Reflectance realism is an important position in the philosophy of colour. This paper is an examination of David R. Hilbert’s case for there being scientific support for the theory. The specific point in question is whether colour science has shown that reflectance is recovered by the human visual system. Following a discussion of possible counter-evidence in the recent scientific literature, I make the argument that conflicting interpretations of the data on reflectance recovery are informed by different theoretical assumptions (...) about the nature of
colour, and of perception. If this is so, there cannot be neutral empirical
evidence on this point, and this does seem to undermine Hilbert’s claim for
empirical support. In the end, I suggest alternative ways of thinking about the relationship between colour ontology and empirical work on colour. (shrink)

This paper critically discusses role functionalism about color and suggests that it is not such a sui generis position as it is often considered to be. The discussionfocuses upon one, hopefully, central point. The main proponent of the idea of role functionalism is Jonathan Cohen who in his book The Red and the Real (2009)suggests a Refined Taxonomy of positions on color ontology. Namely, his proposal implies that color ontology should be divided into relationalist and non-relationalist accounts. Generally, (...) he endorses the relationalist theory of color which roughly claims that colors are constituted in terms of some relation between objects and subjects (inter alia). Specifically, Cohen defends Role Functionalism as the best version of relationalism according to which the relations that constitute colors are functional relations. Based on his role functionalist stance, he distances himself from dispositionalists. However, in this paper I show that he could be interpreted as one and therefore needs to reconsider his Refined Taxonomy of positions on color ontology. (shrink)

This paper considers whether there can be any such thing as a naturalized metaphysics of color—any distillation of the commitments of perceptual science with regard to color ontology. I first make some observations about the kinds of philosophical commitments that sometimes bubble to the surface in the psychology and neuroscience of color. Unsurprisingly, because of the range of opinions expressed, an ontology of color cannot simply be read off from scientists’ definitions and theoretical statements. I next consider two (...) alternative routes. First, conceptual pluralism inspired by Mark Wilson's analysis of scientific representation. I argue that these findings leave the prospects for a naturalized color ontology rather dim. Second, I outline a naturalized epistemology of perception. I ask how the correctness and informativeness of perceptual states is understood by contemporary perceptual science. I argue that the detectionist ideal of correspondence should be replaced by the pragmatic ideal of usefulness. I argue that this result has significant implications for the metaphysics of color. (shrink)

This paper considers whether there can be any such thing as a naturalized metaphysics of color—any distillation of the commitments of perceptual science with regard to color ontology. I first make some observations about the kinds of philosophical commitments that sometimes bubble to the surface in the psychology and neuroscience of color. Unsurprisingly, because of the range of opinions expressed, an ontology of color cannot simply be read off from scientists’ definitions and theoretical statements. I next consider two (...) alternative routes. First, conceptual pluralism inspired by Mark Wilson's analysis of scientific representation. I argue that these findings leave the prospects for a naturalized color ontology rather dim. Second, I outline a naturalized epistemology of perception. I ask how the correctness and informativeness of perceptual states is understood by contemporary perceptual science. I argue that the detectionist ideal of correspondence should be replaced by the pragmatic ideal of usefulness. I argue that this result has significant implications for the metaphysics of color. (shrink)

Colour is, according to prevailing orthodoxy in perceptual psychology, a kind of autonomous and unitary attribute. It is regarded as unitary or homogeneous by assuming that its core properties do not depend on the type of ‘perceptual object’ to which it pertains and that‘colour per se’ constitutes a natural attribute in the functional architecture of the perceptual system. It is regarded as autonomous by assuming that it can be studied in isolation of other perceptual attributes. These assumptions also (...) provide the pillars for the technical field of colorimetry, and have proved very fruitful for neurophysiological investigations into peripheral colour coding. They also have become, in a technology-driven cultural process of abstraction, part of our common-sense conception of colour. With respect to perception theory, however, both assumptions are grossly inadequate, on both empirical and theoretical grounds. All the same, the idea of an internal homogeneous and autonomous attribute of ‘colour per se’, mostly taken not as an empirical hypothesis but as a kind of truism, became a guiding idea in perceptual psychology. Here, it has impeded the identification of relevant theoretical issues and consequently has become detrimental for the development of explanatory frameworks for the role of ‘colour’ within the structure of our perceptual system. The chapter argues that enquiries into colour perception cannot be divorced from general enquiries into the structure of the conceptual forms underlying perception. (shrink)

