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149Hoffman’s “proof” of the possibility of spectrum inversionConsciousness and Cognition 15 (1): 48-50. 2006.Philosophers have devoted a great deal of discussion to the question of whether an inverted spectrum thought experiment refutes functionalism. (For a review of the inverted spectrum and its many philosophical applications, see Byrne, 2004.) If Ho?man is correct the matter can be swiftly and conclusively settled, without appeal to any empirical data about color vision (or anything else). Assuming only that color experiences and functional relations can be mathematically represented, a simple math…Read more
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247Basic sensible qualities and the structure of appearancePhilosophical Issues 18 (1): 385-405. 2008.A sensible quality is a perceptible property, a property that physical objects (or events) perceptually appear to have. Thus smells, tastes, colors and shapes are sensible qualities. An egg, for example, may smell rotten, taste sour, and look cream and round.1,2 The sensible qualities are not a miscellanous jumble—they form complex structures. Crimson, magenta, and chartreuse are not merely three different shades of color: the first two are more similar than either is to the third. Familiar colo…Read more
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100QualiaIn Gibson Bruce (ed.), Sage Encyclopedia of Perception, Sage Publishing. 2010.Perception and thought are often, although not exclusively, concerned with information about the world. In the case of perceiving though, unlike thinking, it is widely believed that there is an additional element involved, a subjective feeling or, as it is often put, something that it is like to be perceiving. Qualia are these characteristic feelings that accompany perceiving. One motivation for the idea that we experience qualia is that there is a clear difference between seeing a red tomato an…Read more
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489Color PrimitivismErkenntnis 66 (1-2). 2006.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 i…Read more
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44Basic tastes and unique huesBehavioral and Brain Sciences 31 (1): 82-82. 2008.The logic of the basic taste concept is discussed in relation to the physiology and psychophysics of color vision. An alternative version of the basic taste model, analogous to opponent-process theory is introduced. The logic of quality naming experiments is clarified
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237Readings on Color, Volume 1: The Philosophy of ColorMIT Press. 1997."This admirable volume of readings is the first of a pair: the editors are to be applauded for placing the philosophy of color exactly where it should go, in ...
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206Color realism reduxBehavioral and Brain Sciences 26 (1): 52-59. 2003.Our reply is in three parts. The first part concerns some foundational issues in the debate about color realism. The second part addresses the many objections to the version of physicalism about color ("productance physicalism") defended in the target article. The third part discusses the leading alternative approaches and theories endorsed by the commentators.
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151Theories of colourIn Edward Craig (ed.), Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Genealogy to Iqbal, Routledge. 1998.The world as perceived by human beings is full of colour. The world as described by physical scientists is composed of colourless particles and fields. Philosophical theories of colour since the scientific revolution have been primarily driven by a desire to harmonize these two apparently conflicting pictures of the world. Any adequate theory of colour has to be consistent with the characteristics of colour as perceived without contradicting the deliverances of the physical sciences. Given this …Read more
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380Hallucination, sense-data and direct realismPhilosophical Studies 120 (1-3): 185-191. 2004.Although it has been something of a fetish for philosophers to distinguish between hallucination and illusion, the enduring problems for philosophy of perception that both phenomena present are not essentially different. Hallucination, in its pure philosophical form, is just another example of the philosopher’s penchant for considering extreme and extremely idealized cases in order to understand the ordinary. The problem that has driven much philosophical thinking about perception is the problem…Read more
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25Comparative color vision and the objectivity of colorBehavioral and Brain Sciences 15 (1): 38-39. 1992.
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334Colors and reflectancesIn Alex Byrne & David R. Hilbert (eds.), Readings on Color, Volume 1: The Philosophy of Color, Mit Press. 1997.When we open our eyes, the world seems full of colored opaque objects, light sources, and transparent volumes. One historically popular view, _eliminativism_, is that the world is not in this respect as it appears to be: nothing has any color. Color _realism_, the denial of eliminativism, comes in three mutually exclusive varieties, which may be taken to exhaust the space of plausible realist theories. Acccording to _dispositionalism_, colors are _psychological_ dispositions: dispositions to pro…Read more
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38Spraying colorIn Katharina Grosse: Atoms Inside Balloons, The Renaissance Society At the University of Chicago. pp. 240-251. 2009.What is color? Of course, examples of colorful objects are not hard to come by (Fig. 1 provides numerous examples), so the question itself is slightly puzzling, suggesting that some confusion needs to be cleared up or ignorance enlightened. But how could anyone (who isn’t blind or Fig. 1 Atoms Inside Balloons totally lacking in color vision) possibly be confused about what color is? After all, if we learn anything about the world merely by looking at it, it’s the colors of the things we see. How…Read more
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40Drink on, the jolly prelate criesIn Steven Hales (ed.), Philosophy and Beer, Routledge. 2007.The 18th century philosopher and Anglican bishop, George Berkeley, is chiefly known to posterity for advocating the radical thesis that there is no unthinking stuff in the world. According to Berkeley, bar stools, kegs, mugs and the all paraphernalia of ordinary life (plus everything else) are merely ideas and have no existence outside the mind of those seated on the stools, tapping the kegs, and drinking from the mugs. What is less well-known is that Berkeley devoted much of his energy in later…Read more
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109Color and Color Perception: A Study in Anthropocentric RealismCsli Press. 1987.Colour has often been supposed to be a subjective property, a property to be analysed orretly in terms of the phenomenological aspects of human expereince. In contrast with subjectivism, an objectivist analysis of color takes color to be a property objects possess in themselves, independently of the character of human perceptual expereince. David Hilbert defends a form of objectivism that identifies color with a physical property of surfaces - their spectral reflectance. This analysis of color i…Read more
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77Readings on Color, Volume 2: The Science of Color (edited book)MIT Press. 1997.These volumes will serve as useful resources for anyone interested in philosophy of color perception or color science.
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106In _An Essay Towards a New Theory of Vision_ George Berkeley made the claim that,.
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112Color realism revisitedBehavioral and Brain Sciences 26 (6): 791-793. 2003.Our reply is in four parts. The first part, R1, addresses objections to our claim that there might be “unknowable” color facts. The second part, R2, discusses the use we make of opponent process theory. The third part, R3, examines the question of whether colors are causes. The fourth part, R4, takes up some issues concerning the content of visual experience.
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285Are colors secondary qualities?In Lawrence Nolan (ed.), Primary and secondary qualities: the historical and ongoing debate, Oxford University Press. 2011.The Dangerous Book for Boys Abstract: Seventeenth and eighteenth century discussions of the senses are often thought to contain a profound truth: some perceptible properties are secondary qualities, dispositions to produce certain sorts of experiences in perceivers. In particular, colors are secondary qualities: for example, an object is green iff it is disposed to look green to standard perceivers in standard conditions. After rebutting Boghossian and Velleman’s argument that a certain kind of …Read more
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300Hardin, Tye, and Color PhysicalismJournal of Philosophy 101 (1): 37-43. 2004.Larry Hardin has been the most steadfast and influential critic of physicalist theories of color over the last 20 years. In their modern form these theories originated with the work of Smart and Armstrong in the 1960s and 1970s1 and Hardin appropriately concentrated on their views in his initial critique of physicalism.2 In his most recent contribution to this project3 he attacks Michael Tye’s recent attempts to defend and extend color physicalism.4 Like Byrne and Hilbert5, Tye identifies color …Read more
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Perception |
Philosophy of Cognitive Science |
Philosophy of Mind |
George Berkeley |
17th/18th Century British Philosophy |
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