As your own example illustrates, it boils down to whether one is talking about the present status of the box or the capabilities of the box.
In your example, the capabilities of the box are what maters because the other person can bring it to be under different lighting conditions were those capabilities are fully used. If however we’re talking about boxes bolted to the floor of a dark room which cannot be lit, for all practical effects and purposes and as far as people know both boxes are black, which is why in such a situation the advice given to find the box would not at all be color but rather thing like shape and size.
That said, after thinking it some more, I think people do say “the OBJECT is COLOR” only when they’re talking about color reflective capabilities and use “the OBJECT looks COLOR” specifically for the current status of reflecting color, even if sometimes they confuse status and capability and might say that something “is” COLOR having seen it only under lighting conditions which are not good enough to fully judge that object’s color reflection capabilities and strictly speaking should have used “looks” instead (I only mention this because when it happens it can cause funny confusions if the person they’re talking to actually saw that object under different lighting conditions and thus thinks of it as having a different color).
I feel like if someone locked in a dark room with a blue box was asked what color it was, they’d say “I don’t know” as opposed to “black”
Interesting point about is vs looks. I was thinking about LEDs before (hence the “reflect/emit” part) but I think I want to walk that back a little…if an LED only emits blue light, we’d say the LED is blue. But an RGB LED? It definitely depends on what it’s currently doing. In both cases, the reflective properties of the LED module while it’s off are the same. So it’s like there’s a hierarchy to how we define color…color it’s emitting > color it CAN emit > color it CAN reflect > color it’s reflecting.
I’m just riffing here so I don’t really have a conclusion for that but it’s intersting to think about. There’s probably other examples that go against my hierarchy idea.
As your own example illustrates, it boils down to whether one is talking about the present status of the box or the capabilities of the box.
In your example, the capabilities of the box are what maters because the other person can bring it to be under different lighting conditions were those capabilities are fully used. If however we’re talking about boxes bolted to the floor of a dark room which cannot be lit, for all practical effects and purposes and as far as people know both boxes are black, which is why in such a situation the advice given to find the box would not at all be color but rather thing like shape and size.
That said, after thinking it some more, I think people do say “the OBJECT is COLOR” only when they’re talking about color reflective capabilities and use “the OBJECT looks COLOR” specifically for the current status of reflecting color, even if sometimes they confuse status and capability and might say that something “is” COLOR having seen it only under lighting conditions which are not good enough to fully judge that object’s color reflection capabilities and strictly speaking should have used “looks” instead (I only mention this because when it happens it can cause funny confusions if the person they’re talking to actually saw that object under different lighting conditions and thus thinks of it as having a different color).
I feel like if someone locked in a dark room with a blue box was asked what color it was, they’d say “I don’t know” as opposed to “black”
Interesting point about is vs looks. I was thinking about LEDs before (hence the “reflect/emit” part) but I think I want to walk that back a little…if an LED only emits blue light, we’d say the LED is blue. But an RGB LED? It definitely depends on what it’s currently doing. In both cases, the reflective properties of the LED module while it’s off are the same. So it’s like there’s a hierarchy to how we define color…color it’s emitting > color it CAN emit > color it CAN reflect > color it’s reflecting.
I’m just riffing here so I don’t really have a conclusion for that but it’s intersting to think about. There’s probably other examples that go against my hierarchy idea.