The Philosophy of Color
Summary
TLDRThis script explores the concept of color as both a scientific phenomenon and a perceptual experience. It discusses cross-modal correspondence, where senses like sight and hearing intertwine, using examples like the association of red with heat and blue with cold. The script delves into color categorization across languages, the psychological impact of color, and philosophical debates on color's nature. It contrasts Newton's scientific view of color as light waves with Goethe's perception-based approach, emphasizing our active role in creating color through interaction with the world.
Takeaways
- 🔴 Cross-modal Correspondence: We associate colors with sensations like temperature, with red often linked to hot and blue to cold.
- 👥 Synesthesia: A condition where individuals experience sensory overlap, such as associating numbers with specific colors.
- 🌐 Cultural Influences: Color perceptions vary across cultures, affecting how we assign meanings to colors and their usage in different settings.
- 🌈 Basic Color Categories: Research identified 11 basic color categories that languages around the world use to describe colors.
- 🌟 Ethnocentric Bias in Color Studies: Criticisms suggest that some color perception studies may be biased towards Western perspectives.
- 🌍 Universal Perceptions: Despite cultural differences, people globally tend to perceive blue as cool and red as warm.
- 🎨 Color in Art and Media: Colors are used symbolically in various media, with different colors representing different emotions or concepts.
- 🌌 Newton's and Goethe's Theories: Two contrasting views on color, one scientific and analytical (Newton), the other perceptual and experiential (Goethe).
- 👀 Color Perception as a Conscious Event: Colors are not just physical light but are experienced through the interaction between the observer and the observed.
- 🧠 Philosophical Views on Color: Philosophers propose different theories about color, including the idea that color is not an inherent property but a relational one.
Q & A
What is cross-modal correspondence?
-Cross-modal correspondence is a phenomenon where multiple sensory modalities interact. For example, associating the color red with hot and blue with cold is an instance where visual perception is connected to the perception of temperature.
What is synesthesia and how does it relate to color perception?
-Synesthesia is a perceptual phenomenon where stimulation of one sensory or cognitive pathway leads to involuntary experiences in another. For instance, some people with synesthesia associate numbers with specific colors, like two being violet and five being yellow.
What is the McGurk effect and how does it connect to color perception?
-The McGurk effect is a perceptual illusion where the perception of a sound changes when a person sees a mouth articulating a different sound. It illustrates how visual perception can influence auditory perception.
What is the Bouba/Kiki effect and how does it relate to color?
-The Bouba/Kiki effect is a phenomenon where people tend to associate rounded shapes with the name 'bouba' and spiky shapes with 'kiki'. It shows how visual shapes can influence auditory perception.
What were the 11 basic color categories identified by Brent Berlin and Paul Kay in their study?
-The 11 basic color categories identified by Brent Berlin and Paul Kay are white, black, red, green, yellow, blue, brown, purple, pink, orange, and gray.
What criticism does the Berlin and Kay study face regarding color perception?
-The study has been criticized for assuming an ethnocentric bias based on Western Scientific and political thought, implying that more 'primitive' cultures have not evolved to capture the true categories of color that Western languages have.
How do colors like red and blue relate to concepts in video games?
-In video games, red is often associated with health or danger, blue with mana or energy, and green with stamina. These associations are based on cultural perceptions of colors as warm or cool.
What is the historical significance of the color purple?
-Historically, purple was associated with royalty because the dye was made from a rare sea snail, making it expensive and available only to the wealthy.
How does the perception of color relate to our physical sensations of warmth and cold?
-Our skin's physical response to temperature (getting red when warm and blue when cold) influences our perception of colors as warm or cool.
What does Newton's scientific description of light tell us about color?
-Newton's description of light as waves of electromagnetic radiation explains that visible light consists of wavelengths perceived by the human eye as colors. The colors we see are the result of how light is reflected by objects and detected by the cone cells in our eyes.
How did Goethe's approach to color differ from Newton's?
-While Newton focused on systematically analyzing color scientifically, Goethe was interested in color as we perceive it. He explored how color affects us emotionally and how our perception of color is influenced by the context in which we see it.
