We make three points. First, the concept of productance value that the authors propose in their defense of color physicalism fails to do the work for which it is intended. Second, the authors fail to offer an adequate physicalist account of what they call the hue-magnitudes. Third, their answer to the problem of individual differences faces serious difficulties.

In this paper I offer an explanation of the ineffability (linguistic inexpressibility) of sensory experiences. My explanation is put in terms of computational functionalism and standard externalist theories of representational content. As I will argue, many or most sensory experiences are representational states without constituent structure. This property determines both the representational function these states can serve and the information that can be extracted from them when they are processed. Sensory experiences can indicate the presence of certain external states of (...) affairs but they cannot convey any more information about them than that. So, format- or code-conversion mechanisms that link different systems of representation (linguistic and perceptual) to each other will fail to extract any relevant information from sensory experiences that could be coded in language. They only way to establish specific roles for sensory experiences in communication and the organization of behavior is to attach to them, by associative links, words, or other behavioral responses. If a sensory experience has no linguistic label associated to it in a particular subject, then no linguistic description can token, or activate, that state in the subject. In other words, no linguistic description can cause a subject to undergo an unlabeled perceptual state. On the contrary, complex, or syntactically structured perceptual states can be built up, on the basis of descriptions, by mechanisms of constructive imagination (conceived here as one sort of format conversion). It is this difference between complex and unstructured representational states that gives us an understanding of the phenomenon we call the ineffability of qualia. (shrink)

The phenomenal character of conscious experience has long been regarded as the major problem for physicalist accounts of consciousness. In recent years, defenders of physicalism have typically been relying on the so-called Phenomenal Concept Strategy to avoid dualism. In this paper, we argue with PCS that cognitive-physicalistic explanations can account for the peculiarities of phenomenal character. However, we think that the conceptual features PCS investigates are not the genuine causes of the special characteristics of phenomenal consciousness but only symptoms, which (...) can themselves be explained in terms of the features of the sensory-perceptual representations underlying conscious experiences, namely that some, but not all, of these states are representationally unstructured. (shrink)

Contrary to some well-known views in cognitive science and the philosophy of mind, in general it is not the case that the felt character of sensory experiences is determined by the information that these experiences pick up, or represent, about the world. In this dissertation I shall focus on a particular sensory modality, namely color vision, to support this thesis. ;Recently there has arisen a strong and popular view of phenomenal consciousness according to which the two fundamental problems about the (...) mind: intentionality and phenomenal experience, can be traced back to just one: intentionality. On this view, the phenomenal aspect of experience is a special case of intentionality, or our mental states' carrying information about the external world. For instance, when we see the colors of objects, we see, in a direct and transparent way, exactly those kinds of properties that the external objects have. Not only are the colors of objects causally responsible for our experiences as of color, object colors crucially determine what is called the phenomenal character of color experience. ;In this dissertation I shall argue that this view of color experience---the view called representational externalism---cannot be correct. I shall argue that from the empirical facts about object color and color vision we need not conclude that object colors do not exist, hence color vision is a grand illusion, however, we do have to conclude from these facts that though object colors are the causes of our color experience, what it is like to see the colors is not, in any theoretically interesting sense, determined by the colors themselves. To the contrary, what it is like to see the colors is crucially determined by how our color vision systems are constructed. In this dissertation I offer two independent arguments to support this claim. (shrink)

In this paper I shall defend a projectivist view of sensory experience. The case I shall focus on is that of color experience. Projectivism has recently been criticized by some authors who claim that it is unintelligible, or at least implausible, and that it makes a severe category mistake. I shall argue that despite some prima facie impressions of implausibility, projectivism can be made intelligible, and plausible, if its details are spelled out in a reasonable way. In addition, projectivism is (...) ubiquitous in human psychology, and certain cases of projection are reasonably viewed as making a category mistake. Viewed from this perspective, sensory projection is just one instance of projectivism, brought about by low-level perceptual processing. Whether sensory projection is one that makes a category mistake is not obvious. However, even if it does, this is perfectly compatible with the evolutionary advantage of sensation and perception. (shrink)

A traditional explanation that dates back to Aristotle is that we access color in one perceptual modality only, whereas shape we perceive via two different modalities: visual and tactile. Two independent modalities make possible a verification of our percepts which is not possible for qualities accessed in one modality only.

A stubborn problem for reflectance physicalism about color is to account for individual differences in normal trichromat color perception. The identification of determinate colors with physical properties of visible surfaces in a universal, perceiver-independent way is challenged by the observation that the same surfaces in identical viewing conditions often look different in color to different human subjects with normal color vision. Recently, leading representatives of reflectance physicalism have offered some arguments to defend their view against the individual differences challenge. In (...) this paper I challenge their defense. I argue thateven though individual differences are present in shape perception as well as in color perception, the mechanisms of shape perception and those of color perception differ in ways which make them completely different regarding their evidential status for certain identity claims. Thus comparing color perception to shape perception offers no support for identifying hues with reflectances. On the other hand, drawing a parallel between the temperature-mean kinetic energy of molecules (MKE) identification and the proposed hue-reflectance identities is no support for reflectance physicalism either, since there is an important disanalogybetween the two cases. While individual differences obtain in color perception, the effects of temperature (e.g., melting, thermal expansion) do not exhibit analogous variation, which makes the temperature-MKE identification unproblematic compared to the hue-reflectance identification. One motivation for this ongoing debate is that the success or failure of reflectance physicalism has far-reaching consequences regarding externalist theories of phenomenal consciousness. (shrink)

