The Primary Quality View Defended
"Perception of difference points strongly to the real existence of such differences, failure to perceive differences points much less strongly to the absence of differences"
(Arrnstrong: 1968: 286)
The primary quality view succeeds where all other contenders fail. From our prime intuition of colour we hold that colours are real properties of the world that then typically cause colour-experiences in perceivers. As the subjectivist position is incompatible with our prime intuition I argued that accepting subjectivism and thereby rejecting our prime intuition (and the way we use colour terms) is too high a price to pay, and therefore on these grounds I rejected subjectivism as a contender for the ontological status of colour. This left a choice between either the primary quality view and the secondary quality view. The secondary quality view, despite initially seeming intuitively impressive, however failed to meet its own commonsense demands. Though it captured an aspect of objectivity from our core belief of Paradigms, it however failed to meet the causal efficacy required to satisfy Explanation (which makes up the second part of our prime intuition). Further, the dispositionalist account was unable to gain the support it claimed from Unity, Perceptual Availability, and Revelation without appealing to some form of mysterious special status for colour perception that is removed from perception in general. Finally, the dispositionalist account, by appealing to standard observers and standard circumstances, failed to satisfy our extended colour concepts when faced with deviant cases such as metamers, and extra colours.
The primary quality view, by separating colour from colour-experience, is able to satisfy our colour conceptual schema. Colours are disjunctive microphysical properties (and complexes thereof) that play such and such causal roles. These colours, through typically causing colour- experience, are represented in colour-experience. The primary quality view is therefore able to meet our prime intuition of Paradigms and Explanation as it allows: that some things that we take to be paradigms of certain colours are that colour, therefore as rubies have the microphysical colour-property that plays the same causal role as other micro-physical
properties of things that are red, rubies are red; and as these microphysical properties typically cause (they are causally efficacious with respect to) colour-experience, something that is a certain colour does sometimes explain our visual experience of that thing being that colour.
By maintaining that colour-experience, though separate from colour, falls under our overarching conceptual colour schema, the primary quality view is able to satisfy our demands from Unity, Perceptual Availability, and Revelation. As colour-experience is typically caused by colour properties, a perceiver is justified upon having such and such a colour-experience, as well as certain background beliefs about causation and perception in general, in believing that s/he sees such and such a colour, though as with the rest of perception, allow that there is some room for error that may come about as a result of limitations in that persons perceptual system (having only a trichromatic system, or only a dichromatic system, or even only a tetrachromatic system). Unity and Revelation are beliefs from our phenomenological colour space in colour-experience. As we give colours colour- names through colour-experience it is through the experienced similarity and difference relations that we group colour shades under certain colour names and not under others. These relations are, however, anthropocentric as they are based in the colour-experiences that we as trichromats have, and are therefore corrigible, and not necessarily a part of colour proper.
Revelation, we have good reason to believe, is the weakest of our five core beliefs, though it is the belief that seems to cause the most confusion as it often mistakenly leaks through to our other core beliefs. As has been argued we have no reason to accept Revelation in the strong sense (as revealing through visual perception alone all the intrinsic feature of colour), and many reasons to reject it. Revelation can however be maintained as part of our overarching conceptual schema as long as it is restricted to colour-experience where what is revealed through colour-experience is just the phenomenological hue, saturation and
lightnesslbrightness dimensions. This doesn't give Revelation any great part in colour, though as I have argued we have no reason to expect it to play any greater a part than this.
The primary quality theorists, when faced with a ruby, are then able to say on the basis of their colour-experience and background beliefs that that ruby is red as it has a microphysical
property that is causing their red colour-experience. Further, they can say that the red of the ruby looks similar to the red of a strawberry, while it looks different to the green of an emerald, and that these similarity and difference relations in colour-experience are revealed
by each colour-experience's position in phenomenological colour space (defined by the hue, saturation and lightnesslbrightness dimensions). Through limitations in the human visual system, the primary quality theorist must accept that their perception is corrigible. This however, when viewed in the context of perception in general, lends commonsense support to the primary quality view. The primary quality theorist must accept that when in day-to-day activities s/he uses colour terms these are (for pragmatic reasons) based in an anthropocentric chauvinism, as colour terms were made by human beings and used to identify colours
through anthropocentric colour experiences. However as our coloUr concepts outrun our colour-experience, the primary quality theorist is able to maintain that, metaphysically, colours surpass our experience of them, and that if we were finer discriminators of colour we would then be able to identify a greater array of colours in the world.
As the primary quality view succeeds -where both subjectivism and dispositionalism have failed- in satisfying our core beliefs about colour, as well as accommodating them within our overarching (perceptual) conceptual schema, it is clear that the primary qualities should be awarded the ontological status of 'colour'.