Online research in philosophy

Over the last two hundred years, there have been many occasions where the name of a newly-discovered element has provoked controversy and dissent but in modern times, the naming of elements after scientists has proved to be particularly contentious. Here we recount the threads of this story, predominantly through discourses in the popular scientific journals, the first major discussion on naming an element after a scientist (Moseley); the first definitive naming after a scientist (Curie); and the first naming after a living scientist (Seaborg).

I propose a counterexample to naturalistic representational theories of phenomenal character. The counterexample is generated by experiences of novel colours reported by Crane and Piantanida. I consider various replies that a representationalist might make, including whether novel colours could be possible colours of objects and whether one can account for novel colours as one would account for binary colours or colour mixtures. I argue that none of these strategies is successful and therefore that one cannot fully explain the nature of the phenomenal character of perceptual experiences using a naturalistic conception of representation.

This book defends the radical thesis that no physical object has any of the colours we experience it as having.

Three experiments examined contributions of study phase awareness of word identity to subsequent word-identification priming by manipulating visual attention to words at study. In Experiment 1, word-identification priming was reduced for ignored relative to attended words, even though ignored words were identified sufficiently to produce negative priming in the study phase. Word-identification priming was also reduced after color naming relative to emotional valence rating (Experiment 2) or word reading (Experiment 3), even though an effect of emotional valence upon color naming (Experiment 2) indicated that words were identified at study. Thus, word-identification priming was reduced even when word identification occurred at study. Word-identification priming may depend on awareness of word identity at the time of study.

In Basic Color Terms, Berlin and Kay argued for a restricted number of "basic" color words—words they claimed to be culturally universal. This claim about language was buttressed by psychologist Eleanor Rosch's famous work on color prototypes. Together, the works of Berlin and Kay and Rosch are the foundation for a contemporary research tradition investigating the biological foundations of color naming. In this article, the author describes some common objections to the works of Berlin and Kay and Rosch and argues that they are not significant. The claim that explanations of color naming ought to be strictly cultural also is discussed and rejected.

While recognizing the theoretical importance of context, current research has treated naming as though semantic meaning were invariant and the same mapping of category exemplars and names should exist across experimental contexts. An assumed symmetry or bidirectionality in naming behavior has been implicit in the interchangeable use of tasks that ask subjects to match names to stimuli and tasks that ask subjects to match stimuli to names. Examples from the literature are discussed together with several studies of color naming and basic emotion naming in which no such symmetry was found. A more complete model of naming is proposed to account for flexible mapping of names to items. Principles of naming are suggested to describe effects of stimulus sampling, differing access to terms, task demands, and other impacts on naming behavior.

The simulations of Steels & Belpaeme (S&B) suggest that communication could lead to color categories that are closely shared within a language and potentially diverge across languages. We argue that this is opposite of the patterns that are actually observed in empirical studies of color naming. Focal color choices more often exhibit strong concordance across languages while also showing pronounced variability within any language.