THIS PAPER ARGUES FOR THE CLAIM THAT ALTHOUGH COLOUR WORDS LIKE 'RED' ARE, ESSENTIALLY, 'PHENOMENAL-QUALITY' WORDS—I.E., WORDS FOR PROPERTIES WHOSE WHOLE AND ESSENTIAL NATURE CAN BE AND IS FULLY REVEALED IN SENSORY EXPERIENCE, GIVEN ONLY THE QUALITATIVE CHARACTER THAT THAT EXPERIENCE HAS—STILL 'RED' CANNOT BE SUPPOSED TO BE A WORD THAT PICKS OUT OR DENOTES ANY PARTICULAR PHENOMENAL QUALITY. THE ARGUMENT RESTS ESSENTIALLY ON THE SUPPOSITION, OFTEN DISCUSSED UNDER THE HEADING OF THE 'COLOR-SPECTRUM INVERSION ARGUMENT', THAT TWO PEOPLE COULD POSSIBLY (...) AGREE IN ALL THEIR COLOUR-JUDGEMENTS WHILE DIFFERING IN THEIR COLOUR EXPERIENCE. (shrink)

Paul Snowdon; XI*—Perception, Vision and Causation, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 81, Issue 1, 1 June 1981, Pages 175–192, https://doi.org/10.

Just how far can externalism go? In this exciting new book Ruth Millikan explores a radically externalist treatment of empirical concepts (Millikan 2000). For the last thirty years philosophy of mind’s ties to meaning internalism have been loosened. The theory of content has swung uncomfortably on its moorings in a fickle current, straining against opposing ties to mind and world. In this book Millikan casts conceptual content adrift from the thinker: what determines the content of a concept is not cognitively (...) accessible. She has only the stanchion of the world to hold her theory fast. She hopes that the tide will turn, and the theory of meaning will come stably to rest downstream of this anchor. This book is a bold exploration of how that might be achieved. (shrink)

In her landmark book, Language, Thought, and Other Biological Categories (Millikan1984),1 Ruth Garrett Millikan utilizes the idea of a biological function to solve philosophical problems associated with the phenomena of language, thought, and meaning. Language and thought are activities of biological organisms, according to Millikan, and we should treat them as such when trying to answer related philosophical questions. Of special interest is Millikan’s treatment of intentionality. Here Millikan employs the notion of a biological function to explain what it is (...) for one thing in nature, a bee dance (43), for example, to be about another, in this case, the location of a nectar source. My concern in this paper is to understand whether Millikan’s account of intentionality adequately explains how humans achieve reference, in language or thought, to individuals and groups in their environment. In bringing her theory of intentional content to bear on human activities, Millikan focuses largely on natural language. Thus, in what follows, I begin by laying out the biology-based principles that underlie Millikan’s theory of content, then proceed with an explanation of how the theory is to apply to natural language. As it appears, Millikan’s account of how content is determined for natural language terms and sentences rests on the determinacy of intentional content at the psychological level. This leads me to take a careful look at what Millikan says about the content of mental representations, in hopes of finding a sufficient basis there for the application of Millikan’s theory of content to natural language. Ultimately, I conclude that Millikan’s theory faces a problem of vacuity. If we approach the theory as a theory of intentional content, intended to explain the nature of reference, the theory is lacking in an extremely important respect: Millikan explains how it could be one of the biological functions of a mental or natural language term to refer, without telling us precisely what in the natural order constitutes the reference relation.. (shrink)

According to color subjectivism, colors are mental properties, processes, or events of visual experiences of color. I first lay out an argument for subjectivism founded on claims from visual science and show that it also relies on a philosophical assumption. I then argue that subjectivism is untenable because this view cannot provide a plausible account of color perception. I describe three versions of subjectivism, each of which combines subjectivism with a theory of perception, namely sense datum theory, adverbialism, and the (...) virtual color proposal, and argue that each version faces serious objections. Considering these three theories of perception to be exhaustive of those available to the subjectivist, I conclude that subjectivism is untenable and that the scientifically motivated argument for this view is unsound. I then offer the diagnosis that the philosophical assumption on which this argument relies is mistaken. (shrink)

