M. Chirimuuta, “Outside Color: Perceptual Science and the Puzzle of Color in Philosophy” (MIT Press, 2015)
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What is the central puzzle about the nature of color that the book addresses?
Hi everyone, this is Marshall Poe. I'm the founder of the New Books Network, and I'm also a historian. I used to be a history professor, and I love maps, so I'm especially happy to tell you that this episode is sponsored by What's Your Map, which was the winner of the Best Education Podcast at the 2025 British Podcast Awards. What's Your Map is hosted by historian and prize-winning author Professor Jerry Broughton. In each episode, he invites a guest to share a map close to their heart and unfurl the ideas, inspirations, and stories behind it. I can tell you I've listened and it's fascinating. The podcast is in its sixth series and is enjoyed by audiences around the globe. You can explore all the maps in the podcast online.
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Hello, and welcome to New Books and Philosophy, a podcast channel with the New Books Network. I'm Carrie Figdor, Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Iowa, and I'm co-host of the channel along with Robert Talese, Professor of Philosophy at Vanderbilt University. Together, we bring you conversations with philosophers about their new books, drawing from a wide range of areas of contemporary philosophical inquiry. Today's interview is with Majrita Chirimuta, a professor of philosophy, assistant professor of philosophy, in the Department of the History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Pittsburgh. And her book, Outside Color, Perceptual Science and the Puzzle of Color in Philosophy, is just out from the MIT Press.
What is color? On the one hand, it seems obvious that it is a property of objects. Roses are red, violets are blue, and so on. On the other hand, even the red of a single petal of a rose differs in different lighting conditions or when seen from different angles. The basic physical elements that make up the rose don't have colors. And surfaces that we see as having the same color, say red, do not have the same light reflectance properties. So is color instead a property of a perceptual mental state rather than of a perceived object? Or maybe it's a relation between a perceiver and an object. In Outside Color, Chirimuta defends an ontology of color that aims to capture the implicit ontological commitments of contemporary perceptual science.
She argues for color adverbialism, according to which color perception is an action-guiding interaction between an organism with the appropriate visual system and the environment, and color is a property of this process. On her view, color vision is not for perceiving colors, it is for perceiving things, helping us to distinguish them from background and each other relative to the interests of each perceiver. By providing a fresh perspective on an old philosophical problem, outside color promises to be an influential contribution to the debate about color and about perception generally. Let's turn to the interview. Hello, Marjorita Chirimuta, are you there?
Hello, Carrie.
Hi, glad to have you with New Books in Philosophy.
Well, thank you very much for the invitation. It's lovely to have the chance to talk.
Yeah, well, it's a really, really interesting book, Outside Color. You have a background in perceptual science, which I hope you'll tell us about in a second. But the whole book kind of presents a, you know, which in a sense a very to me intuitive sort of view of color, ontology of color derived from the perceptual science and other trends actually going on in activism in particular in cognitive science more generally than perceptual science.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is the central puzzle about the nature of color that the book addresses?
0:00–6:59
2
How does Majrita Chirimuta’s academic background lead to her work on color perception?
6:59–15:04
3
What is ‘color adverbialism’ and how does it differ from traditional realist or anti‑realist accounts?
15:04–22:10
4
How does the color‑contrast effect illustrate the limits of object‑based color theories?
22:10–30:49
5
What role does ‘perceptual pragmatism’ play in explaining why colors are useful for action?
30:49–40:06
6
How does the debate between simple resilient and complex Phrygian views shape the content of color experience?
40:06–47:53
7
When do we consider a color perception a misperception, and how does the pragmatic framework handle it?
47:53–56:18
8
What future research directions does Chirimuta envision for color constancy and philosophy of neuroscience?
56:18–1:05:54
Speakers
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