The phenomena of "color" pose a special puzzle to philosophers characterizing the mind, the world, and the interaction of the two. In various ways, both subjective and objective, both appearance and reality, color has been the subject of wide disagreement. Besides the extreme view that colors are literally sensations—which would imply that they are not in the category of properties and that they last precisely as long as sensations—the main views are these.

Physicalism

D. M. Armstrong, J. J. C. Smart, and others have suggested that red (or being red), for example, is a physical property—perhaps a surface physical characteristic (like Robert Boyle's "textures")—or a propensity to reflect some kinds of light more than others. The threat that physical science might be unable to find a predicate coextensive with "red" seems small; but there are challenges to the idea that any such property can...