From David Hume's famous puzzle about 'the missing shade of blue' to current research into the science of colour, the topic of colour is an incredibly fertile region of study and debate, cutting across philosophy of mind, epistemology, metaphysics and aesthetics as well as psychology. Debates about the nature of our experience of colour and the nature of colour itself are central to contemporary discussion and argument in philosophy of mind and psychology, and philosophy of perception. (...) This outstanding Handbook contains twenty-nine specially commissioned contributions by leading philosophers and examines the most important aspects of philosophy of colour. It is organised into six parts: The Importance of Colour to Philosophy The Science and Spaces of Colour Colour Phenomena Colour Ontology Colour Experience and Epistemology Language, Categories and Thought. The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Colour is essential reading for students and researchers in philosophy of mind and psychology, epistemology, metaphysics and aesthetics, as well as for those interested in conceptual issues in the psychology of colour. (shrink)

Reflectance physicalism only provides a partial picture of the ontology of color. Byrne & Hilbert’ account is unsatisfactory because the replacement of reflectance functions by productance functions is ad hoc, unclear, and only leads to new problems. Furthermore, the effects of color contrast and differences in illumination are not really taken seriously: Too many “real” colors are tacitly dismissed as illusory, and this for arbitrary reasons. We claim that there cannot be an all-embracing ontology for color.

From an Ontological Point of View is a highly original and accessible exploration of fundamental questions about what there is. John Heil discusses such issues as whether the world includes levels of reality; the nature of objects and properties; the demands of realism; what makes things true; qualities, powers, and the relation these bear to one another. He advances an account of the fundamental constituents of the world around us, and applies this account to problems that have plagued recent work (...) in the philosophy of mind and metaphysics (color, intentionality, and the nature of consciousness). (shrink)

There is growing body of knowledge about how humans and animals perceive col- ours; we may safely say that both physiology and physics of colour perception are becoming less and less mysterious. Still it doesn't help to solve a philosophical puzzle: What do exactly mean expressions like “perceived red” or “perceived green”? What do perceived colours refer to in the world? There are three problem fields I am touching on in this paper: (i) semantics of colour names, (ii) (...) ontological status of colours, (iii) cognitive relevance of colours. I am trying to formulate onto- logical and epistemological assumptions for semantics of colour names. I am espe- cially focused on classical problem of objectivity of colours. While pursuing my task I am making some critical remarks about Wittgenstein's views on colours as formulated in “Tractatus” and modified in “Remarks on Colours”. I am using. (shrink)

This article discusses sorrow in terms of its resistant possibilities. It describes bodies of color as ontological sites of sorrow in the context of racism and xenophobia. This sorrow, however, does not condemn these bodies to hopelessness and erasure. Rather, it may constitute a rupture with a present that fails to acknowledge racist and xenophobic practices. In addition, it connects sorrow to the kind of melancholia that bodies of color experience given their being-in-worlds that consider them unwanted, unworthy, and disposable. (...) By way of photographic analysis, this article also presents the notion of aesthetic unsettlement in order to point to coalitional possibilities across experiences and histories of woundedness, melancholia, and sorrow. (shrink)

The article draws on critiques in political theory and morality to argue that womanism, a worldview rooted in Black women's lives and history, provides an alternative conceptual framework to prevailing Eurocentric thinking, for promoting socially just institutions of higher education. Presupposing a positioned, encultured, and embodied account of identity, womanism’s social change perspective holds transformative promise. It foregrounds Black women’s penchant for reaching solutions that promote communal balance, affirm one’s humanity and attend to the spiritual dimension (Phillips, 2006 Phillips, L. (...) (Ed.). (2006). The womanist reader. Routledge.[Crossref], [Google Scholar]). Directed first towards scholars of color, fostering inclusivity, communalist values and acknowledged intersectionality offers an ethic of the embodied self. As a corollary, it argues for a universal that recommends at least two guiding principles for a pedagogical philosophy. It is, first oriented towards a love of self and second towards placing all disciplines within a cultural-historical context. In the first claim, there is potential for nothing less than suspending the symbolic and ontological violence to one’s sense of belonging in academia. In the second claim, such an understanding can position scholars of color to actively re-narrate their fields. As illustrations, we focus on three academic fields of education, theology in higher education, and criminal justice. (shrink)