Outlines
🔴 Perception of Color and Temperature
This paragraph discusses the cross-modal correspondence between colors and temperature. It explains how red is commonly associated with heat and blue with coldness, a phenomenon stemming from our sensory perceptions. The concept of synesthesia is introduced, where individuals link numbers with specific colors. The script also touches on the McGurk effect, where visual cues alter auditory perception, and the Bouba-Kiki effect, which illustrates how shape influences the association with sound. The focus then shifts to the linguistic aspect, mentioning a study by Brent Berlin and Paul Kay that identified 11 basic color categories across different languages. The study's implications and criticisms are briefly discussed, highlighting potential ethnocentric bias. The paragraph concludes with a universal observation that people worldwide perceive blue as cool and red as warm, suggesting a fundamental human sensory experience.
🌈 Theories of Color Perception
This paragraph delves into the scientific and perceptual theories of color. It contrasts the analytical approach of Isaac Newton, who saw color as a property of light, with the poetic perspective of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, who focused on how humans perceive color. Goethe's experiments with colored shadows and his color wheel, which placed complementary colors opposite each other, are highlighted. The paragraph also explores the concept of 'accidental color' and how the brain strives for visual harmony by creating complementary colors. It discusses the idea that color is not just a physical property but also a conscious event resulting from the interaction between the observer and the observed. Philosophical theories of color are introduced, comparing the views of Locke and Newton, who saw color as secondary qualities, with those of Goethe, who emphasized the active role of the observer in perceiving color.
👀 The Active Role of Perception
The third paragraph examines the active role of perception in understanding color. It introduces the ecological theory of color, which views color not as an intrinsic property of objects but as a relational property between the environment and the perceiving animal. The concept of 'affordances' is discussed, which refers to the opportunities for interaction that the environment presents. The paragraph contrasts this with the traditional view that color is a dispositional property of objects. It argues that color should be seen as emerging from the interaction between light and sight, rather than being a passive observation. The ecological approach emphasizes the active, exploring nature of animals, including humans, in their perception of color.
🐟 Color Perception Across Species
This paragraph explores how color perception varies across different species and its evolutionary significance. It discusses how the number of cone cells in the eye determines the range of colors an animal can see, from monochromats that perceive only light intensity to trichromats like humans who have a broader color spectrum. The paragraph also explains how color perception is not arbitrary but is adapted to the ecological needs of the species. For example, deep-sea fish have limited color perception due to their dark environment, while primates have evolved to see brightly colored fruits. The co-evolution of primate perception and colored fruits is highlighted, showing how the environment and the animal mutually shape each other's evolution. The paragraph concludes by emphasizing that our associations with colors reflect our participatory relationship with the world.
Mindmap
Keywords
💡Cross-modal Correspondence
💡Synesthesia
💡McCollough Effect
💡Booth-Kiiki Effect
💡Basic Color Categories
💡Ethnocentric Bias
💡Color Constancy
💡Complementary Colors
💡Perceptual Experience
💡Color as a Conscious Event
💡Perceiver Relativity
Highlights
Cross-modal correspondence is the phenomenon where multiple sensory modalities interact, such as associating red with heat and blue with cold.
Synesthesia allows some people to associate things like numbers with colors, such as associating the number two with violet and five with yellow.
The Buba-Kiki effect shows that people across different cultures associate certain shapes with specific sounds, like 'Kiki' for angular shapes and 'Buba' for rounded shapes.
Berlin and Kay's 1969 study of 20 languages identified 11 basic color categories, noting that some languages lack words for colors like brown, purple, and orange.
There is a pattern in the emergence of color categories in languages, with words for brown, purple, pink, orange, and gray coming after categories for green and blue.
Color associations vary across cultures, like the association of orange with enlightenment in Buddhist traditions, or the use of purple for royalty due to the rarity of purple dye.
Warm colors like red and cool colors like blue are universal color associations across cultures, possibly rooted in the human perception of skin temperature and environmental landscapes.
Newton's scientific approach to color focuses on the physical properties of light as electromagnetic waves, with colors being the result of varying wavelengths perceived by our cone cells.
