Are Objects Coloured?
The dictionary definition of colour describes the phenomena as 'a sensation produced on the eye by rays of light when resolved into different wavelengths, as by a prism, selective reflection, etc.'1 ; inferring that the perception of colour is produced by a 'sensation' caused by differing wavelengths of light acting on the eye rather than colour being a property inherent in the object being viewed. Light itself is also defined as 'the natural agent that stimulates sight and makes things visible, and consists of electromagnetic radiation of wavelength between about 390 and 740 nm2 ', again the inference is that sight is stimulated within the viewer-subject by specific wavelengths of electromagnetic radiation and not from the object in itself. This view is the one of the subjectivist and is the dominant perceived wisdom of our time, however the philosophy of colour has conceived many and different theories as to the nature of colour and our perception of it, a few of which I'll! Our world as we 'see' it, is full of extended objects, three dimensional things with surfaces, each identifiable in part by their colour. Our view is of a bricolage of these coloured objects and our language refers to these obje
Smart postulates that the attribution of colour to an object is about a behavioural mechanism within the viewer perceiver who attributes colour terms in relation to an object's dispositional character. However there is an alternative position about colour which basically holds that colour is a property which is a primary attribute of an object, in that it is as fundamental to it as say shape and size are. Science, especially physics, holds the view that the colours we naturally consider objects to posses is as such an illusion, and that these physical objects do not possess any such an attribute whatsoever. Objects themselves play no part in the attributing of colour excepting the phenomena of reflection and refraction of specific electromagnetic waves whose source is independent of them. This proposition, though purely hypothetical, has an experimental precedent in the use of, for example, phenol theo-urea, which when tasted produces an extremely bitter taste in a large proportion of the human population, yet is completely tasteless in the remainder. In fact, for a while, I worked as a lighting designer in the theatre and at no time was my work criticised for having either an unbalanced colour scheme or for being too garish, bland or washed out. It is not the dispositional attribute of the object to produce 'green' or 'greenness', or any other colour for that matter, that effect is purely a concern of the subject viewer's interpretation, although the effect's product is a coherent, codified output through common language. These reflected emissions pass into the eye of an observer where, through a process of photochemical and neurological events, it produces a sensation within the brain to which is attached a language predicate, e. In this model, electromagnetic emissions from a source, ie the Sun, fall upon an object, ie grass, and the composition of the object's surface is so arranged chemically and elementally at a molecular level, as to reflect the emissions of certain wavelengths, e. So I can conclude that the phenomena of colour is due to two things which work simultaneously. On the senses, Galileo remarks "I think that tastes, odours, colours, and so on are no more than mere names so far as the object in which we place them is concerned, and that they reside only in the consciousness. It proposes that colour is entirely perceiver dependent, which is that the impression of colour which an object seems to posses is produced by, and in, the observer subject alone.
Common topics in this essay:
A's Neither,
,
Galileo Descartes,
JJC Smart,
Sidney Shoemaker,
David Hilbert,
Reference Dictionary,
colour perception,
colour object,
sensory structures,
'green' 'greenness',
primary attribute,
physical objects,
electromagnetic radiation,
sense data,
sense data experience,
colour property,
colour qualia,
'green' 'greenness' colour,
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Acceptance Essays
