Are the following propositions true of the colors: No object can be more than one determinable or determinate color all over at the same time (Incompatibility); the colors of objects are mind-independent (Objectivism); and most human observers usually perceive the colors of objects veridically in typical conditions (Veridicality)? One reason to think not is that the empirical literature appears to support the proposition that there is mass perceptual disagreement about the colors of objects amongst human observers in typical (...) conditions (P-Disagreement). In this article, we defend Incompatibility, Objectivism, and Veridicality by calling into question whether the empirical literature really supports P-Disagreement. (shrink)

In this paper, I present the enactive theory of color that implies a form of color relationism. I argue that this view constitutes a better alternative to color subjectivism and color objectivism. I liken the enactive view to Husserl’s phenomenology of perception, arguing that both deconstruct the clear duality of subject and object, which is at the basis of the other theories of color, in order to claim the co-constitution of subject and object in (...) the process of experience. I also extend the enactive and phenomenological account of color to the more general topic of the epistemological and ontological status of sensory qualities (qualia), outlining the fields of enactive phenomenology and enactive ontology. (shrink)

I defend externalism about color experiences and color thoughts, which I argue color objectivism requires. Externalists face the following question: would a subject's wearing inverting lenses eventually change the color content of, for instance, those visual experiences the subject reports with “red”? From the work of Ned Block, David Velleman, Paul Boghossian, Michael Tye, and Fiona Macpherson, I extract problems facing those who answer “Yes” and problems facing those who answer “No.” I show how these (...) problems can be overcome, leaving externalism available to the color objectivist. (shrink)

Intrapersonal variation due to color contrast effects has been used to argue against the following intuitive propositions about the colors: No object can be more than one determinable or determinate color of the same grade all over at the same time ; external objects are actually colored ; and the colors of objects are mind-independent. In this article, I provide a defense of Incompatibility, Realism, and Objectivism from intrapersonal variation arguments that rely on color contrast effects. (...) I provide a novel, ecumenical response to such arguments according to which typical variants are right, and which respects Incompatibility, Realism, and Objectivism, using the thesis that the colors of objects depend on the colors of objects in their surrounds. (shrink)

This article is on a precise kind of color primitivism, ‘ostensivism.’ This is the view that it is in the nature of the colors that they are phenomenal, non-reductive, structural, categorical properties. First, I differentiate ostensivism from other precise forms of primitivism. Next, I examine the core belief ‘Revelation,’ and propose a revised version, which, unlike standard statements, is compatible with a yet unstated but plausible core belief: roughly, that there are interesting things to be discovered about the nature (...) of the colors. Finally, I show that ostensivism is the only view on color that can accommodate both proposed core beliefs. (shrink)

A survey of arguments for and against the view that colors are physical properties.

Drawing on remarks scattered through his writings, I argue that Leibniz has a highly distinctive and interesting theory of color. The central feature of the theory is the way in which it combines a nuanced subjectivism about color with a reductive approach of a sort usually associated with objectivist theories of color. After reconstructing Leibniz's theory and calling attention to some of its most notable attractions, I turn to the apparent incompatibility of its subjective and reductive components. (...) I argue that this apparent tension vanishes in light of his rejection of a widely accepted doctrine concerning the nature of bodies and their geometrical qualities. (shrink)

In the debate over whether mathematical facts, properties, or entities explain physical events (in what philosophers call “extra-mathematical” explanations), Aidan Lyon’s (2012) affirmative answer stands out for its employment of the program explanation (PE) methodology of Frank Jackson and Philip Pettit (1990). Juha Saatsi (2012; 2016) objects, however, that Lyon’s examples from the indispensabilist literature are (i) unsuitable for PE, (ii) nominalizable into non-mathematical terms, and (iii) mysterious about the explanatory relation alleged to obtain between the PE’s mathematical explanantia and (...) physical explananda. In this paper, I propose a counterexample to Saatsi’s objections. My counterexample is Frank Jackson’s (1998a) program explanation for color experience, which I argue needs recasting as an extra-mathematical PE due to its implicit reliance on reflectance, a property that suffers conceptual regress unless redefined with Fourier harmonics. Pace Saatsi, I argue that this recast example is an authoritative PE, non-nominalizable, and minimally esoteric. Important for the indispensability debate at large, moreover, is that my counterexample reifies Fourier harmonics without the Enhanced Indispensability Argument (an argument to which Lyon applies PE as a premise). Indispensabilists have long overlooked the conditionalization of a limited mathematical realism on property realism, and my counterexample to Saatsi exploits this conditionalization. (shrink)

I describe a new, comparative, version of the argument from interpersonal variation to subjectivism about color. The comparative version undermines a recent objectivist response to standard versions of that argument (Gómez-Torrente 2014).

