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Philosophers have, it seems, given up the “common sense” view that colour
is an objective property of physical objects. In Colours (Cambridge University
Press, £32.50/$49.95, ISBN 0 521 47273 3) Barry Mauno argues that
the way our minds construe colours as phenomena plays an active part in the
way we evaluate the colour of physical objects. For him, colour is objective
in a sense, but qualitative in a way that goes beyond physical measures such
as wavelength. An interesting counterpoint is Valentine’s far more empirical
Cognitive and Computational Aspects of Face Recognition (Routledge, £45,
ISBN 0 415 11493 4) that assumes that the visual experience is a purely
physical one: the problem is how the mind stores and retrieves the data. But
here again qualitative mental categories – race, and indeed colour – can make
a big difference.