Hi David,
Thanks for the reply.

I make a negative claim and two positive claims. The negative claim is that the argument for Russellianism fails. The weaker positive claim is that a certain alleged mode of support for Russellianism actually undermines it. The stronger positive claim is that Russellianism is false.


Concerning the negative claim: if it's unclear how to decide claims about how things "look" in any "nonepistemic" sense -- in particular, to the extent that there is no clear meaning to the intuitive claims about how things look on which the arguments of Byrne and Hilbert, Chalmers, and Speaks rely -- then the negative claim goes through. 

You seem to agree with me on this. (Autobiographically, I'm happy to rest here: I think nonedenic Russellianism is quite out of the question, and am not especially happy about the edenic view.) But you also seem to go further: you seem to agree with the antecedent. I'm not so sure about that.

(Note though that the familiar alleged distinction among senses of 'look' is not obviously germane to my argument: I express the case not just in terms of how things look, but also in terms of which color is "presented in experience". I'm not sure whether there is more than one coherent sense of this expression. I'm also not sure whether there is more than zero. One might reasonably press that point.)

Concerning the weaker positive claim, I describe a specific procedure for assessing how things look in the relevant sense that I think the Russellians have in mind: project oneself into the experience, and then "apply" color concepts on the basis of the phenomenal character of the projected experience. Your "semantic" or (b)-type reading of the discussion is the correct one here. The thought then is that the referents of those color concepts are the colors presented in the experiences.


That's the "alleged mode of support" for Russellianism that I claim to undermine it. The stronger positive claim, that Russellianism is false, follows if (I) this mode of support does indeed undermine Russellianism and (II) the procedure just outlined for assessing claims about which color is presented in an experience is legitimate. Byrne and Hilbert et al I take it agree with (II); perhaps you disagree with (II), since you claim I "move without argument" in advancing (II) -- the argument, of course, appears in the text above, namely the stuff diagnosing what the Russellians are up to.

The question for assessing (I) is: "how shall we "apply" the color concepts?" I claim that if we should apply them straight (in accord with the  rule: having an R-experience, deploy a concept of red), the Russellian wins, and if we should apply them "inverted" (in accord with the  rule: having an R-experience, deploy a concept of green), the Russellian loses. (If it's not obvious what the answer is here, then the negative claim goes through.)

Now I also claim that we should apply them inverted. The argument goes (a) Alva applies them inverted, (b) we should apply them as Alva does. The argument for (a) is that otherwise Alva's beliefs about which colors things have are massively wrong. The argument for (b) in the initial post appealed to a familiar line on what the content of a given experience is, namely (roughly) that belief tracks it ceteris paribus (cf Byrne and Hilbert, 263--4). (This is of course distinct from the "epistemic use" of  'look' as you characterize it, as requiring actual belief.) Another case occurs to me just now: otherwise, when Alva reasons: 'lo, something red; therefore this color presented in my experience = red', the argument is, absurdly, invalid.

Obviously some Russellians accept the first line. Those who do must grant (I) and abandon Russellianism. I'm inclined to think that any Russellian should accept the second line, since it seems to be in line with the rhetoric of transparency. Those who reject both need to say something about why we should apply the concepts straight rather than inverted; otherwise it's not clear what the answer is and the negative claim goes through.

Finally, concerning your argument: that's a nice argument; obviously (1) and (2) are correct, I'm not sure about (3). I'm inclined to doubt it will have much dialectical force against Russellians, since most of them will reject (3) (especially the ones who advance the argument I discuss).