The indeterminacy of color vision
Synthese 106 (2):167-203 (1996)
| Abstract | A critical survey of recent work on the ontological status of colors supports the conclusion that, while some accounts of color can plausibly be dismissed, no single account can yet be endorsed. Among the remaining options are certain forms of color realism according which familiar colors are instantiated by objects in our extra-cranial visual environment. Also still an option is color anti-realism, the view that familiar colors are, at best, biologically adaptive fictions, instantiated nowhere.I argue that there is simply no fact of the matter as to which of these remaining options is correct. I blame this indeterminacy on the fact that color vision exhibits several of the hallmarks of a modular input system, as described by Jerry Fodor in The Modularity of Mind | |||||||||
| Keywords | Color Epistemology Indeterminacy Natural Vision | |||||||||
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Evan Thompson (1995). Colour Vision: A Study in Cognitive Science and the Philosophy of Perception. New York: Routledge.
Ian Gold (2001). The Evolution of Color Vision. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 24 (4):671-671.
Mohan Matthen (2010). Color Experience: A Semantic Theory. In Jonathan Cohen & Mohan Matthen (eds.), Color Ontology and Color Science. MIT Press.
Vivian Mizrahi (2006). Color Objectivism and Color Pluralism. Dialectica 60 (3):283-306.
Richard J. Hall (1996). The Evolution of Color Vision Without Colors. Philosophy of Science Supplement 63 (3):125-33.
Mohan P. Matthen (1999). The Disunity of Color. Philosophical Review 108 (1):47-84.
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