โ Scribed by C. L. Hardin
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
Armstrong nicely lays out the desiderata for a satisfactory analysis:
If we consider the class of shapes and the class of the colours, then both classes exhibit the following interesting but puzzling characteristics which it would be agreeable to understand:
(a) the members "of the two classes all have something in common (they are all shapes, they are all colours) (b) but while they have something in common, they differ in that very respect (they all differ as shapes, they all differ as colours) (c) they exhibit a resemblance-order based upon their intrinsic natures (triangularity is like circularity, redness is more like orangeness than redness is like blueness), where closeness of resemblance has a limit in identity (d) they form a set-of-incompatibles (the same particular cannot be simultaneously triangular and circular, or red and blue all over). 1
In what follows, I shall produce an analysis of color resemblance and defend the assumptions on which it depends. The analysis will satisfy Armstrong's desiderata, and be superior to his own candidate without, I hope being too alien to the physicalism to which he subscribes. First the analysis, then the defense.
A color sample may be fully specified by three perceptual variables: hue, saturation and brightness. We shall here be concerned chiefly with hue and its related variable, saturation, which may be roughly understood as the perceived purity of a hue. Saturation is inversely related to the achromatic, or gray content of a color. Accordingly, we shall consider a set of colors with varying hues and saturations, but with the same brightness. Such a set may be modelled by a planar array; we shall employ a circle (Fig. 1). 2
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