Thomas Reid, the Scottish natural and moral philosopher, was one of the founding members of the Aberdeen Philosophical Society and a significant figure in the Scottish Enlightenment. Reid believed that common sense should form the foundation of all philosophical inquiry. He criticised the sceptical philosophy propagated by his fellow Scot David Hume and the Anglo-Irish bishop George Berkeley, who asserted that the external world did not exist outside the human mind. Reid was also critical of the theory of ideas propagated (...) by Locke and Descartes, arguing that it was incompatible with physical and experiential facts. For Reid, our senses demonstrate that the external world must exist, and this work is organised in chapters examining each of the senses in turn. The book, based on his lectures, was first published in 1764 when Reid was a regent professor at King's College, Aberdeen, and was reissued in 1818. (shrink)

In Furnishing the Mind, Jesse Prinz attempts to swing the pendulum back toward empiricism.

Theories of content purport to explain, among other things, in virtue of what beliefs have the truth conditions they do have. The desire for such a theory has many sources, but prominent among them are two puzzling facts that are notoriously difficult to explain: beliefs can be false, and there are normative constraints on the formation of beliefs.2 If we knew in virtue of what beliefs had truth conditions, we would be better positioned to explain how it is possible for (...) an agent to believe that which is not the case. Moreover, we do not say merely of such an agent that he believes that p when p is not the case. We say the agent made a mistake, and often criticize him accordingly; we think agents ought not have false beliefs, and that such beliefs should be changed; etc. An adequate theory of content would, presumably, reveal the source of these normative facts about the mental lives of agents. Indeed, it is typically taken to be an adequacy constraint on a theory of content that it help explain the possibility of error and the "normativity" of content. Teleological theories of content promise to do just this. (shrink)

Physicalism about colour is the thesis that colours are identical with response-independent, physical properties of objects. I endorse the Argument from Structure against Physicalism about colour. The argument states that Physicalism cannot accommodate certain obvious facts about colour structure: for instance, that red is a unitary colour while purple is a binary colour, and that blue resembles purple more than green. I provide a detailed formulation of the argument. According to the most popular response to the argument, the Physicalist can (...) accommodate colour structure by explaining it in terms of colour experience. I argue that this response fails. Along the way, I examine other interesting issues in the philosophy of colour and colour perception, for instance the relational structure of colour experience and the description theory of how colour names refer. (shrink)

Most objectivist and dispositionalist theories of color have tried to resolve the challenge raised by color variations by drawing a distinction between real and apparent colors. This paper considers such a strategy to be fundamentally erroneous. The high degree of variability of colors constitutes a crucial feature of colors and color perception; it cannot be avoided without leaving aside the real nature of color. The objectivist theory of color defended in this paper holds that objects have locally many different objective (...) colors. Most color variations are then real and result from the extreme richness of color properties. (shrink)

Reliable misrepresentation is getting things wrong in the same way all the time. In Mendelovici 2013, I argue that tracking theories of mental representation cannot allow for certain kinds of reliable misrepresentation, and that this is a problem for those views. Artiga 2013 defends teleosemantics from this argument. He agrees with Mendelovici 2013 that teleosemantics cannot account for clean cases of reliable misrepresentation, but argues that this is not a problem for the views. This paper clarifies and improves the argument (...) in Mendelovici 2013 and response to Artiga's arguments. Tracking theories, teleosemantics included, really do need to allow for clean cases of reliable misrepresentation. (shrink)

It is a live possibility that certain of our experiences reliably misrepresent the world around us. I argue that tracking theories of mental representation have difficulty allowing for this possibility, and that this is a major consideration against them.

According to intentionalism, phenomenal properties are identical to, supervenient on, or determined by representational properties. Intentionalism faces a special challenge when it comes to accounting for the phenomenal character of moods. First, it seems that no intentionalist treatment of moods can capture their apparently undirected phenomenology. Second, it seems that even if we can come up with a viable intentionalist account of moods, we would not be able to motivate it in some of the same kinds of ways that intentionalism (...) about other kinds of states can be motivated. In this article, I respond to both challenges: First, I propose a novel intentionalist treatment of moods on which they represent unbound affective properties. Then, I argue that this view is indirectly supported by the same kinds of considerations that directly support intentionalism about other mental states. (shrink)

I defend a version of color subjectivism — that colors are sortals for certain neural events — by arguing against a sophisticated form of color objectivism and by showing how a subjectivist can legitimately explain the phenomenal fact that colors seem to be properties of external objects.

