Fallibilists about looks deny that the relation of looking the same as is non-transitive. Regarding familiar examples of coloured patches suggesting that such a relation is non-transitive, they argue that, in fact, indiscriminable adjacent patches may well look different, despite their perceptual indiscriminability: it’s just that we cannot notice the relevant differences in the chromatic appearances of such patches. In this paper, I present an argument that fallibilism about looks requires commitment to an empirically false consequence. To succeed in deflecting (...) putative cases of non-transitivity, fallibilists would have to claim that there can’t be any perceptual limitations of any kind on human chromatic discrimination. But there are good reasons to think such limitations exist. (shrink)

Conceptualists have it that the representational content of perceptual experience is determined by the concepts a subject applies in having such an experience. Conceptualists like Bill Brewer [1999] and John McDowell [1994] have laid particular emphasis on demonstrative concepts in trying to account for the fact that subjects can perceive and discriminate very many specific shades of colour in experience. Against this, it has been objected that such demonstrative concepts have incoherent conditions of extension and/or of individuation, due to the (...) fact that chromatic indiscriminability is non-transitive. In this paper, I consider three different versions of this objection and show why each fails. (shrink)

Suppose you are presented with three red objects. You are then asked to take a careful look at each possible pair of objects, and to decide whether or not their members look chromatically the same. You carry out the instructions thoroughly, and the following propositions sum up the results of your empirical investigation:

i. red object #1 looks the same in colour as red object #2.

ii. red object #2 looks the same in colour as red object #3.

Drawing on work in psychophysics, psychometrics, and sensory neurophysiology, Clark analyzes the character and defends the integrity of psychophysical explanations of qualitative facts, arguing that the structure of such explanations is sound and potentially successful.

Most solutions to the sorites reject its major premise, i.e. the quantified conditional . This rejection appears to imply a discrimination between two elements that are supposed to be indiscriminable. Thus, the puzzle of the sorites involves in a fundamental way the notion of indiscriminability. This paper analyzes this relation and formalizes it, in a way that makes the rejection of the major premise more palatable. The intuitive idea is that we consider two elements indiscriminable by default, i.e. unless we (...) know some information that discriminates between them. Specifically, following Rough Set Theory, two elements are defined to be indiscernible if they agree on the vague property in question. Then, a is defined to be indiscriminable from b if a is indiscernible by default from b . That is to say, a is indiscriminable from b if it is consistent to assume that a and b agree on the relevant vague property. (shrink)

A series of unnoticeably small changes in an observable property may add up to a noticeable change. Crispin Wright has used this fact to prove that perceptual indiscriminability is a non-transitive relation. Delia Graff has recently argued that there is a 'tension' between Wright's assumptions. But Graff has misunderstood one of these, that 'phenomenal continua' are possible; and the other, that our powers of discrimination are finite, is sound. If the first assumption is properly understood, it is not in tension (...) with but is actually implied by the second, given a plausible physical assumption. (shrink)

I argue in this paper that the existence of sorites series of color patches – series of color patches arranged so that the patches on each end look different in color though no two adjacent patches do – shows that the relation of same phenomenal charac­ter as is not a transitive relation. I then argue that the intransitivity of same phenomenal character as conflicts with certain versions of intentionalism, the view that an experiences phenomenal character is exhausted, or fully determined (...) by its intentional content. Lastly, I consider various objections to the arguments and reply to them. (shrink)

Since Nelson Goodman 1951, the assumption that phenomenal indiscriminability is non-transitive is taken generally for granted. Moreover, this assumption was used (by Goodman 1951, Travis 1985, Dummett 1975 and others) to argue against the existence or coherence of subjective and/or observational properties. Recently, however, the assumption has been questioned [Fara 2001] and I agree with Fara that the assumption is much more problematic than was thought, partly because it is not clear what is meant by the relation of phenomenal indiscriminability, (...) and partly because it is not clear how to interpret ideas such as continuous change, and the limitations of our power of perceptual discrimination. In this paper I will bypass the question of the transitivity of phenomenal indiscriminability. I will use only the assumption about the existence (or even the possibility of existence) of a phenomenal sorites. This assumption is less controversial, and accepted (at least the version I will use) by opponents and defenders of transitivity alike. I will argue that the incoherence of 'red' (as response-dependent or purely observational) can be derived without committing ourselves to a view on the question of transitivity, and I will use this incoherence, to argue against the account of 'red' as a response-dependent concept. (shrink)