Goethe's approach to color emphasizes the subjective, experiential aspect of color perception, with complementary colors creating balance in visual experience.
Goethe's concept of accidental color illustrates how our eyes, after prolonged exposure to one color, will produce its complementary color to create a balanced visual experience.
Color perception is a participatory interaction between the observer and the environment, suggesting that we actively contribute to how we perceive colors.
The ecological theory of color perception emphasizes that organisms and their environments co-determine each other, with color being a relational property rather than just a physical one.
Colors help animals, including humans, adapt to their environments by providing clues for survival, such as distinguishing ripe fruit from foliage.
Different animals perceive colors differently based on the number of cone cells in their eyes, with humans being trichromats, while some animals like pigeons might have five types of cones.
The relationship between primate color vision and fruit evolution suggests that brightly colored fruits co-evolved with primate color perception to benefit both species.
Transcripts
when you look at most sync designs the
knob that controls the hot water is
usually red and the knob that controls
cold water is usually blue we associate
red with hot and blue with cold this
phenomenon is an instance of cross-modal
Correspondence a perception where
multiple sensory modalities interact in
this case our visual perception is
connected to our perception of
temperature there are a few other
examples of this like synesthesia a word
that traces back to Greek words that
mean together sensation people with
synesthesia can associate things like
numbers and colors so two might be
Violet and five might be yellow there's
also the maguric effect where the same
sound can elicit different perceptions
based on how we see a person speaking
that sound
foreign
here our visual perception and auditory
perception are becoming intertwined the
buba Kiki effect is another instance of
this if I present these two images to
you which one would you call buba and
which one would you call Kiki both
American college undergraduates and
Tamil speakers in India are more likely
to call the left shape Kiki and the
right shape buba the way we see these
shapes is interacting with the way we
hear sounds but for this video I'm
mostly concerned with color in 1969
Brent Berlin and Paul K studied 20
different languages from around the
world and the words they have for
different colors they identified a total
of 11 basic color categories white black
red green yellow blue brown purple pink
orange and gray in particular they
noticed that some languages didn't have
all 11 words and that there was a
pattern for which words a language had
words for brown purple pink orange and
gray were never present in languages
that didn't already distinguish between
green and blue they broke this pattern
turned down into a sequence purple pink
orange and gray come after brown brown
comes after blue blue is preceded by
both green and yellow green and yellow
come after red and finally the most
basic language categories are dark cool
and light warm encompassing the set of
all cool colors and warm colors as two
categories now it's important to mention
that this study has been criticized it
assumes an ethnocentric bias based on
Western Scientific and political thought
it's basically implying this idea of
progress where more primitive cultures
have not sufficiently evolved to capture
the true categories of color that the
Western languages have I don't think
Berlin and K have successfully proven
that speakers of so-called primitive
languages can't perceive the same range
of colors that we can they just use
different category systems to describe
them but what can be said conclusively
is that according to the world color
survey people all over the world seem to
perceive blue as cool and red is warm
now this might not be particularly
surprising we make all kinds of
associations between in colors and
Concepts in video games the health bar
is often red the Mana bar is usually
blue and stamina is green we often
associate red with love anger or power
blue has a sophisticated reliable
corporate Vibe orange is usually
associated with energy taste
extroversion or Amusement but these
symbols vary cross-culturally Buddhist
monks wear orange robes where orange
symbolizes Enlightenment in Placebo
studies pills with hot colors like red
or yellow work better as stimulants
whereas pills with cool colors like blue
or purple work better as depressants
these results do seem to depend on
culture though purple was historically
associated with royalty because purple
dye was made from a species of sea snail
which excreted it from a single gland
the hypobranchial gland in very small
quantities this made the dive very rare
and was usually only available to the
very wealthy so just because of this
coincidence that Psychological
Association emerged the one color
Association that remains consistent
across cultures is cool and warm this
might just be coincidence but it Taps
into a much more universal one our skin
gets red when we're warm and goes blue
when we're cold when we gaze at a warm
sunny landscape we're presented with
warm colors when we gaze at a cold
overcast day we're presented with cool
colors so what even is color in the
