The cornerstone of Joshua Gert's philosophy of color is that colors are primitive, objective properties possessed by things in our environment. There are also two crucial qualifications. Colors are rough and not precise. This means that, for example, while there are blue things there are no pure blue things (pure blue being any shade of blue that has no reddish or greenish tinge). Second, although there are no precise colors, there are precise color appearances. A philosophy of color that combines both objective colors and color appearances is what Gert calls a hybrid view. Primitive Colors contains numerous intriguing commitments that go beyond these central claims, including a devotion to neopragmatism, a language-first approach to color, and the endorsement of adverbialism about color appearances.
Stylistically, this book is a treat. Gert's writing is clear and readable, and there is a perpetual “bird's eye view” of various philosophical...