Abstract: How exactly should the relation between a veridical perception and a corresponding hallucination be understood? I argue that the epistemic notion of ‘indiscriminability’, understood as lacking evidence for the distinctness of things, is not suitable for defining this relation. Instead, we should say that a hallucination and a veridical perception involve the same phenomenal properties. This has further consequences for attempts to give necessary and sufficient conditions for the identity of phenomenal properties in terms of indiscriminability, and for considerations (...) about the phenomenal sorites. (shrink)

In her recent book Anti-Individualism and Knowledge, Jessica Brown has presented a novel answer to the self-knowledge achievement problem facing the proponent of anti-individualism. She argues that her answer is to be preferred to the traditional answer (based on Burge, 1988a). Here I present three objections to the claim that her proposed answer is to be preferred. The significance of these objections lies in what they tell us about the nature of the sort of knowledge that is in dispute. Perhaps (...) the most important lesson I draw from this discussion is that, given the nature of knowledge of one's own thoughts, discriminability (from relevant alternatives) is not a condition on knowledge as such. (shrink)

In this paper I show that a variety of Cartesian Conceptions of the mental are unworkable. In particular, I offer a much weaker conception of limited discrimination than the one advanced by Williamson (2000) and show that this weaker conception, together with some plausible background assumptions, is not only able to undermine the claim that our core mental states are luminous (roughly: if one is in such a state then one is in a position to know that one is) but (...) also the claim that introspection is infallible with respect to our core mental states (where a belief that C obtains is infallible just in case if one believes that C obtains then C obtains). The upshot is a broader and much more powerful case against the Cartesian conception of the mental than has been advanced hitherto. (shrink)

This volume will be an essential resource for anyone working in the central areas of philosophy, and the starting point for future research in this fascinating ...

Inspired by the writings of J. M. Hinton (1967a, 1967b, 1973), but ushered into the mainstream by Paul Snowdon (1980–1, 1990–1), John McDowell (1982, 1986), and M. G. F. Martin (2002, 2004, 2006), disjunctivism is currently discussed, advocated, and opposed in the philosophy of perception, the theory of knowledge, the theory of practical reason, and the philosophy of action. But what is disjunctivism?

Let's be externalists about perceptual consciousness and think the form of veridical perceptual consciousness includes /seeing this or that mind-independent particular and its colors/. Let's also take internalism seriously, granting that spectral inversion and hallucination can be "phenomenally" the same as normal seeing. Then perceptual consciousness and phenomenality are different, and so we need to say how they are related. It's complicated!<br><br>Phenomenal sameness is (against all odds) /reflective indiscriminability/. I build a "displaced perception" account of reflection on which indiscriminability stems (...) from shared "qualia". Qualia are compatible with direct realism: while they generate an explanatory gap (and colors do not), so does /seeing/; qualia are excluded from perceptual consciousness by its "transparency"; instead, qualia are aspects of thought about the perceived environment. <br><br>The asymmetry between my treatments of color and seeing is grounded in the asymmetry between ignorance and error: while inversion shows that normal subjects are ignorant of the natures of the colors, hallucination shows not that perceivers are ignorant of the nature of seeing but that hallucinators are prone to error about their condition. Past literature has treated inversion and hallucination as on a par: externalists see error in both cases, while internalists see mutual ignorance. My account is so complicated because plausible results require mixing it up. (shrink)

Perception represents colors inexactly. This inexactness results from phenomenally manifest noise, and results in apparent violations of the transitivity of perceptual indiscriminability. Whether these violations are genuine depends on what is meant by 'transitivity of perceptual indiscriminability'.

