in the last couple of videos we examined

one version of color realism color

reductionism this is the claim that
colors are reducible to physical
properties most plausibly colors are
reducible to surface spectral
reflectance a--'s now this view faces a
number of problems one of the main
objections is that physical properties
lack some necessary feature of color for
instance spectral reflectance a--'s
can't be divided into unique and binary
hughes or they don't match the relations
of similarities between colors and so on
now one view that that solves all of all
of these problems is primitivism because
primitivism says that colors are exactly
as they appear the nature of colors is
revealed in color experience so we
perceive colors as having a distinction
between unique and binary hues and
that's that's exactly what colors have
according to primitive ists similarly we
perceive colors as having certain degree
of saturation we perceive them as having
opponent relations we perceive them as
having certain relations of similarity
primitivism says colors colors have the
properties they appear to have they are
exactly as they appear to be now one
consequence of this is that colors are
irreducible a color can't be identified
with anything else red redness is not a
wavelength it's not a surface spectral
reflectance red is just read when you
open your eyes and look at a red cup
you're seeing a color as it really is
the nature of color is fully revealed in
your perception obviously you know we're
not we don't perceive colors as being
wavelengths for instance we don't
perceive them as being surface spectral
reflectance is so that's not what they
are they are just they are exactly as
they appear so so colors are not
physical properties
they are somehow
over and above the physical properties
actually I mean they're not just over
and above physical properties the point
of
vism is that colors can't be identified
with anything else
so not only a colors
not physical properties they are not to
be identified with other kinds of
non
physical properties either colors are
simple irreducible properties okay they
can't be reduced to anything else now
primitivism is an Objectivist or realist
view like color reductionism primitivism
claims that colours our mind independent
and they're also non-relational
so there
are intrinsic properties of objects they
don't depend on the relation between an
object in the perceiver or the relation
between an object and its surroundings
now of course certain surroundings may
be necessary in order to best perceive a
color for instance in order to see
brownness or brown that requires having
certain surroundings as we discussed in
the last video
but the color itself
exists as an intrinsic property of the
object so I mean this tells us what
colors are not
but what exactly are they
more positively and this is somewhat
somewhat difficult to say

I think that
we can best understand what the
primitive this might be saying by
considering how they how they respond to
one of the main objections to
primitivism so si el jardín points out
with this a bit of a problem accounting

for causality on the primitivism you the

primitive wrist faces a dilemma either
colors are connected to other physical
properties of objects or they aren't now
if they are connected to physical
properties they must have physical
effects and we ought to be able to test
for them by physical means in other
words if colors are connected to
physical properties then in so far as
physical theory makes no mention of
color physical theory is deficient okay
if colors have physical effects then we
should be we would expect that
physicists and other scientists are
postulating colors to explain various
physical phenomena so so if colors are
connects to physical properties it looks
like
theory is deficient but this seems very
unlikely I mean we have a pretty good
story of the causes of color sensations
we're very foggy about how color is
processed in the brain but in terms of
the processes going on in the external
world that cause color we actually know
those very well just go back and watch
the first video in this series we
understand wavelengths of light we know
what light is and how it's produced we
understand how light interacts in
different ways with different objects we
can measure spectral reflectance a--'s
and so on so if colors are connected to
physical properties why does physics
seem to provide a fairly complete story
of the production of color sensations I
mean it looks like well it's very
unlikely that the physics is just
missing this very important part of the
story on the other hand if colors are
not connected to physical properties
then they can't play any role in
determining what wavelengths of light
reflected from or emitted from or
transmitted through a physical object so
if colors are not connected to physical
properties they can't play any role in
determining what wavelengths of light
arrive at our eyes which would mean that
they make no difference to our
perceptual data because ultimately the
only way that we can perceive colors is
by our photoreceptors being stimulated
by photons
I mean well we can
hallucinate colors as well but obviously
that wouldn't be perception technically
speaking so we've got us have no
connection to physical properties then
there's no means by which they could
affect our perceptual systems
we would
have no connection to colors and then
that looks like we're forced to be anti
realists or at least we're forced to a
very skeptical position where we're you
know even if we say that colours exist
out there in the external world we could
have no connection to them

so this is
the dilemma that faces anybody who wants
to say the colors and non physical
properties the colors are over and above
the physical properties how can we
respond well the usual response abyss is
to treat
colors as a kind of higher level or
emergent property what we mean by
emergent property so obviously there is
that there must be some sort of
connection some sort of connection
between colors and physical properties
now to say that color is an emergent
property is to say that color is in some
sense constituted out of physical
properties but is nevertheless not
identical to or reducible to them

