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Why bother about opponency? Our theoretical ideas on elementary colour coding have changed our language of experience

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 August 2019

Rainer J. Mausfeld
Affiliation:
Institute for Psychology, University of Kiel, D-24098 Kiel, Germanymausfeld@psychologie.uni-kiel.de

Abstract

There is no natural and pretheoretical classification of colour appearances into hue, saturation, brightness, unique hues, and so on. Rather, our theoretical insights into the coding of colour have reciprocally shaped the way we talk about colour appearances. Opponency is only one of many fundamental aspects of colour coding, and we are hardly justified in ascribing some theoretical prominance to it.

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Copyright
1997 Cambridge University Press

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