Fitting color into the physical world

Philosophical Psychology 23 (5):575-599 (2010)
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Abstract

I propose a strategy for a metaphysical reduction of perceived color, that is, an identification of perceived color with properties characterizable in non-qualitative terms. According to this strategy, a description of visual experience of color, which incorporates a description of the appearance of color, is a reference-fixing description. This strategy both takes color appearance seriously in its primary epistemic role and avoids rendering color as metaphysically mysterious. I’ll also argue that given this strategy, a plausible account of perceived color claims that colors are physical properties of physical objects.

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Author's Profile

Peter Ross
California State Polytechnic University, Pomona

Citations of this work

Perspectival truth and color primitivism.Berit Brogaard - 2010 - In Cory D. Wright & Nikolaj Pedersen (eds.), New Waves in Truth. Palgrave-Macmillan. pp. 1--34.
In defense of the disjunctive.Alexander Skiles - 2016 - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 59 (5):471-487.
Quality-Space Functionalism about Color.Jacob Berger - 2021 - Journal of Philosophy 118 (3):138-164.
A defense of holistic representationalism.Jacob Berger - 2018 - Mind and Language 33 (2):161-176.

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References found in this work

Naming and Necessity: Lectures Given to the Princeton University Philosophy Colloquium.Saul A. Kripke - 1980 - Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Edited by Darragh Byrne & Max Kölbel.
Physicalism, or Something Near Enough.Jaegwon Kim - 2005 - Princeton University Press.
Empiricism and the philosophy of mind.Wilfrid Sellars - 1956 - Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science 1:253-329.

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