Colour Resemblance and Colour Realism

Dorsch, Fabian

doi:10.4000/estetica.1794

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Journal article

Colour Resemblance and Colour Realism

Dorsch, Fabian Université de Fribourg

2010

Published in:

Rivista di estetica / Luca Angelone. - Labont; Rosenberg& Sellier. - 2010, vol. 43, no. 1, p. 85-108

English One prominent ambition of theories of colour is to pay full justice to how colours are subjectively given to us; and another to reconcile this ﬁrst-personal perspective on colours with the third-personal one of the natural sciences. The goal of this article is to question whether we can satisfy the second ambition on the assumption that the ﬁrst should and can be met. I aim to defend a negative answer to this question by arguing that the various kinds of experienced colour resemblances – notably similarities in hue distance, sameness in superdeterminables, and colour resemblances between surfaces, volumes and illuminants – cannot be accounted for in terms of the mental representa-tion of the scientiﬁcally studied properties, which colours are best identiﬁed with in response to the second ambition.

Faculty

Faculté des lettres et des sciences humaines

Department

Département de Philosophie

Language