Even though there is an ineluctable abyss between Analytic and Continental Philosophy, it is not hard to argue that in his later works Ludwig Wittgenstein draws a closer philosophical attitude to the latter in terms of that the notions developed by him, such as language-games, family resemblances, meaning-in-use or rule-following, apart from his earlier nomological approach to language, leave room for various understandings and uncertainty in language. In the present work, my primary task is to concentrate on the close relationship (...) between the Wittgenstein’s notion of family resemblances and Gadamer’s idea of the fusion of horizons. But both philosophers, coincide in criticizing the authority of the Cartesian subject and private language and in allowing different understandings and uncertainty in language. Starting from this point of view, the linguistic turn, I will turn my remarks on the question how we learn color concepts since the structure of these concepts radically differs from the words that are able to subject to ostensive definitions. This last section will also offer a hermeneutical reading of Wittgenstein’s notion of family resemblances. (shrink)

Our modern scientific explanation of colour as a subjective impression has replaced a ‘pre-theoretical’ notion of colour as an intrinsic property of objects, which was mainstream in ancient thought. Why have we lost such pre-theoretical notion, and what have we lost by losing it? I argue that most ancient Greek philosophers exploited this pre-theoretical assumption – one that was obvious to them – in terms and ways that are still worthy of attention in the context of contemporary philosophy (...) of colour. I offer an in-depth analysis of the theories of a number of early Greek philosophers, as well as of Plato in the Timaeus, showing that they tend to share the idea that colour is an essential property of external bodies and therefore plays a causal role in perception. Then I focus on a comparison between Democritus’ stance and Aristotle’s in order to highlight a significant contrast between the two. Democritus' theory is an exception in ancient thought because it traces the colour phenomenon back to a refraction of atmospheric light through atomic aggregates. Aristotle, instead, posits the presence of colour and light in the bodies themselves. Finally, I interpret Aristotle's account as the most complex attempt in ancient thought to weld together what we call the ‘manifest image’ of colour and its ‘scientific image’. (shrink)

This paper presents a new response to the colour similarity argument, an argument that many people take to pose the greatest threat to colour physicalism. The colour similarity argument assumes that if colour physicalism is true, then colour similarities should be scrutable under standard physical descriptions of surface reflectance properties such as their spectral reflectance curves. Given this assumption, our evident failure to find such similarities at the reducing level seemingly proves fatal to colour (...) physicalism. I argue that we should dispense with this assumption, and thus endorse the inscrutability of colour similarity. This strategy is inspired by parallels between the colour similarity argument and the explanatory gap between mind and body made vivid by Jackson’s (1986) knowledge argument, and in particular by type-B physicalist responses to that argument. This inscrutability response is further motivated by cases in chemistry and biochemistry in which analogous scrutability theses fail to hold. Along the way, I present a challenge to standard formulations of the colour similarity argument based on the extreme context sensitivity of the similarity relation. Most presentations of the argument fail to control for such contextual variation, which raises the distinct possibility that the argument equivocates on the similarity relation across its premises. Although ultimately inconclusive, this context challenge forces a significant reformulation of the colour similarity argument, and highlights the need for much greater care in handling claims about colour similarity. (shrink)

A good portion of the work in the ontology of color focuses on color properties, trying to figure out how they are related to more straightforwardly physical properties. Another focus is realism: are ordinary material objects such as pumpkins really colored? A third emphasis is the nature of what is referred to by the terms ‘what it’s like’ or ‘phenomenal character’, as applied to color. In contrast, this essay is exclusively about select color tokens. I will be arguing that (...) whether or not ordinary objects such as pumpkins are colored, regardless of what the true theory of color properties is, and independently of any talk of phenomenal character or what-it’s-likeness, some afterimage experiences are very hard to fit into any plausible ontology, physicalist or not. (shrink)