first place I'm going to argue that
there are two ways of describing it
which are basically captured by two
figures Newton and Gerta let's start
with Newton in the scientific
description of light visible light can
be understood as waves of
electromagnetic radiation the human eye
can perceive wavelengths of about 400 to
700 nanometers or one nanometer is one
billionth of a meter the visible colors
on the Spectrum increase from red to
Violet following the mnemonic Roy G Biv
which is also a great song by Boards of
Canada
the retinas of our eyes have things
called cone cells we have three types of
those one responds really well to blue
light one to green and one to Red the
colors we see in the world are the
result of the way in which these
receptors respond to different levels of
Blues greens and reds that are reflected
by materials
in the book The physics and chemistry of
color by Kurt Nassau he enumerates 15
different causes of color including
everything from the incandescence of
flames the rotations of blue ice and
water and the interference of soap
bubbles a lot of our scientific
understanding of color has its roots in
an experiment by Isaac Newton conducted
in 1704. he constructed a triangular
prism and Shone a Sunbeam through it
refracting its light colors emerged from
this process of refraction which he
called a spectrum about a hundred years
later gota the German poet responsible
for Faust became interested in color too
guten knew about Newton's experiments
and tested it himself with prisms he
borrowed from a friend as you do we've
all got that one friend who always has a
bunch of prisms on hand while Newton was
concerned with systematically analyzing
color in a scientific way gota was
interested in color as we see it he
conducted experiments with colored
Shadows he noticed that if a colored
light is shown on an object and a white
light is shown on its opposite side we
perceive the shadow as the colors
complement in his color wheel he
situated these complementary colors
opposite one another in his view our
perception strives for Unity yellow
demands violet orange demands blue
purple demands green and vice versa
another instance of this is the
phenomenon of accidental color here I've
made the screen yellow pause the video
and stare into the yellow for 30 seconds
or so and then unpause
your eyes had become accustomed to the
yellow and when the screen abruptly
switched to White your perception
conjured a violet Hue or I wants to
bring Harmony to our visual experience
the eye creates Freedom For Itself by
producing the opposite of that which is
forced upon it creating in this way a
satisfying whole
goto was also very concerned with how
color affects us the color palette of a
scene tells us about the seasons and
cycles of our world they show us how to
tell one thing from another we wouldn't
be able to spot these berries if they
weren't brightly colored we see certain
colors as warm and textural we see
others as cold and spatial yellows seem
to come towards us and blues seem to
recede away not only is color associated
with temperature but also proximity and
distance Guta took this so seriously
that his home was painted very
deliberately with a yellow dining room
to create a sense of warmth and pleasure
and a greenish blue study to promote a
stimulating calming environment where
Newton's approach was analytic Goods
approach was poetic these aren't
necessarily contradictory views either
they're just two ways of looking at
things to elucidate this distinction
consider the scientist Mary she exists
in a black and white world but she can
still study color she has access to
physical descriptions of color she can
tell you which wavelengths correspond to
each color but she can't see them she
has no conscious experience of color now
suppose Mary is able to exit this black
and white world and take in the
perceptual experience of color for the
first time the question is will Mary
gain any new understanding this thought
experiment was proposed by Frank Jackson
in 1982. Newton approached color as Mary
did from her black and white World while
Gutta was concerned with the
understanding Mary achieved from
actually seeing color gutter urged that
physical descriptions of color only tell
half the story we can't separate the
color in the world from the color as we
see it he didn't view humans as passive
observers of things for him the outer
World calls forth the inner World
meeting in a participatory interaction
color isn't just a light particles out
there in the world nor is it a conscious
representation of the light in the world
instead color arises through the
interplay of light in sight
so in this way we don't just take color
in color emerges from our interaction
with the world in a sense we put a
little bit of ourselves into the color
in the book interaction of color the
artist Joseph Albers discusses the way
in which color is relative in visual
perception a color is almost never seen
as it really is as it physically is this
fact makes color the most relative
medium in Art here's an experiment he
describes there are three pots of water
in front of you containing warm lukewarm
and cold water you dip your hands into
each outer container left hand in the
leftmost pot and right hand in the
rightmost part you perceive two
different temperatures warm on the left
and cold on the right but then you dip
both hands in the middle container you
