Black and white and the inverted spectrum

Philosophical Quarterly 57 (227):161-175 (2007)
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Abstract

To the familiar idea of an undetectable spectrum inversion some have added the idea of inverted earth. This new combination of ideas is even harder to make coherent, particularly as it applies to a supposed inversion of black and white counteracted by an environmental switch of these. Black and white exhibit asymmetries in their connections with illumination, shadow and visibility, which rule out their being reversed. And since the most saturated yellow is light and the most saturated blue dark, yellow and blue could not be reversed unless light and dark could be. The difficulties suggest some more general morals for how to think of the role of 'qualia' in colour perception

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Justin Broackes
Brown University

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References found in this work

The inverted spectrum.Sydney Shoemaker - 1982 - Journal of Philosophy 79 (July):357-381.
(Nonsolipsistic) conceptual role semantics.Gilbert Harman - 1987 - In Ernest LePore (ed.), New Directions in Semantics. London: Academic Press. pp. 55–81.
Conceptual role semantics.Gilbert Harman - 1982 - Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic 28 (April):242-56.
Color, consciousness, and the isomorphism constraint.Stephen E. Palmer - 1999 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 22 (6):923-943.

View all 7 references / Add more references