in the last video we saw that a primary

objection to color reductionism is

metamerism two very different spectral
reflectance ha's can appear perceptually
indistinguishable now even if the meta
mo problem can be solved there are still
some serious obstacles to reducing
colors to reflectances so one of the
biggest objections to reductive
physicalism appeals to
the structure of
color space as we saw in the last video
some colors are unique Hugh's red green
yellow and blue there is a shade of
yellow that is neither reddish nor
greenish a shade of red that is neither
yellowish nor bluish and so on on the
other hand purple is always reddish and
bluish to different extents
oranges
always reddish and yellowish so these
are the these are the binary colors red
yellow blue the unique Hugh's regular
blue and green rubber in the unique use
and then other colors are binary Hugh's
the unique colors are our fundamental
binary colors are composed as mixtures
of the unique colors and we saw that
this phenomenology arises due to
the
opponent process structure of color
vision we have
a red versus green
Channel and a yellow vs. blue Channel
and the perceived hue is based on the
relative responses of these channels
now
it certainly seems that this unique
binary structure is a central part of
what color is
and just look at purple
you can immediately see that it appears
as a mixture of red and blue or you can
find a red that's pure red so it's a
necessary feature of what colors are
that they have this unique binary
structure
so here's the problem there is
no reason to suppose that there is such
a unique binary structure to anything in
reality that causes color perceptions
certainly surface spectral reflectance
a--'s can't be sorted into unique or
binary similarly there are no unique or
binary wavelengths of light so it would
seem that there are no physical
properties that
correspond adequately to color
perceptions
to put the argument more
formally premise one for something to be
a color it must be a hue if something is
a hue it is either unique or binary
therefore if Hughes our physical
properties those physical properties
must submit a unique binary division
but
no physical properties have this feature
so color is not a physical property
so
that's one of the major challenges to to
reductionism certainly it seems that
this is a problem for spectral the the
burnin hilbert's spectral reflectance
view so

one response to this kind of

problem is to ask well must a reduction
preserve the unique binary structure I
mean not every property of the reduced
domain needs to be preserved by the
reducing domain the reduced domain in
this cases is color the reducing domain
is spectral reflectance a--'s so a
consider for instance
temperature very
high temperatures and very low
temperatures as such that they cause
pain at least given appropriate
pressures this means that
we can sort
temperatures under a given pressure into
those that cause pain and those that
don't we don't require anything in the
world to match this structure in order
to say that temperature is reducible
temperature is reducible to the mean
kinetic energy of molecules but nobody
would suppose that a certain set of mean
kinetic energies have the property of
pain whereas other mean kinetic energies
don't have the property of pain it is
rather the pain is a feature of how our
perceptual systems react temperature we
don't suppose that it's somehow needs to
be found in the objective properties in
order for temperature to be reducible

similarly Paul churchland points out

that we can sort set temperature
sensations into cold sensations and warm
sensations we
we respond to temperatures
with two different types of neurons one
registers temperatures above the skins
temperature and other registers
temperatures below the skins temperature
so warm sensations in cold
sensations feel qualitatively different
and that is pretty clearly the case when
you feel something warm it feels quality
there's a certain feeling a qualitative
feeling of warmth that's different to
the qualitative feeling of cold but this
this doesn't map onto anything in
reality in reality there are simply
higher temperatures and lower
temperatures there is no fundamental
difference between a warm and cold again
that's just a feature of our perceptual
systems
now we might think that the
distinction between painful and non
painful sensations or between warm and
cold sensations is somehow fundamental
or necessary to what temperature is that
it's a necessary property of temperature
that must be preserved by reduction and
it's certainly experienced central to
our experience of temperature but I
think clearly you know temperature is an
objective property and these features
painfulness non painfulness warmth and
cold those features are not preserved by
the objective property of temperature
so
similarly we might ask you know why does
it matter why do why would we need to
preserve the unique binary structure of
colors

