Alex Byrne

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.

Anything is similar to anything, provided the respects of similarity are allowed to be gerrymandered or gruesome, as Goodman observed.2 But similarity in non-gruesome or—as I shall say—genuine respects is much less ecumenical. Colors, it seems, provide a compelling illustration of the distinction as applied to similarities among properties.3 For instance, in innumerable gruesome respects, blue is more similar to yellow than to purple. But in a genuine respect, blue is more similar to purple than to yellow (genuinely more similar, as I shall sometimes put it)

Our reply is in four parts. The first part addresses objections to our claim that there might be "unknowable" color facts. The second part discusses the use we make of opponent process theory. The third part examines the question of whether colors are causes. The fourth part takes up some issues concerning the content of visual experience. Our target article had three aims: (a) to explain clearly the structure of the debate about color realism; (b) to introduce an interdisciplinary audience to the way philosophers have thought about the issue; (c) to argue that colors are certain sorts of physical properties ("productances"). We are very grateful to the commentators in this continuing commentary for their criticism and constructive suggestions.

The 'content view', in slogan form, is 'Perceptual experiences have representational content'. I explain why the content view should be reformulated to remove any reference to 'experiences'. I then argue, against Bill Brewer, Charles Travis and others, that the content view is true. One corollary of the discussion is that the content of perception is relatively thin (confined, in the visual case, to roughly the output of 'mid-level' vision). Finally, I argue (briefly) that the opponents of the content view are partially vindicated, because perceptual error is due to false belief.

Emergentists such as Samuel Alexander and C. Lloyd Morgan held that the mental is causally efficacious, supervenes on the physical, but does so mysteriously. We must accept the emergent mind, in Alexander's phrase, with "natural piety". Emergentism emerged late last century and all but disappeared in the twentieth. This dissertation attempts to revive the position. ;To explain psycho-physical supervenience is to provide a proof of the mental facts from the physical facts, such that mental vocabulary only occurs in the proof in the form of a priori bridge principles connecting mental goings on with the physical facts. Offering a proof of the mental facts from the physical facts would be one way to justify supervenience, thus simultaneously vindicating and explaining it. ;Those philosophers who try to "naturalize intentionality" can be seen as seeking such proofs for intentional states. Various theories of this kind are considered: those of Fodor, Millikan, Lewis, and others. It is argued in chapters 2 and 3 that these theories are either false or unknowable. ;The case for eliminativism is examined in chapter 4, where it is argued that eliminativism is, of necessity, not a rational thesis to adopt. ;A view found in the writings of Davidson and Dennett is the topic of chapter 5. This is a kind of third-person Cartesianism: a person's mind is completely revealed by the deliverances of a suitably equipped interpreter. This position would elegantly vindicate supervenience without explaining it, at the price of a kind of anti-realism about the mind. It is argued that the price is not worth paying. ;In the sixth chapter it is argued that if the phenomenal aspects of the mind supervene, they do so mysteriously. An argument is then presented for psycho-physical supervenience. It was argued earlier that if supervenience holds for intentional states, it cannot be adequately explained. Therefore physicalism is true, but the mind-body problem has no solution.

Traditionally, perceptual experiences—for example, the experience of seeing a cat—were thought to have two quite distinct components. When one sees a cat, one’s experience is “about” the cat: this is the representational or intentional component of the experience. One’s experience also has phenomenal character: this is the sensational component of the experience. Although the intentional and sensational components at least typically go together, in principle they might come apart: the intentional component could be present without the sensational component or vice versa.

The sceptic about the external world presents us with a paradox: an apparently acceptable argument for an apparently unacceptable conclusion—that we do not know anything about the external world. Some paradoxes, for instance the liar and the sorites, are very hard. The defense of a purported solution to either of these two inevitably deploys the latest in high-tech philosophical weaponry. On the other hand, some paradoxes are not at all hard, and may be resolved without much fuss. They do not contain profound lessons about the human condition. Where should we place the sceptical paradoxes?

David Lewis claims that a simple sort of anti-Humeanism-that the rational agent desires something to the extent he believes it to be good-can be given a decision-theoretic formulation, which Lewis calls 'Desire as Belief' (DAB). Given the (widely held) assumption that Jeffrey conditionalising is a rationally permissible way to change one's mind in the face of new evidence, Lewis proves that DAB leads to absurdity. Thus, according to Lewis, the simple form of anti-Humeanism stands refuted. In this paper we investigate whether Lewis's case against DAB can be strengthened by examining how it fares under rival versions of decision theory, including other conceptions of rational ways to change one's mind. We argue that the anti-Humean may escape Lewis's argument either by adopting a version of causal decision theory, or by claiming that the refutation only applies to hyper-idealised rational agents, or by denying that the decision-theoretic framework has the expressive capacity to formulate anti-Humeanism.

Somewhat at random, I shall pick chapter 7 for a closer look. Tye distinguishes three versions of the view that colors are “mind-independent, illumination-independent properties”, which we frequently see physical objects as possessing. The first is emergentism, according to which colors are “simple qualities” that nomologically supervene on the physical facts: there is a possible world exactly like the actual world physically, but in which nothing is colored. Brute nonreductive physicalism is the same as emergentism, except that colors are said to metaphysically supervene on the physical facts. Hence, on this second view, there is no physical duplicate of the actual world in which nothing is colored. The third position, reductive physicalism, simply identifies colors with physical properties.

Perceptual experiences justify beliefs—that much seems obvious. As Brewer puts it, “sense experiential states provide reasons for empirical beliefs” (this volume, xx). In Mind and World McDowell argues that we can get from this apparent platitude to the controversial claim that perceptual experiences have conceptual content: [W]e can coherently credit experiences with rational relations to judgement and belief, but only if we take it that spontaneity is already implicated in receptivity; that is, only if we take it that experiences have conceptual content. (1994, 162) Brewer agrees. Their view is sometimes called conceptualism; nonconceptualism is the rival position, that experiences have nonconceptual content. One initial obstacle is understanding what the issue is. What is conceptual content, and how is it different from nonconceptual content? Section 1 of this paper explains two versions of each of the rival positions: state (non)conceptualism and content (non)conceptualism; the latter pair is the locus of the relevant dispute. Two prominent arguments for content nonconceptualism—the richness argument and the continuity argument—both fail (section 2). McDowell’s and Brewer’s epistemological defenses of content conceptualism are also faulty (section 3). Section 4 gives a more simple-minded case for conceptualism; finally, some reasons are given for rejecting the claim—on one natural interpretation—that experiences justify beliefs.

Some things are _about_, or are _directed on_, or _represent_, other things. For example, the sentence 'Cats are animals' is about cats (and about animals), this article is about intentionality, Emanuel Leutze's most famous painting is about Washington's crossing of the Delaware, lanterns hung in Boston's North Church were about the British, and a map of Boston is about Boston. In contrast, '#a$b', a blank slate, and the city of Boston are not about anything. Many mental states and events also have "aboutness": the belief that cats are animals is about cats, as is the fear of cats, the desire to have many cats, and seeing that the cats are on the mat. Arguably some mental states and events are not about anything: sensations, like pains and itches, are often held to be examples. Actions can also be about other things: hunting for the cat is about the cat, although tripping over the cat is not. This -- rather vaguely characterized -- phenomenon of "aboutness" is called _intentionality_. Something that is about (directed on, represents) something else is said to "have intentionality", or (in the case of mental states) is said to be an "intentional mental state"