perceive two different temperatures
again but this time in reverse order
your left hand feels cold and your right
hand feels warm but in reality the water
is neither of these temperatures it's
lukewarm the context of our prior
experience altered our perception in the
same way that the relative temperature
of our hands deceives Us in this haptic
illusion or physical fact and our
conscious experience don't match optical
illusions also deceive they cause us to
see colors other than those with which
we are confronted physically remember
this dress as of the recording of this
video this meme blew up just over eight
years ago people argued endlessly over
whether the dress was black and blue or
white and gold the reason nobody could
agree was because people's visual
systems were interpreting the photograph
in different ways in particular
different people assumed different
conditions of Illumination when we look
at a scene with different levels of
Illumination we're able to recognize
different colors as the same a
phenomenon called color constancy
depending on how you initially
interpreted the illumination of this
Photograph you could see the dress with
completely different colors
here's another illusion you've probably
seen before we have a cylinder casting a
shadow on a floor of tiles it appears
that the tiles A and B are different
colors a looks gray while B looks white
but when you scrutinize the image more
closely you realize that these tiles are
in fact identical the context of the
scene and the interpretation we have for
what's happening is changing the way we
see these colors even now when you know
that these colors are the same you don't
see them that way
okay last one take a look at the circles
in the middle the left Circle appears
red and the right Circle appears green
but once again if I zoom in it becomes
clear that each circle is in fact yellow
all of these Illusions demonstrate a key
Insight that go to new colors as we see
them are not merely light color is a
conscious event resulting from the
interplay between the Observer and The
observed the French post-impressionist
artist Paul Cezanne wrote that color is
the place where our brain and the
universe meet
so what do philosophers make of all this
well there's a number of different takes
people have but in this video I'll be
discussing two theories that I think
capture the ancient disagreement between
Newton and Gerta let's start with the
Newton side of things and one of the
most famous distinctions in all of
philosophy John Locke's primary and
secondary qualities primary qualities
are the properties of things as they are
in the world independent of our
perception take a basketball for example
the fact that the basketball is
spherical is an inherent property of
that object and does not depend on an
observer seeing it that way then there
are secondary qualities the stuff that
depends on the Observer like smell taste
sound and of course color the basketball
being orange and the sound it makes when
you bounce it are each secondary
qualities objects don't exactly have
colors in this way but they have
dispositional properties to give rise to
Colors the basketball is not orange
itself but exists in such a way that it
appears orange to an observer when they
look at it under the right conditions
some people call this a received view of
color since the properties of the object
result in The Observer receiving that
sense experience on the other side of
things we have a take that's more more
in the spirit of Gerta Evan Thompson JJ
Gibson and some others put forward
what's known as an action-based
ecological theory of color on first
glance it seems pretty similar to the
received view they still don't consider
colors intrinsic properties of things in
the world independent of any perceiver
it depends in part on the perception of
the color itself color is a relational
property connecting the environment with
a perceiving animal but this view also
wants to emphasize the fact that at the
end of the day we're still basically
animals he who understands the baboon
would do more for metaphysics than Locke
that quote is from none other than
Charles Darwin biologists will always
tell us that an organism can't be
understood in isolation apart from the
world and in the same way that
organism's environment or Niche can't be
understood apart from the organism in
fact the animal and its environment are
connected in a much deeper way than you
might expect an organism finds itself in
an environment but they don't just hang
out there they interact with their
surroundings based on the physical
signals the environment gives them
through this they transform the
environment and simultaneously the
environment itself transforms the
organism by defining what traits are
selected evolutionarily the organism in
the environment co-determine each other
this co-determinacy is a bit of a
problem for people like Locke and Newton
for them perception involves
representing items of sense data which
are the immediate objects of perception
these representations stand in for some
physical object in the external world so
we aren't actually looking out at the
world we're looking through our
representations this view treats the
animal and its environment as separate
systems rather than two components of
one system in the ecological approach to
visual perception Gibson expresses some
issues with this take as animals our