I think this is a pretty good

point but I think one question is
whether the analogy between color and
temperature is really appropriate so one
point is that with the temperature I
would suggest that the distinction
between painful and non-painful
temperatures and the distinction between
the sort of qualitative feeling of
warmth and the qualitative feeling of
coldness those are experienced as a
feature of our reactions
it's not
experienced as a property of the
temperature itself so when you put your
hand on a hot stove and feel pain there
isn't the slightest temptation to think
that the pain is somehow part of the
stove itself or part of the temperature
itself we don't experience pain as being
a mind independent property on the other
hand the unique binary structure does
seem to be a property of color a
property of the object I mean that's how
it that's how
it appears to us that's how we
experience it we experience colors as
properties of things in the world and
the unique binary structure is part of
that it doesn't seem like a mere feature
of our perceptual system although of
course it actually is now
we might note
that also that the distinction between
unique and binary colors is very
important in color science you know at
any rate once we jettison these features
of color we have to say that color
experience involves pretty much massive
you know significant error colors are
nothing like what they seem so that
might be a bit of a problem but I think
that the more important point against
this argument is is this arguably the
reduction of temperature does preserve
the distinction between painful and non
painful and between warm and cold
sensations so obviously we don't assume
that the qualitative feeling of pain or
the qualitative feeling of warmth are
somehow objective but what we can do is
map objective temperatures to sensations
in a fairly straightforward way so there
are objectively higher temperatures and
lower temperatures temperatures that are
higher than a certain point correspond
to warm sensations temperatures lower
than a certain point correspond to cold
sensations as you get higher still or
lower still you get into painful
sensations now obviously the exact
points of correspondence will vary
depending on the person in the context
but there's always going to be a fairly
straightforward relationship between the
sensations and the objective properties
if we keep the person in the context
fixed then in general a warm sensation
means a higher temperature painfully
warm sensations mean it's still higher
temperature cold sensations mean a lower
temperature and painfully cold
sensations mean a still lower
temperature

but there's no way of doing

anything like this with unique and
binary hughes if you collect all the
spectral reflectance a--'s that are
unique hues and all the spectral
reflectance a--'s that are binary hughes
what you end up with are totally
arbitrary sets so you know I mean
imagine if the
unique Hugh's all had a reflectance
curve that had one or two bumps whereas
the binary hughes had a reflectance
curve that had three or more bumps well
in that case we'd be quite happy to say
that the unique binary distinction is
like temperature and hence reducible but
the problem is we just don't have
anything like this we have yeah when we
when we sort spectral reflectance errs
based on whether they are unique or
binary it's completely arbitrary so that
I think is maybe maybe a more maybe the
main problem with this with this
response so