When an object looks red to an observer, the visual experience of the observer has two important features. The experience visually represents the object as having a property—being red. And the experience has a phenomenological character; that is, there is something that it is like to have an experience of seeing an object as red. Let qualia be the properties that give our sensory and perceptual experiences their phenomenological character. This essay takes up two related problem for a nonreductive account (...) of qualia. Some have argued that on such an account there is no room in a physicalist ontology for qualia. Section 1 shows how qualia might fit into a physicalist ontology. The second problem begins with the observation that there is a gap in scientific accounts of color experience; there is no explanation of why the features of the brain that determine our color experiences give those experiences their phenomenological character. Building on the results of Sect. 1, Sect. 2 develops an account of color perception that bridges this gap and shows how qualia give color perception its phenomenological character. To get a grip on the issues involved the paper begins by considering some aspects of a physicalist account of color. (shrink)

: According to a consensus of psycho-physiological and philosophical theories, color sensations (or qualia) are generated in a cerebral "space" fed from photon-photoreceptor interaction (producing "metamers") in the retina of the eye. The resulting "space" has three dimensions: hue (or chroma), saturation (or "purity"), and brightness (lightness, value or intensity) and (in some versions) is further structured by primitive or landmark "colors"—usually four, or six (when white and black are added to red, yellow, green and blue). It has also been (...) proposed that there are eleven semantic universals—labeling the previous six plus the "intermediaries" of orange, pink, brown, purple, and gray. There are many versions of this consensus, but they all aim to provide ontological, epistemological and semantic blueprints for the brute fact of the reality of color ordained by Nature (evolution). In contrast to this consensus, we have argued that "seeing color" is not a matter of light waves impacting on our eyes, producing sensations to be categorized and labeled in the "color space" in the brain. While electrochemical events may unproblematically be regarded as the causal precondition for seeing color, the reception of sensations in "the color space" as semantically labeled natural categories, kinds, or information, is a "just so" story: it is Wittgenstein's beetle in a box. In contrast we consider that the authority of this consensus might better be regarded not as the result of the truth-tracking of nature, but as the sociohistorical outcome of philosophical presuppositions, scientific theories, experimental practices, technological apparatus, and their feed forward into the lifeworld. The question we shall therefore explore is whether, or to what extent, we ourselves are changed, as the conditions of production of color science change. Thus we are doing a kind of anthropology at two levels: of color science itself (and its effect on our own lifeworld), and of those studied by the "anthropology of color". As befits this stance we are agnostic about the theoretical entities of color science (cf. van Fraassen 2001), and within this new context, we propose to cross-cut object-and-subject, organism-and-environment (the bedrock of color science) in socio-historical ways. Our approach is in part inspired by, but not the same as, that of Gibson, in that we wish to pursue the notion of "social affordances" (Burmudez 1995). We suggest that color has become a naturalization through science-based technologies, which, through praxes and materializations, have become the perceptual and cultural entities that structure experience and understanding in the lifeworld. It is this naturalization that we shall refer to and characterize as "the historically inflected exosomatic organ". Consequently we shall explore the historical ontology of "color" without assuming an underlying biological constant (Dupré 2001). In part 1 we show the flimsiness of the evidence for the three dimensions of color, borrowed from physics, and fine-tuned to a "standard observer" (a "spectral creature" with a phenomenal "color space"). In part 2 we address the structuring of hue through the development of color circles and color spaces. This is followed by a review of the evidence for unique hues. Again the evidence is shown to be flimsy. We then show that an isolated domain of color is a particular kind of model, not a "natural given". In part 3, after reviewing what is referred to as "the isomorphy thesis," we discuss the exemplary case study of Berlin and Kay (1969). This illustrates the pull of stadial models presupposed by their evolutionary theory of color language. The Berlin and Kay paradigm proposes that American English color terms are incorrigible and can provide the universal metalanguage. We conclude by presenting an alternative account, namely that we ourselves are changed as the conditions of production of color science change. We argue that it is better to regard "seeing-color" as a historically inflected exosomatic organ that provides social affordances for those trained to grasp them. (shrink)

