Lightness and Brightness and Other Confusions

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oth for perception of lightness (Gilchrist et al. 1999) and hue (Klarén and Fridell Anter 2011). But even if we experience that an object has almost the same colour in a different light, we can at the same time perceive a slight tone of colour that reveals the character of the light. For nominally achromatic surfaces this effect is more obvious than for nominally chromatic surfaces. We experience that the surface is white but we feel at the same time that it is illuminated with a light of a special quality and intensity. This involves not only light coming directly from the light source, but also light reflected from surrounding surfaces. Depending on modes of attention, a nominally white wall lit by ‘warm’ sunlight can be seen (with a reflective attitude) as slightly yellowish or (with living perception) as the “proper” or “real” colour of the wall experienced beyond the perceived colour. As a suggestion one could call this colour constancy colour 26 (Fig. 1). (See also Lightness and Brightness and Other Confusions in this volume). According to Alva Noë, different kinds of visual appearances can be experienced simultaneously. Noë gives an example from shape perception: When a circular plate is held up at an angle, we are able to experience circularity in what we simultaneously perceive as an elliptical shape. In the same way, we can experience, say, a white constancy colour in a surface that we simultaneously perceive as having a hue caused by light. (Noë 2004, pp 131–132). 26 Ewald Hering’s concept memory colour (Gedächtnisfarbe) touches on this phenomena, but confines to expected colours in objects: “What the layman calls the real colour of an object is a colour of the object that has become fixed, as it were, in his memory; I should like to call it the memory colour of the object”. Hering (1920). Constancy colour refers to a natural perceptual ‘skill’; we make ‘hypotheses’ of what the colour is from perceived visual information in a given context. Merleau-Ponty says that the “real” colour persists “not as a seen or thought-of quality, but through a non-sensory presence.” (Merleau-Ponty 2002, p 356). See also Klarén and Fridell Anter, 2011. 24
Figure 2. View of a winter day in Norway: The nominally white snow can be seen as slightly bluish and yellowish as effects of sunlight and shading or as pure white as a whiteness anchor. Beyond the perceived colours we feel the constancy colour, the ‘proper’ or ‘real’ colour of snow. (Photo: Ulf Klarén) All these colour and light interactions are what makes us perceive space. Normally we have no difficulties in making distinctions between what is caused by the light and what by the qualities of surfaces. Perhaps we do not pay attention or give interest to the accidental colour of direct light, of reflected light or of shadows; but intuitively the logically distributed colour variations caused by light, reflections and shadings are indispensable spatial qualities. Human experience of colour and light in space is both perceptual and cognitive. What we call adaptation is not limited to basic physiological reactions (Noë 2004, pp 1–3); it is an interplay between the individual and the world on many levels. These include the basic level of innate reactions, the level of perceptive skills based on direct experience of the world and the level of cultural context. Human aesthetic coherence GOTTLIEB BAUMGARTEN 27 , the originator of aesthetics as a specific academic discipline, tries to describe in his philosophical project a knowledge that implies a coherent intuitive understanding that is given to us directly by sense experiences. (Malmanger 2000, p 8). Knowledge based on the senses is not solely subordinate to logical knowledge; Baumgarten claims that aesthetic 27 German philosopher, 1714–1762 25
Page 5: Contents Foreword .................
Page 8 and 9: faculties. It is therefore most fit
Page 10 and 11: We are left with the paint chip. He
Page 12 and 13: The domain of colour psychophysics
Page 14 and 15: greater than the smallest colour di
Page 16 and 17: involved. It is worth mentioning th
Page 18 and 19: Ulf Klarén Natural Experiences and
Page 20 and 21: that without “benefit of logic”
Page 22 and 23: er of mental categories perceptions
Page 24 and 25: ence derives its origin from multip
Page 28 and 29: knowledge constitutes logical knowl
Page 30 and 31: INDIRECT EXPERIENCE culturally tran
Page 32 and 33: tinctions and colour similarities.
Page 34 and 35: References Baumgarten, Gottlieb (19
Page 36 and 37: Harald Arnkil Seeing and Perceiving
Page 38 and 39: ception is entirely integrated with
Page 40 and 41: parallel lines although they almost
Page 42 and 43: What Gregory is saying is that at t
Page 44 and 45: Zeki goes on to say to say that Mon
Page 46 and 47: References Billger, Monica (1999).
Page 48 and 49: Light and colour as experienced thr
Page 50 and 51: conventional concepts, which can be
Page 52 and 53: could be called the constancy colou
Page 54 and 55: colours yellow, red, blue and green
Page 56 and 57: etween about 380 and 780 nm, which
Page 58 and 59: Cadmium Red 1.0 0.8 0.6 0.4 0.2 0 4
Page 60 and 61: meaning of the word to be more corr
Page 62 and 63: Examples of photometric concepts an
Page 64 and 65: Examples of colorimetric concepts a
Page 66 and 67: Figure 15. Visual measuring of nomi
Page 68 and 69: References Billger, M. (1999). Colo
Page 70 and 71: Especially problematic is the situa
Page 72 and 73: continually confused with each othe
Page 74 and 75: W 05 10 20 30 40 50 C 60 90 70 80 7
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elation to the light source or obse
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ecause the lower reflectance of p i
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and religious symbolism. It is also
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Munsell’s principal hues and Heri
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As the inks developed the three-pri
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David Hubel has proposed that the f
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any hue is one of constant value. I
Page 90 and 91:
saturation, taken together, and is
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Discussion From all of this one may
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The real colours of objects To see
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measured either trichromatically wi
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Inherent, identity and nominal colo
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uniformly coloured. Colour variatio
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flexibility is a natural part of th
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About the Authors Harald Arnkil is
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Hardin wrote the book for philosoph
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- system 9-10, 13, 22, 29, 49, 51-
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- colour 8, 24-25, 30, 42, 49-50, 5
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Lightness and Brightness and Other Confusions

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