a second making more radical

response to the unique hue argument is
to deny the unique binary distinction it
is actually correct so there have been
some challenges to the notion that
colors are clearly demarcated into
unique and binary hues in the first
place a rather long tradition in
philosophy has held that colors are
simple unanalyzable properties
you can
find this sort of view expressed by
david hume GE more and so on it's
usually just a kind of basic assumption
that isn't argued for that we can't
analyze colors I won't go into this too
much here because it's completely off
topic but GE more has an argument in
meta ethics the open question argument
which seeks his throat seeks to show
that moral properties are unanalyzable
and he draws an analogy to colors like
yellow the assumption is we can't
analyze colors into constituent parts
but if we accept the distinction between
unique and binary hughes well actually
we can analyze colors orange isn't
simple and unanalyzable it's a mixture
of yellow and red so perhaps those who
follow this kind of philosophical
tradition would be skeptical of the
unique binary distinction
I don't really
put much weight on philosophical
tradition though I think it's rather
simply that people like people like
human more just didn't really consider
colors in in the sort of detail we have
today but there is actually a comparable
evidence against the unique binary
distinction which I will talk about so
JM Boston and
a boat that actually bae bone or a h
bone in their paper and p racal evidence
for unique hughes to present to
experiments that challenged the
distinction between unique and binary
Hugh's the first experiment it uses hue
scaling in hue scaling the subject is
presented with colored stimuli and asked
how much of a certain specified how much
of certain specified colors the stimulus
contains so I might show you orange and
then sort of say okay red yellow green
blue right how much of those colors does
this orange contain and you know you
might say well it contains sixty percent
red and forty percent yellow so it's a
slightly reddish orange now the
traditional argument for unique Hughes
is that some stimuli are judged to
contain one primary color and not any
others for instance there is a green
where subjects reports just green but
not yellow blue or obviously read now a
bone boston and bowman point out that if
red green blue and yellow are really
unique in the sense that they are
perceptually basic and so composed are
the binary hughes we need to show that
other colors evenly spaced around the
color spectrum as red green blue and
yellow are cannot be used to match all
other colors so they choose the so
called binary colors purple orange lime
and teal now if red is perceptibly basic
then we should be able we shouldn't be
able to describe read as a mixture of
any of these colors but and i quote
subjects report seeing intermediate
primaries in unique hues in the same way
as they report seeing unique primaries
in intermediate hughes so when presented
with red subjects see it as a a mixture
of purple and orange they give a rating
of about fifty percent for purple and
fifty percent for orange it seems then
that red is actually perceived as a
mixture of purple and orange if red is a
unique hue subjects should have assigned
0 to all the options and they should
have been unable to
grab it with the options they were given
you know in the same way that we can't
describe yellow with a mixture of red
green and blue okay I mean maybe you can
see a bit of green in a yellow but
obviously you can't you can't sort of
match yellow to to using just those
colors so I mean defenders of the unique
you hypothesis make much of the fact
that we can describe all colors as
combinations of red blue green or yellow
but actually we can also describe all
colors as combinations of purple orange
line and teal all we need are four
colors spaced fairly evenly around the
color spectrum those don't have to be
the traditional unique use but as long
as we've got four colors spaced evenly
around the color spectrum we can
describe unique use in just the same way
as we would usually use unique use to
describe binary hues

in a second
experiment Boston and bone studied the
effects of instructions on participants
judgments so when asked to identify a
red that is neither bluish nor yellowish
we will tend to pick out a so-called
unique red but if subjects are asked to
identify read that is neither purplish
nor yellowish they pick out a much more
orangey shade of red under the first set
of instructions the orange shade would
be considered yellowish under the second
it isn't I noticed that if the hue
theory the unique hue theory is correct
you shouldn't make any difference under
the unique hue theory a purplish red is
just a red that has some bluish elements
so we would expect but asking
participants to choose a red boots
neither purple itional yellowish would
have the same result as asking them to
choose a red that's neither blue itional
yellowish in any case the fact that when
we when we ask them to choose a red
boots purplish or yellowish they end up
choosing the more orangey red a red that
would normally be identified as having a
yellowish component is itself again a
bit of a problem for the unique cute
theory

so I mean
these are pretty serious challenges
however you know it I'm not entirely
sure what to think about these but there
are a number of reasons to believe in
the unique binary distinction so I think
it's made worse just exploring some of
the reasons why why people believe in
this so first of all there is the

phenomenology so you know phenomenology

is the study of experience and
consciousness from the first person
point of view and if we reflect on our
experience of color I think it does seem
as though some colors are basic whereas
others are mixtures I mean maybe I'm
wrong maybe my observations have been
infected by standard color theory but to
me the way I experienced color it does
seem to me that there there is a red
that is just pure red and whereas
something like orange is a mixture of
red and yellow
so it seems to me to
capture the phenomenology so you know
how what do we say about Boston and
bones Hughes scaling experiment here
well I think that what might be going on
in the hue scaling experiment is that
you know red is between purple and
orange so if we ask people to describe
how much of each there is in red it's
not surprising that they might say fifty
percent of each I mean really this just
reflects a judgment about the place of
red on the color spectrum in fact I'd
make a stronger claim here if red is
unique and purple is a mixture of red
and blue while orange is a mixture of
red and yellow well then Boston and
bones Hugh scaling results aren't really
surprising we say that read contains
fifty percent purple and fifty percent
orange because these colors literally do
overlap in that Ray purple is about
fifty percent bread orange is about
fifty percent right so you know you can
make read by taking those parts of
purple and orange as for Boston a moment
second experiment I'm less sure how to
respond to that but you know that might
at least deal with the huge scaling
experiment but in the way the point is
is that I think there
is the support from from just the
phenomenology of color it seems to me
that the unique binary distinction makes
a lot of sense from that point of view