According to the monitoring theory of consciousness, a mental state is conscious in virtue of being represented in the right way by a monitoring state. David Rosenthal, William Lycan, and Uriah Kriegel have developed three different influential versions of this theory. In order to explain colour experiences, each of these authors combines his version of the monitoring theory of consciousness with a specific account of colour representation. Even though Rosenthal, Lycan, and Kriegel disagree on the specifics, they all hold that (...) colours are represented by a single type of mental state. The main goal of this paper is to show that a more complex account of colour representation is needed for the monitoring theory of consciousness to do justice to the phenomenology of colour experiences. In particular, I will argue that the fine-grained character of colour experience?that is, the fact that perceivers can become conscious of small differences between colours?requires that colour representation be construed in terms of two different types of mental states, namely sensory states that represent appearance properties and colour representations that represent physical colours. (shrink)

Taking a series of colour patches, starting with one that clearly looks red, and making each so similar in colour to the previous one that it looks the same as it, we appear to be able to show that a yellow patch looks red. I ask whether phenomenal sorites paradoxes, such as this, are subject to a unique kind of solution that is unavailable in relation to other sorites paradoxes. I argue that they do not need such a solution, nor (...) do they succumb to one. In particular, I reject the claim made by Fara and Raffman that looks the same is a transitive relation, which would allow us to solve phenomenal sorites paradoxes by denying the possibility of the required kind of sorites series. (shrink)

The goal of the present paper is to defend against a certain line of attack the view that conscious experience of <span class='Hi'>color</span> is no more fine-grained that the repertoire of non- demonstrative concepts that a perceiver is able to bring to bear in perception. The line of attack in question is an alleged empirical argument - the Diachronic Indistinguishability Argument (DIA) - based on pairs of colors so similar that they can be discriminated when simultaneously presented but not when (...) presented across a memory delay. My aim here is to show that this argument fails. (shrink)

I respond to the separate commentaries by Jacob Berger, Charlie Pelling, and David Pereplyotchik on my paper, “Color-Consciousness Conceptualism.” I resist Berger’s suggestion that mental colors ever enter consciousness without accompaniment by deployments of concepts of their extra-mental counterparts. I express concerns about Pelling’s proposal that a more uniform conceptualist treatment of phenomenal sorites can be gained by a simple appeal to the partial overlap of the extensions of some concepts. I question the relevance to perceptual consciousness of the arguments (...) for demonstrative concepts that Pereplyotchik attacks. (shrink)

The disjunctive theory of perception claims that we should understand statements about how things appear to a perceiver to be equivalent to statements of a disjunction that either one is perceiving such and such or one is suffering an illusion (or hallucination); and that such statements are not to be viewed as introducing a report of a distinctive mental event or state common to these various disjoint situations. When Michael Hinton first introduced the idea, he suggested that the burden of (...) proof or disproof lay with his opponent, that what was needed was to show that our talk of how things look or appear to one.. (shrink)

According to the Ability Hypothesis, knowing what it is like to have experience E is just having the ability to imagine or recognize or remember having experience E. I examine various versions of the Ability Hypothesis and point out that they all face serious objections. Then I propose a new version that is not vulnerable to these objections: knowing what it is like to experience E is having the ability todiscriminate imagining or having experience E from imagining or having any (...) other experience. I argue that if we replace the ability to imagine or recognize with the ability to discriminate, the Ability Hypothesis can be salvaged. (shrink)

I defend, to a certain extent, the traditional view that perceptual indiscriminability is non-transitive. The argument proceeds by considering important recent work by Benj Hellie: Hellie argues that colour perception represents ‘inexactly’, and that this results in violations of the transitivity of colour indiscriminability. I show that Hellie’s argument remains inconclusive, since he does not demonstrate conclusively that colour perception really does represent inexactly. My own argument for the non-transitivity of perceptual indiscriminability uses inexactness instead as one horn of a (...) dilemma: the key idea is that there is a class of perceptual experiences which might plausibly be supposed either to represent inexactly or to represent exactly—but which demonstrate the non-transitivity of perceptual indiscriminability either way. (shrink)

