesthetics.
The color sub-pages are red, magenta, burgundy, blue, green, yellow, orange, purple (red-blue), lime (yellow-green), blue-green (sea-foam), yellow-orange (mango), pink (white-red), grey, black, white, and brown.