second I guess sir just a more general

point is that the brain tends to
maximize efficiency it does things as
simply as possible simplicity saves
energy and reduces the chances of error
now why on earth would our cognitive
system encode a host of perceptually
basic colors when it could get away with
mixing them I mean indeed you know it's
surely not possible but every color is
perceptually basic there are just too
many we can distinguish about 1 million
colors so surely there must be some
distinction between unique and binary
colors perhaps we wrong that red green
blue and yellow a unique but all we need
for the argument against reductionism is
the distinction itself provided that
there are colors that are unique and
other colors that are perceived as
mixtures we have the argument against
against reductionism and it does seem
rather unlikely to me at least that that
there would be about a million
perceptually basic colors surely some of
them are mixtures

okay third the

distinction is supported by studies of
infants by studying how infants split
colors into different categories now
obviously we can't simply ask infants
how they split the world into categories
instead we measure how long they spend
looking at objects and we assume that in
general they spend longer looking at
novel stimuli suppose we show a an
infant stimuli a and stimuli be if the
baby considers a and B to be different
it will spend longer looking at B than
if it considered them to be the same so
if a and B are identical colors for
instance it will spend less time looking
at B if a is blue and B is yellow
obviously very different colors it will
look at B for longer so by measuring how
the amount of time spent observing a
stimulus we can make some judgments
about how the baby is categorizing in
that stimulus in a study by born
bornstein Kesson and white cop called
color vision and hues categorization in
young
human infants infants were shown lights
30 nanometers apart and the time of gaze
was measured for instance infants was
shown a 480 nanometer light then they
were shown either a 450 nanometer light
or a 510 nanometer light now adults
judge the 480 nanometer light to be more
like the 550 nanometers light than the
510 nanometer light it turns out that
infants make the same judgments indeed
infant judgments seem to match adult
judgments in general just as with adults
it appears that the color space of
infants is divided into four similarity
classes centered on red green yellow and
blue which are what we traditionally
think of as the unique cues so that
seems to support the distinction

fourth
there is evidence that we unique binary
distinction is culturally universal so
first we can consider the development of
colors homes in languages not all
languages have the same color categories
some languages have a very impoverished
color vocabulary they make very few
distinctions between colors others like
English have an extremely rich
vocabulary for colors a very famous
study by Brent Berlin and Paul K
examined how color categorization
develops now the general rules are as
follows all languages contain terms for
black and white if a language contains
three color terms it will contain a term
for red if a language contains four
color terms it will contain a term for
either green or yellow if it contains
five color terms it will contain a term
for both green and yellow if it contains
six color terms it will contain a term
for blue if it contains seven color
terms which retain the time for brown if
it contains eight it will contain a term
for pink or purple or orange your gray
and it sort of expands from there but
the important point for us is that as we
move into the color terms the first ones
we get our red green and yellow then
blue and we would expect these ones to
come first if these are the unique use
if these hues have special status so
that would again seem to support the
the status of these these colors as
unique Hughes

I should note however you

need to bear in mind that the color
naming debate has been a source of great
controversy in anthropology and
linguistics I won't go into it here but
I suggest you look it up if if you're in
tall interested just go on google type
in color naming debate and you'll find a
lot of interesting material about this
and and what I've said here is is really
just the tip of the iceberg

second a
study by e h rush reported in her paper
natural categories rush looked at the
danny people of New Guinea whose
language contains terms only for black
and white she divided subjects into two
groups the first group were shown
samples of unique hues and asked to
assign them names the second group was
shown samples of binary hues and asked
to assign them names she then showed
each group various color samples and
asked them to pick out examples of the
hues they named the group who were shown
unique hues and asked to pick up these
unique use required much less time than
the binary heute group which again this
suggests of a special cultural universal
perceptual salience to red green yellow
and blue ok

