Color, Variation, and the Appeal to Essences: Impasse and Resolution

Philosophical Studies 133 (3):425-438 (2007)
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Abstract

Many philosophers have been attracted by the view that colors are mind-independent properties of object surfaces. While this view has come in for a fair bit of criticism for failing to do justice to the facts about perceptual variation, Byrne and Hilbert have recently argued that perceptual variation involving color is no more problematic for physicalism about color than representational variation involving temperature is for physicalism about temperature. Unfortunately, the analogy on which this response rests is no less controversial than the disputed view about color, and so the response leads to a standoff rather than a resolution of the debate. However, we can appeal to facts about our inferential treatment of color and other properties as a way of resolving this impasse; doing so gives us defeasible reason for rejecting the Byrne and Hilbert response, and so for rejecting their mind-independent conception of color.

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Jonathan Cohen
University of California, San Diego

References found in this work

Concepts: Where Cognitive Science Went Wrong.Jerry A. Fodor - 1998 - Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press.
Consciousness, Color, and Content.Michael Tye - 2000 - Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
Critical Notice.Michael Tye - 2000 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 68 (1):245-247.
Color realism and color science.Alex Byrne & David R. Hilbert - 2003 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 26 (1):3-21.

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