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. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is twofold: (1) to clarify Ludwig Wittgenstein’s thesis that colours possess logical structures, focusing on his ‘puzzle proposition’ that “there can be a bluish green but not a reddish green”, (2) to compare modeltheoretical and gametheoretical approaches to the colour exclusion problem. What is gained, then, is a new gametheoretical framework for the logic of ‘forbidden’ (e.g., reddish green and bluish yellow) colours. My larger aim is to discuss phenomenological principles of the demarcation of (...) the bounds of logic as formal ontology of abstract objects. (shrink)

One of the most salient facts about our experience of the world is that objects appear to have colors. This feature of our experience is both striking and pervasive. Indeed, representations of colors of objects are among the most notable deliverances of the visual modality, which is perhaps our most important source of information about the world. For this reason, among others, questions about the nature of color have crucial significance for a variety of philosophical subjects including perception, ontology, (...) epistemology, semantics, and philosophy of mind. But the nature of color is a fascinating philosophical topic in its own right, and there has been a significant increase in the philosophical attention paid to this matter in recent years. In this essay I'll survey some of the main views about the nature of color in the contemporary literature and attempt to lay out some of the arguments that have been used to support or reject various of these accounts. (shrink)

Sellars’s views on the Myth of the Given and the ontological status of secondary qualities, one would have thought, are well-known, even if not always well-understood. One would not have expected his Carus Lectures, then, to offer anything radically new and exciting. The ground that they cover is, after all, familiar—from “Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind”, from “Philosophy and the Scientific Image of Man”, from “The Identity Approach to the Mind-Body Problem”, and from the ensuing debates with Cornman and (...) with Firth. One would not really have anticipated many surprises. But one would have been wrong. (shrink)

Sellars’s views on the Myth of the Given and the ontological status of secondary qualities, one would have thought, are well-known, even if not always well-understood. One would not have expected his Carus Lectures, then, to offer anything radically new and exciting. The ground that they cover is, after all, familiar—from “Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind”, from “Philosophy and the Scientific Image of Man”, from “The Identity Approach to the Mind-Body Problem”, and from the ensuing debates with Cornman and (...) with Firth. One would not really have anticipated many surprises. But one would have been wrong. (shrink)

Abstract The grammar of spatial and temporal concepts cannot, it is argued, be the same in their application to the (manifest) world as perceived and to the (nether) world of unobservable causes as modelled in physics. A parallel case is the dual meaning of colour words, for hues and for material dispositions. The keys to differentiating the two main ranges of uses of ?s? and ?t? are: differences in criteria of numerical and qualitative identity in the two ?worlds'; differences (...) in the logic of indexicals in each context; the explanatory role of powers. The differences can be illustrated in a close analysis of the concept of velocity. (shrink)

This article attempts to give a systematic analysis of the passage 67c4–68d7 from the Timaeus, in which we find Plato’s most detailed, but also extremely obscure, account of the nature and perception of colours. In particular, I focus first on the question how Plato conceives of colour, comparing Plato’s notion with that of Empedocles and showing Plato’s dependence on, but also divergence from, the Empedoclean tradition. Second, I discuss the question what, according to the Timaeus, makes things have the (...) particular colour they have; my interpretation is meant to give a better account of Plato’s view both of what he considers as basic colours and of what he considers as mixed colours. And third, I conclude with some remarks about the ontological status of colours on Plato’s theory, in part by contrasting it with Democritus’ conception of colours as secondary qualities. (shrink)

Scientists are often bemused by the efforts of philosophers essaying a theory of colour: colour science sports a huge array of facts and theories, and it is unclear to its practitioners what philosophy can or is trying to contribute. Equally, philosophers tend to be puzzled about how they can fit colour science into their investigations without compromising their own disciplinary identity: philosophy is supposed to be an a priori investigation; philosophers do not work in psychophysics labs – (...) not in their professional capacity, anyway.These inter-disciplinary barriers arise out of misunderstanding. Philosophers should not so much attempt to contribute to empirical theories of colour, as to formulate philosophical theories of colour. Philosophy is concerned with appearance and reality, object and property, function and representation, and other such fundamental categories of ontology and epistemology. Philosophical theories attempt to fit colour into these categories; such theories do not compete with colour science. However, fitting colour into philosophical theories means dealing with colour as it really is – and one cannot know what it is without consulting the psychologists. That is why philosophers need an up-to-date understanding of psychological theories of colour. (shrink)