Despite the fact about colour, that it is one of the most obvious and conspicuous features of the world, there is a vast number of different theories about colour, theories which seem to be proliferating rather than decreasing. How is it possible that there can be so much disagreement about what colours are? Is it possible that these different theorists are not talking about the same thing? Could it be that more than one of them is right? Indeed some theorists, (...) e.g. Leo M. Hurvich, D. L. McAdam and K. Nassau, say that the term ‘colour’ is used to identify a range of different properties, e.g. pigments, properties of light, and sensations. Such a view has its attractions, but it raises the question of what it is that unites these various concepts – what is it that would make them all concepts of colour? What is it that justifies using the same terms, ‘yellow’, ‘blue’, ‘pink’, mauve’, and so on?This paper aims to address this question, arguing that its answer supports the conclusion that the best theory of colour is a form of anti-realism: the Illusory theory of colours. There are two parts to this thesis, one negative, the other positive. The negative part is that there are no colours, as they are ordinarily conceived. The positive part is that, nevertheless, the world is such that ‘it is as if there are such colours’. Such a theory has important implications. One is that it doesn’t fall neatly into the usual taxonomy of philosophical theories. In particular, it does not deserve the label ‘eliminativist’. Another is that it allows some space for the views expressed by Hurvich, McAdam and Nassau, but not quite in the sense that they intend. (shrink)

Jonathan Cohen has produced a powerful argument for Colour Relationalism: the metaphysical thesis that colours are relational properties of a certain sort—relational with respect to perceivers and circumstances. Cohen makes two important assumptions: one is that Colour Relationalism and Colour Irrealism (which include Colour Eliminativism, Fictionalism and other “error theories”) are rivals; the second is that “error theories” are theories of last resort. In this paper, I challenge both assumptions. In particular, I argue that there is good reason to think (...) that Colour Relationalism needs to be supplemented by some version ofan Error theory. In so doing, I examine, in detail, the issues raised in a paper by Janet Levin in which she engages in an instructive debate with Colin McGinn. Levin’s paper is important since Cohen places heavy reliance on her arguments, both in defending his relationalist theory against crucial objections, and in his dismissal of error theories. (shrink)

What is color? What is color vision? Most philosophers answer by reference to humans: to human color qualia, or to the environmental properties or "quality spaces" perceived by humans. It is argued, with reference to empirical findings concerning comparative color vision and the evolution of color vision, that all such attempts are mistaken. An adequate definition of color vision must eschew reference to its outputs in the human cognition and refer only to inputs: color vision consists in the use of (...) wavelength discrimination in the construction of visual representations. A color quality is one that is generated from such processing. (shrink)

Perceptions "present" objects as red, as round, etc.-- in general as possessing some property. This is the "perceptual content" of the title, And the article attempts to answer the following question: what is a materialistically adequate basis for assigning content to what are, after all, neurophysiological states of biological organisms? The thesis is that a state is a perception that presents its object as "F" if the "biological function" of the state is to detect the presence of objects that are (...) "F". The theory contrasts with causal/informational theories, and with internalist theories, for example those which assign content on the basis of introspected feel. Its advantages are that it permits perceptual error while at the same time allowing content to be expressed in terms of external properties. The argument of the paper is illustrated throughout by examples from biology and computational psychology. (shrink)

A common objection to sense-datum theories of perception is that they cannot give an adequate account of the fact that introspection indicates that our sensory experiences are directed on, or are about, the mind-independent entities in the world around us, that our sense experience is transparent to the world. In this paper I point out that the main force of this claim is to point out an explanatory challenge to sense-datum theories.

