Touchy-Feely colour

The default opinion in philosophy is that we perceive colours to be intrinsic properties of things, properties that objects have regardless of their relations with perceivers. This intrinsic-intuition is considered a crucial objection to relational theories of colour, ones that account for colours in terms of interactions between perceivers and objects. In this paper I defend relationism by analysing the motivation for the intrinsic-intuition. Firstly, I argue that intuition relies on a historically entrenched, passive model of vision. Secondly, I discuss recent psychophysical work on the connection between colour and perceived material stability. Finally, I develop a relationist phenomenology of colour by making the comparison between colour vision and the active – and interactive – sense of touch.