This is a commentary on Laurence Maloney’s chapter in Mausfeld R., and Heyer, D. (Eds.): Colour Perception: Mind and the Physical World. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. I discuss two related proposals as to the nature of object color formulated by Maloney. On the first proposal colors are photoreceptor excitations; on the second, they are fundamental, universal reflectance characteristics of terrestrial surfaces. I argue that the second proposal is suitable for purposes of color objectivism, whereas the first one is not. (...) However, if we look at Maloney’s – and Brian Wandell’s – models of color vision and color constancy more thoroughly, not even the second version supports absolutist versions of color objectivism, according to which observer-independent reflectance properties determine, or are identical to, the phenomenal character of color experience. (shrink)

In this chapter, data concerning the development of principal aspects of vision is reviewed. First, the development of colour vision and luminance perception is discussed. Relevant data accumulated so far indicates that perception of colour and luminance is present by 6-9 months of age. The presence of typical color illusions at this age suggests that the phenomenal character of color experience is comparable to that of adults well before the first birthday. Thus it seems plausible that color perception develops on (...) the grounds of genetically preprogrammed maturation, in which perceptual learning and plasticity play a limited role. This claim also seems to be supported by case studies of newly sighted patients. On the other hand, perceptual integration of edges and forms in the visual environment as well as the development of binocular vision, and the perception of ambiguous figures seem to depend crucially on early perceptual learning. Both developmental and clinical data indicate a more significant involvement of perceptual learning in such mid-level and higher level perceptual phenomena. (shrink)

We present a cognitive-physicalist account of phenomenal consciousness. We argue that phenomenal concepts do not differ from other types of concepts. When explaining the peculiarities of conscious experience, the right place to look at is sensory/ perceptual representations and their interaction with general conceptual structures. We utilize Jerry Fodor’s psycho- semantic theory to formulate our view. We compare and contrast our view with that of Murat Aydede and Güven Güzeldere, who, using Dretskean psychosemantic theory, arrived at a solution different from (...) ours in some ways. We have suggested that the representational atomism of certain sensory experiences plays a central role in reconstructing the epistemic gap associated with conscious experience, still, atomism is not the whole story. It needs to be supple- mented by some additional principles. We also add an account of introspection, and suggest some cognitive features that might distinguish representational atoms with phenomenal character from those without it. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that there are problems with the foundations of the current version of physicalism about color. In some sources laying the foundations of physicalism, types of surface reflectance corresponding to (veridical) color perceptions are characterized by making reference to properties of the observer. This means that these surface attributes are not objective (i.e. observer-independent). This problem casts doubt on the possibility of identifying colors with types of surface reflectance. If this identification cannot be maintained, that in (...) turn threatens representationalist theories of phenomenal consciousness: there remains no objective, observer-independent property that color experiences represent - hence no representational content, in terms of semantic externalism, can be attributed to color experiences. I offer an alternative account of color and conclude that further empirical study is required to do justice to the basic claims of color physicalism. (shrink)

We propose a way to achieve across-population sharing within the authors' model in a way that is plausibly in accordance with human evolution, and also a simple way to capture ecological structure. Finally, we briefly reflect on the model's scope and limits in modeling linguistic communication.

Quinian bootstrapping is Susan Carey's solution to Fodor’s paradox of concept learning. Carey claims that contrary to Fodor’s view, not all learning amounts to hypothesis testing, and that there are ways in which even primitive concepts can be learned. Recently Georges Rey has argued that Carey’s attempt to refute radical concept nativism is unsuccessful. First it cannot explain how the expressive power of mental representational systems could increase due to learning. Second, both Fodorian circularity charges and Goodmanian problems of indeterminacy (...) apply to Carey’s examples of Quinian bootstrapping. I argue that Carey’s examples of bootstrapping can be amended to escape Fodorian and Goodmanian objections. I suggest some ways to improve on our models of concept learning to this end. I also argue that skill learning is the way for mental representational systems to increase their own expressive power, that is, to enrich their conceptual repertoire beyond what compositionality alone affords. (shrink)

A stubborn problem for reflectance physicalism about color is to account for individual differences in normal trichromat color perception. The identification of determinate colors with physical properties of visible surfaces in a universal, perceiver-independent way is challenged by the observation that the same surfaces in identical viewing conditions often look different in color to different human subjects with normal color vision. Recently, leading representatives of reflectance physicalism have offered some arguments to defend their view against the individual differences challenge. In (...) this paper I challenge their defense. I argue thateven though individual differences are present in shape perception as well as in color perception, the mechanisms of shape perception and those of color perception differ in ways which make them completely different regarding their evidential status for certain identity claims. Thus comparing color perception to shape perception offers no support for identifying hues with reflectances. On the other hand, drawing a parallel between the temperature-mean kinetic energy of molecules (MKE) identification and the proposed hue-reflectance identities is no support for reflectance physicalism either, since there is an important disanalogybetween the two cases. While individual differences obtain in color perception, the effects of temperature (e.g., melting, thermal expansion) do not exhibit analogous variation, which makes the temperature-MKE identification unproblematic compared to the hue-reflectance identification. One motivation for this ongoing debate is that the success or failure of reflectance physicalism has far-reaching consequences regarding externalist theories of phenomenal consciousness. (shrink)