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certain well-known objections to the primary quality view that arise, as is only proper given our starting-point, from
folk views about colour that seem, when combined with certain empirical facts, to be inconsistent with identifying
colours with physical properties.
The Prime Intuition About Colour
The Visually Conspicuous Nature of the Colours
There is something peculiarly visually conspicuous about the colours. Redness is visually presented in a way that having
inertial mass and being fragile, for instance, are not. When we teach the meanings of the colour words, we aim to get
our hearers to grasp the fact that they are words for the properties putatively presented in visual experience when
things look coloured. By contrast, the term  square picks out a property that is only visually conspicuous
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in objects that are coloured (in the wide sense in which anything not completely transparent is coloured).
However, although colours present themselves in visual experience in a peculiarly conspicuous way, we do not use  red
as the name of the experience itself, but rather of the property of the object putatively experienced when it looks red.
For we examine objects to determine their colour; we do not introspect. We look out, not in. Moreover, we hold
objects up to the light and look carefully before ruling on their colour; and we regard the opinions of others,
particularly others visually better placed than we are, as relevant to arriving at the right judgement concerning an
object's colour. In sum, the ways we arrive at judgements about the colours of objects have the distinctive hallmarks of
the ways we arrive at judgements about the nature of the objects we interact with. Our judgements of colour seek to
conform themselves to the nature of these objects, despite the fact the colour an object seems to have has special
authority in determining the colour it is.
We can sum this up by saying that some such clause as:
 red denotes the property of an object putatively presented in visual experience when that object looks red
is a subject-determining platitude for red. Let's call this platitude, and the corresponding platitudes for yellow, green,
and so on, the prime intuition about colour. The prime intuition is simply that red is the property objects look to have
when they look red and if this sounds like a triviality, as surely it does, that is all to the good. It is evidence that we
have found a secure starting-place.
Causation and Presentation
Despite its trivial sound, our prime intuition tells us something important about the metaphysics of colour when we
combine it with plausible views about what is required for an experience to be the presentation of a property.
The question: How must experience E be related to property P to count as the presentation of P, or, equivalently, to
count as E representing in experience that something is P? is a notoriously difficult one. Nevertheless, part of the story
is relatively uncontroversial. A necessary condition for E to be the presentation of P is that there be a causal
connection in normal cases. Sensations of
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heat are the way heat, that is, molecular kinetic energy in the case of objects whose molecules move, typically presents
itself to us; and essential to this is the fact that molecular kinetic energy typically causes sensations of heat in us.
What is controversial is what is sufficient for E to be the presentation of P. We know that mere causal connection is
not enough: there are far too many normal causes of any given experience. However, for present purposes we can
largely set to one side the hard question of what has to be added to causation to get presentation. We can work with the
rough schema: redness is the property of objects which typically causes them to look red in the right way, where the
phrase  the right way is simply code for whatever is needed to bring causation up to presentation, for whatever is
needed to make the right selection from the very many normal causes of a thing's looking red. In particular, the rough
schema gives us enough to show that the dispositional theory of colour is mistaken, or so I will now argue.
The Case Against the Dispositional Theory of Colour
Background on Causation
Before I present the case against the dispositional theory of colour based on the prime intuition, we need to note that
properties can be causes.
How things are at one time causally affects how things are at future times. How much coffee I drink at dinner affects
how much sleep I get that night; the film The Way We Were is about how the way its protagonists were in their youth led
to how they became in middle age; how steep an incline is, is responsible for how short of breath a climber is; and so
on and so forth. But talk of how things are is talk of properties; thus, to the (considerable) extent that these examples
strike us as commonplaces, it is a commonplace that causation relates properties.
A good question is how to integrate this commonplace into the familiar events framework for thinking about
causation. We might construe events (in the sense relevant to causation) as property-like entities. Or we might
distinguish two kinds of things that can stand
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in causal relations: events considered as concrete entities to be placed in the category of particulars, and, secondly,
certain properties of these events. There would then be two subjects for discussion: which events cause which events,
and which properties of these events are responsible for their standing in these causal relations. For it is because of the
properties the events have that they stand in the causal relations that they do stand in, and, moreover, we can
distinguish which properties of some cause-event matter for which properties of some effect-event the steepness of
the incline matters for how short of breath the climber is, but the colour of my sweater is neither here nor there.
It does not matter for our purposes which strategy is the right one. What matters is that properties are causes, however
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this fact should be integrated into our talk of events causing events. With this background we can now present the
case against the dispositional theory of colour.
Dispositions Are not Causes
The dispositional theory of colour is mistaken because dispositions are not causes, and, in particular, are not causes of [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]