When I open my eyes and look at a Rubik’s cube, there is something it is like for me visually in looking at it. Various color qualities are presented to me, and they are arranged in a specific pattern. By having an experience with this particular phenomenal character I am also thereby visually representing the world outside my experience as being a certain way. If I experience a blue square to the left of a red square, the world outside my (...) experience is represented as being one way. As I turn the cube, and come to view a green square to the left of another green square, I have an experience with a different phenomenal character. But I also come to represent the world differently. In virtue of the difference in phenomenology there is a corresponding difference in how the world is represented as being. Moreover, it seems that any two experiences with the same phenomenal character will share a certain sort of intentional content.1 If two subjects have phenomenally identical experiences, there is an important sense in which the way the world appears to them is precisely the same. I will call this intentional content that supervenes on phenomenal character “phenomenal content”. But how are we to understand this notion of “ways of appearing”? Most philosophers who have acknowledged the existence of phenomenal content have held that the way something appears to a subject is simply a matter of the properties.. (shrink)

Shoemaker argues that one could not hold both that the qualitative character of colour experience is inherited from the qualitative character of the experienced colour and that there are faultless forms of variation in colour perception. In this paper, I explain what is meant by inheritance and discuss in detail the problematic cases of perceptual variation. In so doing I argue that these claims are in fact consistent, and that the appearance to the contrary is due to an optional and (...) controversial conception of experience that should be rejected. (shrink)

Representationalism, the view that phenomenal character supervenes on intentional content, has attracted a wide following in recent years. Most representationalists have also endorsed what I call 'standard Russellianism'. According to standard Russellianism, phenomenal content is Russellian in nature, and the properties represented by perceptual experiences are mind-independent physical properties. I argue that standard Russellianism conflicts with the everyday experience of colour constancy. Due to colour constancy, standard Russellianism is unable to simultaneously give a proper account of the phenomenal content of (...) colour experience and do justice to its phenomenology. (shrink)

In the Garden of Eden, we had unmediated contact with the world. We were directly acquainted with objects in the world and with their properties. Objects were simply presented to us without causal mediation, and properties were revealed to us in their true intrinsic glory.

Traditionally, perceptual experiences—for example, the experience of seeing a cat—were thought to have two quite distinct components. When one sees a cat, one’s experience is “about” the cat: this is the representational or intentional component of the experience. One’s experience also has phenomenal character: this is the sensational component of the experience. Although the intentional and sensational components at least typically go together, in principle they might come apart: the intentional component could be present without the sensational component or vice (...) versa. (shrink)

Color relationalism is the view that colors are constituted in terms of relations between subjects and objects. The most historically important form of color relationalism is the classic dispositionalist view according to which, for example red is the disposition to look red to standard observers in standard conditions (mutatis mutandis for other colors).1 However, it has become increasingly apparent in recent years that a commitment to the relationality of colors bears interest that goes beyond dispositionalism (Cohen, 2004; Matthen, 1999, 2001, (...) 2005; Thompson, 1995). Accordingly, it is an important project for those interested in the metaphysics of color to sort through and assess different forms of color relationalism. There is, however, a powerful and general cluster of objections that has been thought by many to amount to a decisive refutation of any and all forms of color relationalism. Although this idea has been developed in a number of ways, the basic thought is that relationalism — qua theory of color — is at odds with the manifest evidence of color phenomenology, and that this clash between theory and data should be resolved by giving up the theory. (shrink)

If two subjects have phenomenally identical experiences, there is an important sense in which the way the world appears to them is precisely the same. But how are we to understand this notion of 'ways of appearing'? Most philosophers who have acknowledged the existence of phenomenal content have held that the way something appears is simply a matter of the properties something appears to have. On this view, the way something appears is simply the way something appears to be . (...) This identification supports a Russellian theory of phenomenal content, according to which phenomenal content is exhausted by facts about what specific properties are represented by an experience. The present paper motivates and develops an alternative Fregean theory of phenomenal colour content. According to Fregean theories, the phenomenal content that is shared by any two phenomenally identical experiences is a matter of how the world is represented, and need not involve sameness in what is represented. It is argued that ways of appearing are modes of presentations of external properties and objects, and a detailed theory is presented about the nature of the modes of presentation involved in colour experience. (shrink)

Primitivism is the view that colors are sui generis properties of physical objects. The basic insight underlying primitivism is that colours are as we see them, i.e. they are categorical properties of physical objects—simple, monadic, constant, etc.—just like shapes. As such, they determine the content of colour experience. Accepting the premise that colours are sui generis properties of physical objects, this paper seeks to show that ascribing primitive properties to objects is, ipso facto, ascribing to objects irreducible dispositions to look (...) coloured, and that anything that primitive redness can do, the non-reductive disposition to look red can do just as well. What makes primitivism suspect is not the commitment to sui generis properties, but instead the claim that colours are more than dispositions. Since, as I show, whatever primitivism appeals to for the purpose of arguing that colours are more than dispositions—objectivity, explanation, causation, phenomenology, constancy, etc.—can also be invoked... (shrink)