Opponent Processing, Linear Models, and the Veridicality of Color Perception

Abstract

In roughly the last 15 years, it has become increasingly clear that philosophy and color science have some conflicting views about the nature of color. A philosophical view of color emerged in color science more or less as a collateral effect of the practice in that discipline. In philosophy first arose the need to precisely formulate what many believed was the commonsense view of color. This did happen, and later on the theory became a crucial part of a rather popular theory of mind. Other philosophers, however, were more interested in rigorously framing the view that they saw emerging from color science. Let us take a first look at the two approaches.