This is a commentary on Laurence Maloney’s chapter in Mausfeld R., and Heyer, D. (Eds.): Colour Perception: Mind and the Physical World. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. I discuss two related proposals as to the nature of object color formulated by Maloney. On the first proposal colors are photoreceptor excitations; on the second, they are fundamental, universal reflectance characteristics of terrestrial surfaces. I argue that the second proposal is suitable for purposes of color objectivism, whereas the first (...) one is not. However, if we look at Maloney’s – and Brian Wandell’s – models of color vision and color constancy more thoroughly, not even the second version supports absolutist versions of color objectivism, according to which observer-independent reflectance properties determine, or are identical to, the phenomenal character of color experience. (shrink)

Recently Dimitria Electra Gatzia has argued that individual colour variations present difficulties for both colour objectivism and colour subjectivism (Gatzia 2010). On the objectivist side, she has singled out Byrne and Hilbert’s colour physicalism for criticism (Byrne and Hilbert 2003; 2007). The aim of this paper is to defend Byrne and Hilbert’s colour physicalism against an argument of Gatzia’s.

The thesis that smells are objective and independent of perceivers may seem to be in tension with the phenomenon of perceptual variation. In this paper, I argue that there are principled reasons to think that perceptual variation is not a threat to objectivism about smells and is indeed integral to our perceptual relation to the objective world. I first distinguish various kinds of perceptual variation, and argue that the most challenging cases for the objectivist are those where an odourant (...) smells different in different conditions or to different perceivers but the odourant does not change, and there is neither misperception nor a simple failure to perceive a smell. I then argue that there is an independently plausible conception of olfactory experience on which even these challenging cases do not pose a threat to objectivism about smells. Following Kalderon’s work in the domain of colour perception, I argue that olfactory perception provides us with a partial perspective on the smells around us, where this perspective is constrained by the conditions of perception as well as by features of the perceiver. Within this framework, we can allow that perceivers with different sensitivities, or the same perceiver in different conditions, genuinely perceive the same objective smell even though this smell appears different to them. In turn, smells are best understood as qualitatively complex entities, different aspects of which can become perceptually available in different conditions and to different perceivers. (shrink)

Sense experience, naïvely conceived, is a way of knowing perceptible properties: the colors, sounds, smells, flavors, and textures in our perceptual environment. So conceived, ordinary experience presents the perceiver with the essential nature of a property like Sky Blue or Middle C, such that how the property appears in experience is identical to how it essentially is. In antiquity, as today, it was controversial whether sense experience could meet the conditions for knowledge implicit in this naïve conception. Aristotle was a (...) partisan in this debate, but his position is poorly understood. This dissertation examines how Aristotle’s perceptual psychology responds to ancient challenges to the naïve conception, and so articulates his defense of perceptual knowledge. -/- Aristotle’s defense relies on an ontology of “perceptual qualities"—a core class of perceptible properties—according to which those qualities, despite having a perceiver-independent essence rooted in the physics of causation and affection, nevertheless can be present in experience as they essentially are. Chapter 1 defends this realist and objectivist reading against competing interpretations, which overlook a crucial distinction between perceptual qualities and perceptual objects. Chapter 2 presents Aristotle’s ontology as a physicalism that uncharacteristically allows for perceptual qualities to appear in experience as they essentially are. -/- This ontology informs Aristotle’s account of the psychological conditions under which perceivers actually are presented with the essence of perceptual qualities. The locus of this account is an obscure passage where Aristotle purports to show that the senses “discriminate” perceptual qualities because the senses are “mean states” (An. 2.11, 424a5–7). Chapter 3 develops a comprehensive interpretation of the sensory mean state, which Chapter 4 uses to elucidate Aristotle’s argument for sensory discrimination. Sensory discrimination turns out to be a process in which the essence of a perceptual quality comes to be present in the affection it produces in a perceiver. For Aristotle, this shows that sense perception meets a condition for knowledge that his predecessors, including Plato, thought it could not meet. For in his view, but not in theirs, sense experience shares in both the truth and the essence of the qualities it perceives. (shrink)

