ABSTRACT
Most philosophers are colour monists, and if they are realists, they likely believe that there are a plurality of colours— that things are blue, yellow, and red, mauve and magenta, and many other colours, both named and unnamed. Nor is colour pluralism the claim that objects can be multi-coloured. Though colour monism is the orthodox position in the philosophy of colour, it is rarely held explicitly with its commitments articulated clearly. The colour pluralist concedes to the monist that there is a unity to a plurality of colours displayed in the relations of similarity and difference, determination, and exclusion in which they stand. The pluralist was represented as retaining the colour monist’s commitment to colour realism. However, the attribution of realism to the colour monist was made on the back of a particular, and particularly strong, characterization of colour eliminativism—that nothing is or could be coloured.
