Stroud's Quest for Reality

Barry Stroud begins his investigation into the metaphysics of colour with a discussion of the elusiveness of the genuinely philosophical quest for reality. He insists upon a distinction between two ways in which the idea of a correspondence between perceptions or beliefs and the facts may be understood: first, as equivalent to the plain truth of the perceptions/beliefs in question; second, as conveying the metaphysical reality of the corresponding features of the world. I begin by voicing some suspicion about this distinction. Then I go on to consider various aspects of his central argument against the likelihood of any successful unmasking explanation in connection with colour. The final moves of this argument seem to me to be unstable. Either his conclusion that the unmasker's overall strategy is self-defeating is stronger than is warranted, or his insistence that no conclusive result is established in connection with the fundamental quest for reality is unduly cautious, depending on how precisely the dependence, which he rightly insists upon, of the identification of perceptions of colour upon some identification of colour properties themselves, is to be taken. There is an everyday sense in which beliefs and perceptions may critically be assessed. I measure my desk to check whether it is really 80 cm wide as I believe; and I take a shirt out of artificial lighting to confirm whether it is really the shade of blue which it appears. Certainly the metaphysical issue concerning the reality of colours is not to be decided in the same way; but Stroud's claim is stronger. He thinks that that issue concerns a quite different notion of correspondence, not to be equated with the plain truth of beliefs and perceptions as this is involved in such everyday cases. As he says,