fifth the phenomenon of

invariant hues in most cases they
perceived hue of the stimulus changes
with increased brightness this is known
as the bezel bezel brook shift no idea
if I'm pronouncing that right but that's
what it looks like as old Brook shift if
you increase the brightness of a light
but keep the wavelength the same the
perceived hue of lights below 500
nanometers will shift towards blue
whereas the perceived to you of lights
above 500 nanometers will shift towards
yellow there are three exceptions the
invariant hughes these are perceived as
blue green and yellow and some suggested
that these match the unique use for
these colors maybe this won't work for
you because color perception is
different for different people but we'll
give it a shot so look at this color now
all I'm going to do is increase the
brightness right that's it that's all
I'm doing
now as you can see this is far more
yellow at least to me this looks very
green I can't really see much yellow in
there at all this is very yellowish the
perceived Hugh has shifted towards the
yellow and as I said all I did was
increase the brightness on the other
hand look at this blue and again that
looks like just a just a straight blue
to me I don't see much of any other
color in there if I increase the
brightness it just gets brighter the hue
to my eyes doesn't seem to get it
doesn't seem to get more green it
doesn't seem to get more red it's it
either way it's just blue at least it
seems to me in both cases we have a kind
of pure blue this is a darker blue this
is a lighter blue I don't know maybe it
will look different to you because as I
say everybody's perceptual system is
different and so you know that might not
have worked but I mean you get a point
right and now of course

this last point

this fifth point is rather less decisive
because unique red doesn't appear to be
among the invariant hughes but it
possibly there is an overlap with
respect to unique yellow unique green
and unique blue so now all of all of
this all of this evidence is obviously
open to criticism i must say that
All
Things Considered I think that the
unique binary distinction is probably
sound and that the unique hues are red
green blue and yellow but if you wish to
defend color reductionism from the
argument based on the unique Hughes
certainly you may want to consider
challenging the distinction and I think
that there are genuinely plausible
challenges to it however even if we
managed to displace the distinction
between unique and binary Hughes this
doesn't necessarily save reductionism
the unique binary distinction isn't the
only way of running this argument based
on the structure of color space we can
make essentially the same argument in
several other ways because there are
arguably numerous salient features of
colors that fail to be reducible
so let's just remind ourselves of the
the challenge the challenge from you the
unique binary distinction is that when
we consider the structure of color space
we find that colors exhibit a
distinction between unique hues and
binary hues and this distinction is not
shared by any objective physical
property so color is not reducible to a
physical property now the general form
of the argument is if something is a
color it must have property x but
spectral reflectance a--'s do not have
proper TX so colors are not spectral
reflectance a--'s actually we can
generalize that further you know
something is correct must I property X
but nothing in the external world has
property X so nothing in the external
world is a color
and there are many
features of the structure of color space
that the critic of reductionism can plug
into this argument

so let's go through a
few of them

the second argument is that

colors are saturated or unsaturated
again it's not clear that we can really
give any sense to the notion of a
saturated or unsaturated spectral
reflectance I guess part of this problem
is because it only takes two colors to
to sort of cancel each other if you have
a blue you can desaturate the blue by by
making it reflect more wavelengths in
the yellow part of the spectrum so many
so-called desaturated colors are
actually reflecting more like not less
but of course that doesn't always work
if you change the surface of the blue
objects so that it reflects more in the
redder parts of the spectrum you'll get
a deep purple so that won't desaturate
it we just change the hue so you know in
what sense is is there to a saturated or
desaturated reflectance now I think this
is rather more questionable than the
argument from unique views we saw last
time a poor church lands idea of the
economical approximation the ellipse now
churchland would argue that the tilt of
the ellipse gives us saturation but you
know if churchland hypothesis fails then
we have another respect in which a
seemingly necessary property of color is
not found in the external world

third
colors have an opponent structure
this is why certain colors are
impossible red opposes green and yellow
opposes blue this opponent structure is
not realized physically there's no sense
in which red reflectances are opposed to
green reflectances whereas blue
reflectances are compatible with green
reflectances

