What is colour vision for? In the popular imagination colour vision is for “seeing the colours” — adding hue to the achromatic world of shape, depth and motion. On this view colour vision plays little more than an ornamental role, lending glamour to an otherwise monochrome world. This idea has guided much theorising about colour within vision science and philosophy. However, we argue that a broader approach is needed. Recent research in the psychology of colour demonstrates that colour vision is (...) integral to a variety of visual processes, helping us to perform many types of visual tasks. We discuss some of this research and consider its implications for philosophical theories of colour. (shrink)

This paper considers whether there can be any such thing as a naturalized metaphysics of color—any distillation of the commitments of perceptual science with regard to color ontology. I first make some observations about the kinds of philosophical commitments that sometimes bubble to the surface in the psychology and neuroscience of color. Unsurprisingly, because of the range of opinions expressed, an ontology of color cannot simply be read off from scientists’ definitions and theoretical statements. I next consider two alternative routes. (...) First, conceptual pluralism inspired by Mark Wilson's analysis of scientific representation. I argue that these findings leave the prospects for a naturalized color ontology rather dim. Second, I outline a naturalized epistemology of perception. I ask how the correctness and informativeness of perceptual states is understood by contemporary perceptual science. I argue that the detectionist ideal of correspondence should be replaced by the pragmatic ideal of usefulness. I argue that this result has significant implications for the metaphysics of color. (shrink)