Dispositional theories of the colours of objects identify an object’s having a certain colour with its being such that it would produce perceptions of certain kinds in perceivers of certain kinds under certain specified conditions. Without doubting that objects have dispositions to produce perceptions of certain kinds, this paper questions whether the relevant kinds of perceptions, perceivers, and conditions can be specified in a way that (i) does not rely on acceptance of any objects as being coloured in a (...) non-dispositional sense and (ii) secures the necessity of the identity between an object’s having the disposition so specified and its having the colour in question. Accepting any theory that looked as if it succeeded on both these counts would require an explanation of why a parallel identity does not hold for an object’s disposition to produce, e.g., perceptions of shape. (shrink)

Frank Jackson has a new objectivist and representationalist account of the content of colour-experience. I raise several objections both against the account itself and, primarily, against how he tries to support it. He argues that the new account enables us to see what is wrong with the so-called Opacity Puzzle. This alleged puzzle is an argument in which a seemingly implausible conclusion is derived from three premises of which seem plausible to an representationalist. Jackson.

A review of U. Mäki (ed.). Fact and Fiction in Economics, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. pp. xvi 384. ISBN 0521 00957. As people interested mainly in theory, methodologists and philos...

This chapter focuses on the incompatibility of afterimage colors. Several quasilogical, semantic, and metaphysical questions having to do with incompatibility come up in color theory, and the problem is so complicated and fragile that it is argued here that, despite some marvelous work on the topic, the problem remains to be sorted out. Every naive subject who encounters afterimages without prejudice has agreed that they have color; this is mentioned here because it is the initial and also the commonsense view. (...) However, accepting that a physical account of color incompatibility is right for physical colors makes an account for the incompatibility of afterimage colors improbable. One can provide a physiological account based on opponent processes, but this will deliver only a contingent truth or a necessity relative only to a particular retinal structure and postretinal neural coding. (shrink)

Scholars have rejected Wilfrid Sellars’ argument for an ontology of absolute processes on the grounds that it relies on a dubious and dogmatic appeal to the homogeneity of color. Borrowing from Rosenthal’s recent defense, but ultimate rejection of homogeneity, I defend this claim of on Sellarsian/Kantian transcendental grounds, and reconstruct the remainder of his argument. I argue that Sellars has good reason to suppose that homogeneity is a necessary condition of any possible experience, including indirect experience of theoretical-explanatory posits, (...) and therefore good reason to hold that Reductive Materialism, as he conceives it, is an untenable account of color. The remainder of his argument aims to answer the question of what the metaphysical relation is between the state of an experiencing subject that we take color to be and the colorless microphysical particles that we take to constitute that subject. After rejecting Substance Dualism, Epiphenomenalism, and Wholistic or Emergent Materialism as explanatorily inadequate, Sellars proposes that both color-states and micro-physical particles should be understood as manifestations of an underlying ontology on absolute processes. (shrink)

Philosophers and scientists have long speculated about the nature of color. Atomists such as Democritus thought color to be "conventional," not real; Galileo and other key figures of the Scientific Revolution thought that it was an erroneous projection of our own sensations onto external objects. More recently, philosophers have enriched the debate about color by aligning the most advanced color science with the most sophisticated methods of analytical philosophy. In this volume, leading scientists and philosophers examine new problems with new (...) analytic tools, considering such topics as the psychophysical measurement of color and its implications, the nature of color experience in both normal color-perceivers and the color blind, and questions that arise from what we now know about the neural processing of color information, color consciousness, and color language. Taken together, these papers point toward a complete restructuring of current orthodoxy concerning color experience and how it relates to objective reality. Kuehni, Jameson, Mausfeld, and Niederee discuss how the traditional framework of a three-dimensional color space and basic color terms is far too simple to capture the complexities of color experience. Clark and MacLeod discuss the difficulties of a materialist account of color experience. Churchland, Cohen, Matthen, and Westphal offer competing accounts of color ontology. Finally, Broackes and Byrne and Hilbert discuss the phenomenology of color blindness. Contributors: Justin Broackes, Alex Byrne, Paul M. Churchland, Austen Clark, Jonathan Cohen, David R. Hilbert, Kimberly A. Jameson, Rolf Kuehni, Don I.A. MacLeod, Mohan Matthen, Rainer Mausfeld, Richard Niederée, Jonathan Westphal The hardcover edition does not include a dust jacket. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to unravel Aristotle’s reasoning with regard to the ontological status of colours; also, to get a better understanding of his views on the production of the whole spectrum of colours; and finally, to evaluate the explanatory power of his theory of colours. The texts I mainly draw my evidence from is Aristotle’s De sensu 3 and the relevant passages from the De anima as well as from other Aristotelian treatises; in addition, I use for (...) my interpretation remarks made by Alexander of Aphrodisias in his commentary on the De sensu, in his Quaestiones and in the dubious treatise Mantissa. (shrink)