so how
does this work well by analogy maybe you
could consider
functionalism in the
philosophy of mind according to most
functionalist every mental state is
realized by or constituted by certain
physical states for instance in humans
pain is the firing of C fibers whenever
your C fibers fire you will experience
pain actually that's that example is
incorrect as a matter of Neurobiology
pain is very complex involved in all
sorts of different processes but this is
the toy example that you see in
philosophy articles and it illustrates
the point so let's say pain in humans is
the firing of C fibers now presumably
pain can't be identified with the firing
of C fibers because various things that
don't have C fibers could experience
pain so perhaps one day we'll build a
robot that can experience pain but the
robot would be made of silicon chips and
transistors not neurons and C fibers so
functionalism suggests instead that pain
is identified by its causal role certain
stimulations typically cause pain and
certain behaviors are typically produced
by pain so pain is typically caused by
bodily damage and typically causes
distress and attempts to alleviate the
pain anything that has this causal
profile is a pain any in a state that is
caused by bodily damage and causes
distress and attempts to alleviate it is
a pain in humans that's the firing of C
fibers so in humans at the firing of C
fibers is caused by bodily damage and
causes distress and attempt to alleviate
the firing of C fibers but in robots it
would be some
state of the transistors and silicon
chips okay so you know in robots there
would be bodily damage and that would
cause certain state in the transistors
and silicon chips and then that state
would would have various other causes
and effects so so the point is is that
pain is not identified with a physical
state instead it's identified with a
certain causal role and so although
every pain is realized by certain
physical processes pain isn't identical
to any particular physical process
okay
see fibers are our physical silicon
chips and transistors are physical but
we can't reduce pain to any particular
physical property pain is in this sense
something over and above the physical
properties every pain is constituted by
physical properties but but but
nevertheless pain is is something that
is over and above them

this maybe isn't

the best analogy because the
functionalist is still a reductionist of
sorts the functionalist reduces pain to
a state with a certain causal profile
the color primitive estaz we have said
doesn't want to reduce color to anything
else colors are primitive they are
irreducible but perhaps this can give us
a sense of the relation between colors
and physical properties according to the
color primitive 'used so just so that
the functionalist says the point here is
that function that says that that the
pain is constituted by bit physical
states such as C fibers firing or
certain states of silicon chips and
transistors but it is not reducible to
either one of them because of course it

can be both perhaps another example our

genes we identify genes by considering
patterns of inheritance of biological
traits now the underlying physical basis
is sequences of DNA but arguably genes
can't be identified with sequences of
DNA there are many arguments here let me
mention just a couple DNA sequences have
coding regions which known as exons but
also non-coding regions
introns introns don't code for proteins
when the DNA sequence is transcribed
into RNA introns are spliced out now
there's a phenomenon known as
alternative splicing and this occurs
when the DNA sequence can have exons
spliced out as well so the same DNA
sequence can produce different sequences
of RNA giving rise to very different
proteins one splicing might leave you
with all of the exons and other splicing
might remove two of the exons when the
introns are removed these are not errors
alternative splicing is a widespread and
important part of the genome and there
are various other processes of RNA
modification when when and when the RNA
is translated into protein there are
various processes of protein
modification as well so when we look at
what's going on on the molecular level
it turns out this this huge variety of
very complex processes and arguably it
is too much of a simplification to say
that a gene is just a DNA sequence it's
arguably genes emerge at a higher level
we can only identify genes by looking at
the entire organism and its ancestors
and descendants this is obviously
controversial it's a big issue in
philosophy of biology but you know the
point of the analogy is is just to
illustrate how emergent properties might
work so again
genes although they are
constituted by physical processes they
are not reducible to any particular
physical state or physical process now a

