Keith Allen

Colours appear to instantiate a number of structural properties: for instance, they stand in distinctive relations of similarity and difference, and admit of a fundamental distinction into unique and binary. Accounting for these structural properties is often taken to present a serious problem for physicalist theories of colour. This paper argues that a prominent attempt by Byrne and Hilbert to account for the structural properties of the colours, consistent with the claim that colours are types of surface spectral reflectance, is unsuccessful. Instead, it is suggested that a better account of the structural properties of the colours is provided by a form of non-reductive physicalism about colour: a naïve realist theory of colour, according to which colours are superficial mind-independent properties

Locke Defines Knowledge at the beginning of Book IV of the Essay concerning Human Understanding as “the perception of the connexion and agreement, or disagreement and repugnancy of any of our Ideas” (E IV.i.2).1 So defined, knowledge varies along two dimensions. On the one hand, there are four “sorts” of knowledge: of identity or diversity; relation; co-existence or necessary connection; and real existence. On the other hand, there are three “degrees” of knowledge: intuitive knowledge, which consists in the “immediate” perception of agreement or disagreement between ideas (E IV.ii.1); demonstrative knowledge, which consists in the perception of agreement or disagreement by way of intermediate (or intervening) ..

This volume brings together a collection of new essays by leading scholars on the subject of causation in the early modern period, from Descartes to Lady Mary Shepherd. Aimed at researchers, graduate students and advanced undergraduates, the volume advances the understanding of early modern discussions of causation, and situates these discussions in the wider context of early modern philosophy and science. Specifically, the volume contains essays on key early modern thinkers, such as Descartes, Hobbes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Hume, Kant. It also contains essays that examine the important contributions to the causation debate of less widely discussed figures, including Louis la Forge, Thomas Brown and Lady Mary Shepherd.