Abstract

Panmicropsychism is the view that the fundamental physical ingredients of our universe are also its fundamental phenomenal ingredients. Since there is only a limited number of fundamental physical ingredients, panmicropsychism seems to imply that there exists only a small set (palette) of basic phenomenal qualities. How does this limited palette of basic phenomenal qualities give rise to our rich set of experiences? This is known as ‘the palette problem’. One class of solutions to this problem, large-palette solutions, simply denies that the palette is limited. These solutions assume that all types of phenomenal qualities (color, sound, odor, taste, etc., and presumably also types not experienced by humans) were created fully formed at the birth of our universe. On this view, brains evoke conscious experiences by sampling primordial, preexisting phenomenal spaces. My main claim in this paper is that, by analogy with the mathematical description of the fundamental physical ingredients of our universe, which exhibits simplicity, symmetry, and beauty, panmicropsychists should expect the mathematical description of the fundamental phenomenal ingredients of our universe to exhibit similar features. The goal of this paper is to exemplify this claim using what is arguably the simplest of all types of phenomenal qualities—color. Specifically, I utilize phenomenological data on color to construct the maximally symmetric mathematical description of phenomenal color space. I then show that this mathematical description is isomorphic to the mathematical description of two-state quantum systems in a mixed state. Based on this isomorphism, I suggest that color may be the phenomenal dual aspect of two-state quantum systems.