crucial idea for emergence is

supervenience emergent properties
supervene on physical properties mental
states supervene on neural States colors
we might say supervene on spectral
reflectance a--'s and wavelengths of
light now we say that a properties are
super venient on B properties when you
can't change the a properties without
changing the B properties so you can't
alter the mental state without altering
the underlying physical state in other
words if the two physical states are the
same the mental state will be the same
in the same way you can't alter the
color without altering the physical
processes if the underlying physical
processes are exactly the same if you've
got exactly the same spectral
reflectance in exactly the same context
then the color is the same the two
objects two objects with the same
spectral reflectance you know interact
with light in the same way those two
objects must have the same color so this
may be provided the answer to hardens
dilemma colors are connected to physical
properties indeed colors are like
everything else in the world constituted
by purely physical properties but it
doesn't follow that colors are reducible
to or identical with physical properties
furthermore colors are not detectable at
the purely physical level and this is
why we we can't expect physics to make
any mention of colors it's not that
physics is deficient it's just that
colors are not detectable at the level
physics deals with when we focus our
attention exclusively on physical
properties we don't find any colors
there we shouldn't be surprised about
this because the same is true for many
other properties such as mental states
and jeans we can't test for the presence
of jeans by just looking at sequences of
DNA or other prices in the set we have
to consider a wider context the context
of the whole organism and how traits of
the organism related traits of its
ancestors and descendants and then link
that to what's going on at the molecular
level so in the same way we can't test
for the presence of colors by examining
wavelengths and spectral reflectance
a--'s and again you know we can't test
for mental states by just looking at
neural behavior again this is something
we have to look look at that may pass

the whole organism so these properties

emerge at a higher level constituted out
of physical properties and supervene on
physical properties but that they are
not reducible to them or identical with
them

so perhaps this and

is the dilemma posed by harden but a
question about causality still remains
and this objection was presented by jae
hwan kim in his downward causation
argument so Kim's argument is really an
argument against emerging properties in
general but obviously if we can string
colors as emerging properties then this
is an argument against primitivism

so
let's be very clear about how emerging
properties are supposed to work we have

physical properties call them p and

these higher level emergent properties
call them e the physical properties of
properties such as mass charge spin and

so on the higher-level properties might

be colors or mental states or jeans or
whatever now the emergent test makes
three claims first that e supervenes on
P second that E is irreducible to pee so
he is something over and above p and
finally the e has distinctive causal
powers right e isn't just an
epiphenomenon it it can cause things

it
has causes and effects now Kim's
argument is that this picture is
unsustainable suppose we say that some
high level event causes another higher
level event so II causes East are for it
for example we might suggest that the
redness of the cup causes me to
experience a red sensation when I look
at the cup that's surely a claim that
the primitive estoy to make colors cause
color sensations that seems obvious so
we might diagram the situation like this
these red lines here show relations the
relation of supervenience the Green Line
shows causation so we have these
physical properties or physical events p
and p star and these are the sub vinian
basis of the super venient emergent
properties ely emergent events E&E star
e causes east are now the first claim
then is that colors is supervene on some
lower level physical properties but in
that case the only way
e 2 cos e star is for e2 cause p star
right to bring about an emergent
property you need to bring about the
base physical properties from which it
emerges so something like this so if you
want to bring about a certain mental
state you need to bring about the
underlying neural states in order for a
color to cause say a sensation of the
color that color must cause certain
underlying neural states basically he
must exhibit downward causation yeah for
so so it the color must cause the lower
level brain properties that underlie the
higher level sensation so that's fairly
clear I hope now here's the problem at E
itself supervenes on some other lower
level properties p color supervenes on
wavelengths of light or spectral
reflectance Azure whatever then it would
seem to follow that P alone is
sufficient to cause p star like this and
this is kind of obvious when you think
about it we can tell a complete story of
the production of color experiences
using only the physical properties the
spectral reflectance of the object
combined with the wavelength of the
illuminant leads to lead to the object
to reflect certain wavelengths of light
these wavelengths of light hit
photoreceptors in the retina and the
experience of color is produced by
internal processes from from there

what
explains the experience of colors are
the physical properties such as
wavelength and reflectance not the
higher-level properties it looks like
the physical properties alone are
sufficient there's no causal work left
for for the this higher level property

