and Knowing Which

Metamerism, the capacity of some colours to present the same colour appearance in some scenes and conditions of illumination, can raise an epistemological problem. In an environment known to be populated by metameric pairs, a perceiver does not know which colour he is perceiving. Metamerism may pose the problem, but colour constancy provides the solution. In varying the conditions of illumination, the col-our will present a different colour appearance, allowing the perceiver to distinguish it from its metameric pair thus allowing him to know which colour he is perceiving. The central question of this paper is what experience must be like in order for this to be so. I argue that colour experience must have a presentational phenomenology if it can have this epistemic significance. Nature loves to hide. Heraclitus 1. Two conceptions of experience When Norm perceives a red tomato in his garden, Norm perceives the tomato and its sensible qualities—Norm perceives something red, round, and bulgy. Sensible qualities are qualities that objects in the material environment are perceived to have. They are properties, not of experience, but of the objects of experience. Not only does Norm per-ceive the tomato to be red but Norm also perceives the qualitative char-acter of that colour. Norm perceives what red is like—Norm can see that it is reddish and not at all bluish. Moreover, there is a way in which it is like for Norm to perceive the tomato. What it is like for Norm to perceive the red tomato is different from what it is like for Norm to per-ceive a green tomato. Not only are these experiences numerically dis-tinct they are qualitatively distinct as well. Let us say that this qualitative distinction is a difference in the phe-nomenal character of these experiences. Phenomenal characters, so understood, are properties of experience at least in the minimal sense corresponding to the fact that we can intelligibly classify experiences on the basis of their phenomenology. What it is like for Norm to perceive