Metamerism, Constancy, and Knowing Which

Abstract

Metamerism, the capacity of some colours to present the same colour appearance in some scenes and conditions of illumination, can raise an epistemological problem. In an environment known to be populated by metameric pairs, a perceiver does not know which colour he is perceiving. Metamerism may pose the problem, but colour constancy provides the solution. In varying the conditions of illumination, the colour will present a different colour appearance, allowing the perceiver to distinguish it from its metameric pair thus allowing him to know which colour lie is perceiving. The central question of this paper is what experience must be like in order for this to be so. I argue that colour experience must have a presentational phenomenology if it can have this epistemic significance.