to do so basically Kim's challenges as

follows the defender of color
primitivism needs e to be a cause of P
star but P threatens to preempt be as a
cause of P star and this is of course to
an argument against
all emergent properties if if the if the
perimeter fist conceives of color as an
emergent property which seems to be the
only plausible way of developing
primitivism then the primitive ister
faces this this objection so that's a
pretty serious problem
now one response
here not exactly a direct response but
perhaps this can take some of the heat
off the primitive 'used this is from
michael watkins is that it's actually
not just the color primitive estuve aces
difficulties accounting for causality in
fact color reductionism has just as much
trouble when it comes to causal to
causal relations now is it this is
because column reductionism is only
plausible as a disjunctive claim we saw
in I think the the first video on
reductionism that in order to respond to
the metamerism problem reduction
reductionism has to treat colors as sets
of spectral reflectance a--'s that are
pretty much arbitrary from a physical
point of view colors are therefore
disjunctive properties but it's very
difficult to explain how disjunctive
properties can be causally efficacious
to take redness redness is the set of
reflectances A or B or C or D etc ret
redness is the name of this whole
disjunct disjunctive property so the
problem is if an object is a it will
look red if an object is B it will look
red if an object is see it will look red
and so on but now how can the the
disjunctive property of redness have any
causal powers of its own the causal
powers of redness is simply the causal
powers of each of its disjunct the rest
take a specific example suppose i'm
looking at a cup the cup looks red why
does it look red well surely because of
its surface spectral reflectance it has
reflectance d say now d is part of the
disjunctive property redness but it
seems pretty clear that what's doing the
cause will work is d alone it's not that
it's not a or b or c or d or etc that's
doing the cause of work it's just d
another way to see this problem is to
note how easy it is to generate
disjunctive properties so let's say that
the disjunctive property Zed is
constructed out of having out of say
having spectral reflectance d and being
a supergiant star in the Andromeda
galaxy anything that either has spectral
reflectance d or is a supergiant star in
the Andromeda galaxy has the properties
Z surely it's obvious Z doesn't have any
causal powers of its own what has the
causal power is having spectral
reflectance d or it's being a supergiant
star in the Andromeda galaxy but Z
clearly doesn't have any any causal
powers so what can says it's not
legitimate to attack primitivism for
problems accounting for causality
because the only plausible reductionist
option faces the same problem I mean
this is basically the same problem as
Kim's argument if we imagine that this
junk to properties are high level
properties so this is essentially the
same kind of problem now of course the

fact that both primitivism and

reductionism face this problem is
perhaps a reason not to defend
primitivism but to reject both
primitivism and reductionism from from
the anti realist point of view Watkins
has simply pointed out a good reason not
to be a color realist

but what Kansas

point of course is that if we are
attracted to color realism primitivism
is no worse off as far as causal powers
are concerned um still at the the
primitive 'used may want to address

Kim's argument more directly now Kim's

argument has generated an enormous
amount of literature and philosophy and
it would really need a whole series to
deal with it I'd love to look at some of
the responses and the attempts to say
the emergent properties but it really is
just a big tangent for this video one
day I'll do a series on it if you're
interested in any of the literature
please send me a message you know send
you a bunch of papers although I am
actually very bad at keeping up with
messages but if I if I see it I'll
respond so i don't really want to go
into that tangent here
if you're if you're interested as I say
I will send you something but I don't
want this to become a series on
emergence one thing I did want to
mention though is that I think a serious
problem here

even if we can answer Kim's

argument and so make room for emergent
properties the question remains of why
exactly we should believe that colors
are these emergent properties why should
we believe that colors have this status
when we consider other supposed emergent
or higher level states such as mental
states of genes we see that these have
measurable physical effects we can test
for them and we we sort of have to
appeal to them in the sciences they seem
to be indispensable to scientific
practice into everyday life so with
jeans well we need them to explain
patterns of inheritance of phenotypic
characteristics and there are various
ways of testing to what degree genes
influence at rate versus the influence
from the environment and so on with
mental states well obviously we need
those to explain behavior and positing
mental states in psychology and
cognitive science has been extremely
useful for shedding light on our inner
workings so we seem to have pretty good
reason to to believe in mental states
and jeans and that's why emergence needs
to be accounted for assuming that mental
states and genes are emerging properties
now the question is how do we test
colors where the colors fit in the
sciences emergent properties are a
problem because we have good reason to
believe in them because they're
supported by empirical evidence that's
what makes emergence a challenge now if
there were no reason to believe in
mental states or genes we would simply
stop believing in them we would
eliminate them from our theories and
indeed there are philosophers who have
proposed that mental states and jeans
don't exist and should be eliminated
that's obviously a minority position but
prima for sure this is the position
we're in with respect to color most
color scientists are anti realists about
color and it's unclear to me that that
there is this sort of an empirical need
to postulate colors it looks like it
looks to me like we just don't need them
so even if

we can make room for emergent properties

why would we suppose that color is one
of these emergent properties okay and so
you know that that was the problem
arising from causality for primitivism a

second objection to primitivism is that

it faces a skeptical problem how can we
know whether we are accurately
perceiving colors

the trouble is that if

colors are not physical properties
there's no way to check them one example
here and I mean I'm sorry I can't
remember exactly who gave this example I
think it might be John Campbell appeals
to a bike we look at the wheels of a
bike and they appear circular we move
around bike and we look at them from
different angles and we still judge them
to be circular
but how do we know that
our visual perception is accurate I will
know that I'm not hallucinating and the
wheels are actually triangular one
option is simply try to ride the bike if
you can ride it easily they're probably
not triangular wheels because triangular
wheels wouldn't wouldn't ride very
easily now of course this