perception is always guided perception
and action evolve together and are
inseparable our perception guides the
activity in our motor system and our
motor system guides perception for
Gibson environments have particular
relational properties called affordances
things that give us an opportunity to
interact with them trees in relation to
certain animals afford climbing they can
be described as climb uppable the other
side of the coin is F activities the
properties of animals that allow an
opportunity for interaction with the
environment lizards and monkeys can
climb things so they possess the
effectivity climbing thing these kinds
of properties are really weird since
they're almost objective and subjective
at the same time it's both a fact of the
environment and effective Behavior it's
both physical and psychological Gibson
ultimately wants to say that the colors
we see have lawful correlations with
particular ecological properties like
affordances
so what's even the difference here with
the lock-in or the Newtonian view they
both agree that color depends on the
Observer and can't be understood as
intrinsic properties of the world
independent of our perception
Neuroscience can model the features of
color as we perceive them so it might be
tempting to conclude that object color
is really Just an Illusion and we can
reduce it to neural states in the visual
system but Thompson and Gibson want to
avoid this instead of situating color
exclusively in the brain they want to
take into account the relation with the
environment
instead of color being a dispositional
property on the physical level it's on
the ecological level this view is
naturalistic in that it strives to be in
harmony with visual science but that
doesn't mean it wants to reduce animals
like humans to collections of neural
activity in physical processes the
perceiver is treated as an active
exploring animal rather than a
disembodied spectator who just takes the
colors in colors are connected with
affordances and F activities especially
in their roles as categories and signals
to us to satisfy our adaptive ecological
needs they reveal what the environment
can do to us and what we can do to the
environment it's also worth noting that
the colors we see are not the same
colors that other animals see I
mentioned earlier that humans have three
types of cone cells in the eye that
process color which makes us trichromats
but this is not the norm animals like
squirrels rabbits some species of fish
and possibly cats and dogs only have two
goldfish and turtles have four and
pigeons and Ducks might even have five
even Within These categories there's
variation humans and honeybees are both
trackromats but the colors the honeybee
sees is shifted towards the ultraviolet
so why is this a thing well colors
aren't just pretty they help us identify
objects in the world by allowing us to
segment visual scenes and they also give
us clues about the objects in the scene
it can show us how ripe a fruit is or
how hydrated a plant is this leads us to
Evan Thompson's argument from perceiver
relativity color vision helps us split
up the visual scene into regions of
distinct surfaces or objects color
vision varies considerably throughout
the animal world therefore the way we
split up a scene is also also likely to
vary throughout the animal world
therefore what counts as a surface in
visual perception depends on the
perceiver
all of this makes sense when you
consider evolutionary adaptation
consider deep sea fish for example when
you're that far down in the ocean things
are pretty dark these creepy little guys
are usually monochromats meaning that
they only see the intensity of light but
no color a lot of them hunt their prey
from below so their light perception is
tuned to be sensitive to the maximum
contrast to detect movement in their
prey the further up in the ocean you go
where there is much more light around
fish have much more variety in the
colors they're able to perceive
now what about us humans since the 1950s
some people have suggested that the way
primate perception is configured
actually co-evolved with colored fruits
and recent studies support this view too
species of monkeys like macaques patas
monkeys and guanans all have similar
sensitivities in mid-wave pigment and
long wave pigment they all look very
different and live in very different
habitats but they also all eat a lot of
fruit these fruits conveniently tend to
be very brightly colored and stand out
in the green foliage now why would these
fruits be such that they're easy for
monkeys to spot this is obviously great
for the monkeys but it's also in the
fruit's best interest the monkeys pick
and eat the fruit often spitting out the
large seeds far away they also swallow
the smaller seeds and excrete them out
later likely much further away this
allows the fruit species to spread far
and wide throughout the environment so
it's evolutionarily adaptive for them to
look brightly colored for the monkeys
since the monkeys are doing them a solid
the animal in the environment
co-determine each other on an
evolutionary time scale it becomes clear
that the colors an animal perceives are
not arbitrary they depend on the
participatory relationship between the
animal and their environment the
associations we have with colors reveal
this harmony between us and the world
thanks for watching
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