Does colour exist: a support for colour as a mind independent property centered around the topics of colour constancy and perceptual colour variance

• Main Author: Lee, Alicia Ying Ying
• Other Authors: Teru Miyake
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: Nanyang Technological University 2024
• Subjects: Arts and Humanities; Colour perception
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/10356/174519
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Most people, at least those that are able to experience colour perception, would have an intuition about what colours are, based on their experience. Commonly, this intuition would be that colours are mind independent properties of physical objects, in other words, is something that exist out there in the external world. However, the question of what exactly colours are is one that is extremely challenging to answer. Firstly, Science directly opposes to the fact that there exist colours in the external world. Most scientific theories back the argument that colours only exist in our minds, which are caused by light waves causing certain neurons in our minds to fire. However, we cannot simply deny our intuition about the mind independence of colour. Naïve realism is a theory that aligns well with our intuitive everyday view of colour. That being said, there exist many other major theories in the current literature. Using the topic of colour constancy and perceptual colour variance, this paper discusses the reasons for why naïve realism—a proponent of the mind independence of colour is preferred over dispositionalism—a proponent of the mind dependence of colour.