so let me make a few

spective comments about this case do
colors have an opponent structure well
we certainly assumed they did in in the
first video when we talked about color
science but there's an interesting study
by Hewitt crane and Thomas piantanida
called unseeing reddish green in the
yellowish blue in which they used a
complicated experimental setup to
generate these so-called impossible
colors in the peripheral visual field
people reported seeing reddish greens in
the yellowish blues now these were mere
illusions it involved exploiting the the
blind spot and the filling in effect
today what they were illusions but that
doesn't in any way defuse the criticism
the point of a potency is that red and
green and yellow and blue necessarily
opposed each other if there are concept
contexts where we would report seeing
reddish green yellowish blue then this
claim is false they're not they're not
really opposing you know there are
context where they can mix
the opponent
see is not a necessary property of the
colors in which case the the argument
from a potency would seem to fail in any
case
I have a suspicion that you can see
impossible colors in more standard
scenarios in actually quite easy
scenarios so I'm going to show you some
colors and I want you to put aside the
the knowledge of color science that we
have from the first video I just want
you to ask yourself what is the
phenomenology right what's the most
natural way of describing these colors
so let's start with red and green this
is a simple color spectrum from red to
green the claim is that there is no
reddish green or greenish red now am I
just nuts or does this color in the
middle kind of look like a
reddish green or greenish red here's a
slide of sort of two of the colors from
from the middle this is slightly more to
the red side this is slightly more to
the green side I don't know I mean that
kind of looks like there's a combination
of green and red in these two colors I
mean it seems to me like that would be a
natural way of describing them that they
sort of combine green and red I mean
more naturally of course we'd probably
call them maybe a murky yellow or
perhaps murky yellowy brownie sort of
color but then now I think about it
yellowy brown colors do seem like a sort
of mixture of red and green in the same
way that purple seems like a mixture of
red and blue Purple's a reddish blues or
bluish Reds is it possible that these
brownie yellow colors are reddish greens
the phenomenology isn't clear to me but
it's not clear to it certainly isn't
just obvious that red and green are not
compatible so here's a yellow blue slide
now the color in the middle here is
actually grey so there's no point
showing you a slide of that gray grey
doesn't seem like a mixture of yellow
and blue at least out of context but
when put in the context of a cut over
spectrum if you just focus on on this
bit in the middle that does sort of seem
like a mixture of yellow and blue
doesn't it well I can tell you're maybe
not convinced so here's a more powerful
example this is a spectrum from red to
green using a darker green now that
these sure look like ready screams and
greenish Reds to me that seems like the
most I don't really know how else to
this color here how do you describe that
if not a sort of greenish red and that's
a slightly reddish green right that just
that seems like that's what we're
looking at here I'll make a prediction
show this image to people who know
nothing about color science and ask them
to describe I guess these sort of colors
in the middle and I bet anything that
they'll say something like oh it's a
slightly reddish green something like
that now this effect
depends on context if you were to look
at just if you take one of these colors
from the middle and just look at it on
its own you probably would lose the the
effect you wouldn't see it as a reddish
green but but all colors depending on
context right we saw that with some of
the color illusions in the last video as
you change the surrounding colors the
perceived color of an object can change
so the fact that greenish Reds and
radish greens are dependent on context
that's not a problem at all that's the
same for all colors again this is
speculative and maybe I'm just crazy but
certainly there's you know there's a
consensus in color science that mixtures
of yellow and blue and mixtures of red
and green are just perceptually
impossible but it seems to me that
they're actually very simple contexts
where such colors can be generated so
this suggests one way to defuse the
argument from opponents structure
actually colors don't have an opponent
structure red does not oppose green
there are contexts at mid leave aerie
specific contexts where we can perceive
reddish greens and greenish Reds
possibly possibly but this would end up
sort of overthrowing a lot of current
color science so as I say it's a bit
more speculative okay

fourth there's a
distinction between related and
unrelated colors we say that a color is
unrelated if it is seen in isolation
against a like a black or a neutral
background now some colors are
necessarily related they are seen only
against a background of other colors for
instance Brown can be seen only if other
usually lighter colors are seen at the
same time an object that appears Brown
against a light background will appear
orange against the dark one so this
suggests that Brown is a relational
property it depends on the relation
between the object and its surround