This chapter surveys a few of the so-called “easy” problems, as referred to by Chalmers, in understanding color perception. The obscurity of psycho-neural isomorphism is highlighted by the difficulties encountered in the domain of color, and while this theme has been discussed extensively, the discussion here at least provides an opportunity to review interesting facts and ideas about color vision. Trichromacy is considered first in this chapter, since it provides the most familiar example of physiological explanation in perception—an explanation generally (...) held to be straightforward, simple, and completely satisfactory. However, as is shown in the latter part of this chapter, the neural basis of trichromacy is not yet well understood. The prospects for physiological explanation of less elementary aspects of color vision are also discussed in broad terms, and the conclusions reached here are also discouraging for current theoretical perspectives. (shrink)

This chapter discusses the ordering of color percepts, and starts by presenting an overview of the critical issues surrounding the topic and by examining the relationship between stimuli and percepts. Certain types of variability were found by experimental psychology in the relationship between stimulus and response as a result of observation conditions. In the twentieth century, the view that the normal human color-vision system has a standard implementation and that all perceptual data are appropriately treated with normal statistical distribution methodology (...) became the standard paradigm. However, the idea that the large number of color percepts humans can experience must fit into some kind of ordering system is an old one, going as far back to Aristotle and his proposed color categories based on a scale of chromatic colors between white and black. The strengths and limitations of the more recently developed kinds of color order systems are also touched upon here. (shrink)

Paul Churchland proposed a conceptual framework for translating reflectance profiles into a space he takes to be the color qualia space. It allows him to determine color metamers of spectral surface reflectances without reference to the characteristics of visual systems, claiming that the reflectance classes that it specifies correspond to visually determined metamers. We advance several objections to his method, show that a significant number of reflectance profiles are not placed into the space in agreement with the qualia solid, and (...) produce two sets of counterexamples to his claim for metamers. (shrink)

Colors are sensible qualities. They are qualities that objects are perceived to have. Thus, when Norm, a normal perceiver, perceives a blue bead, the bead is perceived have a certain quality, perceived blueness. `Quality', here, is no mere synonym for property; rather, a quality is a kind of property a qualitative, as opposed to quan• titative, property. (The quantitative is a way of contrasting with the qualitative perhaps not the only way.).

As standardly conceived, an illusion is an experience of an object o appearing F where o is not in fact F. Paradigm examples of color illusion, however, do not fit this pattern. A diagnosis of this uncovers different sense of appearance talk that is the basis of a dilemma for the standard conception. The dilemma is only a challenge. But if the challenge cannot be met, then any conception of experience, such as representationalism, that is committed to the standard conception (...) is false. Perhaps surprisingly, naïve realism provides a better account of color illusion.An apparence ymaad by som Magyk. Chaucer. (shrink)

The world-view to which the long arc of modern philosophy since Descartes bends is Materialism With A Bad Conscience, a Materialism continually bedeviled by the need to deal with apparently irreducible mental items. I believe this world-view to be the offspring of an introjective error; in effect, the mentalization of sensible form, finality and value. Hence the characteristic modernist accusation is that when we take sensible form, finality and value to be genuine features of the manifest we are thereby "projecting" (...) aspects of our mental life onto an environment devoid of these features. David Hume went furthest in this Projectivist direction arguing that indeed even the very notion of an efficient cause was a projection of our habitual expectations that the regularly observed consequences of certain classes of events would continue. So far from these expectations constituting a practical knowledge of efficient causes, acquired over immense periods of time in the life of our species as it adapted to and with its complex causal environment, those expectations are merely appearances which we mistake for a mind-independent relation among the things themselves. Thus the manifest is traded in for the "manifest image of the world," an image interposed between a subject and deracinated environment. (shrink)

This chapter focuses on a factor widely considered by the standard view to be the basis for color-naming phenomena and explores some plausible, comparatively uninvestigated factors that might underlie color naming. These are illustrated, in part, through a reexamination of World Color Survey data as it has been presented by Kuehni. The aim of this chapter is to examine the appropriateness of the Hering opponent-color construct as a theoretical foundation for explaining patterns of color naming in datasets like the WCS, (...) which include many languages that do not use Hering color terms. The main conclusion reached is that a proper explanation for cross-cultural color naming and categorization should not depend on the Hering opponent-color construct. (shrink)

