Online research in philosophy

It is argued that Nozick's experience machine thought experiment does not pose a particular difficulty for mental state theories of well-being. While the example shows that we value many things beyond our mental states, this simply reflects the fact that we value more than our own well-being. Nor is a mental state theorist forced to make the dubious claim that we maintain these other values simply as a means to desirable mental states. Valuing more than our mental states is compatible with maintaining that the impact of such values upon our well-being lies in their impact upon our mental lives.

1. Introduction Our question is: how do things look to the color-blind? But what does that mean? Who are the “color-blind”? Approximately 7% of males and fewer than 1% of females (of European descent1) have some form of inherited defect of color vision, and as a result are unable to discriminate some colored stimuli that most of us can tell apart. (‘Color defective’ is an alternative term that is often used; we will continue to speak with the vulgar.) Color vision defects constitute a spectrum of disorders with varying degrees and types of departure from normal human color vision. One form of color vision defect is dichromacy: by mixing together only two lights, the dichromat can match any light, unlike normal trichromatic humans who need to mix three. The most common form of dichromacy (afflicting about 2% of males) is red-green color blindness, or red-green dichromacy, which itself comes in two varieties. A red-green dichromat will not be able to distinguish some pairs of stimuli that respectively appear red and green to those with..

Our question is: how do things look to the color-blind? But what does that mean? Who are the “color-blind”? Approximately 7% of males and fewer than 1% of females (of European descent1) have some form of inherited defect of color vision, and as a result are unable to discriminate some colored stimuli that most of us can tell apart. (‘Color defective’ is an alternative term that is often used; we will continue to speak with the vulgar.) Color vision defects constitute a spectrum of disorders with varying degrees and types of departure from normal human color vision. One form of color vision defect is dichromacy: by mixing together only two lights, the dichromat can match any light, unlike normal trichromatic humans who need to mix three. The most common form of dichromacy (afflicting about 2% of males) is red-green color blindness, or red-green dichromacy, which itself comes in two varieties. A red-green dichromat will not be able to distinguish some pairs of stimuli that respectively appear red and green to those with normal color vision. For simplicity we will concentrate almost exclusively on red-green color blindness.2 In a philosophical context our question is liable to be taken two ways. First, it can be straightforwardly taken as a question about visible properties of external objects like..

Michael Tye has recently been a vocal defender of color realism or, as I shall call it, color objectivism. Objectivism about color is the view that color properties are identical to intrinsic physical properties of the surfaces of objects. Subjectivism about color is the denial of color objectivism. Objectivists argue that color claims must be taken at face value. In this paper I forego the usual bickering about whether there are surface reflectance properties that can be identified with colors as the objectivist theory requires. Supposing that some such properties could be found, I argue that if objectivism about color were correct it would have the unsavory consequence that we are rarely if ever right—perhaps never right—about the particular colors of particular things. So objectivism does not bear out common attribution of colors to the surfaces of things, after all.

What is color? What is color vision? Most philosophers answer by reference to humans: to human color qualia, or to the environmental properties or "quality spaces" perceived by humans. It is argued, with reference to empirical findings concerning comparative color vision and the evolution of color vision, that all such attempts are mistaken. An adequate definition of color vision must eschew reference to its outputs in the human cognition and refer only to inputs: color vision consists in the use of wavelength discrimination in the construction of visual representations. A color quality is one that is generated from such processing.

Representations for Consciousness There are two sorts of representations that figure in AEI—the egocentric and the allocentric—and it is the goal of this and the next chapter to flesh out accounts of these kinds of representation that are consistent with identity theory. One of the main challenges to identity theory that arises as soon as the topic of representation comes up is that representation strikes so many thinkers as requiring a relational analysis, whereby mental representations essentially involve relations between the organism that has the representations and the typically external objects and events which are the things represented. Such a relational account is at odds with the identity theory insofar as the identity theory reduces mental states and properties to wholly internal things in the organism, specifically to things in the organism’s brain.

Purpose. Although observers easily extract the global meaning of natural scenes, it is often the case that they do not notice or remember all of their individual properties. It appears that some scene properties are more readily coded in mental representations than others. We tested the role of three different object properties - color, location, and presence/absence - in scene representations.

Color subjectivism is the view that color properties are mental properties of our visual sensations, perhaps identical with properties of neural states, and that nothing except visual sensations and other mental states exhibits color properties. Color phys- icalism, by contrast, holds that colors are exclusively properties of visible physical objects and processes.

Justin makes a novel case, based on reflection on the “telos” of color vision, for a dispositional theory of colors. Justin’s case is highly suggestive, and comes tantalizingly close to resolving the debate in the metaphysics of color. But I have a few questions which I would like to see answered before I am converted.

In this paper, I propose a fictionalist approach to the problem of color. On my view, which I call prescriptive color fictionalism, we can continue to employ our color discourse as we have thus far even if it turns out that there are no colored objects. My proposal is a species of error theory. As such, it does not describe our current practices. It is rather proposed as a prescription to a problem, namely that the color theory we accept (according to which there are colored objects) is false. By formulating a fictionalist account of color and showing that we can preserve ordinary color discourse in the absence of colored objects, I provide a solution to the problem of color.