Color and Perceptual Variation Revisited: Unknown Facts, Alien Modalities, and Perfect Psychosemantics

Dialectica 60 (3):307-319 (2006)
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Abstract

An adequate ontology of color must face the empirical facts about perceptual variation. In this paper I begin by reviewing a range of data about perceptual variation, and showing how they tell against color physicalism and motivate color relationalism. Next I consider a series of objections to the argument from perceptual variation, and argue that they are unpersuasive. My conclusion will be that the argument remains a powerful obstacle for color physicalism, and a powerful reason to believe in color relationalism instead.

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Jonathan Cohen
University of California, San Diego

Citations of this work

Perceptual variation in object perception: A defence of perceptual pluralism.Berit Brogaard & Thomas Alrik Sørensen - 2023 - In Aleksandra Mroczko-Wąsowicz & Rick Grush (eds.), Sensory individuals: unimodal and multimodal perspectives. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 113–129.
The puzzle of true blue.Michael Tye - 2006 - Analysis 66 (3):173-178.
Truest blue.A. Byrne & D. R. Hilbert - 2007 - Analysis 67 (1):87-92.

View all 8 citations / Add more citations

References found in this work

How to speak of the colors.Mark Johnston - 1992 - Philosophical Studies 68 (3):221-263.
Color realism and color science.Alex Byrne & David R. Hilbert - 2003 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 26 (1):3-21.
Colour Vision: A Study in Cognitive Science and the Philosophy of Perception.Evan Thompson - 1996 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 47 (2):339-343.
Ways of coloring.Evan Thompson, A. Palacios & F. J. Varela - 1992 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 15 (1):1-26.

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