A Hybrid View

Abstract

This chapter presents a hybrid view of color that depends on a view of objective color that can be called “the multiple-aspect view.” The multiple-aspect view of color holds that we can perceive the unchanging objective color of an object, even while it presents us with a variety of color appearances. On the hybrid view, it is only these color appearances that can be truly characterized using precise color language. Objective colors, on the other hand, can only be truly described at a coarser level of grain. The hybrid view allows us to capture the common-sense claims we would like to make about color while still allowing that there is considerable variation in precise color appearance across viewers and viewing circumstances, and that it would be arbitrary to pick out only a very small subset of these appearances as uniquely correct. The chapter also defends adverbialism as a view of color appearances.