In this paper, I present the enactive theory of color that implies a form of color relationism. I argue that this view constitutes a better alternative to color subjectivism and color objectivism. I liken the enactive view to Husserl’s phenomenology of perception, arguing that both deconstruct the clear duality of subject and object, which is at the basis of the other theories of color, in order to claim the co-constitution of subject and object in the process of experience. I also (...) extend the enactive and phenomenological account of color to the more general topic of the epistemological and ontological status of sensory qualities (qualia), outlining the fields of enactive phenomenology and enactive ontology. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:A Picture Is a Patchwork of Color Laid Out in a Private Space in Which Lie Flat Imitations of LifeDavid Socher, Independent ScholarThe fish to be fried has an ontological head, an epistemic belly, and an aesthetic tail.1 A picture is a patchwork of color laid out in a private space in which lie flat imitations of life. Such a patchwork constitutes a make-believe visual field. I roll out (...) this suggestion under the following headings: Intention, Form and Content, Ontology, Picture Space, Make-believe, Photography, and Resemblance (see Figure 1).In Annie and Alfred's house the wallpaper has daisies, the linoleum has pine trees, the carpet has tigers, and the upholstery has sailboats. In Betty and Bill's house the wallpaper is plaid, the linoleum is checkerboard, the carpet is paisley, and the upholstery herringbone. Annie, Alfred, Betty, and Bill all have a few one-dollar bills and a few five-dollar bills. As you of course know, the ones have Washington on them and the fives have Lincoln on them. It goes without saying that these daisies, pine trees, tigers, sailboats, Washingtons, and Lincolns are, in fact, pictures, a word I have not used until now. The absence of that word was not particularly noticeable. That is just the way a daisy is on wallpaper and that is just the way a president is on currency. (The word picture is not the only word to act this way, to drop out in this fashion. Take the word name. When I am on a list it is because my name, or perhaps my number is on the list.) For starters let us bring aboard the term picture to include these daisies, trees, tigers, sailboats, and presidents. And let us note that there are no pictures in Betty's wallpaper, linoleum, carpet, and upholstery.Some pictures work harder than Annie's daisies. Consider, for example, the use of pictures in pedestrian traffic lights. The pedestrian WALK sign pictures (in plain white light) a walking figure. And the DON"T WALK sign pictures (in flashing red light) an upraised hand enjoining us to stop.2 The first directs us to walk by showing us an example of walking, by picturing a walking person. We do what the figure does. It walks, we walk. In the second picture we sort of make-believe it is the hand of a traffic officer holding [End Page 105] his hand up for us to stop. This picture does not operate by example. We are certainly not expected to hold up our hand; we are expected to stop. With this sign a picture is used to command by picturing a command. In the WALK sign a picture is used to command by picturing compliance. So these are two ways of using a picture to direct our actions—picturing compliance and picturing a command. Here is a third sign—a picture of a cigarette is overlaid with a red X. The sign tells us not to smoke. It does not picture either command or compliance. It pictures, rather, the prohibited thing. This sign has a non-pictorial content, the X. It signals the prohibition. Click for larger view View full resolutionFigure 1.Annie's daisies, sailboats, and presidents are not to be imitated like the walking figure, nor obeyed like the halting hand, nor avoided like the prohibited cigarette. In merely displaying their subject these pictures fulfill their mission (see Table 1).IntentionBut what is the subject of a picture? What determines who or what is pictured? The Cracker Jack box features a boy in a sailor suit. Shortly before that [End Page 106] confection went into production, the founder's young grandson died, and the founder put that picture on the box in his memory. Since, whatever the founder had in mind, we do not take the sailor boy on the box to be that grandson, it is not him. Excluding the important special case of photographs we require, as Wolheim put it, intention fulfilled to specify the subject of a picture.3 In this case, even if the founder regarded his memorializing gesture as one of putting his grandson... (shrink)