Should a principle of charity be applied to the interpretation of the colour concepts exercised in visual experience? We think not. We shall argue, for one thing, that the grounds for applying a principle of charity are lacking in the case of colour concepts. More importantly, we shall argue that attempts at giving the experience of colour a charitable interpretation either fail to respect obvious features of that experience or fail to interpret it charitably, after all. Charity to visual experience (...) is therefore no motive for resisting the natural, Galilean response to a scientific understanding of light and vision. The best interpretation of colour experience ends up convicting it of widespread and systematic error. (shrink)

Many moral philosophers have assumed that ordinary folk embrace moral objectivism. But, if so, why do folk embrace objectivism? One possibility is the pervasive connection between religion and morality in ordinary life. Some theorists contend that God is viewed as a divine guarantor of right and wrong, rendering morality universal and absolute. But is belief in God per se sufficient for moral objectivism? In this paper, we present original research exploring the connections between metaethics and particular conceptions (...) of God among religious participants. Study 1 shows that, when controlling for religiosity, age, and belief in God’s loving characteristics, it is belief in God’s punishing characteristics (specifically, the existence of Hell) that uniquely predicts rejection of moral relativism. Study 2 shows that followers of Abrahamic faiths are more likely to endorse moral objectivism when thinking of the Divine, regardless of loving or punishing characteristics. And Study 3 shows that priming for moral objectivism makes theists more likely to endorse God’s punishing characteristics. A general picture is suggested by these data. For Abrahamic theists, God’s particular characteristics are not germane to the question of whether his moral commandments are real and objective. And while theists strongly endorse God’s loving characteristics, focusing on the objective nature of morality can highlight God’s punishing nature, reminding theists that objective morality requires a divine guarantor of justice to enforce it. (shrink)

Is color experience cognitively penetrable? Some philosophers have recently argued that it is. In this paper, we take issue with the claim that color experience is cognitively penetrable. We argue that the notion of cognitive penetration that has recently dominated the literature is flawed since it fails to distinguish between the modulation of perceptual content by non-perceptual principles and genuine cognitive penetration. We use this distinction to show that studies suggesting that color experience can be modulated by (...) factors of the cognitive system do not establish that color experience is cognitively penetrable. Additionally, we argue that even if color experience turns out to be modulated by color-related beliefs and knowledge beyond non-perceptual principles, it does not follow that color experience is cognitively penetrable since the experiences of determinate hues involve post-perceptual processes. We conclude with a brief discussion of the implications that these ideas may have on debates in philosophy. (shrink)

Are color adjectives ("red", "green", etc.) relative adjectives or absolute adjectives? Existing theories of the meaning of color adjectives attempt to answer that question using informal ("armchair") judgments. The informal judgments of theorists conflict: it has been proposed that color adjectives are absolute with standards anchored at the minimum degree on the scale, that they are absolute but have near-midpoint standards, and that they are relative. In this paper we report two experiments, one based on entailment patterns (...) and one based on presupposition accommodation, that investigate the meaning of scalar adjectives. We find evidence confirming the existence of subgroups of the population who operate with different standards for color adjectives. The evidence of interpersonal variation in where standards are located on the relevant scale and how those standards can be adjusted indicates that the existing theories of the meaning of color adjectives are at best only partially correct. We also find evidence that paradigmatic relative adjectives ("tall", "wide") behave in ways that are not predicted by the standard theory of scalar adjectives. We discuss several different possible explanations for this unexpected behavior. We conclude by discussing the relevance of our findings for philosophical debates about the nature and extent of semantically encoded context sensitivity in which color adjectives have played a key role. (shrink)

This paper critically examines color relationalism and color relativism, two theories of color that are allegedly supported by variation in normal human color vision. We mostly discuss color relationalism, defended at length in Jonathan Cohen's The Red and the Real, and argue that the theory has insuperable problems.

