Valtteri Arstila

Dustin Stokes argues for the existence of orectic penetration, a phenomenon in which a desire-like state penetrates our perceptual experience. His candidate for a case of orectic penetration is the most convincing candidate presented thus far. It is argued here that his candidate and his further arguments for the existence of orectic penetration do not support the claim that orectic penetration takes place. As a result, it is concluded that there are no convincing cases of desire-like states penetrating perceptual experience.

The cognitive penetrability of perceptual experiences has been a long-standing topic of disagreement among philosophers and psychologists. Although the notion of cognitive penetrability itself has also been under dispute, the debate has mainly focused on the cases in which cognitive states allegedly penetrate perceptual experiences. This paper concerns the plausibility of two prominent cases. The first one originates from Susanna Siegel’s claim that perceptual experiences can represent natural kind properties. If this is true, then the concepts we possess change the way things appear to us. The second candidate for cognitive penetration is Fiona Macpherson’s claim that, in addition to concepts, our beliefs can penetrate perceptual experiences. It is argued that neither candidate is a case of cognitive penetration. In doing so, I provide an explanation to both that is based on perceptual learning, a non-cognitive phenomenon where relatively slow and long-lasting modifications to an organism’s perceptual system bring about changes in perception. This explanation is theoretically more plausible and remains closer to the empirical data than the explanations based on cognitive penetration.

There exist two widely used notions concerning the structure of phenomenal color space. The first is the notion of unique/binary hue structure, which maintains that there are four unique hues from which all other hues are composed. The second notion is the similarity structure of hues, which describes the interrelations between the hues and hence does not divide hues into two types as the first notion does. Philosophers have considered the existence of the unique/binary hue structure to be empirically and phenomenally well-grounded, and the structure has been considered to be primary because this can account for the similarity structure. Consequently, the unique/binary hue structure has played a central role in color philosophy. This calls for the assessment of the justification for its existence carried out in this paper. It is concluded that, despite the prevalent view among philosophers, none of their reasons for endorsing the existence of the unique/binary hue structure are justified. Since the notion of the unique/binary hue structure appears intuitively plausible for many, however, a sketch explaining this intuition is outlined at the end.

The question of the constituting nature of colour is largely open. The old dispute between colour objectivism and colour subjectivism is still relevant. The former has defended itself against accusations of not being able to explain colour structures, while the latter view has received criticism for not being able to provide a plausible theory of the location of colours. By weakening the notion of physical categories, making some of them perceiver-depended, colour objectivists have managed to overcome at least some of the previous accusations. However, the arguments based on Crane’s and Piantanida’s findings of the existence of binary colours like greenish-red and yellowish-blue, indicate the inadequacy of colour objectivism. Consequently, we have colours but our theories of them are false.

The philosophical debate over the nature of color has been governed by what we have learnt from color vision science and what color phenomenology suggests to us. It is usually thought that color eliminativism, which maintains that physical objects do not have any properties that can be identified with colors, can account for the former but not the latter. After all, what could be more obvious than the external world to be colored? Here I outline one color eliminativistic response to the objections based on phenomenology.