Redness is the property that makes things look red in normal circumstances. That seems obvious enough. But then colour is whatever property does that job: a certain reflectance profile as it might be. Redness is the property something is represented to have when it looks red. That seems obvious enough. But looking red does not represent that which looks red as having a certain reflectance profile. What should we say about this antinomy and how does our answer impact on the (...) contest between realism and subjectivism about colour? I address the issues through the lens of a representationalist position on colour experience. (shrink)

The typical kind of color realism is reductive: the color properties are identified with properties specified in other terms (as ways of altering light, for instance). If no reductive analysis is available — if the colors are primitive sui generis properties — this is often taken to be a convincing argument for eliminativism. That is, realist primitivism is usually thought to be untenable. The realist preference for reductive theories of color over the last few decades is particularly striking in light (...) of the generally anti-reductionist mood of recent philosophy of mind. The parallels between the mind—body problem and the case of color are substantial enough that the difference in trajectory is surprising. While dualism and non-reductive physicalism are staples, realist primitivism is by and large a recent addition to the color literature. And it remains a minority position, although one that is perhaps gaining support. In this paper, we investigate whether it should be accepted, and conclude it should not be. (shrink)

What ecological advantages do animals gain by being able to detect, extract and exploit wavelength information? What are the advantages of representing that information as hue qualities? The benefits of adding chromatic to achromatic vision, marginal in object detection, become apparent in object recognition and receiving biological signals. It is argued that this improved performance is a direct consequence of the fact that many animals' visual systems reduce wavelength information to combinations of four basic hues. This engenders a simple categorical (...) scheme that permits a rich amount of sensory information to be rapidly and efficiently employed by cognitive machinery of limited capacity. (shrink)

Yellow sun in a blue sky. Green leaves caressed by the wind. Open the shutters of the eye, that window of the soul, and all such things are revealed. Nothing is more apparent than that things have colors, and that we have immediate perceptual access to those colors.

Today, many philosophers think that perceptual experiences are conscious mental states with representational content and phenomenal character. Subscribers to this view often go on to construe experience more precisely as a propositional attitude sui generis ascribing sensible properties to ordinary material objects. I argue that experience is better construed as a kind of belief ascribing 'phenomenal' properties to such objects. A belief theory of this kind deals as well with the traditional arguments against doxastic accounts as the sui generis view. (...) Moreover, in contrast to sui generis views, it can quite easily account for the rational or reason providing role of experience. (shrink)

In previous work, I have defended a non-standard version of intentionalism about perceptual experience. According to the doxastic account, visual experience is a peculiar kind of belief: belief with “phenomenal” or looks-content. In this paper, I investigate what happens if this account of experience is combined with another idea I find very plausible: That the colors are to be understood in terms of color experience. I argue that the resulting phenomenal account of color experience captures everything essential to what has (...) been called the “natural concept of color”. And I show that circularity worries are not aggravated by adopting this account instead of more standard forms of intentionalism—rather, they can be dispelled along the same lines. (shrink)

Whether or not one endorses realism about colour, it is very tempting to regard realism about determinable colours such as green and yellow as standing or falling together with realism about determinate colours such as unique green or green31. Indeed some of the most prominent representatives of both sides of the colour realism debate explicitly endorse the idea that these two kinds of realism are so linked. Against such theorists, the present paper argues that one can be a realist about (...) the determinable colours of objects, and thus hold that most of the colour ascriptions made by competent speakers are literally true, while denying that there are any positive facts of the matter as to the determinate colours of objects. The result is a realistic colour realism that can certify most of our everyday colour ascriptions as literally correct, while acknowledging the data regarding individual variation. (shrink)

In "How to Speak of the Colors", Mark Johnston’s claims that eliminativism would require us to jettison colour discourse. In this paper, I challenge Johnston’s claim. I argue that a particular version of eliminativism, i.e., prescriptive colour fictionalism, allows us to continue employing colour discourse as we have thus far in the absence of colours. In doing so, it employs statistical models in its base discourse to derive high-level statistical constructs that can be linked to the fiction via bridge principles.

Preface 1 Introduction: The Persistence of the Attitudes 2 Individualism and Supervenience 3 Meaning Holism 4 Meaning and the World Order Epilogue Creation Myth Appendix Why There Still Has to be a Language of Thought Notes References Author Index.

First published in 2002. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.