Colour is, according to prevailing orthodoxy in perceptual psychology, a kind of autonomous and unitary attribute. It is regarded as unitary or homogeneous by assuming that its core properties do not depend on the type of ‘perceptual object’ to which it pertains and that‘colour per se’ constitutes a natural attribute in the functional architecture of the perceptual system. It is regarded as autonomous by assuming that it can be studied in isolation of other perceptual attributes. These assumptions also provide the (...) pillars for the technical field of colorimetry, and have proved very fruitful for neurophysiological investigations into peripheral colour coding. They also have become, in a technology-driven cultural process of abstraction, part of our common-sense conception of colour. With respect to perception theory, however, both assumptions are grossly inadequate, on both empirical and theoretical grounds. All the same, the idea of an internal homogeneous and autonomous attribute of ‘colour per se’, mostly taken not as an empirical hypothesis but as a kind of truism, became a guiding idea in perceptual psychology. Here, it has impeded the identification of relevant theoretical issues and consequently has become detrimental for the development of explanatory frameworks for the role of ‘colour’ within the structure of our perceptual system. The chapter argues that enquiries into colour perception cannot be divorced from general enquiries into the structure of the conceptual forms underlying perception. (shrink)

The orthodox monadic determination thesis holds that we represent colour relations by virtue of representing colours. Against this orthodoxy, I argue that it is possible to represent colour relations without representing any colours. I present a model of iconic perceptual content that allows for such primitive relational colour representation, and provide four empirical arguments in its support. I close by surveying alternative views of the relationship between monadic and relational colour representation.

The distinction between objective and subjective reasons plays an important role in both folk normative thought and many research programs in metaethics. But the relation between objective and subjective reasons is unclear. This paper explores problems related to the unity of objective and subjective reasons for actions and attitudes and then offers a novel objectivist account of subjective reasons.

Dispositional theories of colour have been attacked by McGinn and others on the ground that ‘Colours do not look like dispositions’. Langsam has argued that on the contrary they do, in ‘Why Colours Do Look Like Dispositions’, The Philosophical Quarterly, 50 , pp. 68–75. I make three claims. First, neither side has made its case. Secondly, it is true, at least on one interpretation, that colours do not look like dispositions. Thirdly, this does not show that dispositionalism about colours is (...) false. (shrink)

Many philosophers think that moral objectivism is supported by stable features of moral discourse and thinking. When engaged in moral reasoning and discourse, people behave ‘as if’ objectivism were correct, and the seemingly most straightforward way of making sense of this is to assume that objectivism is correct; this is how we think that such behavior is explained in paradigmatically objectivist domains. By comparison, relativist, error-theoretic or non-cognitivist accounts of this behavior seem contrived and ad hoc. After (...) explaining why this argument should be taken seriously (recent arguments notwithstanding), I argue that it is nevertheless undermined by considerations of moral disagreement. Even if the metaphysical, epistemic and semantic commitments of objectivism provide little or no evidence against it, and even if the alternative explanations of ‘objectivist’ traits of moral discourse and thinking are speculative or contrived, objectivism is itself incapable of making straightforward sense of these traits. Deep and widespread moral disagreement or, rather, the mere appearance of such disagreement, strongly suggests that the explanations operative in paradigmatically objective discourse fail to carry over to the moral case. Since objectivism, no less than relativism, non-cognitivism and error-theories, needs non-trivial explanations of why we behave ‘as if’ objectivism were correct, such behavior does not presently provide reason to accept objectivism. (shrink)

I argue that existing objectivist accounts of subjective reasons face systematic problems with cases involving probability and possibility. I then offer a diagnosis of why objectivists face these problems, and recommend that objectivists seek to provide indirect analyses of subjective reasons.