When we are asked what the term ‘Socrates’ signifies, we answer spontaneously, I suppose: “the man Socrates.” And when we are asked what the term ‘white’ signifies, we tend to answer: “the color white” or “whiteness.” Although our second answer may be less spontaneous than the first, either because we may have some difficulty in explaining what a color is, ontologically speaking, or because we may be reluctant to commit ourselves to such a controversial thing as whiteness, we may nevertheless (...) be willing to grant that ‘white’ signifies something, however this thing is to be explained in detail. But when we are asked what ‘Socrates is white’ signifies, we might hesitate in giving an answer. Some may say: “Well, this sentence signifies nothing other than Socrates and the color white.” Others may respond: “It signifies Socrates insofar as he is white” or “the fact that Socrates is white.” Still others may reply that there is no answer because only terms signify something; a sentence, on the other hand, does not signify but expresses something or brings something to the understanding. (shrink)

Digital pictures can be type-identical in respect of colours, shapes and sizes (allographic), but they are not tokens of notational systems, because the types under which they are identical have vague limits and do not meet the requirements for notational characters. Digital display devices are designed to instantiate only limited ranges of objective properties (light intensities, sizes and shapes). Those ranges keep differences in objective magnitudes below sensory discrimination thresholds, and thus define objective conditions sufficient, but not necessary, for the (...) phenomenal type-identity of pictures. The fact that digital pictures are types shows that pictures are not necessarily autographic. Moreover, the reasons why digital pictures are allographic (essentially, the consistent manipulation of sub-phenomenal information) could in principle also be made to apply to non-digital pictures. (shrink)

From an Ontological Point of View is a highly original and accessible exploration of fundamental questions about what there is. John Heil discusses such issues as whether the world includes levels of reality; the nature of objects and properties; the demands of realism; what makes things true; qualities, powers, and the relation these bear to one another. He advances an account of the fundamental constituents of the world around us, and applies this account to problems that have plagued recent work (...) in the philosophy of mind and metaphysics (color, intentionality, and the nature of consciousness). (shrink)

The physical properties of color and its influence on the organism -- The source of the myths about experience : the principle of the being and thinking identity.

Color provides an instance of a general puzzle about how to reconcile the picture of the world given to us by our ordinary experience with the picture of the world given to us by our best theoretical accounts. The Red and the Real offers a new approach to such longstanding philosophical puzzles about what colors are and how they fit into nature. It is responsive to a broad range of constraints --- both the ordinary constraints of color experience and the (...) more theoretical constraints of color science, psychology, semantics, and ontology. (shrink)

A review of Cohen's *The Red and the Real*.

In this paper I argue that color is a relational feature of the distal objects of perception, a way of appearing. I begin by outlining three constraints any theory of color should satisfy: physicalism about the non‐mental world, consistency with what is known from color science, and transparency about color experience. Traditional positions on the ontological status of color, such as physicalist reduction of color to spectral reflectance, subjectivism, dispositionalism, and primitivism, fail, I claim, to meet all three constraints. By (...) treating color as a relational property, a way of appearing, the three constraints can be met. However, serious problems for this view emerge when considering the relation between illusory color experiences and veridical color experiences. I do not propose a solution to these problems. (shrink)

Questions about the ontology of color matter because colors matter. Colors are extremely pervasive and salient features of the world. Moreover, people care about the distribution of these features: they expend money and effort to paint their houses, cars, and other possessions, and their clear preference for polychromatic over monochromatic televisions and computer monitors have consigned monochromatic models to the status of rare antiques. The apparent ubiquity of colors and their importance to our lives makes them a ripe target (...) for ontological questions such as the following: " • What is the nature of colors? " • Are they, as they seem to be, properties of objects? (shrink)