Merlijn, the article still seems to be down.
Anyway, I doubt I'd disagree with their point of view, I'd just call it useless and impractical and inconsistent with the language the rest of the world speaks.
I don't debate that you can choose to define color as the objective (4-D of course) physical structure. I'm simply observing that such a definition is very useless and doesn't apply to the ways the idea "color" is actually used by people. A paradigm case argument would easily show that such a conception of color means you're speaking a different language and so your view on the matter can be dismissed by all of us speaking normal language.
Originally posted by Adam
Colour is a physical property of energy and materials.
First, although it's a side point, properties are not physical -- they're about the physical. For something to be physical, that means it's made up of matter/energy. There is no particle or substance in the universe which is a property, properties are only conceptual ways of classifying the effects those external things have. The property of being able to cause the sensation of color when interacting with an eye and brain is dependent on the idea of the possibility of the eye and brain being there and being connected.
A useful way of thinking would say that the cause of color is a property of energy and materials. Certainly we often call that just color for short, but the actual meaning of it is cause of color (with an implied clause that it's from the point of view of human perception).
If you have even the slightest familiarity with science, you should know that a piece of the sky does not enter into the brain... nor do "physical properties" magically transport themselves from external objects into the brain. To take a direct realist approach like that is pushing science back 3000 years.
The eye is a device which alters light and produces signals based on it. These signals are further altered and interpreted by the brain. There is no giant lamp or light switch inside your head when you're seeing light.
The experience of the light is in patterns logically mapped from the external reality, but what you experience is not itself what's out there, only a representation. Your head isn't quite big enough to fit the universe in it.
If you define color as being the objective electromagnetic waves, then you can never experience it. You only experience the translated internal representation which is caused by electromagnetic waves + eye + brain and is a part of a brain state.
Take your pick... keep the definition of color that you're using and lose all ability to say that you actually experience color or know anything about the nature of it besides logical patterns of structure, or switch to the definition the rest of the world uses.
Originally posted by Adam
Our eyes developed to take advantage of that difference.
Our eyes (and brains) developed because things live longer when they can represent external things in clearly distinguishable ways like color. It's evolutionarily advantageous for the representations to retain the logical structure of the external thing, but so long as the logical pattern of it is the same (allowing you to know where things are in relation to you) there's no advantage to making the experience similar to what it would be to directly experience the thing we're getting the representation of. In fact, evolution requires us to have what amounts to artificial highlights of things, which allow us to better distinguish between structures so that we can tell which ones are food and which are dangerous, etc.