According to the epistemic theory of hallucination, the fundamental psychological nature of a hallucinatory experience is constituted by its being ‘introspectively indiscriminable’, in some sense, from a veridical experience of a corresponding type. How is the notion of introspective indiscriminability to which the epistemic theory appeals best construed? Following M. G. F. Martin, the standard assumption is that the notion should be construed in terms of negative epistemics: in particular, it is assumed that the notion should be explained in terms (...) of the impossibility that a hallucinator might possess a certain type of knowledge on a certain basis. I argue that the standard assumption is mistaken. I argue that the relevant notion of introspective indiscriminability is better construed in terms of positive epistemics: in particular, I argue that the notion is better explained by reference to the fact that it would be rational for a hallucinator positively to make a certain type of judgement, were that judgement made on a certain basis. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that those who accept the conceptualist view in the philosophy of perception should reject the traditional view that colour indiscriminability is non-transitive. I start by outlining the general strategy that conceptualists have adopted in response to the familiar ‘fineness of grain’ objection, and I show why a commitment to what I call the indiscriminability claim seems to form a natural part of this strategy. I then show how together, the indiscriminability claim and the non-transitivity claim (...) –the claim that colour indiscriminability is non-transitive –entail a further, suspicious-looking claim that I call the problematic claim. My argument then splits into two parts. In the first part, I show why the conceptualist does indeed need to reject the problematic claim. Given that this claim is jointly entailed by the indiscriminability claim and the non-transitivity claim, the conceptualist is then left with a straight choice: reject the indiscriminability claim, or reject the non-transitivity claim. In the second part, I then explain why the conceptualist should choose the latter option. (shrink)

The Academics offered an argument from twins or perceptually indiscernible objects and an argument from dreams or madness in support of the indiscernibility thesis: that every true perceptual impression is such that some false impression just like it is possible. I claim that these arguments, unlike modern sceptical arguments, are supposed to establish mere counterfactual rather than epistemic possibilities. They purport to show that for any true perceptual impression j, there are a number of alternative causal histories j might have (...) had which would not have resulted in any change in the way in which j represents its object. (shrink)

It is obvious both that some changes are too small for us to perceive and that we can perceive constant motion. Yet according to Fara, these two facts are in conflict, and one must be rejected. I show that conflict arises only from accepting a ‘zoëtrope conception’ of change experience, according to which change experience is analysed in terms of a series of very short-lived sensory atoms, each lacking in dynamic content. On pain of denying the phenomenologically obvious, we must (...) reject the zoëtrope conception. I offer an alternative account, according to which the dynamic content of our experience at short timescales is metaphysically dependent on the content of experience over longer timescales. Moreover, at short timescales such content is purely determinable. (shrink)

This paper examines the relationship between perceptual knowledge and discrimination in the light of the so-called ‘relevant alternatives’ intuition. It begins by outlining an intuitive relevant alternatives account of perceptual knowledge which incorporates the insight that there is a close connection between perceptual knowledge and the possession of relevant discriminatory abilities. It is argued, however, that in order to resolve certain problems that face this view, it is essential to recognise an important distinction between favouring and discriminating epistemic support that (...) is often overlooked in the literature. This distinction complicates the story regarding how an alternative becomes relevant, and in doing so weakens the connection between perceptual knowledge and discrimination. The theory that results, however—what I term a ‘two-tiered’ relevant alternatives theory of perceptual knowledge—accommodates many of our intuitions about perceptual knowledge and so avoids the revisionism of some recent proposals in the epistemological literature. (shrink)