but
of course surface spectral reflectance
a--'s are not relational now burnin
Hilbert respond to this that we
have to be careful not to conflate the
conditions necessary for perception with
what is perceived the conditions
necessary to see an object as brown
depend on the relations between the
object and the and the illumination of
the surround but this it doesn't follow
from this that Brown itself depends on
the relation between the object and its
surround

bear in mind that in general

color constancy requires making use of
information from the entire scene we
don't just look at objects in isolation
the only way we can keep track of colors
is by taking cues from other objects and
other illuminance around them color
perception is better in some conditions
and others in some conditions we can't
see Brown in others we can see Brown
that's not surprising still there's
maybe still a bit of a problem here
which is that what appears Brown against
a light background will appear orange
against the dark one this is the case
for all Browns so this raises a question
is the object really Brown or really
orange we could say the object is really
brown and perceiving it accurately
requires conditions a B and C or we
could say that the object is really
orange and perceiving it accurately
requires conditions x y&z how do we
judge
I mean maybe this is more of a
skeptical problem so with slightly
changing changing the problem it's not
so much about whether or not it's
reducible this is more skeptical
question a question of how we can know
what color it is really but still color
reductionist swill we'll need to deal
with with this problem okay so a final
version of this argument from the
structure of color space is that colors
can be ordered systematically we can all
the colors in terms of hue lightness and
saturation and we can talk about the
relations between different colors for
instance purple resembles blue more than
it resembles green and that seems like a
pretty important feature of our
perception of colors and that these
relations of similarity between colors
are not preserved by the relations of
similarity between physical properties
this graph shows the reflectances of
of green at the bottom here blue and
purple at the top there doesn't appear
to be any sense in which top reflectance
is more similar to the middle
reflectance than the bottom one indeed
if we were just looking at the
reflectances we would probably say that
blue is more similar to green than it is
to purple but in fact blues very often
usually similar more similar to purples
right so you know that's it we have
these relations of similarity between
colors and yet these relations are not
preserved by by the spectral reflectance
a--'s we one source of this problem is
yet again metamerism obviously because
different colors will have very
different spectral reflectance curves so
obviously you can kind of construct
difficult examples for the relations
between colors
another source is that
the spectral sensitivity of long and
medium wavelength cones overlaps much
more than the sensitivity of medium and
short wavelength cones so the relations
between perceived colors end up being at
odds with the relations between whatever
the physical causes of colors are so
overall then we we have this argument
from the structure of color space and
there are many ways of running this
argument we've looked at the unique
binary distinction saturation opponents
see the related unrelated distinction
and the sort of systematic ordering of
colors the relations of similarity
between colors
the challenge then is
that none of these salient properties of
colors or at least few of these salient
properties can be found in any mind
independent property

I guess one way of

summing up all of the problems for

reductionism is this

the I certainly
responds to real features of the world
it responds to spectral energy relative
reflectance wavelengths and so on these
physical properties obviously influenced
perceived color and that's what explains
the fact that there's widespread
agreement on color judgments and the
fact that color perception gives us
knowledge of objects the problems for
reductionism arise because the I
responds in a very coarse way

Hugh
have only three photoreceptors in the
cones in three photoreceptors involved
in color vision and that's nowhere near
enough to recover precise information
about spectral reflectance or about
wavelength or whatever very different
reflectance profiles prompt the same
response and of course the coarseness is
is amplified by the mechanisms that
produce color constancy

on the one hand

color constancy allows color judgments
to be relatively stable over different
illumination but it also induces various
illusions and makes us unable to
distinguish different wavelengths so um
those were some of the challenges to
reductionism I mean we saw at the
beginning that reductionism is a very
appealing theory in many ways it seems
very much in line with science and it
certainly allows us to preserve common
sense but there are some very serious
problems for it it's it's a difficult
position to maintain so I hope you found
that interesting thanks for watching
next time we'll be talking about
primitivism