Behavioral and Brain Sciences

Table of Contents - 2003 - Volume 26, Issue 01  

Short Communication

In favor of an ecological account of color

Scott Huettel a1, Thomas Polger a2 and Michael Riley a3

a1 Departments of Psychiatry and Neurobiology, and Brain Imaging and Analysis Center, Duke University Medical Center, Durham, NC 27710 scott.huettel@duke.edu www.biac.duke.edu/people/faculty/huettel.asp
a2 Department of Philosophy, University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, OH 45221-0374 thomas.polger@uc.edu homepages.uc.edu/~polgertw
a3 Department of Psychology, University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, OH 45221-0376 michael.riley@uc.edu homepages.uc.edu/~rileym/pmdl/RileyLab

Abstract

Byrne & Hilbert understate the difficulties facing their version of color realism. We doubt that they can fix reflectance types and magnitudes in a way that does not invoke relations to perceivers. B&H's account, therefore, resembles the dispositional or ecological accounts that they dismiss. This is a good thing, for a dispositional account is promising if understood in an ecological framework.