doesn't
absolutely prove that the wheels are
circular if you've read they can't you
might think that maybe all of our
sensors could be completely mistaken
but
the point is that with shape we can test
the deliverances of vision in various
ways for instance by testing what we see
against other sensory modalities
what
about the question how do I know that
the bike is red and not white well
notice that if we identify colors with
physical properties as the reductionist
does this is no problem redness is a set
of spectral reflectance a--'s so to
check whether the bike is really red we
analyze the surface spectral reflectance
of the bike but what can we turn to on
primitivism since colors are not
physical properties it looks like
they're just is nothing to check

now one
response to this might be to say well
first we can apply radical skepticism to
anything yes we can't check color
perceptions against other sensory
realities but in general we we have to
assume that perception provides an
accurate picture of the world we have to
assume that because if we drop that
assumption we simply wouldn't be able to
trust perception at all anymore but
given the assumption that perception is
is generally reliable we have every
reason to believe that we accurately see
colors perception is generally accurate
and perception shows us a world full of
color

more significantly there are in

fact ways of checking whether our color
perceptions are accurate and this is
because we know the circumstances in
which color illusions can occur and we
can identify color illusions fairly
easily for instance we know what
produces after images it's when the
cells become fatigued as we explained in
the first video or to frame it in a more
everyday sense it's when we stare at a
particular image for a long period of
time if we stare at something for a long
time that will produce an after image of
what we have seen and so we can also
easily identify after images if if after
looking at a red circle you see a
greenish circle follows the movements of
your eyes that's a pretty good sign that
it's an illusion the greenish circle
doesn't exist out there in the world
it's just something that it's just a
product of your perceptual system and of
course there are other methods for
instance if you're wondering whether
your perceptions accurate you could just
ask other people if we're not sure of
what the color of an object is we can
check our own perceptions against the
perceptions of others so in fact there
are ways of checking our color
perception we can't you know the methods
are not quite the same as the methods
with shape but that's no surprise at all
color is not the same as shape so we do
have methods of checking whether we are
under an illusion whether we are
perceiving things accurately now the
main thing here is that I think this
argument perhaps mrs. the real point of
the

a real force of the skeptical objection

I mean this kind of argument explains
how to identify local illusions
illusions in particular cases like after
images but arguably it doesn't really
help with the possibility of global
illusion so let's assume that
primitivism is true the real skeptical
problem is that there are a number of
different theories of the relation
between colors and color experiences so
let's take two two hypotheses about how
color relates to color experiences the
obvious theory is that red cord is
sensations of red green causes
sensations of green blue causes
sensations of blue and so on in other
words our color perceptions are
veridical so now consider an alternative
some sort of spectrum inversion for
instance red causes the experience of
green blue causes experience of yellow
how can we rule this out I mean given
primitivism this hypothesis seems just
as reasonable as the theory that our
experience is our vertical see the
problem let's contrast this with what
the reductionist might say so this is an
image of jazz musician Barry Sanders now
so this is how you see Pharoah Sanders
when when you look at him when you look
at this image this is how the image
looks to you but perhaps another person
sees be emitted like this now the
reductionist says that colors are
spectral reflectance 'as obviously we're
not perceptually aware that we're
looking at spectral reflectance 'as the
the nature of color is not revealed in
the color experience so the reductionist
says that this is a sensation of sort of
reddish orange and also this is a
sensation of reddish orange both of
these individuals the the person who
sees things this way in the person who
sees things this way are seeing red it's
just that red presents itself
differently for each individual provided
we both make the same color
discriminations we can both claim to see
the same color though we might see them
in different ways this kind of inversion
is not a problem because the real nature
of colors is hidden from us anyway but
the primitive ists says that colors just
are as they appear primitive 'used isn't
entitled to the rest
that we're seeing colors in different
ways because if we're seeing it in
different ways then one of us must be
massively mistaken about color so you
know let's say that let's say that this
is is redness okay the person who sees
things this way is accurately seeing
redness well then the person who sees
things this way is in the grip of an
illusion a serious illusion The
Skeptical problem for primitivism is
that it looks like we have no way of
choosing between the hypothesis that
color experiences veridical and the
hypothesis that were all under some sort
of spectrum inversion illusion and of
course there are many other hypotheses
that would fit the data equally well so
those are a couple of problems for
primitivism problem relating to
causality and the problem of skeptical
hypotheses we will look at a couple more
problems in the next video but for now
that's all thanks for watching goodbye