Consider the distinctive qualitative property grass visually appears to have when it visually appears to be green. This property is an example of what I call sensuous color. Whereas early modern mechanists typically argue that bodies are not sensuously colored, Margaret Cavendish (1623–73) disagrees. In cases of veridical perception, she holds that grass is green in precisely the way it visually appears to be. In defense of her realist approach to sensuous colors, Cavendish argues that (i) it is impossible (...) to conceive of colorless bodies, (ii) the very possibility of color experience requires that bodies are sensuously colored, and (iii) the attribution of sensuous colors to bodies provides the best explanation of color constancy. Although some passages might suggest that Cavendish endorses a reductive account of sensuous color, according to which sensuous color reduces to a body's microscopic surface texture (or some other mechanistically respectable property), I argue that she accepts a nonreductive account, on which sensuous color is not thus reducible. (shrink)

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. (shrink)

There is a kind of objectivism in epistemology that involves the acceptance of objective epistemic norms. It is generally regarded as harmless. There is another kind of objectivism in epistemology that involves the acceptance of an objectivist account of justification, one that takes the justification of a belief to turn on its accuracy. It is generally regarded as hopeless. It is a strange and unfortunate sociological fact that these attitudes are so prevalent. Objectivism about norms and justification (...) stand or fall together. Justification is simply a matter of conforming to norms. In this essay, I shall make the case for objectivism about justification. (shrink)

Most philosophical or scientific theories suppose that colour composition judgments refer to the way colours appear to us. The dominant view is therefore phenomenalist in the sense that colour composition is phenomenally given to perceivers. This paper argues that there is no evidence for a phenomenalist view of colour composition and that a conventionalist approach should be favoured.

This paper (from 2006) is now defunct. I argue against "realist primitivism". One of my arguments is a kind of "evolutionary debunking argument". Some of the material of this was incorporated into “Can Disjunctivists Explain Our Access to the Sensible World?” and "How Does Color Experience Represent the World?".

One prominent ambition of theories of colour is to pay full justice to how colours are subjectively given to us; and another to reconcile this first-personal perspective on colours with the third-personal one of the natural sciences. The goal of this article is to question whether we can satisfy the second ambition on the assumption that the first should and can be met. I aim to defend a negative answer to this question by arguing that the various kinds of experienced (...) colour resemblances – notably similarities in hue distance, sameness in superdeterminables, and colour resemblances between surfaces, volumes and illuminants – cannot be accounted for in terms of the mental representation of the scientifically studied properties, which colours are best identified with in response to the second ambition. (shrink)

I will develop a new problem for almost all realist theories of colour. The problem involves fluctuations in our colour experiences that are due to visual noise rather than changes in the objects we are looking at.

It seems intuitively obvious that metameric matching of color samples entails a loss of information, for spectrophotometrically diverse materials appear the same. This intuition implicitly relies on a conception of the function of color vision and on a related conception of how color samples should be individuated. It assumes that the function of color vision is to distinguish among spectral energy distributions, and that color samples should be individuated by their physical properties. I challenge these (...) assumptions by articulating a different conception of the function of color vision, according to which color vision serves to partition object surfaces into discrimination classes. (shrink)

This paper articulates a case for supposing that all shades of colour are visually complex.

What is the relationship between color experience and color? Here, I defend the view that it is semantic: color experience denotes color in a code innately known by the perceiver. This semantic theory contrasts with a variety of theories according to which color is defined as the cause of color experience (in a special set of circumstances). It also contrasts with primary quality theories of color, which treat color as a physical quantity. (...) I argue that the semantic theory better accounts for the kinds of knowledge we have regarding both the color of objects that we see and of the colors themselves. (shrink)

I propose a strategy for a metaphysical reduction of perceived color, that is, an identification of perceived color with properties characterizable in non-qualitative terms. According to this strategy, a description of visual experience of color, which incorporates a description of the appearance of color, is a reference-fixing description. This strategy both takes color appearance seriously in its primary epistemic role and avoids rendering color as metaphysically mysterious. I’ll also argue that given this strategy, a (...) plausible account of perceived color claims that colors are physical properties of physical objects. (shrink)

This paper articulates a case for supposing that all shades of colour are visually complex.

In this paper I argue that all transparent objects are colorless. This thesis is important for at least three reasons. First, if transparent objects are colorless, there is no need to distinguish between colors which characterize three-dimensional bodies, like transparent colors, and colors which lie on the surface of objects. Second, traditional objections against color physicalism relying on transparent colors are rendered moot. Finally, an improved understanding of the relations between colors, light and transparency is provided.

