Alex Byrne

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.

I know various contingent truths about my environment by perception. For example, by looking, I know that there is a computer before me; by hearing, I know that someone is talking in the corridor; by tasting, I know that the coffee has no sugar. I know these things because I have some built-in mechanisms specialized for detecting the state of my environment. One of these mechanisms, for instance, is presently transducing electromagnetic radiation (in a narrow band of wavelengths) coming from the computer and the desk on which it sits. How that mechanism works is a complicated story—to put it mildly—and of course much remains unknown. But we can at least produce more-or- less plausible sketches of how the mechanism can start from retinal irradiation, and go on to deliver knowledge of my surroundings. Moreover, in the sort of world we inhabit, specialized detection mechanisms that are causally affected by the things they detect have no serious competition—seeing the computer by seeing an idea of the computer in the divine mind, for example, is not a feasible alternative.

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

Consciousness, Color, and Content is a significant contribution to our understanding of consciousness, among other things. I have learned a lot from it, as well as Tye’s other writings. What’s more, I actually agree with much of it – fortunately for this symposium, not all of it. The book continues the defense of the “PANIC” theory of phenomenal consciousness that Tye began in Ten Problems of Consciousness (1995). A fair chunk of it, though, is largely independent of this theory: the discussion of the knowledge argument, the explanatory gap, and color. Tye says much of interest about these topics. But as most of my disagreement is with the PANIC theory, I shall concentrate on that. The PANIC theory is nothing short of ambitious. It is a reductive account of phenomenal consciousness in intentional/functional terms. Tye further gives, at least in outline, a broadly physicalistic account of intentionality (a “naturalized semantics”), in terms of causal covariation. Putting the PANIC theory and Tye’s naturalized semantics together, the result is a physicalistically acceptable theory of phenomenal consciousness. The two parts of this package are independent. A naturalized semantics can be combined with dualism about consciousness (a position close to this is in Chalmers, 1996). And a PANIC theorist is at liberty to endorse a rival physicalistic theory of intentionality, or indeed could take intentionality to be entirely irreducible. The plan is this. Section 1 briefly airs a concern about Tye’s naturalized semantics. The rest of the paper focuses on the PANIC theory, in particular the use it makes of “nonconceptual content”.1 Philosophical Studies 113: 261–274, 2003. © 2003 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands. 262..