Introduction to Cognitive Science:  Color

Schedule

Day 1  Why color is important: color basics & color perception.

• Questions about color
• The physical description of color
• Color space and color models (RGB, CMY, HSL, XYZ, Munsell)
• Basic phenomena of color perception.

Day 2  Color from a (neuro)psychological and from a linguistic perspective

• Neuronal basis of color opponency
• Trichromatic color perception and color constancy
• Color words and color categorization
• The typological aspect.
  

Day 3  Color from the perspective of developmental psychology, anthropology, and philosophy of mind

• The Sapir-Whorf thesis and the Kay-Kempton experiment
• Infant color categories and categorical perception
• Qualia and the hard problem.

Assignment

• Planning a simple experiment investigating color categorization.
• Small essay discussing Kay's & Maffi's (1999) ranked partitioning principles. 
• Applying these principles in order to discuss possible outcomes of the categorization experiment.

Course Material

A  Slides  

B Articles

Some Relevant Links

• Austen Clark (color, consciousness, vision)
• Jonathan Cohen (color, philosophy of language)
  
• Peter Gardenfors (concepts, mental spaces, festschrift, etc.)
• David Hilbert (color, philosophy of perception)
• Paul Kay (yes, he's the "Kay" in Berlin & Kay)

• Munsell Color Lab 
• 6x6x6 Color Cube 
• All 16.7 Million Colors on one page 
• Color Science - IBM 
• Color Matters - a thorough, illustrated exploration of the concept of color from several disciplines including physiology, psychology, philosophy, and art