Xingyu Lyu
University of Mannheim
Color Physicalism is the thesis that colors are identical with physical properties, such as surface spectral reflectances. Color physicalism is normally developed as a form of posterior physicalism, which requires some constraints to single out the right epistemic possibility out of many epistemic possibilities that seem to be metaphysically possible for colors being physical properties. For color physicalism, one significant constraint is externalist representationalism of color experience, which claims that the phenomenal characters of color experience are determined by the representational content of the same experience, and that the representational content represents the worldly colors before one’s eye being in certain way. In this presentation, my aim is to explain why the combination of color physicalism and externalist representationalism is inconsistent, since it cannot account for simultaneous color contrast phenomena. I also aim to demonstrate that why simultaneous color contrast phenomena cannot be explained away as exceptions.
Chair: Emma Jaura
Time: September 8th, 15:20-15:50
Location: HS E.002
SOPhiA 2026 