a matter of context!

I've been reading a book by Kenya Hara on the color white, and he makes an interesting (if somewhat immediate) point. The brightness of white is dependent on context.  A thousand consecutive sheets of the brightest paper will not have the same effect as a bright sheet of paper placed next to a paper that is a dimmer white, or perhaps a different texture.  The whiteness resides is not inherent in the hue or chroma of an individual kind of white, but in the relationship between two or more components. It kind of reminds me of Josef Albers' examples of color theory.