What ought you believe? According to a traditional view, it depends on your evidence: you ought to believe (only) what your evidence supports. Recently, however, some have claimed that what you ought to believe depends not on your evidence but simply on what is true: you ought to believe (only) the truth. In this paper, we present and defend two arguments against this latter view. We also explore some of the parallels between this debate in epistemology, and the debate in (...) ethics about whether how you ought to act depends on your epistemic position, or on all the facts. (shrink)

The dominant view among philosophers of perception is that color experiences, like color judgments, are essentially representational: as part of their very nature color experiences possess representational contents which are either accurate or inaccurate. My starting point in assessing this view is Sydney Shoemaker’s familiar account of color perception. After providing a sympathetic reconstruction of his account, I show how plausible assumptions at the heart of Shoemaker’s theory make trouble for his claim that color experiences (...) represent the colors of things. I consider various ways of trying to avoid the objection, and find all of the responses wanting. My conclusion is that we have reason to be skeptical of the orthodox view that color experiences are constitutively representational. (shrink)

The idea of gender is one of this century’s fiercest intellectual battlegrounds. In this paper, I seek to narrow down my focus towards one major debate surrounding gender: the debate between gender objectivism and gender constructivism. My contention is this: gender objectivism is a more reasonable view than gender constructivism. Moreover, gender constructivism has unjust and dangerous implications, especially towards biological women, a result to which gender objectivism is generally immune. I begin by noting how transgenderism as (...) a product of gender constructivism leads to absurd consequences, is viciously circular and lacks conceptual clarity in defining what a woman is. Then, I assessed the real-life consequences of transgenderism in three areas: women’s spheres for recognition such as women’s beauty pageants, women’s spaces, and women’s sports. I argue that evaluating the cogency or lack thereof of transgenderism while also seeing its harmful and dangerous consequences to women provide us with good reasons to prefer gender objectivism over gender constructivism. (shrink)

Relationalism is a view popularized by Cohen according to which the colors are relational properties. Cohen’s view has the unintuitive consequence that the following propositions are false: (i) no object can be more than one determinate or determinable color all over at the same time; (ii) ordinary illusion cases occur whenever the color perceptually represented conflicts, according to (i) above, with the object’s real color; and (iii) the colors we perceive obey (i). I investigate Cohen’s attempt to (...) address these intuitive propositions with which his view struggles and find it to be incompatible with how he motivates his view. (shrink)

The dispute between realists about color and anti-realists is actually a dispute about the nature of color properties. The disputants do not disagree over what material objects are like. Rather, they disagree over whether any of the uncontroversial facts about material objects--their powers to cause visual experiences, their dispositions to reflect incident light, their atomic makeup, and so on--amount to their having colors. The disagreement is thus about which properties colors are and, in particular, whether colors are any (...) of the properties in a particular set that is acknowledged on both sides to exhaust the properties of material objects. In a previous paper we discussed at length one attempt to identify colors with particular properties of material objects--namely, with their dispositions to cause visual experiences. Here we shall discuss a different and perhaps more influential version of realism, which says that the colors of material objects are microphysical properties of their surfaces. We shall call this theory physicalism about color (physicalism, for short). In order to evaluate this theory, however, we shall first have to clarify some methodological issues. Our hope is that we can bring some further clarity to the question of color realism, whether or not we succeed in our critique of the physicalists' answer. (shrink)

Chapter 2 primarily discusses Bernstein’s account and its differences both from Nagle’s metaphysical realism and Rorty’s postmodern pragmatism. Trying to diagnose assumptions that polarize thinkers to become objectivists and relativists, Bernstein articulates a Cartesian Anxiety he thinks they ironically both share. Descartes’ anti-skeptical wave of rigor was presented as a rationalistic project of rebuilding an unstable and dilapidated ‘house of knowledge’ on secure philosophical and scientific foundations. His overtly foundationalist metaphor of rebuilding from timbers set “in rock or hard clay” (...) shapes Descartes’ attempt to refute the skeptic and to secure the objectivity of knowledge as pursued by a more rigorous and analytical method of knowing. (shrink)