Of the many families of words that are thought to be vague, so-called observational predicates may be both the most fascinating and the most confounding. Roughly, observational predicates are terms that apply to objects on the basis of how those objects appear to us perceptually speaking. ‘Red’, ‘loud’, ‘sweet’, ‘acrid’, and ‘smooth’ are good examples. Delia Graff explains that a “predicate is observational just in case its applicability to an object (given a fixed context of evaluation) depends only on the (...) way that object appears” (2001, 3). By the same token observational predicates are, as Crispin Wright observes, terms “whose senses are taught entirely by ostension” (1976). Like other vague predicates, observational words appear to generate sorites paradoxes. Consider for example a series of 20 colored patches progressing from a clearly red one to a clearly orange one, so ordered that each patch is just noticeably different in hue from the one before. The following argument then seems forced upon us: (1) Patch #1 is red. (2) Any patch that differs only slightly in hue from a red patch is itself red. (3) Therefore patch #20 is red. Premise (2) expresses what Wright has called the tolerance of ‘red’: the application of the predicate tolerates small changes in a decisive parameter (here, hue). Of course, most vague predicates, hence most versions of the sorites, are not observational. For instance, given a series of.. (shrink)

It is widely supposed that one family of sorites paradoxes, perhaps the most perplexing versions of the puzzle, owe at least in part to the nontransitivity of perceptual indiscriminability. To a first approximation, perceptual indiscriminability is the relationship obtaining among objects (stimuli) that appear identical in some perceptual respect—for example hue, or pitch, or texture. Indiscriminable objects look the same, or sound the same, or feel the same. Received wisdom has it that there are or could be series of objects (...) _o__1…_o__n in which _o_₁ and _o_₂ are indiscriminable, _o_₂ and _o_3 are indiscriminable, etc., and _o_n-1 and_ o_n are indiscriminable, but _o_1 and _o_n are discriminably different. For example, there could be a series of colored patches so ordered that each patch looks the same in hue as its immediate neighbors but the whole progresses from a clear case of red to a clear case of orange. On the assumption that an observational word like ‘red’ applies to both if to either of a pair of perceptually indiscriminable items, the absurd conclusion of the sorites comes into view. Crispin Wright explains. (shrink)

In Thomas Metzinger, Conscious Experience, Schoningh Verlag. 1995. [ online ].

This volume analyzes and studies how vagueness occurs and matters as a specific problem in the context of theories that are primarily about something else.

Early formulations of disjunctivism about perception refused to give any positive account of the nature of hallucination, beyond the uncontroversial fact that they can in some sense seem to the same to the subject as veridical perceptions. Recently, some disjunctivists have attempt to account for hallucination in purely epistemic terms, by developing detailed account of what it is for a hallucinaton to be indiscriminable from a veridical perception. In this paper I argue that the prospects for purely epistemic treatments of (...) hallucinations are dim, and that this undermines the case for disjunctivism. (shrink)

In this paper, I describe and criticize M.G.F. Martin's version of disjunctivism, and his argument for it from premises about self-knowledge.

Disjunctivism is the focus of a lively debate spanning the philosophy of perception, epistemology, and the philosophy of action. Adrian Haddock and Fiona Macpherson present 17 specially written essays, which examine the different forms of disjunctivism and explore the connections between them.

Definitions of phenomenal types (Nelson Goodman’s definition of qualia, Sydney Shoemaker’s phenomenal types, Austen Clark’s physicalist theory of qualia) imply that numerically distinct experiences can be type-identical in some sense. However, Goodman also argues that objects cannot be replicated in respect of continuous and densely ordered types. In that case, how can phenomenal types be defined for sizes, shapes and colours, which appear to be continuously ordered types? Concentrating on size, I will argue for the following points. (§2) We cannot (...) deny the possibility of replication in respect of dense types, because this would imply that particulars have determinable sizes, shapes and colours. (§3) Phenomenal sizes and shapes are determinable types; objective, or super-determinate, sizes and shapes are unknowable. (§4) We can define and know, prior to verification, groupings of objective sizes for which indiscriminability is transitive. (§5) Phenomenal identity has to be defined on the basis of these transitive groupings, because finer-grained criteria (such as Goodman’s) lead to definition of objective identity. The quality space of phenomenal types consists of overlapping but not dense types, and this prevents a collapse of phenomenal types. (shrink)