Realism about affirmations of a given type is the view that these affirmations are to be understood as assertions that attempt to describe a largely independent reality, and that they are correct if and only if they manage to do so (regardless of whether they can be known to be correct). Objectivisim about affirmations of a given type is the view that they are subject to adequate, non-arbitrary standards of correctness, and that there are a significant number of non-trivial affirmations (...) of this type that can be known to be correct. On this understanding, realism, objectivism, and their denials can be combined in four possible ways: realism with objectivism, realism with antiobjectivism, antirealism with objectivism, and antirealism with antiobjectivism. This paper clarifies the distinction between realism and objectivism, illustrates it applications in various fields of philosophy, and draws attention to its value. (shrink)

I address the question of whether differences in color terminology cause differences in color experience in speakers of different languages. If linguistic representations directly affect color experience, then this is a case of what I call the linguistic penetrability of perception, which is a particular case of cognitive penetrability. I start with some general considerations about cognitive penetration and its alleged occurrence in the memory color effect. I then apply similar considerations to the interpretation of empirical (...) studies of color perception in speakers of different languages. I argue that findings such as differences in categorical perception in speakers of different languages do not show that language affects color experience. They therefore do not support the claim that color experience is linguistically penetrable. But even if we grant that color experience is different in speakers of different languages, I argue that this might still not be a case of linguistic penetration. Finally, I consider some epistemological consequences of the assumption that speakers of different languages have different color experiences. (shrink)

Tracking theories of mental representation posit a privileged relation between color representations and the color properties of objects. Tracking theories of mental representation have been used to motivate color realism as they posit that the function of color vision is to represent the colors of objects. It has been argued that tracking theories have a major flaw, namely they cannot account for reliable misrepresentation. It has further been suggested that reliable color misrepresentation is a live (...) possibility. In this chapter, I argue that the current evidence indicates that our color representations reliably misrepresent. This conclusion undermines tracking theories and the color realist theories they purport to motivate. (shrink)

A major part of the mind–body problem is to explain why a given set of physical processes should give rise to qualia of one sort rather than another. Colour hues are the usual example considered here, and there is a lively debate between, for example, Hardin, Levine, Jackson, Clark and Chalmers as to whether the results of colour vision science can provide convincing explanations of why colours actually look the way they do. This paper examines carefully the type of explanation (...) that is needed here, and it is concluded that it does not have to be reductive to be effective. What needs to be explained more than anything is why inverted hue scenarios are more intuitive than other sensory inversions: and the issue of physicalism versus dualism is only of marginal relevance here. (shrink)

"The Location Problem for Color Subjectivism" response to commentators.

A quarter of a century ago, the first systematic behavioral experiments were performed to clarify the nature of color constancy—the effect whereby the perceived color of a surface remains constant despite changes in the spectrum of the illumination. At about the same time, new models of color constancy appeared, along with physiological data on cortical mechanisms and photographic colorimetric measurements of natural scenes. Since then, as this review shows, there have been many advances. The theoretical requirements for (...) constancy have been better delineated and the range of experimental techniques has been greatly expanded; novel invariant properties of images and a variety of neural mechanisms have been identified; and increasing recognition has been given to the relevance of natural surfaces and scenes as laboratory stimuli. Even so, there remain many theoretical and experimental challenges, not least to develop an account of color constancy that goes beyond deterministic and relatively simple laboratory stimuli and instead deals with the intrinsically variable nature of surfaces and illuminations present in the natural world. (shrink)

Colour relationalism holds that the colours are constituted by relations to subjects. Anti-relationalists have claimed that this view stands in stark contrast to our phenomenally-informed, pre-theoretic intuitions. Is this claim right? Cohen and Nichols’ recent empirical study suggests not, as about half of their participants seemed to be relationalists about colour. Despite Cohen and Nichols’ study, we think that the anti-relationalist’s claim is correct. We explain why there are good reasons to suspect that Cohen and Nichols’ experimental design skewed their (...) results in favour of relationalism. We then run an improved study and find that most of our participants seem to be anti-relationalists. We find some other interesting things too. Our results suggest that the majority of ordinary people find it no less intuitive that colours are objective than that shapes are objective. We also find some evidence that when those with little philosophical training are asked about the colours of objects, their intuitions about colour and shape cases are similar, but when asked about people’s colour ascriptions, their intuitions about colour and shape cases differ. (shrink)